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Oct 01

Studio Visit: Erin Mickelson / Broken Cloud Press

FeatureStudio Visit

Erin Mickelson’s book-based artwork plays with translation, in every sense of the word. In LIMINAL betwixt/between, her series of work displayed in form & concept’s Superscript show in 2018, text is translated to sound, sound to image, and image fed into an algorithm, chopped up, and assembled into new images. Her collaborating artists are Twitter bots and long-dead authors, and her process a visible part of the product. In everything she makes, there’s a degree of absurdity and flux: how many times can you translate something and still call it the same thing? By Robin Babb

Oct 01

Impressions From the Past: The Rich History and Modern Processes of Printmaking

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The evolution of the art of printmaking is practically a human inheritance of knowledge from which we all benefit. We experience printmaking in our daily lives, from the clothes we wear and the books we read to poster advertisements for performances we attend and the money we spend. Printmaking is a three-thousand-year-old art form that reveals within itself an intimacy probably only found in the throes of a fight: gouging, biting, scraping, pressure, scarred surfaces, trenches dug. Years of battling the grain to carve images into wood leave the artists’ hands bent and curved like tree roots, maybe even burned from caustic processes that can scar the hand in the effort of creating visual landscapes. By Marya Errin Jones

Oct 01

Master Printer Valpuri Remling Doesn’t Stand on Ceremony in Life or Lithography

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Unlike most other traditional printmaking technologies, the invention of lithography can be traced to a specific person and time. Like most artists before and since, German actor and playwright Johann […] By Titus O'Brien

Oct 01

Still in Print: ABQ Zine Fest 9 and Local Lit Destinations

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As ABQ Zine Fest 9 approaches, we take a look at how print media has endured and the spaces that are building culture through the celebration of zines, books, and comics. By Maggie Grimason

Aug 28

All Work and All Play: At Home with Artists Cannupa Hanska Luger and Ginger Dunnill

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We took a seat at the table in the center of the warehouse-turned-home (turned-“work, brainstorming, and studio space”) where artists Cannupa Hanska Luger and Ginger Dunnill live in Glorieta, New Mexico. Taped to the kitchen cabinet was a wall-size paper schedule of impending deadlines for numerous projects. Every line was filled out, and notes were made in black marker, even in the margins. “Welcome to my life,” Dunnill laughed as, never skipping a beat, she outlined their individual projects—while the couple’s two children ran in one door and out the other... By Maggie Grimason

Aug 28

Studio Visit: Ted Larsen

FeatureStudio Visit

The tone of my studio visit with Santa Fe artist Ted Larsen was set early when he declared that he would likely be both circumspect and like a blowtorch when talking about his thoughts on his studio practice, life, and work. Now fifty-five, the trained painter has been showing his art since before he graduated college. By the time he was twenty-two, he had already exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, making big strides early on in a career that has now spanned decades. By Clayton Porter

Aug 28

Field Report: Silver City, New Mexico

FeatureField Report

It should be on everyone’s bucket list. Silver City. It sounds like a romantic vestige of another time. I didn’t realize how much so until I turned off the highway and onto a deliciously winding drive through the Black Range and into the Gila National Forest and Pinos Altos Mountains. By Rachel Preston Prinz

Aug 28

Weekday Detour: Street Art in Albuquerque

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Briana Olson meditates on belonging as she tours the murals and street art of Albuquerque, New Mexico. By Briana Olson

Jul 30

Building the Legacy of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson

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Quietly, a new foundation has come into being in Santa Fe that promises to have a significant impact on art history and art-making, not just in the Southwest, but internationally. The Holt/Smithson Foundation (HSF) was literally willed into existence by artist Nancy Holt—creator of the massive concrete art installation, Sun Tunnels, in the Utah desert— who lived in Santa Fe the last two decades of her life, until her death in 2014. By Janet Abrams

Jul 29

The Seed Stewards of New Mexico

FeatureFood & Drink

Genetic diversity is important in plants for the same reason it’s important in humans and animals: a shallower gene pool means more vulnerability to disease and mutation and less adaptability to environmental change. Throughout human history, farmers have benefitted from plants’ ability to evolve over time by carefully selecting seeds from their harvest to plant for next year based on drought tolerance, disease resistance, productivity, or other desirable traits. This long partnership between growers and seeds has created countless unique plant phenotypes, many of which are now extinct or going that way. By Robin Babb

Jul 29

Seven Alternative Immersive Art Experiences

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Want to break out of the mold? Seven alternative immersive art experiences in Santa Fe are worth exploring this summer. By Jenn Shapland

Jul 26

Studio Visit: Dorielle Caimi

FeatureStudio Visit

Dorielle Caimi’s paintings have been described as absurd, humorous, truthful, and empowered. Those adjectives adequately describe Dorielle the painter, too, though I would add that she is extremely funny, smart as a whip, and masterful in her execution and rendering of the female figure. Both articulate and open in speaking about her work, Dorielle effectively integrates her emotional and physical experiences into her studio practice. Balancing expressive and brutally honest portrayals of the female form with jarring pop-surrealist color, animal characters, and cartoonish elements, she offers viewers something vibrant and complex. By Kate Wood

Jun 26

Matron’s Matron: Eliza Lutz

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“What exactly is a record label’s future in a music industry climate seemingly hellbent on conditioning audiences to pay next to nothing for music?” Eliza Lutz, founder of the pioneering Santa Fe–based Matron Records label, thinks the only path forward is to embrace the inevitable and adapt accordingly... By Patrick McGuire

Jun 26

Stage Worthy: The Santa Fe Opera Properties Department

FeatureMeet Your Makers

Where was the dagger? It was the final act of The Letter, a Santa Fe Opera world premiere that opened in 2009, and forty-mile-per-hour winds were howling across the venue’s open-air stage. The murderous Leslie, played by Patricia Racette, was singing her way towards suicide-by-stabbing. Suddenly, the wind whipped a tablecloth and sent Leslie’s fateful knife skittering down the dining table. This was despite the fact that the properties department had reinforced the linen with a stitch called a swing tack and secured it with a wind skirt. By Jordan Eddy

Jun 26

Studio Visit: Stuart Arends

FeatureStudio Visit

Visiting Stuart Arends’s studio was no quick jaunt. We drove one and a half hours from Santa Fe to Willard, New Mexico, past the town, further down the highway, and just before a specified mile marker where we were to rendez-vous with the artist at an unmarked wire gate... By Clayton Porter

Jun 26

Summer According to The

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Summer in northern New Mexico can be overwhelming. Any day of the week there is some activity calling for our attention: artist talks, studio tours, performances, openings, fairs, festivals, markets, music, and, of course, beautiful weather beckoning us outdoors. To help us make sense of it all, I asked two of our regular contributors, Maggie Grimason and Rachel Preston Prinz, to give us a selection of their “must-sees” for the summer season... By Maggie Grimason and Rachel Preston Prinz

May 24

West by Southwest: Considering Landscape in Contemporary Art

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Landscape painting: the passé genre that dominates so much of the world’s understanding of Southwest art. For me, first it conjures images of Albert Bierstadt (wrought with a minefield of American colonialism), the sappy, wistful romance of a Caspar David Friedrich abyss, and the airy, observational paintings of Provence by Paul Cézanne... By Shane Tolbert

May 24

JB Jackson and the Exploration of the American Cultural Landscape

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I grew up on a ranch in the Texas Hill Country and spent as much time outside as possible. There were old roads, stone fence lines, ruins of buildings, and archaeological sites that stretched from creek beds to groves of trees. By Julie McGilvray

Apr 26

Studio Visit: Grace Rosario Perkins

FeatureStudio Visit

Grace Rosario Perkins describes a drawing she had made years ago, taking Black Flag’s Family Man album and replacing Raymond Pettibon’s violent imagery with a repeated series of pencil drawings of women. She then filled out the liner notes with her mother’s name... By Maggie Grimason

Apr 26

Field Report: El Paso + Juárez

FeatureTravel

Downtown Juárez still feels gutted since the demolition of its nightclubs and the shuttering of so many businesses and markets, but among the ruins you can experience—if, I will stress, you have a Juarense to guide you—a lively community trying to find itself and its sense of vitality and ownership over the space again... By Jenn Shapland

Apr 26

My Love Affair with Sandro’s Ghosts: Alexander Girard’s Legacy in New Mexico

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Amy was unyielding. Every time I saw her, she’d ask, “Have you gone to church yet?” “No,” I’d reply, again. “They’re about to start construction on the new sanctuary...” By Rachel Preston Prinz

Mar 27

Studio Visit: Harmony Hammond

FeatureStudio Visit

Harmony Hammond is lying on the floor beneath one of her paintings, craning her neck within inches of the canvas. “I’m doing edges,” she tells me. I first heard of Hammond when I came across the catalogue for Out West, a 1999 show... By Jenn Shapland

Mar 27

Southwest Creative Residencies

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A tour of destination residency programs in the Southwest for artists and writers. By Shane Tolbert

Mar 27

Return to Blackdom

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Taos artist Nikesha Breeze met her father for the first time when she was ten years old. He was homeless on the streets of Portland, while she was growing up beyond the city’s southern outskirts in the small town of Sherwood... By Jordan Eddy

Nov 28

The Slash that Killed Santa Fe Style

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I tucked myself between the open front door and an elegant, old wood easel next to the Acequia Madre House’s immense living room’s antique grand piano, taking a moment in my hiding place to observe the extraordinary space, rarely open to the public. I took in the deeply stained beams in the grand sala, the large arched opening into the dining room with its traditional kiva fireplace, the collection of antiques from all over the Spanish empire, and the gorgeous, massive European-style fireplace. I looked out through the open door towards the mountains over the rare jewel of a lawn and enjoyed the view from the Spanish Pueblo Revival porch. Something prickled at me... By Rachel Preston Prinz

Nov 27

Daniel McCoy

FeatureStudio Visit

"Before, I was taught to paint in a traditional, old-school style in Oklahoma. But Santa Fe wasn’t into that. There was lots of activism back then. It was the four hundred year mark of Columbus in the Americas, and there was a certain kind of American Indian Movement (AIM) echo in response. That was my first eye-opener..." By Alicia Inez Guzmán

Oct 30

Aaron Honyumptewa

FeatureStudio Visit

Aaron Honyumptewa imbues his katsina carvings with the traditional ethos of the Hopi people combined with an undercurrent of... By Clayton Porter

Oct 30

Mourning and Militancy: David Wojnarowicz’s ITSOFOMO

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A snake rides in the grass. A rat materializes in front of it. There’s not much doubt how this encounter is going to end... By Ellen Berkovitch

Oct 30

Meaning and Music: Mark Morris Dance Group Comes to Santa Fe

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Mark Morris dances are difficult to describe because they are so innovative. The man’s wit is a source of endless creativity, and his work gives the simultaneous impressions of serendipity and contemplation. His dances can... By Tamara Johnson

Oct 29

Art in Public Places

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Public art finds itself at the center of a number of our era’s flashpoints: the controversy over Confederate monuments; a questionably placed statue of... By The Magazine

Oct 01

Karsten Creightney

FeatureStudio Visit

In Karsten Creightney’s painting studio at Sanitary Tortilla Factory in downtown Albuquerque, there is a massive pile of paper scraps: richly colored vintage advertisements, newspaper clippings, blown-out images torn to bits, an array of textures, colors, and weights. This is the stuff of dreams... By Nancy Zastudil

Oct 01

Archive Futures

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One of the most difficult things for an artist to do is to reckon with her own legacy. This is not just a theoretical concern for where one fits into a particular historical narrative—it’s also of material importance... By Chelsea Weathers

Aug 28

The “Indigefection” of Doctor Atomic

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Peter Sellars’s new staging of Doctor Atomic refuses to allow the audience to look past the Pueblos... By Thomas Grant Richardson

Jul 30

The Knight, Death, and the Devil—Doctor Atomic Comes Home

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A tragic awareness haunts every element of the opera Doctor Atomic. The libretto, the music—the tableaux of singers, dancers, scenes, and the one prop that never ceases to cast its shadow on the whole... By Diane Armitage

Jul 30

Foto Forum Santa Fe

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Sitting with Sage Paisner in his new gallery space, Foto Forum Santa Fe, I am met with the feeling that photography can create a sense of community, togetherness... By Hatty Nestor

Jul 30

Jetsonorama: Messages for the Future

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"I am the son of J.E.T., or Jetson," Chip Thomas said, referring to his own initials and those of his father. Thomas’s full name is Dr. James Edward Thomas, Jr., and his father, James Edward Thomas, Sr., was the original J.E.T. It’s how Chip Thomas came to his own moniker, Jetsonorama. By Alicia Inez Guzmán

Jun 28

The Folk Art Universe

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This year the International Folk Art Market celebrates its fifteenth birthday. IFAM first began in 2004 with sixty-one artists from thirty-six countries. Now, that number has more than doubled to 162 artists from fifty-three countries. Officially, the vending is two days... By Alicia Inez Guzmán

Jun 01

New Feet On An Old Stage

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“I suppose in some ways I’m always trying to achieve the impossible.” Jonathan Winkle, the newly appointed director of Performance Santa Fe ignores his coffee while enthusiastically explaining how he books the perfect season roster. “I want a balance between artistically... By Maxwell Lucas

Jun 01

Anonymous: Icons, Hackers, and the Carnivalesque

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Every now and then modern societies erupt in what Noam Chomsky calls “outbreaks of democracy.” These can take many forms, from political revolution to resistance, and various art movements can be viewed as versions of such outbreaks. Eventually, outbreaks are suppressed... By Marina La Palma

May 01

Interview with Colson Whitehead

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In the late '80s and early '90s, Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning novelist Colson Whitehead and New Yorker Poetry Editor Kevin Young were a couple of kids at Harvard. They became friends long before either had a writing career to speak of, but in Whitehead's words... By Jenn Shapland

Apr 30

Let Nature In[side]

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“I love coming back home and being surrounded with things that have some connection or meaning to me,” Aimee LaCalle tells me. An avid traveler and founder of her eponymous Santa Fe–based textile design company, LaCalle makes soft home goods, like bedding, table linens, and fabric... By Maria Egolf-Romero

Apr 01

A New Frontier Hides in the Air: In the Studio with Luke Carr

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“This place. The river is life,” Luke Carr tells me as we walk through a stand of cottonwood trees near the flowing water. He lives on a small farm in a remote part of northern New Mexico, next to the confluence of two rivers. For a musician, this place provides silence for writing... By Maxwell Lucas

Apr 01

The New Mexico Museum of Art after 100 Years

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In terms of New Mexico’s history, one hundred years is but a drop in the bucket of time. Still, it was noteworthy when, this past November, the New Mexico Museum of Art celebrated its centennial anniversary. This is an especially significant moment when considering the meaning... By Kathryn M Davis