Catch up on recent art news headlines in the Southwest region, including people on the move, grants, and more.
News
Dawn Penso, a New Mexico Arts Writer and Southwest Contemporary Contributor, Passes Away
It’s with a broken heart that Southwest Contemporary announces sad news. Dawn Penso, a Taos, New Mexico-based arts writer, who had contributed to SWC since 2021, died in a car accident on January 4, 2024. She was just twenty-six years old. The Taos News reported on the tragedy. An obituary states that donations can be made in her memory to Taos Community Foundation’s general memorial fund. Dawn, who we consider one of our own, will be greatly missed.
Utah Artist Holds Daily Vigil During the State’s Legislative Session
Each day during the entirety of the 2024 Utah Legislature (January 16–March 1, 2024), Utah writer, poet, and activist Nan Seymour is organizing a vigil for the “no longer Great” Salt Lake on the grounds of the Utah State Capitol. Seymour held a similar vigil in 2022 at the Great Salt Lake, which is in danger of drying up. The daily “peaceful uprising” is open to everyone.
Denver Art Museum Employees Announce Intention to Form Union
More than 100 Denver Art Museum employees, as reported by Hyperallergic, have pushed to unionize, according to a January 11, 2024, letter posted on the Denver Art Museum Workers United website. Higher wages, better safety training, and increased transparency between leadership and workers are among the list of grievances.
Grants and Awards
Freedom Monument Sculpture Park Acquires Major Works by Allan Houser
Five bronze sculptures from the late and longtime Santa Fe artist and educator Allan Houser (Chiricahua Apache) have been acquired by the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park in Montgomery, Alabama. The seventeen-acre site honors the lives of the millions of Black people who were enslaved in the United States. “The inclusion of the five Allan Houser bronzes is particularly gratifying for the Houser/Haozous family as Allan’s father, Sam Haozous, was among the population of Chiricahua Apaches who were held as prisoners of war from 1889 to 1894 at the Mt. Vernon Barracks in Southern Alabama,” reads an Allan Houser Gallery press release. “Allan’s mother, Blossom, was born as a prisoner in the Mt. Vernon Barracks in 1893.”
Five New Mexico Artists Receive Creative Capital Awards
Nani Chacon (Diné, Chicana), Chaz John (Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska/Mississippi Band Choctaw/European), Chris Eyre (Cheyenne and Arapaho), Erica Lord (Tanana Athabascan, Inupiaq, Finnish, Swedish, English, and Japanese), and Jordan Ann Craig (Northern Cheyenne), who is collaborating with Brigit Johnson (Northern Cheyenne), have received grants from Creative Capital, a grantmaking organization based in New York. The 2024 awardees in visual arts and film/moving image will receive $50,000 each to realize new works.
Utah’s Epicenter and Arizona’s SMoCA Receives Andy Warhol Foundation Grants
Epicenter, a “rural and proud” nonprofit community design and contemporary arts center in Green River, Utah (near Moab), and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art are two of fifty arts organizations that will receive a total of more than $4 million during the fall 2023 grant cycle “to support artists and nurture creative practice around the country.” Aurora Picture Show in Houston also received the coveted award.
Southwest Artists Awarded USA Fellowships
Blackhorse Lowe (Navajo Nation) of Santa Fe, Cristóbal Martínez of Tempe, Arizona, Farid Matuk of Tucson, Arizona-based Fronterizx Collective (Gabriela Muñoz and M. Jenea Sanchez), Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate (Chickasaw) of Tulsa, PJ Raval of Austin, Selina Martinez (Pascua Yaqui Tribe and Xicana) of Scottsdale, and Tammie Rubin of Austin were each awarded $50,000 in unrestricted funds by the United States Artists’ USA Fellowship program.
El Paso’s Rubin Center Announces Genius Loci Artists
Marcus Chormicle of Las Cruces, New Mexico, Un Dique (Octavio Castrejón and Alonso Robles) of Ciudad Juárez, and Cynthia Gutierrez-Krapp of El Paso have been named recipients of the Rubin Center for the Visual Arts’s Genius Loci series. The artists will exhibit at the gallery, located on the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso, during the 2024-25 season.
New Mexico Arts Announces 2024 Artist-in-Residence Fellows
Chormicle (from the El Paso Rubin Center item above) and Dylan McLaughlin (Diné) have been selected for residential fellowships at the Lincoln Historic Site in Lincoln, New Mexico. Chormicle, a lens-based artist who ran CAV Gallery in Las Cruces, and multi-media artist McLaughlin will each be in residence for six weeks.
Chianti Foundation Names New Cohort of Resident Artists
Farah Al Qasimi, Morgan Bassichis, Willie Binnie, Carmina Escobar, Troy Montes Michie, and Charisse Pearlina Weston have been selected as part of the Chianti Foundation’s Artist in Residence Program in Marfa, Texas, established by Donald Judd in 1989.
Santa Fe Selects Recipients for the Art is the Solution Grant Fund
Hernan Gomez Chavez, Alas de Agua Art Collective, Black Men Flower Project founder Robert Washington-Vaughns, the documentary theater project Blacks Seen and Unseen in Santa Fe, and No Name Cinema will each receive $10,000 through the City of Santa Fe’s 2024 Art is the Solution grant fund.
Ucross Awarded Four National and State Grants
Ucross Foundation, which heads the well-regarded Ucross Artist Residency Program near Sheridan, Wyoming, is a recent recipient of four grants totaling $91,000 that will help support the residency, which includes fellowships for Native American visual artists and writers, and the Ucross Art Gallery. The funding institutions include the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ruth Foundation for the Arts, the Ford Family Foundation, and the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund.
City of Albuquerque Selects Resiliency Residency Artists
Thirty-four artists—including Beth Hansen of Basement Films and Lindsey Fromm of Friends of the Orphan Signs—have been selected for the 2024 Resiliency Residency, a self-paced, at-home residency. The City of Albuquerque’s Department of Arts and Culture and the Urban Enhancement Trust Fund program, now in its second iteration, doubled its award amount this year to $5,000 per artist.
Arizona Artists Receive Research and Development Grants
Raquel Gutiérrez and Jacob Meders (Mechoopda/Maidu) are among twenty-one artists to receive a research and development grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. The $5,000 grants “support Arizona artists as they work to advance their artistic practice, expand their creative horizons, and deepen the impact of their work.”
Artpace Announces International Artists in Residence
Melissa Joseph of Brooklyn, Patrick Quarm of Ghana, and José Villalobos of San Antonio, Texas, are the spring 2024 artists in residence at Artpace in San Antonio.
