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 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 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 […]
Feb 12
Professor Rebecca Schreiber of the UNM American Studies Department was awarded the Frank Jewett Mather award for art criticism by the College Art Association for her book The Undocumented Everyday: Migrant Lives and the Politics of Visibility.
Feb 12
Name: Lauren Tresp Location: Santa Fe, NM Writing for The since: 2013 1. Where are you from? Oshkosh, Wisconsin. 2. What is your favorite thing about New Mexico? It feels real. […]
Jan 30
This week, an image from the February 2019 issue of Vanity Fair has been circling my social-media feeds. It features six newly elected Democrat representatives, and at the center of the photo sits Representative Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo). Rep Haaland’s demeanor in the photo is fierce yet kind, the exact, impossible combination of feelings a woman politician has to strike to be elected in this country.
Jan 30
tasting notes with Andrea R. Hanley. occupation Membership and Program Manager at IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. venue Geronimo, Santa Fe.
Jan 30
In November of 2018, we put out an open call for New Mexico artists to submit their work to be featured in this issue and were astounded receive over 450 submissions from artists across the entire state.
Jan 21
It's January, and for many artists that means it's application season. Was your New Years resolution to apply for more things in 2019? We can help! The Classifieds page on The Magazine's website features a running list of opportunities for artists throughout the southwest.
Jan 15
It's a big month for news from Santa Fe. Four Grammy nominations, two Living Treasures, a residency, an art CSA, and a new secretary of cultural affairs.
Jan 08
Meet Maggie Grimason, The Mag writer since 2017, who lives in Albuquerque and hails from "northwest Indiana, land of lakes and soy beans." Her favorite things about New Mexico? "Mountains on the horizon, lizards, and clothes drying instantly on the line."
Dec 27
Jimmy Montoya, The Magazine's distributor extraordinaire, reflects on his twelve years at the magazine. In that time, he's found a cat, a dead snake, and a wallet in our streetside boxes, among other treasures.
Dec 19
What a year for The Magazine! The top ten most read articles on our website in 2018 were:
1. Field Report: Las Vegas
2. Wendy Young: A Long and Slow Surrender
3. Santa Fe Women: Paula Angel
4. Floating Worlds: The Santa Fe Opera Scene Shop...
