Curator Walk-Through: Route 66: A Deep Imagining

Blue Sky NM and Harwood Art Center have partnered to present the SURFACE: Emerging Artists of New Mexico Alumni Satellite Gallery—a space for experimentation, conversation, and continued creative practice in the heart of Albuquerque’s Nob Hill. The collaboration supports the visibility and viability of SURFACE alumni while creating new pathways for emerging creative voices.

At the center of this exhibition is inaugural curatorial fellow Jakia Fuller, who will lead guests through Route 66: A Deep Imagining, featuring work by Christian Gallegos, Ben Roe Jr., and Jen H. Doolittle.

As the centennial of Route 66 approaches, the exhibition turns away from the familiar mythology of the Mother Road and toward the stories that linger beneath, beside, and beyond it. Through explorations of place, collective consciousness, and lived experience, the artists consider the narratives that may have coincided with this historic passage—and those still unfolding along its path.

Moving between past, present, and imagined futures, Route 66: A Deep Imagining asks audiences to look again at a road so often reduced to nostalgia. Jakia’s guided walkthrough invites guests deeper into the exhibition’s connections, tensions, and possibilities, creating space to consider Route 66 not simply as a road, but as a layered landscape shaped by memory, environment, movement, and human experience.