Karla Garcia’s Clay Landscapes Challenge the Lines that Divide Us
Karla Garcia, a Dallas-based multidisciplinary artist, creates clay landscapes that urge us to reflect on our connections to place and each other.
February 27, 2024
News
Raven Chacon: Three Songs Extols Indigenous Matriarchy
Raven Chacon (Diné) honors matriarchal Indigenous resistance at the Harwood Museum in a unique grouping of visual, video, and sound works that will be shown in New Mexico for the first time.
February 20, 2024
The Tucson Art Scene Impresses with its People Power
Tucson, Arizona is home to an incredible community of creative people. Southwest Contemporary visited in November 2023 to discover the local art scene.
February 16, 2024
Jeannie Hua’s Tailings Focuses on a Dark History Involving Chinese Americans, Mining Waste, and a Burial Site
Las Vegas artist Jeannie Hua conceptually illustrates the Tonopah tailings burial site and asks the viewer to ponder the historic neglect of Asian Americans who settled in the American West.
February 08, 2024
BLAC Empowerment: New Tucson Gallery Bolsters Black Artists
Blue Lotus Artists’ Collective, or BLAC, is a new Tucson gallery—and perhaps the first of its kind—dedicated to elevating local, national, and international Black artists.
February 06, 2024
Snakebite Creation Space: An Artist-Run Haven for Experimental Exhibitions
Snakebite Creation Space’s Geneva Foster Gluck and Racheal Rios invite artists to install exhibitions that push their practices in new directions while challenging the constraints of a typical gallery show.
February 02, 2024
Southwest Art News: February 2024
Catch up on recent art news headlines in the Southwest region, including people on the move, grants, and more.
February 01, 2024
MOCA Tucson is an Incubation Space and “Not Just Arbitrators of Archives”
Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, known as MOCA Tucson, supports regional and local artists through grants, community events, peer connections, and more. Here’s why artists and curators say that matters.
January 30, 2024
How George Floyd Protests Led to a Community-Created Exhibition in Arizona
Twin Flames: The George Floyd Uprising from Minneapolis to Phoenix at ASU Art Museum displays signs, artworks, and other community offerings from George Floyd Square.
January 26, 2024
The Unholy Ecstasy of Black Mass Blood Ritual
Through the subversive and (sac)religious performance Black Mass Blood Ritual, Denver-based artists Mary Grace Bernard and Genevieve Waller create an occult celebration of pain, kink, queerness, and (dis)ability.
January 22, 2024
How Beatrice Moore and Tony Zahn Unintentionally Founded the Grand Avenue Arts District
Artists and preservationists Beatrice Moore and Tony Zahn recall how they established Phoenix’s Grand Avenue arts district despite wanting to do the opposite.
January 12, 2024
Elaine Parks and the Art of Paying Attention to Everything
Ceramicist Elaine Parks, in the under-appreciated northern Nevada landscape, carefully combs the environment to find and fashion objects that command awareness and attention.
January 10, 2024
Southwest Art News: January 2024
Catch up on recent art news headlines in the Southwest region, including people on the move, grants, and more.
January 05, 2024
Books + LiteraryInside Southwest Contemporary
Our Favorite Reads (and One Podcast) of 2023
Southwest Contemporary’s staff—Roman Aragón, Natalie Hegert, Steve Jansen, and Lauren Tresp—pick their favorite reading materials of 2023.
January 04, 2024
The Top 10 Southwest Contemporary Stories of 2023
In 2023, Southwest Contemporary published 300 original articles by seventy-five contributors across eight states about contemporary art in the Southwest. These are readers' ten favorite stories of the year.
January 03, 2024
Join Southwest Contemporary to Expand Arts Coverage in 2024
Southwest Contemporary gives the arts community the focused attention, critical engagement, and depth of storytelling that no other publication can provide to the Southwest region.
December 21, 2023
Bright Lights for Dark Days: Southwest Contemporary’s Winter 2023-24 Art Guide
From contemporary Korean photography to a time-spanning collection of Andean fiber arts and a bubbling biennial on the U.S.-Mexico border, let these exhibitions across the Southwest be bright lights on these short, dark days.
December 19, 2023
Del Harrow Stays True to Form, Fusing Clay and Computer
Del Harrow, a Colorado-based ceramicist, combines ancient practices and contemporary technologies to create historically informed objects that tell stories toward a more sustainable future.
December 18, 2023
Ronald Rael Constructs an Architecture of the Borderlands with 3D-Printed Adobe and Regional Histories
Ronald Rael, who was born and raised in the San Luis Valley, harnesses the inherent contradictions between heritage and digital-build practices in his 3D-printed adobe works.
December 15, 2023
“I’m Here, We’re Here”: The Work of Manuel Carrillo in Conversation with Delilah Montoya and Maryssa Rose Chavez
Though focused on a 20th-century photographer, Manuel Carrillo: Mexican Modernist illuminates a sense of community identity through beauty that connects to the work of artists practicing in the Southwest today.
December 11, 2023
Appropriation in the Arts Series Dissects Thievery of Indigenous Art and Culture
The Appropriation in the Arts series of panel discussions at the Museum of Northern Arizona and Sedona Arts Center tackles topics ranging from mass-produced costume Navajo jewelry to spiritual colonialism.
December 08, 2023
Southwest Arts News: December 2023
Catch up on recent art news headlines in the Southwest region, including people on the move, grants, and more.
December 01, 2023
Truce Is a Word Made of Velvet: Andrea Gibson Named Colorado Poet Laureate
Celebrated Boulder-based performer Andrea Gibson, known for their spoken word poetry on topics ranging from gun reform to mental health, succeeds Bobby LeFebre as the tenth poet laureate of Colorado.
November 28, 2023
Southwest Cities Win Millions of Dollars from 2023 Bloomberg Public Art Challenge Awards
Bloomberg Public Art Challenge funding will help Phoenix and Salt Lake City address climate change, and Houston examine homelessness, through temporary public art that engages artists and community members.
November 21, 2023
Cey Adams, Album Cover Designer of Iconic Public Enemy Record, Receives the Retrospective Treatment in North Texas
The first Cey Adams retrospective displays more than four decades of the artist’s commercial collaborations with global brands and hip-hop visuals that include Public Enemy and Beastie Boys album covers.
November 20, 2023
Albuquerque Exhibition One Day Closer to Home to Showcase Projects by Incarcerated Youth
Amanda Dannáe Romero and sheri crider discuss the Sanitary Tortilla Factory exhibition featuring the work of system-impacted youth and the role of art in creating social change in New Mexico.
November 15, 2023
Recent Allegations at Regional Art Spaces Beg the Question: Can Best Practices Prevent Censorship?
As Southwest art spaces such as Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum deal with art censorship allegations, national art censorship and art law experts weigh in on the broader issue.
November 10, 2023
Nani Chacon, Hand and Machine, and Working Classroom PAHTIA Mural Collaboration Celebrates Healing, Empowers Education
Nani Chacon, Hand and Machine, and Working Classroom student artists collaborated to create PAHTIA, an interactive, site-specific space for healing via art and technology at Albuquerque’s National Hispanic Cultural Center.
November 08, 2023
Exhibition by Ben Aleck Honors the Great Basin and Celebrates Native Resistance
Ben Aleck's exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art looks at thirty years of work by the artist and Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe member who has witnessed key Native American political moments.
November 06, 2023
Southwest Art News: November 2023
Catch up on recent art news headlines in the Southwest region, including people on the move, grants, and more.
November 02, 2023
