A handy roundup of Southwest Contemporary’s studio visits with Southwest artists in 2021.
In 2021, Southwest Contemporary writers visited artists out in the field and within their studios, both spacious and small: in their homes, garages, university offices, warehouse studio complexes, and even a closet. Most visits were in person, some were virtual, with studio tours captured on mobile phone cameras. We visited artists in Colorado, Utah, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to talk about art practices and media spanning painting, photography, assemblage, architecture, sound, and even smell. We talked theory, personal history, trauma, and travel. Most of all we learned about how all these artists work and got a glimpse of where they do it.
Here are the studio visits to catch up on before 2021 runs out:
Malena Barnhart
Malena Barnhart, a Tempe-based artist who uses quirky materials like children’s stickers and party favors, looks for new ways to explore the serial obsessions that drive her creative practice.
Diana Calderón
Diana Calderón, a Phoenix-based artist raised in the borderlands, uses materials from Mexico and the United States to investigate her ancestral roots and immigrant experience while exploring both physical and spiritual borders.
Jay Chung
Dallas-based painter Jay Chung addresses climate change and challenges perceptions of the human figure.
Trey Duvall
Denver-based artist Trey Duvall explores futility and absurdity as they relate to objects through installation, video, performance, and sculpture.
Oswaldo Maciá
Oswaldo Maciá, a Santa Fe- and London-based artist, utilizes the unconventional media of smells and sound to provoke questions about coexistence, human borders, and migration.
Terry Maker
Colorado artist Terry Maker investigates the potential of discardable items—papers, markers, straws, even candy—by transforming them, through arduous processing, into ethereal yet witty wall reliefs and objects.
Suchitra Mattai
Denver artist Suchitra Mattai challenges Western traditions of painting through her use of culturally specific materials informed by the South Asian diaspora.
Derrick Velasquez
Artist Derrick Velasquez, who is represented by Robischon Gallery and runs Yes Ma’am and Friend of a Friend, is a pillar in Denver’s gallery and DIY scenes.
Jeffrey Wentworth Stevens
Jeffrey Wentworth Stevens, a Denver-based jack of most trades and label boss of Multidim Records, talks cassette releases and trading a Snickers for flyer design.
Jaclyn Wright
Jaclyn Wright’s new work explores the contentious space of the Utah desert and how the ideology of “rugged individualism” has visually manifested itself.
