Southwest Art News: December 2022
Catch up on recent art news headlines in the Southwest region, including people on the move, grants, and more.
Dec 01
Nov 30
The Sentience of Sediments: Elpitha Tsoutsounakis’s Alchemy of Ochre
Elpitha Tsoutsounakis’s project Unknown Prospect explores the material possibilities of ochre to showcase the beauty and agency of the Utah landscape and its nonhuman inhabitants.
Nov 29
Local Tucson Gift Guide 2022
Whether giving or receiving gifts is your love language, you’ll never run out of original Tucson gift options for friends and family this holiday season.
Nov 22
Artists Speak About the Impacts of Rampant Development in Phoenix’s Roosevelt Row
Phoenix’s Roosevelt Row arts district is different (read: more corporate) these days. How are all of the speedy commercial and residential developments impacting local artists?
Nov 21
Local Denver Gift Guide 2022
Southwest Contemporary’s first installment of the 2022 gift guide series takes shoppers to Denver, with jaw-dropping nature bundles, an in-the-thick-of-it-all staycation, and more.
Nov 17
“Pornographic” Mural in Salt Lake City Suburb Causes Confusion, Outrage
Midvale, Utah recently instituted a cultural revitalization project to enhance its downtown. A large mural depicting two nude figures and a ghoulish specter has become the talk of the town. […]
Nov 15
Downtown Phoenix Art Existed Before Roosevelt Row. Just Ask Pete Petrisko.
Pete Petrisko has spent decades participating in and documenting the downtown Phoenix arts scene, which has morphed from the grit of Metropophobobia and Gallery X to a place for brewpub-hopping.
Nov 14
A Rift Out West: Salt Lake City’s Arts Community Confronts Issues of Indigenous Representation at Local Gallery Modern West
New Mexico artist Billy Schenck has made a successful career of cowboy-and-Indian pop-art imagery, but a recent exhibition of his work brings present-day debates over representation and authorship into the harshest of spotlights.
Nov 10
Albuquerque’s Risolana Fosters Lo-Fi Art That’s Responsive to the Contemporary Moment
Risolana—Albuquerque’s only risograph studio that’s set to open an exhibition by debut artist-in-residence Lena Kassicieh—builds knowledge-sharing connections and shares stories through printed books, posters, and more.
Nov 08
Wendy Kveck Stages the Feminine at ASAP in Las Vegas
Wendy Kveck’s Prompt: at ASAP in Las Vegas explored the ways we stage ourselves and our art while employing a feminist practice that confronts and amplifies women as cultural markers.
Nov 04
Stephen Marc Explores the American Psyche Amid Midterm Elections
As midterm elections loom, Stephen Marc, an Arizona-based photographer and Guggenheim fellow, explores what protests reveal about the American psyche in An American Journey Continues.
Nov 02
Anne L’Ecuyer Abruptly Fired from Arizona’s State Arts Agency
Arizona Commission on the Arts, which secured the state’s largest allocation of arts funding this past summer, dismisses executive director Anne L’Ecuyer less than a year into her term.
Nov 01
Southwest Art News: November 2022
Catch up on recent art news headlines in the Southwest region, including people on the move, grants, and more.
Oct 31
The Gallerist in Fuzzy Slippers: Doug Kacena’s Fashionable Footwear
Doug Kacena, owner of Denver art gallery K Contemporary, replaces art-world stuffiness with swagger through stylish and attention-grabbing kicks.
Oct 28
Pete Petrisko: 35 Years Onward at Lost Leaf Counterpunches at In-Flux Phoenix
Pete Petrisko, one of the few remaining old heads in the local art scene who has lived in downtown Phoenix since the 1980s, exhibits selections from the past thirty-five years.
Oct 26
Documenta 15: What You Need to Know About the History-Making Quinquennial
Documenta 15, the globally significant quinquennial, was both an exercise in decentralized curation with a focus on the Global South and a show riddled with unrelenting controversies.
Oct 25
Salt Lake City Bids Farewell to John Sproul’s Beloved Nox Contemporary
John Sproul, a prominent local artist and owner of Nox Contemporary, will close the gallery following the end of Jared Steffensen’s exhibition Idem, Norms, Dorms Mine on November 4, 2022.
Oct 24
Work in Progress with Monica Aissa Martinez
Monica Aissa Martinez talks about her drawings of human figures, animals, and viruses during a studio visit in Phoenix, where she shares past inspirations and future projects.
Oct 20
Curator Profile: Daina Warren for Vicki Myhren Gallery
Curator Daina Warren draws from her expertise in Indigenous art as practiced in Canada to present a powerful female-centric exhibition.
Oct 18
Country’s Largest Mexican Retablo Collection, Once Stored Underneath Bleachers, is Paired with Contemporary Devotional Works
Contemporary Ex-Votos at NMSU Art Museum sheds light on the understudied iconographic and ideological aspects of retablos depicting miracles on tin and found materials.
Oct 17
Work in Progress with William T. Carson
William T. Carson's coal-based artworks comment on cultural relationships to fossil fuels and provoke questions about how humans value natural materials.
Oct 14
In i know you are, but what am i?, Artists Turn Taunts into Self-Empowerment
i know you are, but what am i? at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art focuses on the figure to launch discussions about identity, fluidity, and body positivity.
Oct 12
Santa Fe’s Multicultural Mural, Version 2.0
Gilberto Guzmán, a lead artist of Santa Fe’s sharply contested and now-defunct Multicultural mural, painted a new Multicultural to be displayed in 2023.
Oct 10
Ho Baron’s 50-Year Retrospective of Outsider Art in El Paso
Ho Baron: Gods for Future Religions at the El Paso Museum of Art is an uncanny blend of maximalism, surrealism, the ascetic, and the interstellar.
Oct 06
In Memoriam: Tigre Mashaal-Lively
Memorial services for Tigre Mashaal-Lively, who made art about individual and collective trauma and healing, are scheduled for Friday, October 7 and Saturday, October 8 in Santa Fe.
Oct 05
Before and Afterlives: JC Gonzo Rejuvenates New Mexico’s Abandoned Cemeteries
JC Gonzo’s photographs of New Mexico cemeteries place viewers in a symbiotic relationship with the land, community, and history.
Oct 04
Southwest Art News: October 2022
Catch up on recent art news headlines in the Southwest region, including people on the move, grants, and more.
Sep 30
Step Into Christian Degn’s Dark, Magical Castle
Provo-based artist Christian Degn brings viewers into an abstract, dark, and magical world with pen-and-ink illustrations that grace album covers for well-known metal and ambient bands.
Sep 27
Denver’s Tya Anthony Explores Social Justice Through Visual Catharsis
Tya Alisa Anthony untangles the meaning of safe spaces as sanctuary and explores the art of social justice, human rights, and identity in the Mile High City.
Sep 26
Curator Profile: Rachelle Pablo of 516 Arts
Rachelle Pablo (Diné), 516 Arts's newly-appointed curator who will unveil her first exhibition this weekend, aims to unpack nuance and adjust misrepresentations of contemporary Indigenous artists.
Sep 22
New Salt Lake City Gallery Current Work Arrives at a Transitional Time for the Local Art Scene
Current Work, founded by longtime arts advocate Tiffini Porter, raises the contemporary art bar in Salt Lake City. The gallery also fills several sudden gaps in Utah's creative ecosystem.
Sep 20
Work in Progress with Afton Love
Afton Love, who lives and creates in Ojo Caliente, New Mexico, pivoted from big-picture abstract art to a form of abstraction that ponders and employs addition rather than subtraction. 1. […]
Sep 19
Anthony Garcia Sr.’s Serape-Influenced Murals of Denver
The serape-style murals and public-art pieces of Birdseed Collective co-founder Anthony Garcia Sr. are integral to Denver’s urban infrastructure.
Sep 16
Work in Progress with Jeff Suina
Cochiti Pueblo artist Jeff Suina incorporates traditional pottery materials and knowledge as well as architectural and digital technologies in sculpting angular and eye-catching works in clay.
Sep 14
Indigenous Designers Rebuff Mainstream Fashion Industry Trends
The Santa Fe Indian Market fashion show shined a spotlight on Indigenous designers who bring new perspectives to an industry in need of positive, equitable change.
Sep 09
Phoenix Faces Tough Choices with Arts and Culture Funding
Phoenix seeks community input as the city considers bond funding for a new Latino Cultural Center and other creative projects, all while art spaces rebound from COVID-19 impacts.
Sep 07
Review: Jorge Rojas: Material Witness at Granary Arts
Jorge Rojas’s retrospective Material Witness at Granary Arts in Ephraim, Utah, showcases a quiet yet still tenacious side of the Salt Lake City-based artist.
Sep 05
Utah’s Expanded Art Budget Increases Opportunities for Artists
The pandemic forced Utah’s arts organizations to get creative with funding sources. The strategy ultimately allowed for more direct aid for individual artists and novel programming.
Sep 01
Southwest Art News: September 2022
Catch up on recent art news headlines in the Southwest region, including people on the move, grants, and more.
Aug 30
Nancy Rivera’s Laborious Practice Pulls a Thread Between Her Art-Making Process and Her Immigration Experience
Salt Lake City artist Nancy Rivera illustrates the immigrant experience in a series of complex and time-consuming embroideries.
Aug 29
Diego Rodriguez-Warner’s Modernized Trompe L’Oeil Nods to the Canon’s Victors and Antiheroes
Diego Rodriguez-Warner: Iteratives at Rule Gallery in Denver subverts and reinforces historical permutations of beauty.
Aug 26
Marvelous Green Encounters: The Poetry and Anthropology of Nathaniel Tarn
InterviewNew MexicoVol. 6 Rooted: Poetics of Place
Based in Santa Fe since the early 1980s, Nathaniel Tarn has spent his career chasing an international literature. A new autobiography, Atlantis, an Autoanthropology, explores the author’s broad career.
Aug 26
Critical Mass: MASS Design Group’s International Humanitarian Architecture Starts with Immersion in the Local
FeatureNew MexicoVol. 6 Rooted: Poetics of Place
Sustainable Native Communities Design Lab in Santa Fe, an arm of the international human justice architectural firm MASS Design Group, recasts architecture and design in the Southwest.
