May 26
After careful consideration, and much initial heartbreak, I have decided that Southwest Contemporary will publish one final print edition this year: our new Field Guide publication. We will suspend print publication of The Magazine for the remainder of 2020, with strong and sincere plans to return to print in 2021.
May 26
“Uncharted” is a new interview series created in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re talking to people in the New Mexico arts world and beyond to see how the community […]
May 26
In an effort to bring multiple perspectives into conversation, Friends of Architecture Santa Fe has organized an in-depth series of public discussions termed “ReVisioning History” to take place May through December this year. Each installment of the ReVisioning History series will bring together a group of architects, planners, allied design professionals, and policymakers to make expert presentations, engage in panel discussions, hold Q&A sessions, and structured visioning exercises.
May 20
Southwest Contemporary has compiled a list of resources that may be useful to our community members at this time. This list will be updated as new information and new resources become available. Check out the most recent updates as of May 20!
May 19
This week we chat with Sarah Stolar, an interdisciplinary artist and head of the art department at UNM-Taos. She shares how her students are coping, and the importance of supporting young artists whose voices we need most
May 06
Richard Levy Gallery presents New Work: Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture, a solo exhibition of colorful minimal pieces by Jeff Kellar. He creates beautiful surfaces through the application of many layers of acrylic resin and clay pigment onto paper, aluminum panels, and woodblocks. Each layer is methodically sanded and buffed leaving the surface smooth and modulated. Playing with illusion, ambiguity, and space, Kellar uses these ultra-flat surfaces to form dimensional compositions.
Apr 09
The Weekly 5x5 is Southwest Contemporary's weekly email newsletter with our top five picks of things to do for the next five days. At least that's what it was until our to-dos became homebound during the COVID-19 pandemic. We're now sharing five things to enjoy from home, and this week we are focused on creative activities for kids in quarantine captivity.
May 06
This exhibition is the culmination of Tonee Harbert's first nine months at the Roswell Artist-in-Residence program. A photography exhibition that shows the southeast New Mexico landscape with surreal and melancholy beauty, and is relevant during the pandemic, showing an absence of people, while referencing marks of humanity on the landscape.
Apr 29
"Uncharted” is a new interview series created in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This week, we catch up with Merry Scully, Head of Curatorial Affairs at the New Mexico Museum of Art about working from home, translating the work of the museum to the web, and her hopeful outlook.
Apr 21
"Uncharted" is a new interview series created in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. First up, we're talking to Pauline Kamiyama, Director of the Santa Fe Arts and Culture Department, to see how the Department is navigating this unprecedented health crisis and how it is working to serve the rest of the community.
Mar 23
Southwest Contemporary will continue to serve our community by sharing information, resources, and connections, and supporting arts businesses, organizations, and artists as best we can during this time. However, we need you, our readers and community members, to help us weather this storm.
Mar 23
We know many artists, arts professionals, arts and culture organizations are in difficult situations now and facing uncertain futures in the coming months. Southwest Contemporary has compiled a list of resources that may be useful to our community members at this time. This list will be updated as new information and new resources become available.
Mar 26
Anita Rodriguez is a true renaissance woman. She is a writer and painter, in addition to her accomplishments in the field of sustainable architecture.
Mar 18
Call for videos! We can't visit your exhibitions, so we want to see them on video!
Mar 16
Amidst this unprecedented time of change across the globe, we're tracking arts-related closures and postponements locally and nationally. In this post you'll also find resources for artists. For the most updated information, please contact each venue individually. Stay tuned for more from us on ways to enjoy the beauty of art—its release, its expression, its embodiment of joy—from wherever you may be.
Jan 28
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's most recent installation Border Turner in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez brings voice and person to the forefront.
Dec 23
As we approach a new year and a new decade, we're looking for light. And frankly, there's no better place to turn than all of you - our readers and community members who make these conversations around art and culture in the southwest possible. So we want to know: What's lighting you up as we head into 2020?
Dec 01
This issue taps into contemporary craft. It wasn’t intentionally a choice informed by the season, but it feels right to contemplate our own crafts at the end of the year—a season of endings, reflections, and new opportunities. We approached this topic from many different angles, from traditional craft to craft and tech.
Dec 01
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.
Oct 04
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!).
Oct 01
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.
Aug 28
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...
Aug 28
This month we embrace our new name and traverse the southwest from Silver City, New Mexico, to Scottsdale, Arizona. In our features, we visit the studio of Santa Fe artist Ted Larsen, whose work we are honored to present as this issue’s cover art. Briana Olson takes us on a day tour of some of Albuquerque’s incredible murals. Rachel Preston Prinz gives us the lowdown on the art, architecture, and natural glories in and around Silver City, New Mexico. Maggie Grimason goes deep with artists Ginger Dunnill and Cannupa Hanska Luger at their Glorieta, New Mexico home, to talk about their individual and collaborative practices spanning art, life, community, and family.
Aug 28
Have a beer with Matie Fricker, owner of the only queer-woman-owned sex shop in Albuquerque: Self Serve Sexuality Resource Center.
Jul 30
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.
Jul 29
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.
Jul 29
Welcome to the next chapter of The Magazine! In July, the beginning of The Magazine’s 28th year, I launched a new business: Southwest Contemporary. (If you missed this launch, sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of this page!) Southwest Contemporary is a new art media company that will serve as an umbrella over The Magazine while also carving out room for this company to evolve and grow.
Jul 29
Want to break out of the mold? Seven alternative immersive art experiences in Santa Fe are worth exploring this summer.
Jun 26
“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...
Jun 26
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...
Jun 26
"If there is a goal to sustain yourself as an artist, then innovation is a big part of that. Traditions have to change with the times, because artists are the chroniclers of our times."
May 24
For a monthly magazine, it can be difficult to capture a theme throughout an entire issue. So much of our content is deliberately eclectic, covers a span of disciplines, and is a mix between in-depth and topical coverage. I’m delighted, therefore, that our “Landscapes” issue came together rather organically...
May 24
Tasting notes with: Kenneth Francis. Occupation: Landscape architect. Venue: Geronimo bar, Santa Fe. (Next stop: Paloma patio.) Drinking: Hendrix Martini.
May 11
For the first panel-discussion Collectors Collect New Mexico I at The Magazine on May 9, 2019, we hosted collectors and gallerists Christian Mayeur and Anne Poux along with artists Anne-Marie […]
Apr 26
In her essay, “Time to Get Ready,” Maria Varela recalls, “I once volunteered in the fourth grade that I was Mexican, and the angry response of the teacher frightened and shamed me. ‘No, you are not! We’re all Americans here,’ snapped Sister Rosita.” For a woman who has spent her life fighting white supremacy across the U.S., this scene presents a formative moment.
Apr 26
Have a drink with Elaine Ritchel of Santa Fe Art Tours.
Apr 26
I can already tell from our overflowing calendar of events that the New Mexico arts season is soon upon us.
Apr 16
Client Account Representative and Distribution Manager Rebecca Lynch is the newest addition to The Magazine's staff.
Mar 27
A tour of destination residency programs in the Southwest for artists and writers.
Mar 27
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...
Mar 18
Name: Kenji Barrett Location: Albuquerque, NM Proofreading for The Magazine since: 2002 Proofreader Kenji Barrett and his trusty dog, Kai, stop by each month right before the issue is sent to the […]
Mar 11
The City of Santa Fe is looking for a new Arts Commission Director to plan, organize and coordinate arts and cultural programs and services, and represent the City in the arts and cultural arena...
Mar 06
“12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now” opened on Friday, March 1, with a wonderfully packed house. Big thanks to everyone who came out to see the work of emerging […]
