ArtistsColoradoVol. 11 The Hyperlocal
The Hyperlocal: Sammy Lee
Denver-based artist Sammy Lee makes highly portable sculptures from paper, but a longing for home is embedded in her materials.
March 07, 2025
ArtistsNew MexicoVol. 11 The Hyperlocal
The Hyperlocal: Edie Tsong
Santa Fe–based artist Edie Tsong explores lineage through repeated strokes of ballpoint pen, revealing the spaces where our inner lives overlap to create new shapes.
March 07, 2025
ArtistsArizonaVol. 11 The Hyperlocal
The Hyperlocal: Urgent Care Art
Urgent Care Art’s pop-ups in quotidian Tucson spaces juxtapose the healing and fear inherent to queer visibility.
March 07, 2025
ReviewNew MexicoVol. 11 The Hyperlocal
Adapted from a Podcast, Broken Boxes Materializes Artists’ Voices
Ten years of podcast guests contribute to this multimedia exhibition at Albuquerque Museum, foregrounding the playful possibilities of socially engaged art.
March 07, 2025
ReviewColoradoVol. 11 The Hyperlocal
Ugo Rondinone’s Aspen Show is a Decadent Confection that Knows its Audience
Ugo Rondinone, creator of Las Vegas’s Seven Magic Mountains, returns to the American West with more rainbows and a light touch.
March 07, 2025
InterviewNew MexicoVol. 11 The Hyperlocal
Jerry West: “It was a magic thing, our life on that little prairie world”
Nonagenarian artist Jerry West on New Mexico homesteading, dream work, and adobe architecture as sculpture.
March 07, 2025
Southwest Art News: March 2025
Santa Fe mourns Gene Hackman, Austin's Big Medium closes, another staff departure from CCA Santa Fe, and more top Southwest art news headlines for March 2025.
March 04, 2025
The Maternal Mystery Box That Changed a Taos Pueblo Artist’s Life
Painter Eva Mirabal bequeathed a sealed wooden box to her son Jonathan Warm Day Coming. Its contents shaped his artistic trajectory.
February 27, 2025
As Another Denver Art Project Goes Fugitive, Co-Director Counts “A Hundred Reasons Why”
"You can’t show art if no one can afford to make it," says Brett Matarazzo of BRDG Project, an arts nonprofit that just left its second location—with nowhere else to land.
February 25, 2025
UMFA’s Copper-Infused Riverbed Installation Surfaces Shimmering Visuals from Poisoned Depths
Yasuaki Onishi's site-specific installation Stone on Boundary poetically links Japan and Utah's mountains, rivers—and entanglements in the mining industry.
February 18, 2025
Hopi Artist Mavasta Honyouti Carved a Chronicle of His Grandfather’s Abduction—and Return
Mavasta Honyouti debuts sixteen remarkable panels bearing ancestral memories of the Native American boarding school system at Wheelwright Museum.
February 13, 2025
In an Artery of New York Commerce, Diné Artist Eric-Paul Riege Plays with “the Real and Fake”
New Mexico–based artist Eric-Paul Riege chose Canal Street, a commercial thoroughfare and counterfeit market, to question notions of material value in his first New York solo exhibition.
February 11, 2025
Southwest Artist and Writer Residencies with Spring 2025 Deadlines
Apply for artist residencies with spring 2025 deadlines in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Oklahoma, California, and beyond.
February 10, 2025
This Utah Curator Launched Her Career with a Treatise on Artistic Rebellion
Nancy Stoaks of Park City's Kimball Art Center wrote her thesis on artistic rabble-rouser Niki de Saint Phalle, sparking a career-long fight for the underdogs.
February 06, 2025
Tempe Artists Seek Answers Amid Alternative Art Space Redevelopment
The City of Tempe says there are no plans to demolish DIY arts hub Danelle Plaza, but the mayor is sending different signals. Local artists are demanding clarity.
February 04, 2025
Southwest Art News: January–February 2025
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith dies, Texas officials seize Sally Mann photos, and more top Southwest art news headlines for January and February 2025.
February 04, 2025
Beautiful Corners: A Road Trip to Witness Larry Bell’s First Cube, and His Last
Artist Jon Revett makes a pilgrimage to see his mentor Larry Bell's career retrospective in Phoenix, and view what the Light and Space master calls his last cube in Taos.
January 30, 2025
Flowers as Hammers: A Project to Build Up Black Men Started With One Man’s Crisis
Robert Washington-Vaughns dumped the "capitalistic dream" to start Black Men Flower Project, a fanciful gifting initiative with the muscle of a mutual aid organization.
January 28, 2025
Las Vegas Curator Fawn Douglas On What It Takes to Build a Native Arts Center
From fundraising to ceiling patches, here's how artist and curator Fawn Douglas cofounded Nuwu Art in downtown Las Vegas.
January 23, 2025
María Elena Ortiz’s Sweeping Curatorial Worlds Start with Hyperlocal Specificity
Amid a triumphant New York triennial, Fort Worth–based curator María Elena Ortiz looks back at her diasporic storytelling efforts—and calls for a bigger Latinx curatorial web.
January 16, 2025
Keith Haring’s City-Spanning Phoenix Takeover Almost Didn’t Happen
Keith Haring was a Phoenix teacher's second choice for a 1986 art workshop, but the invite made a major mark on the city.
January 14, 2025
Relax and Stay Alert: The Playful Incoherence of Tristram Lansdowne and Ryan Crowley
Wicked Wells and Window Wipeouts traps the viewer between a hard place and a sunken one—but its ambiguity offers a different kind of freedom.
January 09, 2025
Denver Collective’s Four-Hour Karaoke Marathons Have a Message For the Art World: Get Over Yourself
Bucking the solemn tone of much performance art, Right on Time collective's sweaty, cyclical extravaganzas herald a roaring late-2020s vibe.
January 07, 2025
Books + LiteraryInside Southwest Contemporary
Our Favorite Books (and One Epic Article) of 2024
The Artist's Way for werewolves, a guide to forgetting the Alamo, and other compelling reads from the Southwest Contemporary editorial team.
January 06, 2025
Karima Walker’s “Grief Rituals” Seek the Non-Linear Wisdom of Walking in Circles
The Arizona-born artist’s MOCA Tucson exhibition draws inspiration (and soil) from the Santa Cruz River, melding body and land.
December 23, 2024
“The Doors Were Breaking, Things Were Moving”: Inside the Roswell Museum After Disastrous 500-Year Flood
Museum insiders offer firsthand accounts of the flash flood that breached Roswell Museum in October—and an update on the uphill battle for remediation.
December 19, 2024
Darkest Days: 11 Urgent (and Uplifting) Art Shows to See This Winter
Catch these must-see art exhibitions across the Southwest for winter 2024–25, featuring Richard Avedon, Nancy Hemenway Barton, Charles Ross, and more.
December 17, 2024
New Mexico is in the Midst of an Under-the-Radar Indie Book Publishing Renaissance
Despite economic flux, new independent book publishers are blooming—and veteran presses are thriving—across New Mexico.
December 12, 2024
Scripted Spaces Dissects the Mind Maze of the Las Vegas Casino, Down to Those Crazy Carpets
Las Vegas–raised painter eri king co-opts the persuasive powers of gambling hall interior design at Available Space Art Projects.
December 10, 2024
Death of Santa Fe Publishing Icon Guy Cross Stirs Tales of a Supercharged Southwest Art Moment
Guy Cross, who cofounded SWC precursor The Magazine, stoked Santa Fe’s turn-of-the-21st-century push to join a globalized contemporary art conversation.
December 06, 2024
