Articles

Review

From the vast archives of Denver’s Clyfford Still Museum comes Elemental, an eye-catching exhibition that organizes Still’s work around images conjured by the elements: earth, air, water, fire, and æther.

Deborah Ross • December 01, 2019

Review

Scott Johnson’s solo show, Fissure, at the Center for Contemporary Arts is a rich smorgasbord of textures, light, and reflections, culminating in a crescendo of visual experience.

Clayton Porter • December 01, 2019

National Spotlight

In this day of broad familiarity with Philip Guston’s figurative paintings, it’s hard to comprehend the shock of his 1970 show at Marlborough. Remember, though, that by then Guston, first a muralist and then a part of the New York School, had been painting his gestural liquid masses to much acclaim for over twenty years.

Shane Tolbert • December 01, 2019

Review

In Nari Ward: We the People at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Harlem-based mixed-media artist subtly yet powerfully confronts America’s sordid legacy of racism and discrimination as well as overall American identity in his show of sculptural pieces constructed from discarded materials.

Steve Jansen • December 01, 2019

Review

Organized by the Phoenix Art Museum, Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist is a comprehensive survey of the obscure American modernist painter, who actively worked for decades to invent abstraction in the West.

Shane Tolbert • December 01, 2019

Sponsored

"There’s no safety net. Great art is full of ups and downs, but when I see someone come in wearing fine jewelry from Patina, my heart fills. That so many people trust us makes me feel we’ve made an impact."

Tamara Johnson • December 01, 2019

Review

In Species in Peril Along the Rio Grande, twenty-three New Mexico artists challenge themselves and visitors to 516 Arts to confront the fragmentation of the ecosystem on which the river, the bosque, and innumerable lifeforms—humans included—depend.

Briana Olson • December 01, 2019

Feature

Craft is alive and well in New Mexico. The home of Pueblo pottery and colorful Diné tapestry, this part of the world has a heritage of craft and design that continues to inspire artisans to practice old trades or create something entirely new. Often some mixture of the two. These are just a few of the craftspeople in New Mexico who are creating one-of-a-kind goods by hand.

Robin Babb • December 01, 2019

Books + Literary

Don’t sleep on Deutsch. For the past fifty years, he has actively questioned the narrative of painting, photography, and image-making in general through highly innovative approaches. This monograph, put out by the can-do-no-wrong Radius Books here in Santa Fe, is full of surprises for any artist who claims to know all things Deutsch.

Shane Tolbert • December 01, 2019

Feature

We asked nine curators, critics, and makers in the state to look back, in hindsight, at the vibrant art scene here as experienced in the past year, and to look forward as through a crystal ball at the year to come. They were asked to answer two questions: "What was your favorite exhibition in 2019: the most compelling, beautiful, or thought-provoking show?", and "What shows are you looking forward to in the next year?"

Asuri Ramanujan Krittika • December 01, 2019

Review

The exhibition, H. Joe Waldrum: Retrospective, at Rio Bravo Fine Art is a first-of-its-kind overview of works from the H. Joe Waldrum Trust, which inherited a majority of his pieces after his estate closed in 2014. The exhibition, curated by Eduardo Alicea-Moreno—director and president of Rio Bravo Fine Art, the Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, gallery Waldrum founded shortly before his unexpected death in 2003—showcases the depth and breadth of Waldrum’s high-volume career.

Steve Jansen • December 01, 2019

Feature

“I want my students to understand that their embodied knowledge and way of consciously moving in space, as dancers, is special. My goal is to give them vocabulary and tools so they can be part of the creative force that invents whatever comes next.”

Tamara Johnson • December 01, 2019

Feature

Craft is alive and well in New Mexico. The home of Pueblo pottery and colorful Diné tapestry, this part of the world has a heritage of craft and design that continues to inspire artisans to practice old trades or create something entirely new. Often some mixture of the two. These are just a few of the craftspeople in New Mexico who are creating one-of-a-kind goods by hand.

Robin Babb • December 01, 2019

Feature

Craft is alive and well in New Mexico. The home of Pueblo pottery and colorful Diné tapestry, this part of the world has a heritage of craft and design that continues to inspire artisans to practice old trades or create something entirely new. Often some mixture of the two. These are just a few of the craftspeople in New Mexico who are creating one-of-a-kind goods by hand.

Robin Babb • December 01, 2019

Feature

Craft is alive and well in New Mexico. The home of Pueblo pottery and colorful Diné tapestry, this part of the world has a heritage of craft and design that continues to inspire artisans to practice old trades or create something entirely new. Often some mixture of the two. These are just a few of the craftspeople in New Mexico who are creating one-of-a-kind goods by hand.

Robin Babb • December 01, 2019

Feature

Craft is alive and well in New Mexico. The home of Pueblo pottery and colorful Diné tapestry, this part of the world has a heritage of craft and design that continues to inspire artisans to practice old trades or create something entirely new. Often some mixture of the two. These are just a few of the craftspeople in New Mexico who are creating one-of-a-kind goods by hand.

Robin Babb • December 01, 2019

New Mexico Women

The role of a midwife is a powerful one. She is a guide through one of the most life-changing events a person can have, welcoming a new child into the world. How one enters the world matters. Birth experiences can have effects that ripple throughout a person’s life, impacting their family and community.

Angie Rizzo • December 01, 2019

New Mexico Artists to Know Now

Southwest Contemporary is pleased to announce an open call for art to be featured in the second annual "12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now" publication and group exhibition. Artists living and working in New Mexico are welcome to submit artwork in any medium.

Southwest Contemporary • November 01, 2019

National Spotlight

Gina Adams considers herself an Indigenous-hybrid artist involved in a variety of craft-based work rooted in her heritage. Yet her commitment to art-making is equally matched by the extensive research she conducts in libraries, museums, and databases. Its Honor Is Hereby Pledged: Gina Adams is the product of Adams’s deep-dive into American history. It is a stunning collection of works intent on truth-telling, making it all the more relevant and poignant.

Deborah Ross • October 01, 2019

Music

“Having your crew is essential,” says Paul who relocated to Portland for college and stayed after graduating. “When you walk outside and don’t see people who look like you, it makes you feel helpless. It’s a lonely feeling.” She goes on to say that the people of color who supported her during the creation and release of Mother of My Children were invaluable for their love and understanding. The “party” Paul’s new album refers to is a bittersweet one, the unavoidable and contrasting beauty and despair of life, born of a worldview that’s inextricably linked with her Native upbringing, friends, and family.

Patrick McGuire • October 01, 2019

Food + Drink

Have coffee with Tom Leech, Curator at The Press at the Palace of the Governors.

Lauren Tresp • October 01, 2019

From the Editor

I love print. I love words on a physical page held in my hands. I love the texture of paper and the smell of old books. I love interesting editorial design that creates an experience greater than the sum of its parts. If you’ve ever been to Southwest Contemporary’s offices, you may have seen my collection of independent magazines from around the world, which is always growing (here’s an open invitation to come say hi and take a look!).

Lauren Tresp • October 04, 2019

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?

Robin Babb • October 01, 2019

Feature

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.

Marya Errin Jones • October 01, 2019

Feature

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 […]

Titus O'Brien • October 01, 2019

Feature

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.

Maggie Grimason • October 01, 2019

Review

IAIA’s Museum of Contemporary Native Arts showcases its student printmakers from the ‘60s and ‘70s in their explorations of form and psyche.

Asuri Ramanujan Krittika • October 01, 2019

Review

From the moment Shandien LaRance (Hopi) dances out onto the runway, threading her legs into and out of and through her five hoops, the sixth annual Indian Market Haute Couture Fashion Show feels as much a ceremony as a runway show.

Briana Olson • October 01, 2019

Review

Globular figures seem to wiggle, tumble, float, or crawl across pieces of thick, white paper. Two particularly large sheets of paper cascade down from the ceiling at the center of the gallery. Sometimes they’re partially covered by a layer of clear film. About thirty smaller iterations occupy the walls. Here and there: a curled hand wearing what could be an elbow-length glove; firm, flexed ballet feet; sturdy legs in the air; and extra-long legs with powerful thighs...

Marcus Civin • October 01, 2019

Review

To Survive on This Shore is the product of five years of research and travel across the U.S. The show pairs Dugan’s photographic portraits with Fabbre’s interviews with transgender and gender-nonconforming adults, all aged fifty or older. I’m drawn immediately to Duchess Milan, 69, Los Angeles, CA (2017). “I just know I’m me,” begins the text beside the photo. “I identify as Duchess.”

Briana Olson • October 01, 2019