Trend Digital 2025

ART +SCIENCE = WILD THOMAS ASHCRAFT Electro Receptor ALBUQUERQUE ASSERTS ITSELF ANNUAL 2025 VOLUME 26 Cover price US & CAN $25.00 Regionally in New Mexico Display until Spring 2026 Newsstand display until September 30, 2025

Murals • Flamenco • Architecture and More

FIND THE PLACES THAT MOVE

YOU, & Your Business.

Discover Santa Fe County, where centuries-old traditions and vibrant artistic communities blend seamlessly with modern innovation amidst breathtaking landscapes and thriving businesses.

SantaFeCountyNM.gov

Where Creative Businesses Thrive

I-25 & T R A M WAY | 50 5 . 7 9 6. 7 5 0 0 | S A N D I A C A S I N O.C O M

JEREMIAH DANIEL WELSH

Wetland Whorled Milkweed and Dragonflies, bronze (left) and cast cotton (right)

Rarely is excellence undeniable in fine art, but when it is, the work transcends the boundaries we normally associate with genres and styles. The technical and energetic qualities of the works of JEREMIAH DANIEL WELSH offer an opportunity to witness the elevation of an art category.

Wiford Gallery • 403 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM • wifordgallery.com • 505-577-0888

ESTELLA LORETTO

Earth Mother, edition # 4/5, bronze

Best known as the sole female Native American monumental sculptor in the world and a fine jewelry maker, you can see ESTELLA LORETTO’S work at the Capitol Building in New Mexico, the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, and Wiford Gallery on Canyon Road in Santa Fe.

STAN BERNING

Autumn Tree Stand / La Mesilla, intaglio-type etching / edition of 10, 18” x 24”, 2025

Stan Berning’s ART BOX | 901 Canyon Road | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 stanberningstudios.com | stan@stanberning.com | 928-460-2611

Early Winter / The View East, watercolor, 18” x 24”, 2025 View to the River / La Cienega, watercolor, 18” x 24”, 2023

ARLO NAMINGHA

REFLECTION SERIES II Texas Limestone 15˝ X 12˝ X 17˝ Arlo Namingha ©2024

MICHAEL NAMINGHA

DISASTER 2

Silkscreen on Canvas 50˝ X 55˝ Michael Namingha ©2024

DAN N A M I N G H A

POINTS CONNECTING #51 & #52

Acrylic on Canvas Each 24˝ X 18˝ Dan Namingha ©2025

Representing Dan, Arlo, and Michael Namingha 125 Lincoln Avenue • Suite 116 • Santa Fe, NM 87501 Tuesday–Saturday, 10am–5pm 505-988-5091 • nimanfineart@namingha.com • namingha.com •

Celebrating 35 Years on Lincoln Avenue in Santa Fe

alexander brown sculpture

Chameleon Wheel, steel and stainless steel, 60" x 72" x 72" Freeman Gallery / Abiquiu Inn / Studio: abbrown@nets.com

CAROLE LAROCHE GALLERY

Wild Red Wolf II Carole LaRoche

Levity

Miguel Edwards

Night Pueblo Carole LaRoche

Celebrating over 41 years on Canyon Road

Morning Song Allen Wynn

Indian Joe Carole LaRoche

Blue Wolf Pack Carole LaRoche

415 Canyon Road Santa Fe, New Mexico (505) 982-1186 email@laroche-gallery.com

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Bún Chả Hà Nội Northern Vietnamese Grilled Pork & Rice Noodles A beloved street food staple of Hà Nội, Alkemē’s version stays true to its roots while elevating every element. Tender grilled pork slices and juicy pork patties are served in a warm, aromatic broth infused with fish sauce, lime, and garlic. Paired with delicate rice vermicelli, pickled green papaya and carrots, crisp lettuce, and fresh herbs, this dish is a vibrant interplay of sweet, savory, and umami— soulful, comforting, and timeless.

“At Alkemē, we don’t simply replicate tradition, we honor it, respect it, and then allow it to evolve. Each dish tells a story, one that reflects our heritage while inviting diners to experience something entirely new.”

– Chef/Owner Hue-Chan Karels

Alkemē at Open Kitchen 227 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe, NM 87501 (at the corner of West Alameda) Tuesday – Saturday: 5:00 pm - 8:45 pm Happy Hour: 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm 505-982-9704 • info@alkeme-santafe.com • alkeme-santafe.com Photography: Moonlight Studios and Douglas Merriam Photography

Erica Tai, Executive Chef, and Hue-Chan Karels, Chef/Owner

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pink moon at taos pueblo 36 x 48 gold and copper leaf with acrylic

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Michael Billie

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on Canyon Road Navajo Owned

www.michaelbillie.com 621 Canyon Road Santa Fe, New Mexico Gallery co-owner

ETHELINDA

Summer Wind 32x40 oil on canvas

123 West Palace avenue • 505.986.0440 • WWW.manitougalleries.com

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Vera Neel luveru.com 505-980-7136 luverunm@gmail.com

Tatiana (Klimov) Komaldinova tatsart.com 505-661-6161 4tatsart@gmail.com

"Poppies Field"

“El Pueblo”

30x40 oil on canvas

24x30 oil on canvas

Chris Cashiola cashiolapaintings.com 505-629-8927 ccashiola@gmail.com

Kirk Buchanan kirkbuchanan.com 575-741-1456 kirkbuchanan@gmail.com “Rowe Mesa Scene”

18 x 24 oil on canvas

“Abundance in Simplicity”

9x12 oil & cold wax on Okoume wood

Art Mozaik Fine Art Gallery Surround yourself with Art that is filled with Happiness!

713 Canyon Road, Santa Fe NM 87501 www.4artmozaik.com

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PHOTO: © WENDY MCEAHERN FOR PARASOL PRODUCTIONS

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Night Out, oil and collage on canvas, 46" x 42"

Kate Rivers PHOTO: JENNIFER ESPERANZA

kateriversstudio@gmail.com kateriversart.com

600 Canyon Road • Santa Fe 505-365-3992 • KayContemporaryArt.com

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holographic light etchings

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Visit my studio and gallery, just a mile and a half from the historic Santa Fe Plaza.

Please text me at 505-690-9097 to introduce yourself and arrange a time for your tour. I look forward to meeting you! somersrandolph.com

Photos © Wendy McEahern

Argentinian Blue Onyx 29” tall

188

126 The Duke City’s Energetic Mural Scene

Up in the air, underground, in an alley, on a museum tower, everywhere you turn in Albuquerque there’s dynamic wall art to be found.

By Autumn Gray | Photography by Kirk Gittings

Five insiders—Ginger Dunnill, Israel Haros Lopez, Matthew Chase-Daniel, Raashan Ahmad, and Jade Begay—open up about the region’s arts, culture, and life-in-the-moment.

Photography by K ate Russell

188 Currents Review: ‘Verify You Are Human’

A look back at Santa Fe’s recent Currents 2025 annual festival featuring futuristic innovations.

By Amy Boaz | Photography by Audrey Derell

152 Designing with Heart and Mind

198 Must-Know Artists

A quintet of notable new Albuquerque projects runs the gamut, displaying the city’s talented architectural and builder corps.

By Gussie Fauntleroy | Photography by Robert Reck

These three rising stars—Jazmin Novak, Keaun Beacom, and Esther Elia—each pushing boundaries in diverse media, are worthy of attention.

B y Ylise Kessler | Portraits by Audrey Derell

168 Thomas Ashcraft: The Electro Receptor

210 Dos Santos: Shaping Light into Form

Melding creative art to serious science, this cosmic citizen defines “far out.”

By Daniel Gibson | Photography by Kitty Leaken

Antonio and Margaret de Souza Santos bring an international sensibility to New Mexico architecture.

B y Joan Conrow | Photography by K ate Russell Detail of Aaron Jones’s Super Light Structure, Currents Festival

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COURTESY BOULDER MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

features

182 Art Speak

woodsbuilders.com 302 Catron Street 505 988 2413

Photography © Laurie Allegretti Architecture: Lorn Tryk Design & Construction: Woods Design | Builders

236

102

departments

Charles Ross at The Harwood; Meow Wolf expands in LA and NYC; a new Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is being built in Santa Fe, and more.

By Daniel Gibson

46 FOLK WAYS

The Santa Fe International Folk Art Market returns to Santa Fe.

By Daniel Gibson

48 IN MEMORIAM John Nichols

By Kay Matthews Guy Cross

By Hannah Hoel

52 NOW SHOWING

SITE Santa Fe International: a look inside this far-reaching art event.

By Ylise Kessler

58 ARTIST STUDIO

Light Breaks Through Darkness: August Muth and the art and science of true holograms.

By Bill Nevins Photography by K ate Russell

An Interwoven Inheritance: Four generations of Northern New Mexico weavers bind together centuries of Hispanic and Native regional textile arts.

By Amy Boaz Photography by Bill Curry

94 TAOS: NATIVE SON

GARY MEDINA COOK A former rock and roller explores his genízaro legacy in documentary film.

By Lynne robinson Photography by Bill Curry

102 ARTIST STUDIO

A Dance of Light, Water, and Sound: Sasha vom Dorp captures moments in time working with elemental processes.

By Anya Sebastian Photography by Kate Russell

ALBUQUERQUE

120 CREATIVE CULTURE

ON THE RISE The Duke City is emerging as a significant art and cultural mecca with a wild profusion and diversity of talent, media, and themes.

By Ana Dickerson Photography by Eric Draper

70 MASTER ARTIST

139 LIVE!

84 ABIQUIU:

146 TUNES

Endless Circles: George Rivera’s life as an artist and tribal leader.

By Gussie Fauntleroy Photography by Lonnie Schlein

NOT RIDING OFF INTO THE SUNSET Chavela Trujillo leads a new generation of enterprising young women of Abiquiu.

By Amy Boaz

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88 HERITAGE

Trend 2025

Albuquerque’s Flamenco Culture: The dynamic art form grows deep roots in the Duke City.

By April Goltz Photography by Audrey Derell

DESIGN SOURCE

228 HOW WE LIVE

Rolling Rock House: Jeff Maul and Lori Harnar build a striking, novel home and life together on a hillside perch above Santa Fe.

By Brian Bixby Photography by Robert Reck

236 ARTIST STUDIO

Christine Cassano: Sound art meets science in this stellar artist’s discoveries.

By Anya Sebastian Portraits by Audrey Derell

242 VENUES

Just Listen: Four outstanding performance spaces—The Outpost, Unit B, Paradiso, Mary’s Place— where the music is the prime focus.

By Bill Nevins Photography by Linda Carfagno

PASSION OF THE PALATE

250 BEYOND CHILE A look at regional restaurants Farm & Table, Jambo, Arroyo Vino, Zacatlán, Palace, and more.

By Ellen Ritscher Sackett

256 ROMANCING THE PLATE

Insights into couples running hot dining spots Horno, Capital Coal, Restaurant Martín, and Alkemē.

Story and Photography

by Gabriella Marks

Glen Kostur: New Mexico jazz force extraordinaire.

By Bill Nevins Photography by Daniel Quat

ABOUT THE COVER: Christine Cassano, Threading Primordial Chords (2025), a “sound painting” of a black hole in acrylic paint and colored pencil on panel.

LEFT: AUDREY DERELL. RIGHT: KATE RUSSELL

36 TEAM TREND 37 FROM THE EDITORS 38 CONTRIBUTORS 42 FLASHES

Left: Christine Cassano. Right: Sasha vom Dorp

T “T” W

939 K C R.

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TEAM TREND

Individually, we are one drop.

Together, we are an ocean. ­­ –Ryunosuke Satoro

Ana Dickerson Albuquerque Associate Publisher

Amy Boaz Copy Chief

Jeanne Lambert Production Manager and Associate Designer

Janine Lehmann Art Director and Designer

Ezra Leyba New Mexico Distribution

“Unity is strength…when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.” –Mattie Stepanek 36

Trend 2025

TOP: AUDREY DERELL. BOTTOM, FROM LEFT: AMY LIOTTA; GEORGIA GERSH; KATE RUSSELL; SONIA LEYBA

Cynthia Canyon, Publisher and Founder. Lightwork art installation in background, Astral Array (2023),

by Leo Villareal, at New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary.

FROM THE EDITORS

O

KITTY LEAKEN

n Oct. 14, 2024, Europa Clipper, the largest interplanetary spaceship NASA has ever built, blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Aboard it was one of the first poems sent into space, but it won’t be the last. The 150-word poem, “In Praise of Mystery,” engraved on a metal panel, was composed by Ada Limón, the nation’s 24th poet laureate. NASA, it seems, is interested in the overlapping fields of art and science, believing each has something to lend to the other in humanity’s efforts to transcend its limitations, and to come to a better understanding of our place in the universe.

The craft’s destination after a voyage of some 1.8 billion miles and five and a half years is Europa, a moon of Jupiter. It is believed to harbor a saltwater ocean heated by the moon’s internal heat hidden beneath its icy surface. If so, it might contain life.

The poem serves as a kind of calling card from Earth to Europa, and includes the line, “we, too, are made/of water, of vast and beckoning seas.” It invokes our planet’s songbirds, trees bending in the wind, and humanity’s shared emotions of awe, grief, hopes, and pleasures.

The poem and its flight form a rare realization of the links between humanity’s left brain—rational, mechanistic thinking that can piece together a rocket ship—and right brain—our creative, artistic, and intuitive attributes. Here, with this annual issue of Trend magazine, we too seek to bridge this false divide, to reveal the common bonds that propel people into space and to peer into our own internal cosmos and express the wonders found therein.

With the value of both art and science being trashed today by elements of our society, support for these fields is needed now more than ever. This Art + Science issue continues Trend’s ambitious track record of probing the edges of artistic and creative endeavors in Northern New Mexico for the previous 25 years. This significant accomplishment, in an age when print media is being shed like spent rocket fuel tanks, was built upon the backs of a number of notable editors before me. I came on board this rocket in December 2024, following the footsteps of other editors I greatly admire, including Ellen Berkovitch, Nancy Zimmerman, and Rena Distasio, all led by publisher and founder Cynthia Canyon. They cobbled together the vehicle and have fueled it and maintained it over the years. I’m proud to sit behind FPO the control panel now, especially as a native New Mexican, and am a bit intimidated by the responsibility and trust FPO entailed. But, with an outstanding crew we have piloted the craft to the destination you now hold in your hands, and hope you find it interesting, informative, and illuminating. Stay inspired!

—Daniel Gibson, Editor

AUDREY DERELL

S

erving as Trend’s managing and arts editor has been a deeply rewarding experience, one that has allowed me to blend a lifelong passion for the visual arts with a flair for creative problem solving—and, I’ll admit, a generous helping of 100 other things. There was never a dull moment in bringing this issue to life.

I’m especially grateful to our publisher, Cynthia Canyon. Together, we crafted the ideas that became the feature and department stories in these pages. Bringing this issue to life reminded me of Phil Jackson’s words: “The strength of the team is each individual member.

The strength of each member is the team.” That couldn’t be truer of our team.

Thank you, Team Trend. You made this possible.

—Ylise Kessler, Managing Editor and Arts Editor trendmagazineglobal.com

37

CONTRIBUTORS

bakery | restaurant

Amy Boaz was born in Albuquerque; a longtime New Yorker now living in Taos, she is a novelist (A Richer Dust, Beat, and, most recently, Because You Are Mine), editor, and book columnist for Taos News. Her work has appeared in publications as diverse as The New York Times Book Review, ELLE, and Creative Nonfiction. She also serves as a maestra of English, composition, rhetoric, and literature, and as copy chief for Trend.

Joan Conrow has been writing professionally for more than 40 years. Reporting assignments have taken her to India, Africa, and the South Pacific, and she has contributed to numerous magazines, travel guides, books, and scientific papers. After living on Kauai for nearly three decades, she moved to Santa Fe in 2014.

Her favorite pastimes include yoga, Sanskrit chanting, and outdoor adventures.

www.chocolatemaven.com

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TOP LEFT: LINDA CARFAGNO. MIDDLE: GEORGIA GERSH. BOTTOM: KATHY HIRSHON

Bill Nevins (on right, with the actor Ed Asner) has lived in New Mexico since 1996. Born in 1947, he grew up in the vicinity of New York City, and attended Iona University, the University of Connecticut, and University of California, Berkeley, and taught at University of New Mexico. A poet, he has organized poetry readings in Albuquerque, Bernalillo, Santa Fe, Taos, and Angel Fire, and with Justin R. Romine made the poetry film Silence of the Messengers. A collection of Nevins’s poems, Light Bending, was published in 2024 by Sligo Creek Publishing of Washington, DC. As a journalist, he has reported from Ireland and Mexico, and he has written for many New Mexico, national, and international publications.

Kate Russell is a Santa Fe-based photographer who has covered architecture, art, fashion, and travel, as well as circus life, friends, and action topics. Her photography career began in 2000 as she was looking for ways to run away from the circus instead of to it. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Artforum, Hi-Fructose Magazine, New Mexico Magazine, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, among many others. Russell continues to intersect with artists in her work and allows the camera, light, and subjects to lead the way toward a more creative work life.

TOP: KATE RUSSELL. MIDDLE: KAREN KUEHN. BOTTOM: AUDREY DERELL

Kirk Gittings has had a diverse career as a photographer, including photographing New Mexico for some 50 years since studying the medium as an undergraduate at the University of New Mexico. He taught photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for almost 26 years, and his commercial and fine artwork has been featured internationally and is widely collected in museum and private collections.

Audrey Derell was exposed to the arts as a child growing up in Finland, the Philippines, Spain, Belgium, and France. She landed in Santa Fe in 1984 as a visual artist with a background in dance, and is currently the official photographer for Zeitgeist Dance Theatre, New Century Dance Project, and the Preprofessional Dancer Institute. She has also photographed for numerous Santa Fe institutions, annual events, businesses, media, and visual and performance artists. trendmagazineglobal.com 39

www.unitbsantafe.com

PUBLISHER AND FOUNDER Cynthia Marie Canyon EDITOR Daniel Gibson ART DIRECTOR AND DESIGNER Janine Lehmann MANAGING EDITOR AND ARTS EDITOR Ylise Kessler

Fine Arts - Crafts - Home Goods Jewelry and More!

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COPY CHIEF Amy Boaz ALBUQUERQUE ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Ana Dickerson PRODUCTION MANAGER AND ASSOCIATE DESIGNER Jeanne Lambert PHOTO PRODUCTION Boncratious CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Brian Bixby, Amy Boaz, Joan Conrow, Ana Dickerson, Gussie Fauntleroy, Daniel Gibson, April Goltz, Autumn Gray, Hannah Hoel, Ylise Kessler, Gabriella Marks, Kay Matthews, Bill Nevins, Lynne Robinson, Ellen Ritscher Sackett, Anya Sebastian CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Linda Carfagno, Bill Curry, Audrey Derell, Eric Draper, Kirk Gittings, Kitty Leaken, Gabriella Marks, Daniel Quat, Robert Reck, Kate Russell, Lonnie Schlein, Mark Steven Shepherd ACCOUNT REPRESENTATIVES Orion Canyon, Mary Doeffinger, Maggi Hendricks, Anya Sebastian, 505-470-6442 NORTH AMERICAN DISTRIBUTION Disticor Magazine Distribution Services, disticor.com ACCOUNTING Gen Goldy BOOKKEEPING SUPPORT Patti Moore SUBSCRIPTIONS Bettina Lea

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NEW MEXICO DISTRIBUTION Ezra Leyba, 505-690-7791 NATIONAL NEWSSTAND DISTRIBUTION Dawn Cressor, Disticor PRINTING Walsworth Ripon, WI, walsworth.com Manufactured in the United States Copyright 2025 by Santa Fe Trend LLC

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All rights reserved. No part of Trend may be reproduced in any form without prior written consent from the publisher. For reprint information, please call 505-470-6442 or email santafetrend@gmail.com. Trend art+design+culture ISSN 2161-4229 is published online throughout the year and in print annually (25,000 copies), distributed throughout New Mexico and the US. To subscribe, visit trendmagazineglobal.com/subscribe-renew.

To receive a copy of the current issue in the US, mail a check for $17.99 to P.O. Box 1951, Santa Fe, NM 87504-1951 or go online to subscribe to the next issue at trendmagazineglobal.com/ subscribe. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/magazineTrend and instagram at instagram.com/santafetrend and instagram.com/trendabq.

We’re seeking new and diverse voices! If you are a writer or photographer interested in contributing, please visit trendmagazineglobal.com/contribute and send your story pitches to santafetrend@gmail.com.

Trend, P.O. Box 1951, Santa Fe, NM 87504-1951 505-470-6442, trendmagazineglobal.com 40

Trend 2025

RAILYARD ARTS DISTRICT

RAILYARD ARTS

L AST FRIDAY ART WAL KS GALLERIES & MUSEUMS

MUSIC AT THE WATER TOWER INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART MARKET

VL ADEM CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM ARTISTS MARKET ARTISANS MARKET SANTA FE SOC IET Y OF ARTISTS

SITE SANTA FE INTERNATIONAL ONCE WITHIN A TIME

INDIGENOUS WAYS FESTIVAL INDIGENOUS FUTURES 4EVER MARKET

DINING COCKTAILS SHOPPING

THE RAILYARD S

INF ORMATION & SCHEDUL E S AT R AILYARDSANTAF E .COM AN

T A F

E

FLASHES BY DANIEL GIBSON

Meow Wolf exhibition is designed as a dream space, a walk-through floor-toceiling collection of psychedelic art with a sci-fi bent and an anythinggoes, punk rock spirit,” stated Todd Martens, the Los Angeles Times game critic in a story published on May 3, 2024. The description is apt, as Meow Wolf installations have proven to be a powerful alchemy of public consumption. Launched in Santa Fe in 2008 as an arts collective, then following up in 2016 with Meow Wolf, the original immersive and participatory experiential

Top: Numina, one of the many eye-dazzling, sensory-bending environments created by Meow Wolf artists, this one set in their Denver facility, Convergence Station. Inset: Hallway, another of the mind-warping spaces guests walk through dreamed up by Meow Wolf, this one found in their Las Vegas site, Omega Mart.

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forum has spawned offspring in Denver, Las Vegas, Grapevine (near Dallas), and Houston, with new iterations in LA and NYC. The world can’t seem to get enough of alt-realities.

The LA project, overseen by 39-year-old Meow Wolf co-founder Sean Di Ianni, is expected to open in 2026 in West LA in what was once a movie theater complex befitting Tinsel Town. It will explore a world at a distant cosmic crossroads caught

in the midst of some sort of ritual, suggests Di Ianni. As with other MW projects, it will rely heavily on contributions by local artists, such as Han Santana-Sayles, a native of Murrieta, California, who now resides in Pasadena.

The New York installation is not expected to open until 2027, at the earliest, and plans are still minimal.

It will be located in Manhattan’s thriving South Street Seaport district at Pier 17, and like the other MW facilities, will include a restaurant and bar. It is believed the experience may incorporate the company’s Plotzo rat king character, who rules the subterranean group known as the Undermallers. For more lore on the group and its historical rise to prominence in the booming “experiential economy,” look up the documentary Meow Wolf: Origin Story.

TOP: ATLAS MEDIA, COURTESY MEOW WOLF. INSET: KATE RUSSELL, COURTESY MEOW WOLF

“A

Meow Wolf Goes Bicoastal

Charles Ross: Cosmic Art at the Harwood

W

orks by the preeminent land-art artist Charles Ross never publicly exhibited are on view at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos through Sept. 7. The works span his long career, exploring his fascination with celestial phenomenon, and merge his astronomical observations with his fluency with light and geometry. “Charles Ross is a living legend,” notes Curator of Exhibitions and Collections Nicole Dial-Kay. “This series lets audiences experience his deep relationship with the cosmos while celebrating his pivotal role in art history.”

The works include the series Mansions of the Zodiac that track the procession of the solar equinoxes, and Point Source / Star Space: Weaves of Ages that explores space from the vantage point of the center of Earth looking out into space. The film Sunlight Dispersion, created with one of his glass prism sculptures, which split light into a rainbow of color, captures the solar spectrum as the sun tracks across the walls of his New York studio.

Ross tells Trend that New Mexico has played a central role in his artwork and evolution as an artist, including his monumental-scale earthwork titled Star Axis nearing completion on the eastern plains. “My artworks that explore various aspects of light” are best done “on bright sunny days, and dark night skies with bright stars,” which New Mexico abounds in, he explains. “And there’s a cosmic connection on the mesas from a sense of standing at the boundary of earth and sky—your feet planted firmly on the earth, your head in the space of the stars, with the horizon at your midsection.”

He cites his exploded pigment drawings.

“These are large-scale drawings of the behavior of light at the subatomic level, made by detonating dynamite prima cord to blow powered pigment into wet paper.

Energy used to draw energy. The explosions are so powerful that we pick pieces of the paper from surrounding trees and reassemble them back into the drawing.

You can't do that in New York.” Indeed.

Mansions of the Zodiac: Libra, by Charles Ross, (1973-76/2012), acrylic paint and collage using Bakelite powder Xeroxes of Hans Vehrenberg photographic star atlas images on canvas, on view at the Harwood Museum in Taos.

Left: Bloom Array–3 Single Blooms,

by Christopher Thomson, forged steel with powder coating.

RIGHT: SUSAN LIVERMORE. TOP: COURTESY HARWOOD MUSEUM

Melding Sound and Fire A gallery exhibition in Santa Fe offers a rare opportunity to simultaneously enjoy the visual presentation of forged steel sculptures paired with improvised flute music inspired by the physical works by the same artist, Christopher Thomson. The show, Forged in Sound: A Dialog Between Metal & Music, explores the primal connection between forging and music—one shaped by fire and hammer, the other by air and breath. It will kick off on Aug. 1 at Owen Contemporary with the live flute performance by Thomson, and a talk and slideshow by the artist. The exhibition will run into mid-fall, but his work is always found on display in the Canyon Road establishment. trendmagazineglobal.com

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FLASHES

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ork is proceeding at a steady pace on the new Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in downtown Santa Fe. The new 54,000-square-foot facility will open in 2028 and will replace the existing, much smaller, O’Keeffe Museum located just a half-block away, giving the extremely popular institution a major presence in the cultural landscape of New Mexico.

That original facility opened in 1997 and is so popular that admission is granted only on a reservation basis, and has always been constrained by its limited size. The new museum will allow for more robust programming and educational efforts.

Santa Fe-based DNCA, the design architects, have evolved a schematic plan produced by Gluckman Tang Architects. The one-acre site will also include a public greenspace designed by landscape architects Reed Hilderbrand. The $75 million project is being built by Bradbury Stamm Construction.

The museum will enhance Santa Fe’s architectural legacy of excellence, honoring the earthen building traditions of the past while providing a contemporary building of our times.

Rendering courtesy of DNCA Architects based on the original schematic design by Gluckman Tang Architects.

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Billy the Kid Rides Again

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he world seemingly just can’t get enough of Billy the Kid. The story of The Kid is now going to a theatrical production, surprisingly, for the first time, in The Last Dance of Billy the Kid. The groundbreaking stage performance, from producers Jacalyn Kane and Gary Brown and Tumbleweed Ranch Productions, will make its worldwide premiere in Santa Fe in August 2026.

The blended story of history, romance, and mystery focuses on The Kid’s love affair with Paulita Maxwell, and includes other key historical figures like José Segura, Billy’s loyal ally; Chief Manuelito, a revered Diné leader who fought to protect his people; and Sheriff Pat Garrett, whose relentless pursuit of Billy culminated in one of history’s most debated endings.

The production will be staged at the historic Alhambra Theatre, an architectural gem built in 1912 within the Scottish Rite temple. Known for its period details and intimate setting, the venue provides the perfect atmosphere for audiences to step back in time and fully immerse themselves in this dramatic retelling of The Kid’s final chapter.

Kane brings over two decades of experience in directing and producing theater, live award shows, and iconic festivals and concerts. Brown is celebrated for his work as an Emmy Award-winning producer and director for television and film.

Together, they aim to honor Billy’s legacy while shining a light on the cultural diversity and resilience that defined New Mexico during one of its most tumultuous eras.

COURTESY O’KEEFFE MUSEUM

New Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Coming to Downtown Santa Fe

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FOLK WAYS

BY DANIEL GIBSON

IFAM: Bringing the World to You

prestigious event of its kind in the world, returns to the City Different July 10-13 in its 20th annual incarnation with a few new wrinkles and continuation of its many popular aspects.

“The market will introduce awards for the first time in 2025,” notes Stacey Edgar, IFAM’s executive director. “The new Folk Art Innovation Awards are being sponsored by JoAnn and Bob Balzer, and will be presented in five categories— design, materials, process, color, and originality—with an overall winner to be designated Innovator of the Year.”

The awards will be presented at a private welcoming reception for the artists and later displayed in their booths.

The market will be held, for the third 46

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year, within the Railyard grounds, which has proven to be a great success. With its nooks and crannies, winding pathways, and intimacy, it feels like a global bazaar.

Here you will find the riches of the world spread before you, from incredibly fine and dazzling textiles to glassware, huge copper kettles, works of straw, jewelry, beadwork, sculpture, household goods, rugs, basketry, pottery, and more—far more. Around every corner awaits some discovery.

More than 140 artists from some 57 nations will participate this year, including 40 first-timers, such as Joseph Koo, an Aboriginal indigo textile artist from Australia; Nisha Subramaniam of Himachal Pradesh, India, who creates shawls and stoles from Himalayan wool; and Ololo Diseño Mexicano, an artisan

of figures, toys, and sculptures of kraft paper, crepe paper, and acrylic paint.

This is perhaps the greatest aspect of the event: the chance to meet, greet, and get to know people from across the face of Earth. The event is a wonderful celebration of the commonalities and ties that bind humanity together.

IFAM is now also more than a one-anddone event. It has begun hosting pop-up shows and workshops for select artists in Santa Fe in December and March, and operates the Passport to Folk Art Trips.

Artisans and craftspeople from all corners of the Earth gather onstage in 2024 at the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market in a celebration of shared values, aspirations, and appreciation of things beautifully made.

SETH ROFFMAN

The Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, the largest and most

Artistic Director Colin Jacobsen

Orchestra

GABRIELLA MARKS; CHRISTIAN G RODRIGUEZ; GABRIELLA MARKS; DANIEL QUAT

Bach Festival

These outings, arranged and led by IFAM with local guides and experts onsite to locales around the world, are open to only 8 to 20 guests and typically sell out.

"The trips are a very important piece of what we do because it is the very best opportunity for IFAM supporters to understand the lives and livelihoods of the artists at IFAM,” says Edgar.

“Seeing artists’ homes, workshops, and communities and learning their methods build deep connections and understanding for our travelers. Folk art is the art of the people; it is born in community and there is no better way to see its role in local culture than to immerse yourself in that culture.”

For details on the 2025 event and IFAM in general, visit the website at folkartmarket.org. R

String Quartets

Top left: A collection of finely woven baskets by Rwandan artists grace IFAM 2024. Top right: Artist Ololo Diseño Mexicano at IFAM 2024.

Middle: A popular aspect of IFAM is the annual gathering of artisans in their traditional attire.

Bottom: Handwoven straw hats by Reinel Mendoza Montalvo of Colombia at IFAM 2024. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Baroque Holy Week SFPROMUSICA.ORG

IN MEMORIAM

JOHN NICHOLS Author, photographer, journalist, screenwriter, activist, and beloved Taos beacon

BY KAY MATTHEWS

John Nichols circa 1988, at top, next to an acequia—subject of his beloved book The Milagro Beanfield War. And, above, with many of his favorite things: his dog, horses, an old tractor, open space, and in the background, Taos Mountain.

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appreciation only deepened as he roamed the Sangre de Cristos on foot or snowshoes, fished the rocky rapids of the Rio Grande, and explored the Taos West Mesa—its small ephemeral ponds and sage landscape full of animal life—often with his children, Luke and Tanya. The mesa inspired several of the 10 nonfiction books he wrote and photographed, including On the Mesa and A Fragile Beauty.

But his love was fiction. He wrote 13 novels over the course of his life. His first novel published after moving to Taos, The Milagro Beanfield War, never made the bestseller list, but its story of a Northern New Mexico village opposing a golf resort and housing development became a local favorite and made Nichols a New Mexico celebrity. Two more “Chamisaville”—aka Taos— books came fast and furious to form a trilogy with a more radical tract—The Magic Journey—and a satirical look at the future, The Nirvana Blues. Later books also reflected his desire to write “political fiction,” especially American Blood, an indictment of the violence underlying American history, which takes place during Vietnam. But Nichols could also write comic novels, like Conjugal Bliss, this writer’s personal favorite. The Chicago Tribune called it “a hilarious, raucous, painfully graphic portrait of The Marriage from Hell.” Nichols was married three times, had many girlfriends, and lots of platonic women friends.

His fans also became his friends. He faithfully answered mail from people he’d never met, often maintaining correspondence

KITTY LEAKEN (2)

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ho wasn’t John Nichols’s friend? His Hispano neighbors who shared the acequias that served the Lower Ranchitos area where he first lived in Taos, New Mexico, taught him the ins and outs of getting water from the ditches to his fields, how to fix his roof or plaster the house, and argued with him about whose responsibility it was to keep the horses or sheep or dogs out of his garden and chicken coop. When the bureaucrats came to town to persuade Taoseños that a conservancy district to impound irrigation water was a good idea, Nichols teamed up with his compadres to let the state engineer know that the people of Taos thought it was a bad idea, and in the battle over the Indian Camp Dam he made lifelong friends of the farmers and acequia parciantes who valued his courage and writing skills.

Those writing skills had already produced two novels, The Sterile Cuckoo and The Wizard of Loneliness, published in New York, where he grew up. John Treadwell Nichols, the curator of fishes at the Museum of Natural History, instilled in his grandson a lifelong appreciation of the natural world. When the young author and his small family moved to Taos in 1969, that

with them for decades. He knew everyone at the which was backed by the CIA and American post office where he stopped daily to get the dozcorporations. ens of letters that always arrived via snail mail (he There’s a video called “My Beautiful Storage never had an internet account although late in life Locker” now residing within the University of he got a digital tablet so he could go online and New Mexico’s Center for Southwest Research, do research). His best friend, Rick Smith, owner where Nichols’s archive was established, that proof Brodsky Bookshop, explains, “He loved being vides a discerning look into his personality and woven into the fabric of everyday life in Taos. For talents. It begins with him playing his guitar and him, the people were what made it so special. The singing a song he’d written for the occasion. (He His fans also pandemic was hard on John because it isolated was an accomplished guitar and piano player, and him from his community.” was part of the popular local band, Ricky and the became his friends.

His celebrity only increased when he was Re-Rites).

He then takes you inside his storage He faithfully answered recruited by Robert Redford to adapt Milagro locker, which is filled floor to ceiling with drafts mail from people Beanfield War to film. It went into multiple of every one of his published books and every unhe’d never met, rewrites and he was not credited for the published book—of which there were many. often maintaining screenplay, but it launched a career spanning In his memoir I Got Mine, published a year correspondence with several years as a screenwriter. He repeatedly before he died in late 2023 at age 83, Nichols adthem for decades. told people that Milagro “is an albatross around mits that he thrived on staying up all night writmy neck.” Everyone thought he’d made a ton of ing the 50th iteration of whatever book he was money; he hadn’t—though the film did secure a much-needworking on. Rick Smith notes, “John always said that doing the ed pension later in life from the Writers Guild. Other screenwork was what he trusted, not genius or inspiration. He truly writing included work on Greek film director Costa-Gavras’s was grateful to be a writer and be able to make a living being great film, Missing, a story based on the disappearance of a one. It wasn’t something he took for granted and he showed young American during the military coup in Chile in 1973, that with his work ethic.”

GUY CROSS The Legacy of Avant-garde Provocateur

BY HANNAH HOEL

ANNE STAVELEY

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or many, their first encouter with Guy Cross— photographer, publisher for decades of THE Magazine, and author—was through his mother, Doris Cross, a legendary Santa Fe artist to whom Guy was incredibly close. Artist Marion Wasserman fondly recalls a dinner in Nambé with Doris and artist John Connell, where Doris asked, “Are we the Chosen People?” Wasserman noted that Guy truly embodied his mother’s spirit—when you were with Guy, you felt chosen and untouchable.

Guy Cross was born in 1939 at French Hospital in New York City and raised in Brooklyn, “a proud Dodgers fan,” says his nephew, James Rodewald. His passion for photography started early when Guy’s father, Christopher Cross, gave him a camera when he was about 17. “It gave me status,” Guy recalled shortly before his death in 2024 at the age of 81. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but with a camera in my hands, I had a certain power. It got me into places I wouldn’t have been able to go.” This

early fascination with photography laid the foundation for a career that would not only redefine and chronicle the art world in Santa Fe but also foster dozens of artists he supported through THE, while seamlessly spanning the rise of the internet.

A UK transplant named Liz Munro vividly recalls her first visit, back in the ‘60s, to Cross’s studio on Chambers Street in New York City. “When I walked up that flight of stairs to that loft and saw those photographs, I knew he had this great eye.

And I was very drawn to that.” Guy and Liz married in a Budtrendmagazineglobal.com

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dhist ceremony, pursuing both art and life together.

He moved with Liz to London, where his career as a fashion photographer took off, then back to the States in the early ‘70s, eventually settling in Santa Fe, where Doris and his sister, Norma, were living.

Alongside Michael Motley, Cross co-founded The Picture Paper, a renegade publication of tabloid-like images. Featuring everything from mail-in photos to a lost dog poster Cross liked, and an early comic from Matt Groening, pre-Simpsons—it reflected his spirited irreverence for convention.

“The Picture Paper was a punk era precursor to THE, and neither of us had a clue how to get it done,” recalls Motley, who would later be the designer of THE. “We just figured it out as we went. Guy was fearless, and reckless, which was part of his charm. We got it done through improvisation, guts, and wild will.”

Santa Fe was a small, close-knit community back

Guy Cross shooting photos of a fairylike figure, Cynthia Becker, in 2019.

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then. “You could meet everyone there was to know within a month,” notes Joshua Baer, who would go on to pen a column on wine and life for THE. When asked about her brother’s approach to publishing, Norma Cross commented, “He invented it. Guy’s approach was unique—something that was never taught but always felt. He didn’t follow rules; he created his own.” Cross and his then-wife, Judith, brainstormed early ideas and sketched initial designs on newsprint, aiming to capture the Indeed, his true energy and creativity of the Santa Fe art scene defiance of authority and beyond. Wasserman says, “Culturally, we were and institutional old world, and he was trying to modernize and exnorms reflected a pand past the local—while still keeping THE very global movement of much tied to Santa Fe.” artists challenging Judith Cross noted that they intended THE hierarchy and Magazine to “bring some criticism into the art redefining art. world in Santa Fe,” and it did. The oversized, blackand-white monthly captured more than 25 years of the arts in this enchanted crossroads of dust, sun, and creative entrepreneurship. Cross championed new voices and unconventional approaches, including Baer’s beloved One Bottle column, where wine was a lens through which to understand culture. It’s hard to see that column existing anywhere else.

As a writer for THE Magazine for seven years, Iris McLister (now Iris Fitzpatrick) characterized Cross as an iconoclast within seconds of being interviewed. Indeed, his defiance of authority and institutional norms reflected a global movement of artists challenging hierarchy and redefining art. In a pre-web era, when production was slower and word spread through conversations and snail mail, Cross’s projects and leadership in Santa Fe contributed to the postmodern shift in how art was understood and shared.

Even the name THE Magazine was deliberate. Notes Fitzpatrick, “He did that on purpose, to be a provocateur, to get under people’s skin. It’s not that he pushed the envelope—he ignored the idea that anything should fit inside one.” Guy was iconic—a cowboy and the best kind of iconoclast—always among the avant-garde, embracing the community while subverting its norms. He was the authority in Santa Fe’s art scene, yet by engaging and mentoring new, unexpected voices, he simultaneously challenged the self-righteous conventions of the “art world.” R

LEFT: ANNE STAVELEY, COURTESY THE GUY CROSS FAMILY

IN MEMORIAM

CONSIGNMENT VINTAGE WESTERN

320 Aztec St, Santa Fe, NM santafedoubletake.com 505-989-8886

NOW SHOWING

BY YLISE KESSLER

SITE Santa Fe International focuses the global contemporary art gaze on the City Different

S

ANTA FE HAS ALWAYS BEEN a magnetic force for artists, a place where ancient stories and avant-garde visions collide. This year, SITE Santa Fe’s 12th International, Once Within a Time, running June 27-Jan. 13, will transform it into the global epicenter of contemporary art, integrating the city’s rich history with cutting-edge con52

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temporary art, drawing from a planetary perspective while remaining deeply rooted in place.

At the heart of this ambitious undertaking is Italian curator based in New York, Cecilia Alemani, whose selection of artists drew from her international sensibilities and wealth of experience. As curator of the widely acclaimed exhibit The Milk of Dreams at the 59th Venice Biennale, as well as New York’s stellar art program at The High Line, she stands out not just for her aesthetic sensibilities, but for intellectual depth. Unlike biennials that rely on collective curatorial teams, she has developed a singular, coherent vision for Once Within a Time. Her approach is neither encyclopedic nor merely thematic, but instead is an intricate weaving of ideas, materials, and

histories that reflect both New Mexico’s past and the broader contemporary world.

The 12th International takes its title, Once Within a Time, from Godfrey Reggio’s 2022 film, a surreal meditation on storytelling, human nature, and technology. Inspired by Reggio’s circular narratives, the exhibition centers on storytelling, weaving together historical and contemporary figures connected to Santa Fe. Alemani’s commitment to the project is palpable. Since accepting the role, she has immersed herself in the history of the region, delving into New Mexico’s complex narrative. Her research has led her to the mythologies and historical figures that shaped this land, people she tagged “figures of interest.”

In Alemani’s words, “Conceived as

©MAJA RUZNIC. COURTESY THE ARTIST AND KARMA

ONCE WITHIN A TIME

THE LOWE FOUNDATION

a vast family album, Once Within a Time takes cues from the lives of a vibrant collection of Santa Feans, bringing together figures both historical and current, real and imagined, whose existential adventures step into dialogue with works of contemporary art.” The exhibition, she emphasizes, “will not simply place contemporary works alongside historical artifacts but will engage in a dynamic dialogue between them, asking questions about legacy, representation, and continuity.”

Louis Grachos, the Phillips executive director at SITE Santa Fe, has this to say about the event: “I think one facet of the imagery in her show is that she brings out this sort of transcendental aspect that was such a significant part of the culture, especially in Taos, through the influence of people like Mabel Dodge. But

what’s also interesting is how figures like D.H. Lawrence and various artists, both historic and contemporary, have contributed to this. There’s an element in her show that feels less conventional than what you might expect from someone curating a strictly art-historical, linear exhibition. But she doesn’t work that way. She curates through ideas and themes. Yes, she draws from literature, but also from these quirky historical figures who help us understand why. For example, New Mexico has such a strong wellness culture. Francis Schlatter, for instance brought his vision of healing and built a cult following in the 1870s through the 1890s. These are fascinating themes to explore about our region. What excites me most is how she will connect these ideas to the contemporary artists she’s bringing in.”

Opposite: Maja Ruznic, The Dark Place of Star Lines and Electricity (2023), oil on canvas.

Above: Heechan Kim, #16 (2023), ash, copper wire.

The International will be unlike any before it. It extends far beyond the walls of a single museum, encompassing six local cultural institutions and noninstitutional sites, as well as activating unexpected spaces like the old Shidoni Foundry property, vacant storefronts, toy shops, hotel rooms, and historical cinemas, among many others. Symbols of shifting economies and changing urban landscapes, they will house installations bringing global perspectives into direct conversation with the everyday life of Santa Fe. The artistic presentations encompass a range of interventions, from site-specific sculptures and large-scale installations to subtle disruptions and participatory actions. The artist commissions involve production of new works that infiltrate the routines and configurations of the city.

Once Within a Time will include more than 300 artworks made from 1926 to the present. Around half of the participating artists will present new commissions that engage directly or indirectly with the experiences and lore of the “figures of interest.”

Seventy-one international artists, alongside more than 20 figures of interest, both real and fictional, historical and contemporary, with strong ties to Santa Fe and the surrounding region will be present. In addition to aforementioned art patron Mabel Dodge Luhan and writer D.H. Lawrence, these include author Willa Cather, the Fire Spirit of the annual Zozobra burning in Santa Fe, Hernán Cortés’s Mexican Native consort La Malinche, and recently deceased Kiowa author N. Scott Momaday.

The singular life stories of these figures are woven into a rich narrative texture with the work of the exhibiting artists whose works span continents and disciplines. Among them are local contemporary Indigenous and Hispanic artists such as Joanna Keane Lopez and Autumn Chacon, whose work challenges conventional representations of identity. The curator has taken this challenge to heart, ensuring that fresh voices trendmagazineglobal.com

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and perspectives take center stage, eschewing the expected in favor of bold, new expressions.

In addition to the exhibition itself, June 30-July 3, the International will host the annual International Biennial Association meeting, bringing together representatives from 22 biennials worldwide. This gathering, the first hosted in the United States, will not be an insular affair but will feature public programming designed to foster direct engagement between local audiences and international curators.

Public programming has been a cornerstone of the International’s development. During the opening gala weekend, on July 18, Laurie Anderson, 54

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one of the most innovative multimedia artists of our time, will perform, creating a moment of artistic convergence that bridges sound, storytelling, and technology. Anderson’s performance runs full circle, as she performed at the very first SITE Biennial, Longing and Belonging: From the Faraway Nearby, 30 years ago, in 1995. In addition, Autumn Chacon’s opera, Malinxe, will be staged twice—on Aug. 15 and Aug. 17 (both at dusk)—outdoors in Diablo Canyon, a site known for its dramatic landscapes and deep historical resonance. Jeffrey Gibson, whose work explores Indigenous identity through contemporary materials, will perform and host a book signing on Aug. 16 for

TOP: MARIA BARANOVA. BOTTOM: SHAYLA BLATCHFORD

Laura Ortman performs a live rendition of the opera Malinxe by Native composer Autumn Chacon at the Prototype Festival, New York City, 2024. Right: the projecting metallic entryway at SITE Santa Fe.

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Simone Leigh, Untitled (2023–2024), earthenware, stoneware, and steel armature.

The Space in Which to Place Me, celebrating his 2024 US Pavilion exhibition at the 60th Venice Biennale. His was the first solo presentation of an Indigenous artist for the US, which was co-sponsored by SITE Santa Fe. This event will provide further opportunities for dialogue and connection.

The International is not only about spectacle; it is about impact. Beyond attracting international visitors, it aims to deepen engagement within Santa Fe’s own community, creating opportunities for residents to experience art in new ways. The fall 2025 programming, developed in collaboration with partner institutions, will ensure that the International’s presence is felt throughout the city,

making contemporary art accessible to a broad audience. For details on these additional events, see sitesantafe.org.

By intertwining contemporary practice with historical depth, activating unexpected spaces, and fostering dialogue between local and global communities, this biennial positions Santa Fe as a crucial nexus for contemporary art.

As Santa Fe prepares to welcome artists, curators, and visitors from around the world, one thing is clear: this International is not simply another event on the art world’s calendar. It is a statement, a vision, and a bold declaration that Santa Fe remains, as it has always been, a place where art does not just exist but thrives, evolves, and transforms. R trendmagazineglobal.com

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Artist

STUDIO

BY BILL NEVINS | PHOTOGRAPHY BY KATE RUSSELL

Light Breaks Through Darkness August Muth and the Art and Science of True Holograms

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ight breaks through darkness. Hologram artist August Muth says his own major artistic breakthrough came to him in 1994 at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis when he experienced the dark humor of Bruce Nauman’s provocative video installation Clown Torture, a work to which, Muth admits, “my initial response was revulsion.” The multiscreen video piece assaults the viewer with the absurdly repeating actions of a clown performing futile tasks ad nauseam. Muth recalls that on closer examination of the piece, he was captivated by it, even though “most others who entered the gallery left shaking their heads in disgust. At that moment, I realized the power of art to elicit a strong physiological and psychological response.”

Muth has striven to inspire such strong emotional responses with his own art ever since. In his candid, autobiographical 2020 research thesis, “Material Light—In the Realm of the Photon,” he writes that, after viewing Nauman’s disturbing video masterpiece, he “realized that light and the mysteries it holds should be the basis for my creative work.” This epiphany was further shaped by Muth’s awareness that Nauman was the first established artist to work in holography. Over the 40-year course of Muth’s career since then, he has employed that scientifically charged art form in an ongoing quest to grasp the cosmic profundity of light. “Every day I am out looking at sunsets. A friend in France has a huge telescope and we love to explore galaxies millions of light years away,” he offers, by way of example.

His unique hologram creations can be experienced in his Santa Fe studio lobby and in private collections. They also are on display nationally at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Corning Museum of Glass, in New York; the Butler Institute of American Art, in Youngstown, Ohio; and four prestigious galleries: Pie Projects Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, Parrasch Heijnen in Los Angeles, Gallery Sonja Roesch in Houston, and Modern Fine Art in New York City. His hologram art also has been put on public display at The Paseo Project in Taos, and in an installation in Paso Robles, California.

Muth has a semi-open-door policy at his studio. “Artists who work in the holographic medium visit my studio, from around the world. There is no other facility that incorporates the holographic medium in the way I do. My system facilitates experimentation. I feel a duty to open my studio and techniques to others who have done their homework. My open-studio concept stems from the Greek source of the word hologram. Holo means whole or entirety and gram means drawing or writing. From every point within a hologram you are able to see the entirety of the holographic image. In essence, holograms are an integration of billions of individual perspectives.”

Born in 1955, Muth was raised in a quiet Albuquerque neighborhood. He recalls, “I grew up at the tennis club, in the water every summer day,” and there he began to observe light as a phenomenon. “When I discovered diffraction grating, I was totally happy looking at reflections from swimming pools.” His artistic inclination emerged early; at age 6 or 7 he was selling paintings to neighbors, and his artistic path continued with his construc-

tion of water-filled glass prisms illuminated by the light of the setting sun that created spectral colors projected onto his family’s garage door. When he was 18, he moved in with his brother, who was a jeweler, and started making jewelry. “I was intrigued by the light seen in opals and diamonds,” he recalls, and traces his obsession with light to these initial experiences.

After time spent in Aspen, Colorado, Muth returned to Albuquerque and enrolled in the University of New Mexico to study physics, astronomy, and art. He went on to the University of Houston and University of Texas at Austin.

In 1978, he moved to New York City, where he began to devote his full attention to art. There, he continued his jewelry crafting with diamonds and opals, selling his work through several New York fine jewelry galleries. He also began studying holography under the guidance of Fred Unterseher at the Museum of Holography. In 1985, Muth moved to the Telluride, Colorado, area, where he built his first holographic studio and spent seven years mastering the single-beam holographic techniques developed by the late, acclaimed Russian physicist Yuri Denisyuk. There, his August Muth’s reflection is caught in the giant concave mirror that sits in one corner of his studio. Opposite: Muth’s studio is set up with multiple instruments that control and direct very specific light and light frequencies onto a single object. The bouncing and diffusion of light is directed so that the image of that object is then captured on glass plates covered with an emulsion. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Artist

Resplendent Bloom (2023), holographic etching.

Opposite: Ingress (2022), holographic etching.

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COURTESY AUGUST MUTH

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Particle (2024), holographic image.

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COURTESY AUGUST MUTH

“I see the light as the truth. If we can truly see it and perceive what it holds, that keeps me inspired in working with light and the holographic medium.” —August Muth

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COURTESY AUGUST MUTH

Muth assessing the glass panels with the image of the object captured in time on the glass.

work evolved into the making of small sculptural pieces, and then into creating holograms of these sculptures. In 1985, he also launched a company called Lasart Ltd. to produce these works, and it eventually grew to include two manufacturing sites and employed 12 people with sales worldwide. In 1995, he closed Lasart to devote himself to his true calling, an exploration of holographic techniques and the wonder of light. In 1994, he constructed his reimagined studio in Santa Fe, where he has continued his artistic production of larger holograms to the present day.

Trend visited The Light Foundry, Muth’s workshop/laboratory/studio, in late October for a look into the intertwined mysteries of light and time manifested in his body of work. He first explained that holography originated with sonar and the study of sound waves, which led eventually to identification of the vastly more complex light waves that constitute holograms. He then gave Trend a guided tour of his workspace and a fascinating, detailed demonstration of his process of hologram creation. He first coats a sheet of glass with a very special light sensitive emulsion he makes himself, and then

exposes it to an expanded laser beam.

This produces a “nano-terrain” of emulsion on the glass surface—the image.

These exposures are made on a 14,000pound table that f loats on small inner tubes to prevent any vibrations from disrupting the coherent laser light exposure. If anything moves as little as one ten billionth of an inch during the exposure, the hologram goes “out of phase,” resulting in a blank image.

He demonstrated how he uses lasers, directing their light energy via mirrors toward the emulsions. “Lasers don’t focus,” he notes, “their light is coherent and collimated, their waves lined up in perfect order. Light is a faithful archivist of time,” he states, “and each hologram is an archive of time. When you observe a hologram, you are looking at the pattern of laser light when the hologram was made, and you are also looking at it in the present. So, in that sense, you are looking at time. People see holograms as illusions, but they are not—they are actually recordings of space and time.

It is just like a star, which emits light information traveling from far within the universe and from a distant time.

We see the star as it was in ancient time, and we also see it in the present.”

But the heart of his art lies not with the process but the results. “I love working with color,” he notes. “And, the colors that I can get out of my emulsions are unique. There are blues—electric blue—which you cannot realize with paint pigments, only in holograms” and other unique tones as well.” He adds, “Living in New Mexico is good because of its wonderful natural light, low humidity, and almost daily spectacular sunsets.”

The artist often laminates three holograms together to produce even more intriguing forms. “When you f lip a hologram vertically, the image it holds is flipped inside out and in reverse. So, in theory you are looking at recorded time turned inside out and in reverse.

The image now appears to be f loating in thin air, enabling you to ‘walk’ into it visually. This effect is called ‘pseudoscopic.’ It calls you to tactically interact with it.”

Despite the astounding qualities of his holograms, he notes, “My work is not always understood in the art world.

Some people think it is a gimmick. It takes a while for people to really see what I am doing: the wow factor of dimensional light in space, and the more subtle shifting color. I am creating real multidimensional light forms in free space. It is not an illusion or a trick.”

Asked what is new for him and his art, Muth responds, “What’s new for me is really understanding who light is,” speaking of it as a living entity. “Light and information are always coming to us from the sun and the universe. We need to understand this information as deeply as we can if we are to survive.” He adds his hope that holograms and a deep appreciation of light may help advance human awareness in a truly holistic fashion. R

Visits to Muth’s Santa Fe studio can be arranged through his website, augustmuth.com, or through the Santa Fe gallery, Pie Projects. trendmagazineglobal.com

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THE HARVEY CENTER

The Harvey Center businesses at 839 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, New Mexico, from left, Tulsi; Pilates Santa Fe; Sandbar Trading; The Video Library; and Travel Bug.

TULSI Santa Fe chef Paddy Rawal, best known for his classical Indian cooking and who once bested Bobby Flay with his chicken tikka masala, is now offering something new and different. He describes his latest venture, Tulsi, as “a traditional Indian restaurant with a twist.” His menu, he explains, has evolved to reflect the cuisine of other Asian countries—including Pakistan, Thailand, and Malaysia—as well as India, integrating herbs and spices that reflect flavors from different regions of the continent.

Rawal spent an extra year in culinary school in Bombay to study spices, their characteristics and properties. Many—like cumin, tamarind, and turmeric—turn out to be staples in both Indian and Southwestern American cooking. “I like to pay tribute to both,” says Rawal, “so I incorporate local ingredients into my dishes as well. Introducing people to what I call my theater of Indian cooking is what Tulsi is all about.”

PILATES SANTA FE Pilates Santa Fe has been voted the city’s number one Pilates studio in the Santa Fe Reporter’s Best of Santa Fe readers’ opinion poll every year since polling first began. Its motto, Live Young Longer, encompasses a wide range of wellness modalities, aimed at assisting people of all ages to attain and maintain the best health possible, from the inside out.

Ray Kurshals, the founder and director, was a professional dancer in New York City for over 20 years, and being familiar 64

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THE VIDEO LIBRARY with the practice and its benefits, decided to become a certified Pilates instructor as well. Since then, he has worked with notables from Olympic athletes to movie stars, including Ali MacGraw and the late Gene Hackman. “It builds strength without sacrificing flexibility, and flexibility without sacrificing strength,” Kurshals explains of his method. “Making Pilates part of your lifestyle will significantly improve your chances of remaining healthy, both physically and mentally, for many years to come.”

SANDBAR TRADING Sandbar Trading could best be described as a gallery full of eclectic treasures. Here you will find objects ranging from historical to contemporary, focusing on Native American, Southwestern, and Western art and artifacts, including Navajo weavings, paintings, silver and turquoise jewelry, Pueblo pottery, beadwork, old books, baskets, kachinas, and much more. “We buy and consign from people downsizing their collections, as well as from artists,” says Rick Gottsponer, who with his wife, Julie, started the business in Wichita, Kansas, over 30 years ago. “Collectors are always checking with us for items that they are searching for, and they know that we guarantee and ship daily.”

After years of doing shows and business in Santa Fe, the couple moved here last year. “We love it here,” comments Julie. “Rick grew up in southern New Mexico, so it’s like coming back home.”

The Video Library, which celebrates its 44th birthday this year, is a beloved community fixture. It also happens to be not only America’s oldest surviving video store, but the second oldest in the entire world.

Here you will find about 18,000 movies—everything from Buster Keaton shorts from 1919 to current releases— and founder/owner Lisa Harris can tell you the plot, characters, and cast from just about any title. She will also tell established customers if she thinks they will like it. “I guess I’ve become a kind of video therapist,” she says with a laugh.

TRAVEL BUG Travel Bug is a special and very local Santa Fe business, providing resources for travelers and locals alike. It features a range of products—among them luggage, maps, travel accessories, and newly released travel books—along with a coffee shop and an in-store brewery to boot.

Travel Bug is a pleasant and serene place to hang out while sipping a brew, with a happy hour from 5-6 p.m., Monday-Friday, as you ponder your next adventure.

It also offers in-store classes in Spanish, French, and Italian.

Community connection is a high priority for founder/owner Greg Ohlsen, emphasized through hosting presentations on travel and other topics, most Saturdays at 5 p.m. “We really want to be a place for people to come and hang out,” Ohlsen simply states.

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Master ARTIST

BY GUSSIE FAUNTLEROY | PORTRAITS BY LONNIE SCHLEIN

George Rivera in his studio. To the left of his head is a photo of his late son, Valentino (Lightning Boy), with master hoop dancer, the late Nakotah LaRance.

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Endless Circles George Rivera’s life as an artist and tribal leader connects Pueblo tradition and our world

BRANDON SANDERSON

A

top a hill that marks the highest point on Pojoaque Pueblo, just north of Santa Fe, George Rivera—sculptor, jewelry artist, and the former Pojoaque Pueblo governor—stands at the edge of a 33-foot-wide circle of packed ground, a dance circle, beside his studio and home. As a breeze blows through the 60-year-old artist’s long white hair, he takes in the expansive views around him: the Sangre de Cristo Mountains off to the east, Jemez Mountains to the west, and down below, a winding green line of cottonwood trees along Pojoaque Creek.

Although the sight lines are vast, the dance circle itself, where the feet of young tribal dancers have lifted and returned to the earth hundreds of times, is “simple and humble,” Rivera says. It brings together age-old tradition and contemporary life, while on a larger scale the shape represents the circular movement of time, without end, in the Native worldview. And of course, it echoes the round forms of hoops carried and handled by the dancers in beautiful and seemingly magical ways.

For Rivera, the dance circle outside his studio holds a poignant and very personal message as well. His young son Valentino Tzigiwhaeno, whose name in the Pueblo’s Tewa language means “lightning,” was a boy “who couldn’t stop dancing.” He was an extraordinarily energetic child who had been taking part in traditional dances, including hoop dancing, since he was 5. In 2015, Tino was riding in a car when it was broadsided by a vehicle whose driver had a heart attack and whose foot, in that moment, pressed down hard on the gas.

Tino suffered a traumatic neck injury that left him paralyzed and unable to speak. Over the next 14 months, he underwent at least 20 surgeries, gradually regaining limited movement and the ability to eat and talk. But he knew he would never dance again or move in the ways that had given him so much joy. Rivera remembers his son in diapers taking off running, clearly inspired

by Rivera’s own passion for running; he’s taken part in several marathons, including in Boston.

Eventually Tino told his family he was ready to go to heaven. He was 8 years old.

“He begged us not to do more surgeries. He wanted to be known for who he was, not for his injuries,” Rivera says.

“We had to let him go. We gave it our best shot, but at least we had those 14 months with him.” A year later the family, including Rivera’s wife Felicia Rosacker-Rivera, co-founded Lightning Boy Foundation. The organization carries on Tino’s legacy by providing Pueblo and other Native boys and girls with instruction and opportunities to perform and compete in hoop dancing, as well as other arts. The foundation’s beautiful short film, The Hoop Has No End, earned a Rocky Mountain Southwest Emmy in 2023.

The hoop dance is said to have originated at Taos Pueblo in the late 1800s as a healing ceremony, and later was almost lost. “When Valentino danced, he was focused, meditating before he started, to put out that healing energy. When people watch it, it brings out the best in them,” Rivera says. He adds that along with keeping the tradition alive, when young people are hoop dancing in public, “their confidence level goes through the roof. They do better in

Top: Bison pendant, 22K gold, silver, Bisbee chrysocolla turquoise. Middle: The Wave bracelet, 18K gold. Bottom: Mother Wave, 18K gold, oxblood coral, silver. trendmagazineglobal.com

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school and with other traditional dances.”

Rivera has another personal connection with the revitalization of Pojoaque Pueblo’s traditions and strengths. At the turn of the 20th century, the Pueblo’s population was virtually decimated by a smallpox epidemic. The few who survived moved away, and by 1912, the Pueblo had been abandoned.

In 1932, several families, including Rivera’s great-grandfather Jose Antonio Tapia, returned to reestablish the tribe. Rivera remembers hearing the story from his grandmother Feliciana Tapia Viarrial, Tapia’s daughter. “I just knew there was a lot of hard lifestyle to bring the Pueblo back to being a community,” he says.

Several decades later, in the mid1980s, the artist felt his own call to return home and help reinvigorate his community’s cultural and economic foundations. After studying at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and the California College of the Arts in Oakland, he spent three years in France at the SCAD Lacoste school, where he focused on sculpture and served as a teaching assistant. Enormously inspired by visiting art museums around Europe and in New York City, learning about art history, and with his own creative energy turbocharged by the experience, he had a vision of what he could do for his people. “From the stories I heard about my ancestors, I felt like I was being called back to work with this community,” he says.

From 1993 to 2003 Rivera was Pojoaque Pueblo’s lieutenant governor under Governor Jacob Viarrial, his uncle. Following Viarrial’s death, Rivera served as the Pueblo’s governor from 2003 to 2014. Alongside Viarrial, and then as governor himself, he made numerous trips to Washington, DC, meeting four presidents and 72

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Top: As a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, creating an enormous teapot. Rivera holding his pendant, Strength, modeled by his wife, Felicia Rosacker-Rivera.

The artist wears his Bison bolo tie.

working on issues of importance to the Pueblo and other Native tribes, including water rights and economic and jurisdictional matters.

Later, Rivera’s daughter Poqueen and son PaaWee both worked at the White House on tribal affairs.

The Riveras’ younger daughters, Paloma and YsaDora, are still at home.

Back at the Pueblo, Rivera’s vision resulted in the establishment of the Poeh Cultural Center, which opened in 1991 and is aimed at teaching, sharing, and preserving the culture and arts of Tewa-speaking peoples and other Pueblos and tribes. The Poeh Center Museum followed in 2000.

One Native artist, internationally known contemporary ceramic sculptor Roxanne Swentzell of Santa Clara Pueblo, enlisted her family in finishing the interior of a three-story adobe tower on the Poeh Center property and opened it in 2006 as the Roxanne Swentzell Tower Gallery.

Rivera was also instrumental in having the Hilton Santa Fe Buffalo Thunder Resort and Casino built at Pojoaque Pueblo, a project for which he had final say on the aesthetics and architectural style.

“When I was asked what the design theme would be, I said we don’t need a theme, we are the theme,” he recalls proudly. He brought in other renowned Native artists as consultants, including Swentzell, Mateo Romero, Michelle Tapia, and Tony Abeyta, whom Rivera first met as a fellow student in Lacoste.

The resort’s exceptional Native art collection now numbers more than 300 pieces.

Rivera’s own artistic path began early, with clay—or at least mud.

One morning when he was 6, he woke early and went outside before the rest of the family was up. To occupy his time, he opened

TOP: ERIC MOYER. BOTTOM: COURTESY THE ARTIST

ARTIST

COURTESY PHOTO

the water hydrant and “built a massive bowl of clay under the hydrant,” he recalls, smiling, adding that he’s been drawn to large-scale creations ever since.

At 12, he moved to Santa Fe to live with his father and became involved with the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Fe, taking art classes, competing in athletics, and, as a teen, teaching art to the younger boys. The strong support he received there is among the reasons he pours his heart and efforts into helping youngsters of all ethnicities, work that has led him to being inducted into the Boys and Girls Club of America’s Alumni Hall of Fame. He was the first Native so honored.

In tenth grade Rivera put his hands to a potter’s wheel for the first time and felt an immediate resonance. “I was gone!” he remembers. During his senior year of high school, his art instructor, Phil Karshis, and Swentzell, an IAIA student at the time, both encouraged him to enroll in IAIA. In his first year there he was producing oversized plates and vases, along with teapots more than two feet tall. “I was already making sculpture, but I didn’t call it sculpture,” he says. His penchant for pushing the boundaries of what could be done in clay continued at the California College of the Arts. There, instructor Viola Frey, whose monumental ceramic figures were later represented by Riva Yares in Santa Fe, nudged him further in the direction of experimentation and sculptural art.

By the time he returned from France in the mid-1980s, Rivera had been exposed to so many styles and genres and periods of art history that his creative spirit could not be contained in any single one. “I’m still not locked into a style,” he says. For a number of years, his primary means

George Rivera, Lightning Boy (2020), oil on panel.

of expression was monumental bronze, typically work that honored his Pueblo culture. His 12-foot-tall Buffalo Dancer stands outside Buffalo Thunder Resort, and Buffalo Dancer II is at the entrance to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC Another large-scale commissioned piece, now on permanent residency at the New Mexico History Museum in

Santa Fe, commemorates Pueblo runners who served as messengers during the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. Watching over the dance circle next to Rivera’s studio is The Great Horse, a 21-foot-high bronze horse and Native rider, holding a stainless steel spear, on a four-foot-tall stainless steel base.

Today Rivera divides his creative focus between sculpture, painting, and jewelry. trendmagazineglobal.com

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GEORGE RIVERA

James Beard Award-winning chef and owner of Sazón, Fernando Olea, modeling jewelry by Rivera: Desert Thorn bracelet, two rings featuring Bisbee turquoise, and a multistone ring (Olea’s left hand) that Rivera created for him as a wedding ring. Opposite: Wearing some of his jewelry in front of his monumental bronze and stainless steel sculpture, The Great Horse.

In 2020, he started spending time and learning to make jewelry in the studio of acclaimed artist Cody Sanderson, of Diné (Navajo) ancestry. Sanderson later reminded Rivera that he (Sanderson) first learned jewelry making at the Poeh Cultural Center. The two artists’ connection had come full circle.

Rivera’s jewelry features sterling silver, gold, coral, turquoise, and diamonds and other precious gems, and is clearly sculpturally inspired. One pendant, in fact, is a cast silver bust created as a smaller version of a bronze titled Slave Warrior. But at four-plus inches long, it’s hardly small. “Look at this, who makes that to wear?” the artist jokes as he polishes the piece, and then adds, “I’m going to wear it today.”

Many of Rivera’s bracelets marry museum-quality craftsmanship and highend materials with a maverick, almost dangerous-looking style. Among his Desert Thorn series, with curved silver

and gold elements suggesting thorns or feathers, is a wrist adornment that combines two bracelets into one. He also enjoys collaborating with other artists. Asked to create a piece for an IAIA fundraising auction, Rivera teamed up with Sanderson and contemporary Muscogee/Seminole artist Kenneth Johnson on a bracelet that brought in $80,000 for the school.

“I stay true to my jewelry based on what I would like to wear and would like to see,” Rivera explains. And what he would most like to see is something that hasn’t been seen before. “I tell young artists: Ideas are the most important. Skills are important, but the more creative you can be, the more unique your work is going to be. I’m in my fourth year of jewelry, but all the art mediums I’ve done before are the reasons I can do this and have so much fun enjoying and playing with a new medium.” R trendmagazineglobal.com

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ABIQUIU

MARK STEVEN SHEPHERD

Keepers of Tradition The people of the Chama River Valley villages of Abiquiu and Medanales tenaciously hold onto their way of life, their land-based values, and faith in one another There isn’t exactly a center to the “wild chokeberry place”—its Pueblo Tewa name—that is the village of Abiquiu, some 45 minutes northwest of Santa Fe. It’s been made famous by the work and long residency of painter Georgia O’Keeffe, and by the pink striated canyons that make a stunning backdrop to western films, but is scarcely on the map. Its humble plaza presently holds the Saint Thomas Catholic Parish, built and rebuilt after fires and long wear since the mid-18th century. But the first church for this fledgling genízaro community was constructed a mile and half east, overlooking the Rio Chama, and named for Santa Rosa de Lima, a beloved female saint. The community of small ranchers and farmers remains self-contained, fiercely devoted to family ties, preserving precious water rights and cultural traditions like retablo carving and weaving passed from generation to generation. Meet two of those families, now led by women, who are stewards of this ancient land, artisans and entrepreneurs introducing innovations in their work to meet the changing world, while remaining stubbornly, and authentically, true to their roots. — Amy Boaz

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Not Riding Off into the Sunset Chavela Trujillo leads a new generation of enterprising young Abiquiu women

T

he four horses are restive as they wait for the morning arrival of their master and trainer, Chavela Trujillo. They cavort and nip at each other in the open corral under the shadow of the half-burned stable roof on the Trujillo property in Medanales, a village just east of Abiquiu, New Mexico. The 15-acre property, once her uncle’s, lies along the roiling Rio Chama. The unprecedented rains of the summer of 2024 forced the Rio Chama to temporarily change course, leaving behind enormous silt buildups along its banks, forcing Trujillo to reroute the accustomed trails she takes her customers riding along. Her seven-year business, Extreme Horseback LLC, is actually her second full-time job, after her work in property management at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and it is the more stressful one. Nodding to her quarrelsome charges, Trujillo explains, “My coworkers don’t fight in public.”

Horses are in her blood. She has six of them. Trujillo, now 27, was riding on horseback in the lap of her mother since she

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was a toddler to the vast reaches of her family’s cattle ranch near Abiquiu. She got hooked on rodeo at age 9 and soon after entered her first barrel-racing event. “I like speed events,” she notes. She won all kinds of buckles and was crowned the 2015 Rio Arriba County Rodeo Queen. With her 4-H champion lamb auction, where she pulled in a cool $3,500, she researched online and bought her own barrel-racing horse from Tennessee, Pina—one of the present bickering band. Trujillo’s mother, Isabel War Trujillo, a grant writer and formerly the Abiquiu librarian, notes of her daughter’s early accomplishments: “I haven’t been able to catch up with her since.”

Now, with a dozen or so riding students at any given time, Trujillo teaches those same events she excelled at like Western Pleasure. “People told me I could do this as a lifestyle,” she recalls. She found out that caring and keeping horses could be a write-off. “From the lessons, I could pay for their feed and build a barn,” she notes. A Native Women Lead partial grant from Nusenda Credit Union allowed her to build her training arena in

KITTY LEAKEN

BY AMY BOAZ

TOP: BILL CURRY. BOTTOM: KITTY LEAKEN

Medalanes in 2021. Her passion became the business, Extreme Horseback LLC. The baby of the family, eight and ten years younger than her older brothers, Trujillo learned early on how to deal with the reigning male egos, including that of her father, Virgil Trujillo, an outspoken “old-school rancher” and Abiquiu historian who successfully defended the family’s water rights in the State Supreme Court. “Growing up there weren’t a lot of girls up at Abiquiu ranch,” Chavela recalls. “Growing up I had a lot of tias [aunts], but mostly it was boys. It was easy as a kid—that lingo I know, I was a part of it. It gets harder as you get older.” Indeed, of the numerous horse-riding customers she trains, she recalls, “Some men students don’t come back—they can’t take directions from a woman.”

Living in an apartment on her own near her family’s ranch, Trujillo has become a leader in her community. Her résumé is already chock-full, well documented, and impressive: Honor student, 4-H champion, horno builder, petroglyph mapper. Fittingly, in a land where water rights are essential to the life of ranchers, she also worked at mapping acequias since age 18, first with the East Rio Arriba Soil and Water Conservation District’s Youth Conservation Corps, then with the New Mexico Acequia Association for four years. This required walking the entirety of

the acequias, taking location points, and inventorying the infrastructure. In 2019, she participated in NMAA’s panel with other young people and woman ranchers to discuss crop models and “restorative initiatives for a changing climate.” At the NMAA conference, with a poise beyond her years, she stated eloquently: “What I am trying to do through my career is to encourage entrepreneurship among our youth, with a focus on agriculture.

I hope I can be an example, pushing through all the struggles and tangles I’ve been facing…We need our young people to see that they can make it at home in our rural communities and that we will find a way as a community, all working together, to help them out so we don’t keep losing our youth.”

Dancing since age 3 at the annual Abiquiu Fiesta in the group known as Las Inditas del Pueblo de Abiquiu ensures that the next generation continue to commemorate her community’s genízaro heritage. Abiquiu was founded in 1754 as a buffer between the Spanish settlements and raiding Native tribes, including the Navajo, Ute, and Jicarilla Apache. The families of genízaro—detribalized Native Americans captured by other tribes, particularly the Comanche, who were then sold to Spanish families in New Mexico—were allowed to settle there and given Spanish citizenship in exchange for military defense. The Indita dancers enact a coming-of-age dance called Nanille, while one of the most poignant dances is El Captivo, performed by youth of both sexes with dollar bills tacked to their persons, commemorating the former ransoming of genízaros.

As part of her long involvement in Indita dances, Trujillo and her older sister, Delilah, and mother were invited last year to the National Museum of the American Indian, a unit of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, to speak to students about the traditions and regalia of the dances. Blowup photos of her and her sister dancing at the Abiquiu morada (the village’s Penitente church) greet visitors at the entrance to the museum’s “Colonial Legacies” exhibition. The sisters also appear in Gary Medina Cook’s recent film, The Genízaro Experience (see story on page 94).

Left: Trujillo started riding as a toddler in her mother’s lap when they ran the cattle on her father’s Abiquiu ranch. Top: The Penitente morada in Abiquiu is home to both this brotherhood and ceremonies associated with the community’s deep genízaro roots. Opposite: The Rio Chama, along which Trujillo takes her students trail riding, borders her family’s ancestral land. trendmagazineglobal.com

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ANDREA VILLAREAL (2)

As a member of Las Inditas del Pueblo de Abiquiu since she was 3, Trujillo and her troupe of young dancers annually commemorate the solemn history of her genízaro people, such as the ransoming of captives. Top: They are dancing on the feast day at the Saint Thomas the Apostle Church in Abiquiu. Bottom: In 2023, they danced at the Abiquiu morada for the Smithsonian exhibit.

BILL CURRY (3)

Clockwise from top: Trujillo started her horse-riding enterprise Extreme Horseback LLC seven years ago. She trains students in her Medanales arena. Jalinna Martinez, 12, has been taking riding lessons with Trujillo since she was 6, and has already participated in parades and rodeos.

Photos and newspaper clippings from Trujillo’s time as 2015 Rio Arriba Rodeo Queen attest to her impressive résumé.

Trujillo is named after her grandmother Margarita Isabel, but has always been called by the nickname Chavela. She has become a role model for younger girls, not only her young riding students, training for the fiesta royalty and rodeo events she herself competed in, but working with the Indita dancers. Some of her riding students have been with her since they were 8 or 9; Trujillo is pleased to see how the girls gain confidence. As a child Trujillo was present when her uncle Dexter, a ceremonial elder, would meet with the grandparents to talk about old customs, and the elder ladies were brought into the library to teach the young girls about rituals and regalia. She’s learned that the younger generation has lost the sense of the dances as a kind of prayer rather than a show. Trujillo “taught the younger girls to be aware of themselves—to be within yourself.”

The church picks the mayordomos for the fiesta, who then choose which girls will participate. Usually this has been just the girls whose families attend the church. In a pushback—or

what the Trujillo daughter and mother delicately call a “workaround”—they encouraged participation of girls who hadn’t been asked before. “It brought the community together,” Chavela remembers. Clunky UGGs were traded for traditional regalia, and as more girls participated, they asked questions and became aware of their grandparents’ stories.

Trujillo is part of the genízaro renaissance and proud history. She has not wanted to leave the place she grew up, barely enduring a semester away at New Mexico State University at Las Cruces, and only then because she had brought her horse. (Since, she has gained an associate degree in science from University of New Mexico at Los Alamos.) “Culture has a big inf luence on me,” she explains. “I am grateful for what my grandparents and great-grandparents have done. I am proud to say I am from Abiquiu, from generations of people on each side. I am glad to know where I’m from. We have a beautiful culture to be protected.” R trendmagazineglobal.com

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HERITAGE

BY AMY BOAZ | PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL CURRY

An Interwoven Inheritance

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he color blue is what strikes one while gazing at the wool blankets hanging around the crammed workroom in weaver Norma Medina’s trailer off the highway to Chama in Tierra Azul (“Blue Earth”), a village adjoining Medanales, New Mexico. Medina is known for the singular color of her thread—a rich cerulean New Mexico sky on a cloudless day.

It is somewhere between the soft indigo in the curtains lining the trailer and the royal folds of a statue of Virgin Mary that rests on a sideboard. The blue complements the bright sapphire prize ribbon tacked onto an award-wining textile hung on the wall. Norma comes from a long line of acclaimed weavers in Abiquiu.

Three looms command the tight space in her trailer, worked by four generations of masterly hands of the Martinez-Archuleta-Medina-Montoya clan. One of the looms belonged to the renowned weaver matriarch, Doña Agueda Martinez, the dynasty’s late 88

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Four generations of weavers led by Norma Medina of Tierra Azul bind together Hispanic and Native cultures and centuries of regional textile arts great-grandmother. She won the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and was the subject of a 1977 documentary, Agueda Martinez: Our People, Our Country, among many other distinctions. Another of the looms was that of her accomplished daughter, Eppie Archuleta, whose own numerous accolades include the Colorado Governor’s Award and a 1985 National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Award. She dyed her own wool and helped revive her local economy through the weaving arts.

Today, the next generations manipulate these looms, including one built by Norma’s husband, Levi, for his granddaughter. Besides Norma, now the elder at age 83, in the studio is one of her daughters, Delores Medina, 58, plus

Delores’s four daughters: Monica, 22; Elizabeth, 26; Mary Margaret Archuleta, 28; and Ashley Montoya, 33. Also present are Ashley’s two children, Maya, 13, a talented fine artist; and Aiden, 11, who likes to draw cartoons and is also learning to weave.

Each woman has her own style of weaving, derived from a long tradition of Rio Grande textiles dating back to the Spanish Colonial era. Traditional patterns are distinguished by stripes, chevrons, and diamonds. Besides being known for her signature blue, Norma forged past common designs. She excels at pictorial weavings, like the uncanny head of a cougar in a wall hanging with green luminous eyes. In 1994, Norma was commissioned to weave the Stations of the Cross for St. Peter’s Church in Greeley, Colorado, a monumental effort that took three years to complete and a huge toll on her health: each scene is chillingly lifelike, the faces riveting and the flesh of Christ slashed with blood.

With some trepidation Norma would show her grandmother Agueda the panels as she went along: the elder passed critique on each and urged her to keep toiling on what became a largely spiritual task. Offered an enormous sum for her work, Norma would not accept remuneration for it: “Weaving taught me to appreciate what God has created.”

Growing up in Medanales, near Abiquiu in the Chama River Valley, Norma watched how hard her mother, Eppie, worked at weaving to raise her large family. Norma was reluctant to become “addicted to it,” she says. But urged to make money for her own family, Norma finally learned to weave by sneaking into the local post office, where her aunt Cordelia, the town’s postmaster, kept a loom to ply in her downtime.

Eventually, Norma’s husband, Levi, made her a loom.

Each generation of weavers has learned from her master artisan forebear: Doña Agueda died at age 102, in 2000; and her daughter Eppie Archuleta in 2014. Delores, one of Agueda’s great-granddaughters, first learned rag weaving from her grandmother Eppie, who reused material from the wide brilliant-colored skirts she wore. Delores also mastered, through generations, the art of dyeing wool naturally, using indigo, loose-leaf tea, walnut shells, cochineal, and onion skins. Cota, for example, is an abundant local wildflower that creates a particular golden brown, as well a delightful tea. Delores, who lives in Española, is now reassembling Agueda’s large loom in her own house.

Norma and Eppie used to teach in the schools in Española and Abiquiu, keen to impart their heritage to a new generation.

Doña Agueda had Navajo grandparents on both sides, and the Navajo have a long, rich tradition of weaving cotton textiles, so Agueda was informed by both Spanish and Native practices. Her grandparents were weavers and ranchers, and an elderly Navajo neighbor served as another early weaving teacher. In 1916, Agueda married Eusebio Martinez from

Chimayo, who taught her, and all his daughters, to weave with woolen yarns.

All the various strands of the master weavers of the Martinez, DeArguellos, Trujillos, and Ortega families are intertwined in some fashion. In 1986, the four generations (Agueda, Eppie, Norma, Delores) participated in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and the family’s weaving is on permanent

display on the third floor in the Santa Fe State Capitol.

Ashley, Delores’s eldest daughter, recalls her first memories of resting in an open box near the loom where her mother was working. “It was always a choice,” Ashley recalls, “no one forced us.” Ashley, for instance, didn’t come to the craft until she had her own girls. At some point, she realized, “I had better teach them!”

A weaving dynasty poses in Norma Medina’s busy Medanales workroom, left to right: Mary Margaret Archuleta (fifth-generation weaver), Maya Montoya (sixth-generation weaver), Ashley Montoya (fifthgeneration weaver), Levi Medina (loom maker, carpenter), Norma (third-generation weaver), and Aiden Montoya (sixth-generation weaver). Top: The first church for this genízaro community of ranchers and farmers was built a mile and half east of Abiquiu, overlooking the Rio Chama, and named for Santa Rosa de Lima, a beloved female saint. Opposite: One of Norma’s award-winning wool rugs. trendmagazineglobal.com

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HERITAGE

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Left: On the loom is a runner that a customer ordered for her table to match a vintage Mascot stove. It was inspired by a coaster that Norma Medina gave the customer 14 years before—featuring Norma’s signature blue wool. Right: The rug Norma holds is a priceless rag rug that four generations all took turns weaving for the folk festival in Washington, DC, 1986. It now belongs to great-great-granddaughter Maya.

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Norma urged her grandchildren to learn in order to supplement their income.

Great-granddaughter Mary Margaret, who learned from Eppie and would often be left in tears when the elder weaver wasn’t satisfied with her work, realized that she could sell coasters to college friends over Christmastime. All the women recall as students taking looms with them in their car trunks. “It’s a job no one can take away from you,” notes Norma.

“But, it’s hard on your body,” explains Ashley, demonstrating the fastidious action of working the treadle and shuttle while keeping the weft and warp taut. A novice has to master the steps, according to Norma: first the slow slant; the fast slant; the bear claw; and, finally, the step terrace. Norma likes to watch Law & Order while she weaves or listen to audiobooks: “You forget about problems in life,” states Norma.

The women of this weaving family acknowledge the cultural value of their art, but also the potential economic benefits. The revival of fine arts and crafts in the area beginning in the 1930s has boosted the appreciation and knowledge of Rio Grande textiles, along with prices for their work. Their expertly crafted rugs 90

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continue to fetch hefty prices at places and events like the Traditional Spanish Market held annually in Santa Fe, and the annual Dixon and Abiquiu studio tours.

The weavers also work on commissions.

Newly graduated from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces with a degree in agriculture and animal science, Mary Margaret hopes to work into her weaving craft the raising of sheep, and even has her eye on a defunct wool factory in Capulin, Colorado, that her great-grandmother Eppie used to run.

There are still sacks of wool stored there, explains Delores, and as other mills are closing, the prices rising, and the weavers literally running out of yarn, she plans to take up the chore of carding and spinning. “We’re setting up as a family,” she affirms.

Norma is pleased to see her “inheritance” embraced enthusiastically by the next generations. “I ask them to do what their spirit moves them to do,” she states. “I feel that weaving is the tradition and what they design and create is their identity.” Mary Margaret agrees: “I hope to keep the tradition alive,” and adds her aim to be able to produce her own yarn someday.

“It would make Grandma happy.” R

Where Earth meets the Sky…

#TaosTrue – Where Tradition is a Way of Life

...and Enchantment is endless.

Travel to the northern high country of Taos, New Mexico, and immerse yourself in adventure, transformative culture, and world class art.

Taos Native Son A rock and roller explores his genízaro legacy in documentary film

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BY LYNNE ROBINSON | PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL CURRY

“My Grandmother Medina

would tell me stories of our Native grandmothers who were taken captive,” Gary Medina Cook tells Trend, as we talk over coffee and breakfast at Legacy Café in Taos one early December morning.

Medina Cook sits across from us in a corner of the café, his long, dark hair tied in a ponytail under his black cowboy hat.

Except for the crimson scarf around his neck, he’s dressed all in black, right down to his boots: a stark frame for his mestizo features. More rock and roller than academic or filmmaker, he is at once easygoing and self-consciously aware that he is called to remember a forgotten history.

“That is truly where my film The Genízaro Experience: Shadows in Light was born,” he says as he recalls his grandmother’s kitchen in Questa, New Mexico. This film, released in 2022, has brought new attention and acclaim to Medina Cook, adding to his rich life as a renowned musician.

Lorraine Medina Cook, his mother, was genízara—of Spanish, Comanche, Ute, Apache, French, and Pueblo heritage—with no single tribal affiliation.

His father, Richard Cook—of English, Scottish/Irish, and Choctaw descent— was an artist from Fort Worth, Texas.

“My father didn’t speak much about his Indigenous great-grandmother,” Medina Cook relates, and his awareness of her connection to the infamous Trail of Tears still nags at his conscience.

His parents moved him and his siblings to Louisiana for a few years during their early childhood, before returning to Santa Fe when he was 8. He remembers the stories his grandmother

Gary Medina Cook with one of his many guitars kicks back in Taos.

told him sitting around her kitchen table when they visited her during summers, at Christmas and other holidays.

The term genízaro is a Spanish word taken from the Italian word giannizzero, which in turn was adapted from the Ottoman Turkish term yeniçeri (“janissary”). The Turkish word referred to slaves from other cultures who were trained as soldiers for the Ottoman Empire. Genízaros were Native American women and children captured by the Spaniards, or Natives purchased by Spaniards from tribes that held them captive. Spanish laws forbidding slavery forced the buyer to bring them into their homes and in turn, introduce them to Spanish (i.e., Catholic) customs; they were classified as indentured servants rather than slaves.

As far back as the 1500s, there are records of Spaniards taking young Indian boys and training them to guard Spanish communities from raiding tribes like the Navajo, Ute, and Comanche. Eventually, these displaced people began to lobby the New Mexico authorities for land of their own to settle and farm. In exchange for their service, they were given land grants in strategic areas, and during the mid- to late-1700s, towns including Ranchos de Taos, Abiquiu, Las Trampas, Tome, Ojo Caliente, and Questa were established as genízaro buffer settlements against raiding tribes.

Medina Cook’s ancestry ties back into this convoluted and rich heritage. He was a professional musician in Los Angeles until a decade ago. He attributes his love of music to his mother, who bought him his first guitar at age 12, recognizing perhaps that her sensitive son needed a creative outlet. By the age of 15, he was wowing local musicians and bands, and was regularly invited to jam.

At age 16, he dropped out of school

to pursue a career in music. He played at many clubs around Santa Fe and Albuquerque for about three years before moving to LA, where he was quickly hired as a session musician. Although self-taught on guitar, he enrolled at the Dick Grove School of Music, where he studied composition and jazz. He has played with many leading artists, including Joni Mitchell and Sting, who were intrigued by his use of a device called a Roland VG-8.

“You could plug your guitar with a special pickup into this device, and then you could detune the guitar itself electronically in the [device] and create all these wild sounds,” he explains. He accompanied Mitchell to perform at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and worked on Sting’s 1999 album Brand New Day, modifying the sound on some tracks using the device. “A couple years ago, I heard Sting was coming to Taos as the last show of his tour, and called his people to see if I could arrange an opening slot for Robert Mirabal and myself,” Medina Cook recalls.

“He already had an opening band, but he let us play a couple songs and bless the show with a Tewa prayer.”

While in LA, Medina Cook married, had two sons, and even cut his hair to work for a time in management at Yamaha (the music instrument company) to support his young family. It was the eventual demise of that marriage that brought him back to New Mexico. He remains extremely close to both of his sons, who are clearly chips off the old block: Ryan is a touring drummer, while Sean cowrote and produced “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” for Shaboozey, which currently holds the record as the longest running number one song on the Billboard Hot 100.

Medina Cook chuckles as he tells me he discouraged both sons from becoming professional musicians. “I really tried

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to get them into sports,” he says with a smile. This proud dad recently flew out to Nashville when it was announced Sean was up for a CMA award. He will be at the Grammys in LA in February to root for him there as well.

The Genízaro Experience: Shadows in Light features music by Native musicians Rita Coolidge, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Bill Miller, as well as Michael Martin Murphey, Tyrone Wells, and Felix Peralta, plus poetry from American Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, also of Native heritage, and special appearances by actor Raoul Max Trujillo (Apocalypto) and the late Native activist and poet John Trudell.

Although he wrote the music in 2019 for his first film, the short Tomena, which is the precursor to Genízaro, about a songwriter from an Indian reservation who’s in a creative rut, he didn’t create all the music for Genízaro. “I wore so many other hats,” he reasons, “I didn’t need to do all the music, too!”

Medina Cook continues to sit in with friends like Miller and Martin Murphey and others if they are passing through Taos, but since being bitten by the film 96

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Los Comanche Dancers perform outside St. Francis Church in Los Ranchos de Taos. Top: Medina Cook shoots footage for his film of Francisco “El Comanche” Gonzales, at the front of the famous Los Ranchos de Taos Church. Opposite, from top: The filmmaker (far left) performs on acoustic guitar with Robert Mirabal (Taos Pueblo). Medina Cook with his students at the Institute of American Indian Arts view a film in December 2024 as part of their curriculum.

bug, it has captured his creative spirit, as has the genízaro experience itself. “When I decided to come back home, I moved to Taos and began to explore those roots,” he explains.

He recalls the final words his grandmother Medina spoke to him before she died: “Remember who you are and remember where you come from!” After several decades in LA he considered relocating to Nashville to try his luck as a studio musician there, and went to check it out.

“On my return f light back to LA, I stopped off in Albuquerque to visit my parents, and I ran into an old friend while sitting in on guitar with a band at a local bar,” he remembers. “She started talking about Taos. Being that my mother and her family were from there, I suggested we take a drive up north.

We looked at land in Valdez and I showed her Arroyo Seco, where the Medina side of my family planted roots in the 1700s.” The visit reawakened his love of Taos and in

2015 he decided to resettle there.

He reflects that he also has “Taos Pueblo connections with my great, great, great grandfather, who was hanged in Taos Plaza for his role in the revolt of 1847 that killed Governor Bent, and so many more connections to this land and place. This sense of returning home transcends art: my entire sense of self was reshaped after I discovered querencia, my place of belonging.”

Outside on the Plaza, Danza Azteca de Anáhuac entertains a gathering crowd while we talk about cross-cul-

tural ties and blood memory. “I did not grow up on a reservation or in a pueblo,” Medina Cook says. “Because of that, I don’t identify as Native, but I do identify as an Indigenous New Mexican. I understand our ancestral connections and remember where our mixed blood dries.”

By 2019, as a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, he was thinking about creating the documentary that would later become Genízaro. “For my final thesis at IAIA, I was searching for ideas when,” he re-

calls, “my Grandmother Medina’s spirit spoke to me. I remembered the amazing stories she would tell me in her kitchen about our ancestors—those Native American grandmothers enslaved in Spanish households. While doing research on the topic, I found a book by Moises Gonzales and Enrique Lamadrid titled Nación Genízara.

That is where I learned the word genízaro. I realized that the stories my Grandmother Medina had shared with me were that of the genízaro.”

The pandemic forced Medina Cook to fill several roles when creating the film. He’d just begun working on it when restrictions were announced, leaving him unable to assemble a film crew, and with no budget to speak of.

“I did everything,” he tells us. “It was a labor of love. It was just me and my camera. Many of the interviews never took place because of COVID. Some people didn’t feel comfortable doing interviews at the time.”

Medina Cook says he wanted to explore the origins of Indigenous slavery along with other themes includtrendmagazineglobal.com

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Looking north as one approaches Taos, NM 68 delivers this stunning view of the Taos Gorge, domed Ute Mountain on the horizon, and the Taos Plateau, the homelands of Medina Cook’s ancestors.

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ing cultural hybridity, equality, genetic genealogy, and tribal recognition. Over the decades the children and grandchildren of genízaros have intermarried with local Hispanics, Natives, and other ethnicities, further blurring their identity. In fact, identity—or rather, its absence—is the crux of the film.

“Genízaros embody duality in the human condition and celebrate two worlds: Indo and Hispano. I am quite proud of the film and learned a great deal about my own ancestral connections. The people tell their story, which is my story as well. The Genízaro Experience is a blending of spirits that embodies cultural hybridity and duality in the human condition.”

Featuring artists and authors, professors, scholars, and those still living in genízaro communities who continue to practice their mixed-blood traditions, the one-hour documentary was quickly picked up by PBS after its release and has brought both the film and its maker to the attention of critics, fellow academics, and researchers. Clearly, The Genízaro Experience: Shadows in Light, is timely, to say the least. The film continues to be shown at festivals, and with each screening, more and more people are becoming aware of this mostly invisible, and nearly forgotten, history of some of New Mexico’s most intriguing communities and their founders.

These days, the former high school dropout is an adjunct professor/staff member of his alma mater, IAIA in Santa Fe. “When I came back to New Mexico, a friend encouraged me to get my GED. After I did, my dad suggested, ‘Why not go and get a degree?’ I was already in my 50s.”

He smiles at the memory.

He drives down to Santa Fe several days a week from Taos and admits there are days when he questions the long commute. “But Taos is home,” he says softly, as we leave the café. “This is where my roots are.” R

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August 2nd thru September 21st

We’re attracting some very remarkable figures to Taos.

Come mingle!

Meet the many special friends of former NYC artist Al Bensusen (1930-2024), unveiled for the very first time in our tribute to the artist, The Gift of a Lifetime!

More than 350 terracotta figures and a dozen stone sculptures will be on exhibit at the TCC Gallery from August 2nd thru September 21st. Sale proceeds will go to the building of a dedicated educational center at the Taos Ceramics Center, a non-profit 501(c)(3), for furthering ceramics education throughout northern New Mexico.

Learn more about this exhibit at TaosCeramics.com/Bensusen-Exhibit

TCCGallery Taos Ceramics Center 114 Este Es Rd, Taos 575.758.2580 TaosCeramics.com

©

‘Fire & Ice 91’, Cold Wax & Oil, 30” x 40”

studio|gallery 222 ledoux st, taos, nm 87571 (in courtyard of Blumenshein Museum)

575-770-0760 (variable hours – call ahead) Wilder Nightingale Fine Art 119 Kit Carson Road Taos, NM 87571

Royal Street Fine Art 228 South Mill Street Aspen CO 81611

Breckenridge Gallery 124 Main Steet Breckenridge, CO 80424

Artist

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BY ANYA SEBASTIAN | PHOTOGRAPHY BY KATE RUSSELL

A Dance of Light, Water, and Sound Sasha vom Dorp captures moments in time working with elemental processes

S

asha vom Dorp has created a unique art form that is a fascinating fusion of art and science. Art is the final product, science the means to that end. As to how he interacts with that mix, he readily admits, “I’m an artist, not a scientist, so I can’t wrap my mind around that. I’m just hopelessly addicted to creating visual imagery.”

Born and raised in Taos by parents who are both artists, he started out at the age of 19 as a plein air painter, exploring images of his local surroundings—landscapes, flowers and trees.

That finally came to an end because, as he recalls, “I started thinking that you might as well take a photograph if you’re going to paint hollyhocks or something, so I began to be inspired to create art that wasn’t necessarily physically tangible.” As it turned out, photography was the medium through which he finally engineered a whole new world of artistic expression.

Vom Dorp credits Rod Goebel, the father of one of his child-

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hood friends and a well-known Taos artist, for introducing him to the philosophy that started it all. A notable portrait painter, his paintings conveyed more than recognizable images. “It was as though he was painting people from the inside out, painting the person’s spirit,” vom Dorp says. “I took one of his weekend workshops during which he said that, for him, it was important not to have any judgment in the act of creation, not to let the conscious mind be judging what you’re doing, but to just follow your instincts, let them flow free and trust yourself. I really took that to heart, and it has inspired my work ever since.”

It also inspired him to remain a free spirit and forego any formal training, and he began his own artistic journey of discovery, in earnest, in 2003, exploring something that had been increasingly attracting his attention. As he explains it, “I started thinking about energy and the transference of energy.

For example, if you’re walking down the street and you smile

The artist’s studio: on the right is 66.66Hz Sunlight 2023-01-24 from his Sound Bending Light series, a photographic documentation of sunlight encountering sound as observed through the medium of water. Opposite: The artist leaning against his “sound illuminator” in his studio in Taos. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Bespoke electronic tools of his trade on the table in vom Dorp’s studio, designed to translate sound into light for his tetrahedron light box.

at somebody, you might have just made their day. That could start a ripple, as they then smile at someone else. That’s an energetic exchange that keeps on going. So I started thinking about energy and energy transference, and trying to make art that reflected that.”

Curious to see if he could turn the invisible into something visual, vom Dorp began experimenting in his studio, a historic and secluded adobe building in downtown Taos, combining elements that are not usually combined. He took a car battery, a little car stereo speaker and a small plastic cup filled with water.

When sound waves from the speaker interacted with the water in the cup, patterns were formed. That in itself is an energy transfer and it was an exciting development; when light waves were added to the mix, color was born.

The process can be compared to what happens when crystals are hung in a window. When sunshine, which starts out as white light, hits the crystal, it gets split, opening up the color spectrum, and forming rainbows, because white light is made up of all those colors combined.

In vom Dorp’s artwork, water acts as the crystal.

Things have progressed significantly since then, and his studio is now equipped with electronics specifically designed to 104

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facilitate the process, and enhance the end results, which he then photographs.

Since he requires direct sunlight in order to do his work, he has designed and put together what he calls a ‘sound palette,’ close to a window in the main section of his studio. The big, round, hollow metal base was once the nose cowling from a 727 jet, modified to fit his particular needs. A large, acrylic plate, installed near the top of the base, holds about a gallon of water, and underneath it is a speaker, connected by a cable to the source of the sound.

The sound itself can be music, singing, chanting, speaking, drumming... anything at all. A local artist/pianist, Bill Arms, was recently inspired to commission an artwork created from the images produced by him playing the piano.

Sound waves are measured in beats per second, or hertz, and vom Dorp is able to adjust the speed, making it faster or slower, with different frequencies producing different patterns in the water.

Images are constantly changing, never still, which means that when he decides to take a photograph, vom Dorp is literally capturing and recording a fraction of a second in time, that will never be repeated. The variety of images, shapes, and color formations is literally endless, since the light is bent and split in different ways as it hits the shifting ripples

in the water. Occasionally all the colors recombine on the crest of the wave back into white light, and not even vom Dorp understands how that happens.

He takes the digital images captured by his camera to a fine art reproduction studio, where massive printers turn them into works of art many times larger than life. Such places are relatively rare, but as luck would have it, there is one not far from the artist’s studio in Taos, so he is able to print his own work on archival pigment paper. “I use a high pixel camera that retains the integrity of the image,” he explains. “It can be reproduced by those printers, up to a maximum of 48 by 72 inches.” Finding that kind of wall space could be a challenge, however, so most exhibition pieces are 40 by 58 inches, still an impressive size. “I like them larger,” vom Dorp says, “so you can feel the energy around you. People tell me it almost feels as though you could walk right into them.”

Each piece is titled, not with words, but with information: the exact sound frequency that was used to create it; the exact time stamp to a hundredth of a second; the date, and the GPS location of vom Dorp’s studio. As for an artist signature, the nature of his work does not lend itself to having a name written across it, so his solution is both unconventional and unique. On the back of each piece

Vom Dorp in the back room of his studio, with his tetrahedron light box experience.

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is his fingerprint, stamped in blood. “I know that’s strange,” he acknowledges, “but it is my DNA, so it’s personal and does serve to identify me.”

The fact that vom Dorp’s artwork is printed, not painted, means that multiple copies could be produced, so he makes it a rule to have a limited edition of just three, plus an artist’s proof. He places them in a white wooden frame, designed and made by him, with room to accommodate glass, if the buyer chooses to add that, and applies a thin acrylic seal, in a heat-vacuum press to each archival pigment print.

The seal both protects it from harmful

UV rays and is also impenetrable. “You could spill ketchup on it and wipe it right off and it would be fine,” he says. “Even without the glass, it should be good for a couple of hundred years.”

Before becoming involved with the intersection of sound, water and light, vom Dorp spent a number of years exploring other artistic media. From his early days as a painter, he moved on to kinetic sculpture, prompted by a fascination with the tetrahedron, also known as a triangular pyramid. Within the realm of sacred geometry, it is the fundamental building block of the universe and vom

The artist’s studio, with the specially devised illuminator sound palette in the background.

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Dorp made an outsize sculpture, which he has preserved to this day, in its honor.

He also experimented with photography and interactive video installations, and has taken part in The Paseo arts festival, the annual outdoor celebration of the arts in Taos, a number of times.

His work has also been shown at the Harwood Museum in Taos, as well as galleries in New York and Los Angeles.

“One thing I really love about what I’m doing now is that it’s basically so simple,” he says. “Sound, sunlight and water, and how they interact. It’s like a little message from the universe.”

Home interior displaying some of vom Dorp’s artwork. Right: Vom Dorp with his daughter, Vida, and their dog, Mabel the Menace.

He has also lived and shown in other countries, including Sweden, Mexico, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Philippines, as well as spending time in Los Angeles, before finally returning home to the open spaces, blue skies, and rich, artistic environment of Taos. He and his wife, Rachel, and four children live in a contemporary, very striking, and appropriately white, house that vom Dorp and his wife designed. “So many of the people who live and work here are involved in some way with art of some kind,” he says. “I find it very nurturing, with none of the stresses and the intensity of life in a big city.”

Now that he has mastered the art of combining sound waves with water and light, vom Dorp is using the knowledge

he has acquired in order to explore yet another previously unknown territory, this time substituting brain waves for sound. In order to succeed, this cutting-edge project requires the assistance of experts in related fields, and he is currently working with a neuro-scientist, a cognitive psychologist and two electrical engineers, to turn his dream into a functional reality.

The work is already well under way, with a live demonstration being planned at Edition One Gallery, on Canyon Road in Santa Fe, before the end of this year. “Creating experiences for people is part of what I love to do with my art,” explains vom Dorp, “so this event, which requires a darkened space, no light, will be launched in the

gallery’s back room.” The basic process, as he explains it is, “You will be able to sit on a gently vibrating bench, with a special device on your head, an EEG, that will pick up your brain waves, just thoughts, no words required. That will enable you to interact with your own brain and then see your thoughts transformed into color on a specially constructed light box.” The light box is built in the shape of a tetrahedron, and the idea is to eventually create a device that turns brain waves into music. Future possibilities can only be guessed at. “It definitely has the potential to do some cool things,” says vom Dorp, “and maybe one day I will even be able to take pictures of brain waves in sunlight.” R trendmagazineglobal.com

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PRESCOTT GALLERY and SCULPTURE GARDEN

Prescott kinetic sculptures on safari Opposite left: Moose on the Loose, kinetic sculpture, 8.5’ tall Opposite right: Rockin’ Rooster, kinetic sculpture, 10’ tall

clear coat protects the work from the weather if it is to be

id-steel sculptures are truly one of a kind. Engineered to

displayed outdoors.

move in the wind or be activated by hand, they combine

The enormous works are transported all over the country,

reality with fantasy in an ever-evolving variety of magical

strapped down on a huge trailer hooked onto a big truck, to

images. There are 30-foot-high giraffes alongside pink fla-

be exhibited in museums, public parks, schools, galleries,

mingos, elephants, seahorses, dinosaurs, dragons, and many

and private homes. Prescott is also open to commissions

other real and imaginary creatures.

and over the years has completed many, including some for

Everything is created in a 30,000-square-feet studio in

celebrities such as Michael Jordan and Steven Spielberg.

Santa Fe. The process is inevitably complex, starting with a

The gallery on Siler Park Lane is currently showing a ret-

drawing transferred to a computer and then on to a machine

rospective, with photographs and early works that demon-

that cuts sections in steel. The pieces are then powder coated

strate Prescott’s artistic evolution over the years. One may

with a spray gun, sandblasted, and then fired in a massive

wonder: After a career that spans more than 50 years, has he

oven that heats the environmentally friendly powder paint

ever run out of ideas? “Never,” he says. “The problem is too

up to 500 degrees, melting it into a glossy finish. A final

many ideas and not enough time.”

prescottstudio.com | 1127 Siler Park Ln, Santa Fe, NM 87507 | 505-424-8449 | prescottstudio@gmail.com

TOP: GABRIELLA MARKS PHOTOGRAPHY

F

redrick Prescott’s larger-than-life, brightly colored, sol-

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ANDRÉS SALAZAR

Discover a city rich in history, vibrant art, and culture

The fiery national dance of Spain, flamenco, has found a home on the high desert terrain of the Duke City. Dancer Lydia Gallegos is a regular performer at Tablao Flamenco Albuquerque. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Trend Albuquerque For 25 years, Trend magazine has provided its readers with an unmatched written and visual exploration of New Mexico’s vibrant cultural landscape. Albuquerque has always been part of that tableau, but less for its own unique attributes and more for how it complements and enhances the state’s overall aesthetic presentation.

As Trend enters its 26th year of production, we can no longer ignore that Albuquerque has quietly evolved into an exceptional cultural entity in its own right, undeniably distinct from other established New Mexico markets. Given this admirable progression, Trend is now giving the Albuquerque area a permanent presence in the magazine as a dedicated supplement to the publication—complete with its own features, photography, advertising, and editorial insight.

Serving as the new associate publisher for Trend leading its Albuquerque effort, I make it my job to form organizational sense of our diverse local scene. As a Latina with experience in South America and Southern California markets, my knowledge and expectations of Hispanic-influenced art and design were simply inadequate to fully appreciate the complexities presented by the Duke City. So, my first step in our production process was to canvass our experts and tastemakers around town to get their opinions and insight regarding Albuquerque’s cultural evolution. Be sure to check out the story that follows for their compelling observations and remarks.

As part of our collaborative journey, we welcome our readers to submit their own suggestions for future stories through my email below.

Sincerely,

AMY LIOTTA

Ana Dickerson Associate Publisher ana@trendabq.com

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The Company We Keep

Saturday night traffic passes the one-of-akind Pueblo Deco-style KiMo Theater on Central Avenue in the heart of downtown Albuquerque.

Creative Culture on the Rise The Duke City is emerging as a significant art and cultural mecca with a wild profusion and diversity of talent, media, and themes

A

BY ANA DICKERSON | PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC DRAPER

lbuquerque is certainly the overlooked “stepchild” of the New Mexico art community; Santa Fe and even Taos garner far more media coverage and universal acclaim as significant art centers. However, Albuquerque is quietly evolving into an exceptional cultural presence in its own right, with distinctive character and attributes. But it is incredibly hard to define, as it resists easy categorization.

There is the expected blend of Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo representation typical of the region, but also an unexpected celebration of nationally recognized artisans here exploring their vision free from the competitive saturation and financial burdens that plague other cultural meccas like New York or Los Angeles.

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Even people well-versed in the knowledge and expectations of art and design upon arrival here find themselves challenged by the complexities presented by the Duke City. Many who have spent decades in the city still grapple to articulate the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, intricacies of Albuquerque’s art and design culture.

Andrew Connors, director of Albuquerque Museum in Old Town, notes the city’s distinct aesthetic has always been influenced by its exceptional background: at once traditional, reflecting Hispanic and Native roots, and an industrial history as a center of transportation—the crossroads of major railroads and interstate highways—and trading.

But, it has also been propelled by the avant-garde since the mid-century arrival of the Atomic Age, and by its current role as a thriving film center and exuberant youthful street arts and music scene.

“Albuquerque benefits from a vibrant, diverse community of creatives that are always pushing the envelope, developing innovative aesthetics, techniques, and modes of dynamic communication,” Connors states. “From the hightech sector, film and TV industry, spoken word and literary crowd, music, theater, and opera scene, culinary arts innovators, tradition bearers—both homegrown and international—and the visual artists that inspire and engage with it all, there is never a dull moment.” Connors feels the creative community here is much more collaborative versus competitive, as found in bigger cities, and believes its unique cultural ethos encourages an exceptional openness to new creative voices.

Richard Levy of downtown Albuquerque’s Richard Levy Gallery sees a current trend among city artists in fusing art and design with hopeful environmentalism. He states, “Partnering programming for exhibitions such as our upcoming show for Elizabeth Chiles this

San Felipe de Neri Church, located on the Old Town Plaza, was built in 1793 and is a lovely example of Spanish Colonial architecture and interior design. It is open to the public and includes a small museum and gardens. Top: A stunning mural by renowned fresco artist Frederico Vigil graces a domed space at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in the South Valley of Albuquerque.

year and Trees (2024) brings art, science, and community together in conversation.

These exhibitions serve as a visual entry point and an invitation to participate in the larger dialogues that need to happen to reconfigure our relationship to the natural world.”

The University of New Mexico is one of the dynamos of the city’s artistic flowering. Graduating hundreds of students annually with fine art degrees, UNM provides a constant stream of new, innovative, and hungry artists. Many, of course, depart, but many also settle into

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George Bustamante and his daughter Amor show off their tricked out “ride,” a 1959 El Camino, during one of Albuquerque’s many car shows— part of its flourishing lowrider car culture and general love affair with the automobile.

Below: Student in the printer training program pulls a practice print using the blend-roll technique at the world-famous Tamarind Institute.

“Albuquerque benefits from a vibrant, diverse community of creatives that are always pushing the envelope, developing innovative aesthetics, techniques, and modes of dynamic communication.” life here as the city is far more affordable than Santa Fe or Taos. UNM’s excellent on-campus museum inside Popejoy Hall mounts impressive, thought-provoking exhibitions year-round, and includes a world-caliber photography collection. The Tamarind Institute at UNM is a leading center of collaborative printmaking and lithography, attracting top artists from around the world. Director Diana Gaston explains, “Every season brings a new cycle of students, guest artists, educators, and curators to the workshop, and the public is invited to engage with this creative space through our gallery program.”

Pervasive throughout the Albuquerque art community is work that is increasingly inspired by the natural world and its defense.

This seems to be the case of art imitating life in the Duke City, with its culture serving as a mirror to the myriad green initiatives currently underway here. In 2024, the Bezos Earth Fund named Albuquerque as one of five recipients of its Greening America’s Cities project, a $400 million effort promoting tree planting, parks,

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FRANCIS REYNOLDS, COURTESY TAMARIND INSTITUTE

—Andrew Connors, Albuquerque Museum director

trails, and urban farms. Such exciting endeavors will shape the city’s character and culture for years to come, as clearly as the city’s iconic Sandia Crest on its eastern horizon, the Rio Grande with its chocolate waters and quiet cottonwood forests in its center, and the five volcanic cones on its western edge.

Beyond its exceptional setting, Albuquerque is also finding more opportunities for creative expression in its built environment. Jim Long, recently named Best Local Business Owner by Albuquerque The Magazine as founder and CEO of Heritage Hotels & Resorts, is finding inspiration in New Mexico’s vertical landscape for his $200 million redevelopment of Old Town’s Sawmill District. “We want to show Albuquerque 124

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the potential for mixed-use public spaces in beautifying our city,” he states, “while also revealing to the world the best of our local artisans, brands, and fine dining.”

Sherri Brueggemann, manager of the City of Albuquerque’s Public Art Urban Enhancement Division, likewise draws inspiration from local inf luences in the restoration currently underway of its historic airport, The Sunport. She says, “Albuquerque is unique in the art community because our artists have honed their craft on their own, away from the stylistic expectations of other cities. This is particularly evident in the murals and mosaics for which our cityscape is already world renowned and that will also feature prominently in our airport redesign.”

This is not the Albuquerque of Breaking Bad, nor is it Georgia O’Keeffe paintings, nor the moneyed chic of Santa Fe or the bohemian insouciance of Taos.

A drive down the length of Central Avenue will expose you to both the best and worst of the physical city, its creative culture contradictory and chaotic: traditional Indigenous jewelry displayed in the shadows of edgy Burqueño murals, 18th-century homes returning to earth beneath glass-and-steel architectural marvels, tattoo artists and tamale cooks rubbing elbows with James Beard Award and Pulitzer Prize winners.

Join us here on our first on-theground expedition to uncover the real Albuquerque in all of its quirky, fresh, and indefinable incongruities. R

SUSAN RIVERA

The placid Rio Grande bisects Albuquerque flanked by the cottonwood bosque, providing a natural haven for boaters, walkers, bikers, wildlife watchers, and hot air balloonists.

Up in the air, underground, in an alley, on a museum tower, everywhere you turn there’s dynamic wall art to be found

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BY AUTUMN GRAY PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIRK GITTINGS

O

ur plan had been to go directly to meet internationally acclaimed fresco artist Frederico Vigil at the Albuquerque Convention Center downtown. He is in the middle of a 2,500-square-foot, multiyear mural project that encases a circular stairwell with rich scenes of local agriculture and winemaking.

Instead, first we drove around the city center and its fringes, experiencing the place as if for the first time.

“You had a guide, or were you just going?” Vigil asked later.

“Just on my own.”

“I’m impressed. It’s hard to do it by yourself. You have a lot of gumption.”

“No, a lot of ignorance.”

“You need a chauffeur next time. Besides being safe, you can see things better and be comfortable.”

He was right, not because of crime risk, but because anyone wanting to see Albuquerque’s vibrant mural scene needs a driver to be able to tour it properly. From behind the wheel, you’re likely to miss a lot, or wreck, or both. We’d set out with a list of about a dozen murals to see. However, becoming distracted by other wall art that popped up, we quickly abandoned our agenda to freestyle it.

Murals in Albuquerque are like weeds both in their number and in their inconspicuous tendency to hide in plain sight: You can be focused on one, then depending on the angle of the sun, the shadows playing on the buildings, the colors at hand, you suddenly notice a half-dozen more lurking like forest wildlife around an unaware hiker. There’s two massive crows peering down from a thirdstory cinder-block facade; a fluorescent violet skull with glowing yellow eyes guarding an alley; a field rich with glowing flowers and friendly animals in a neighborhood where little else thrives; an oldfashioned town square, complete with an ice cream shop, police station, market, candy store, and more, reviving ye olde simple life on the exterior of an abandoned block; a 20-foot graffiti-style horned serpent (“Avanyu” in Pueblo terminology) slithering next to Interstate 25; geometric abstracts befitting

Kevin Zuckerman and apprentices, Echoes of the Future (2000), east wall of 123 Central Ave. NW.

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a modern art museum; and paintings that incorporate building infrastructure for three-dimensional effect, such as a vent that stands in for the nose of a biplane.

Indeed, Albuquerque has about 1,800 murals within city limits, according to its first Public Art Census conducted in 2024 by Rokh, a research and design company. The city released the survey results in January 2025 after canvassers drove 12,000 miles in an attempt to catalog all wall art.

Though a blogger had dubbed Albuquerque as the “Mural Capital of the Southwest” even before the census, it’s difficult to know with certainty where Albuquerque ranks among the nation’s great mural cities. Still, between the area’s historically robust arts community and liberal public art policy supporting murals, Albuquerque is arguably among the most prolific, especially for its size.

Albuquerque was among the nation’s first cities to adopt a public art ordinance, officially defining its Public Art Program and creating an Arts Board in 1978. The legislation also set up the funding mechanism for the acquisition of public artworks. Philadelphia, which, with more than 4,000 murals, is widely heralded as the “Mural Capital of the World,” having adopted the first municipal public arts ordinance in the country in 1959. Baltimore, San Francisco, and Hawaii followed suit in the ‘60s, and Seattle in 1973.

About ten years ago, Albuquerque developed a Public Art Program Mural Policy, which took municipal direction a step further. It provides funding for murals that reflect diversity in style and media, and encourages artists from diverse backgrounds and a range of experiences to apply. Most recently, in 2022, city councilors approved an increase in the amount of funding that goes toward the Art in Public Places Ordinance, from 1 percent to 1.5 percent of all county improvement projects.

However, no one has to go through government to do a mural here. “Basically, anybody can put up a mural anywhere they want,” says Sherri Brueggemann, manager of the City of Albuquerque’s Public Art Urban Enhancement Division. “We just advise you to be very smart, make sure you have the support and approval of whoever’s wall you’re putting it on. As long I’m here, we are not going to have a mural permit because nobody wants to be the art police.”

For 40,000 years or more, murals have played a powerful role as a means of creative and cultural expression, visual storytelling, education, commentary, and historical preservation. This flows from prehistoric cave paintings and etchings to Renaissance frescoes exalting Biblical scenes; from the Mexican mural movement of the 1920s, often celebrating the working class led by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, to the federally funded Works Progress Administration (WPA) pieces of the 1930s meant to inspire hope during the Great Depression. It encompasses the rise of LA-style street art

making sociopolitical statements in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and satirical works by artists such as Banksy. Murals provide a monumental record of humanity.

Today, the conversion of unused urban walls into artworks helps to redefine, invigorate, and beautify public spaces, while also providing free gallery space to often unknown artists and making their work accessible to all.

Albuquerque’s extensive collection of public art includes a legacy of indoor, outdoor, Pueblo, WPA, and communitybased murals, Brueggemann notes. Situated at the crossroads of more than 400 years of rich cultural diversity and complex struggles between the various communities of the Southwest, Albuquerque is in a singular position for its murals to tell a history well worth viewing.

Today, artists from around the country come to Albuquerque to create murals alongside those installed by schoolchildren, Native artists, and everyday Albuquerque residents. Collectively, their paint, mosaic tiles, and aerosol sprays emphasize the character of Albuquerque’s one-of-kind neighborhoods, reflect the city’s rural and urban influences, document its past, and celebrate its present.

Standing at about 110 feet in height and 55 feet wide, a mural titled Windforms is the tallest in New Mexico and among the newest in Albuquerque, having been completed in late 2024. The county commissioned the 4,500-square-foot piece not only to enhance the exterior of its eight-story Alvarado Square building downtown but also to emphasize creative innovation. Self-identified Hispanic-American artist Ivan Toth Depeña intended the mural’s curvilinear forms to produce a 3-D quality. LED lights illuminate the piece at night, animating its multiple dimensions. His inspiration for the mural came from the wind’s impact on New Mexico’s landscape and the progressive colors of the horizon.

“It is by far the largest in scale and substance I’ve ever done,” the artist explains from his studio in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Having lived, worked, or exhibited in cities such as New York, Miami, and Denver, Depeña also says, “Albuquerque has an amazing and inspiring collection of murals … a range in style and content that keeps pace with most major cities.” The rise of legal and commissioned street art, often evolving from illegal, nocturnal art “capers,” underscores the power of murals to not only foster dialogue but inspire curiosity and fuel the need for publicly accessible art, he adds.

Albuquerque also boasts a set of murals so unlike those almost anywhere else in the country that the 1939 artworks helped earn their building a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. Known locally as Maisel’s Murals, this compilation of vignettes depicting Native American life is not just one of few examples of Native workmanship on a commercial building façade at the time; they are also rare in that the Native artists received payment for creating public art that doubled as a marketing tool.

Today, artists from around the country come to Albuquerque to create murals alongside those installed by schoolchildren, Native artists, and everyday Albuquerque residents.

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Father Symeon Carmona (titular Bishop of Cyzicus) and Father Barsanuphius Deane, on west wall of Our Lady of Kazan Russian Orthodox Monastery, corner of Hazeldine and 4th St. SW. Left: Kerry Bergen and apprentices, The Heart Is Universal: A Tribute to Max Roybal (2015), 1014 4th St. SW.

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The murals were like museum-quality billboards attracting tourists to Maisel’s Indian Trading Post at 510 Central Avenue NW in the heyday of Route 66.

Now, the collection represents a Who’s Who of Navajo and Pueblo artists of the time, almost all of whom are sought after by collectors today, including Pablita Velarde (Santa Clara Pueblo), Harrison Begay (Navajo), Pop Chalee (Taos Pueblo), Popovi Da (San Ildefonso Pueblo), and Awa Tsirah (San Ildefonso Pueblo). However, only two long panels of Pueblo and Navajo dancers can be seen from the street. The building is vacant and its entrance is blocked by a protective metal gate, in part to protect the murals. Nevertheless, the spot remains a destination for art historians, Mother Road enthusiasts, and architecture afficionados.

Maisel’s Murals are also notable because they were among those in Albuquerque that “represented a sense of space, an indicator of where you are,” says Historic Albuquerque president Diane Schaller. The people who commissioned them, she notes, “wanted to let travelers know you’re in the Southwest, that there’s Native American culture here, providing something that conveys you’re not just in any ordinary place.”

Schaller believes the same was true of some stunningly beautiful murals now secreted in a dark tunnel beneath the bustle of air travelers at the Albuquerque International Sunport. About 15 floor-to-ceiling mosaics composed of one-inch square tiles depict Indigenous symbols such as birds and katsina “dolls.” The figures, which once welcomed Albuquerque visitors, stand sentinel flanking both sides of about 100 yards of the passageway’s walls, which is now closed off and not accessible to the public. The tunnel was part of a 1960s terminal that was demolished in an airport expansion decades ago. Since then, it has functioned more as a time capsule, preserving the mysterious images among the tangles of wires, maze of plumbing, and other infrastructure that now live there.

Though the subterranean airport murals are stylistically opposite of their graffiti counterparts basking in the sunlight above, the disparate artworks share this in common: No one seems to know who made them. All that’s certain about the tunnel artist is that the person was not

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Jaque Fragua, Shape of Color, Little Bear (2019), west wall of 3123 Central Ave. NE.

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Aaron Noble and apprentices, Quantum Bridge (2013), 508 1st St. NW, which artists describe as “semiabstract time travel expressed with aesthetic roots in comics, graffiti, and hip-hop.” Opposite: Eamon Quigley, Weed Dreams (no date), small building north of iLL Chino Meal Service, northeast corner of 6th St. and Lomas Blvd. NW.

“Basically, anybody can put up a mural anywhere they want. We just advise you to be very smart, make sure you have the support and approval of whoever’s wall you’re putting it on.”

–Sherri Brueggemann, manager of Albuquerque’s Public Art Urban Enhancement Division Native, Schaller said. Similarly, almost all of Albuquerque’s edgy “underground” murals, like the horned serpent of I-25, is also anonymous.

Whereas the airport tunnel murals once greeted travelers on the south side of town, a relatively new “postcard” mural is now serving as a gateway to the city’s northern side. Titled Greetings from Burque, the painting at 3123 Central NE was part of a nationwide project called the Greetings Tour by artist Victor Ving and photographer Lisa Beggs. From 2015-2020, they collaborated with artists in communities across the country to paint 70 murals in 30 states (greetingstour.com/murals). Using the classic large-letter postcard typeface, the pieces are intended as symbols of hometown pride, to spark the interest of visitors, and serve as interactive landmarks, Ving explains from his home in Pasadena, California.

Ving got permission from Little Bear Coffee to use its wall for the mural when the café owners were developing the business. They also introduced Ving and Beggs to Jaque Fragua, an acclaimed multimedia artist from Jemez Pueblo, who assisted

with the mural’s content and its production. Fragua later painted a larger “untitled” abstract mural next to the postcard, tying the two together through shared geometric imagery and colors.

The postcard image is 90 percent spray paint. Each of the letters forming “Burque” contain images emblematic of the area, including hot air balloons, a yucca plant, and chile peppers. An alert roadrunner stands atop the U. “It’s educational in some ways. It helps people to learn about the city,” Ving notes.

Now that the project is complete, “people go out of their way to collect these (through photographs) on their travels,” he adds. “People visiting Santa Fe will drive to Albuquerque just to get a picture. That’s our way to get people out of their car and increase foot traffic and help local businesses.”

Back downtown, when Frederico Vigil and his two young local apprentices finish the Convention Center fresco, it, too, will provide visitors with an opportunity to feel a sense of place.

Vignettes of planting techniques, irrigation, cultivation, and harvest that convey the history of New Mexico winemaking can already be seen emerging behind Vigil’s scaffolding in the

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Jaque Fragua and Mauricio Ramirez, untitled, on east-facing wall of Copper Building at corner of 6th St. and Copper NW. Top left: Sam Flores, Silkscreen Kid (no date), in the alley south of 111 4th St. SW. Top right: Artist unknown, in alley behind 3017 Monte Vista NE. 134

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Andrew Fearnside, Birds of ‘Burque (2020), 1222 Mountain Rd. NW.

artistic tradition of fresco masters like Michelangelo and Diego Rivera. (Fresco is an Italian word for the process of painting on fresh lime plaster before it dries so that the pigment becomes part of the wall and the art is more durable.)

The revival of the art form in the Southwest is largely attributed to Vigil, a 79-year-old Santa Fe native, who learned the craft in Mexico from former apprentices of Rivera. Vigil is also widely known for his depiction of more than 3,000 years of Hispanic history in 200 frescoed images that saturate the interior of the National Hispanic Cultural Center’s Torreon, transforming it into a 45-foot-tall walk-in kaleidoscope. He said he hopes his art will help educate the public about the positive aspects of traditional Hispanic culture.

On this day, we walked with some trepidation behind Vigil along his scaffolding’s wood planks to get close-up views of the mythological figures and various New Mexico landscapes underway around the stairwell. His images were vastly different from any we had driven by earlier, so we showed Vigil some of the photos we’d taken of garish spray-painted murals earlier in the day.

We asked him, “What do you think of these?”

The master didn’t hesitate: “Wow, that’s art! It’s amazing.

Look at that!” R For images and addresses of many of Albuquerque’s multitudes of murals, visit the city’s website, murosabq.com. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Albuquerque Little Theatre the Premier Theatre Company of New Mexico Celebrating 96 years of Live Theatre Summer Repertory

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DISCOVER THE OF soul FLAMENCO YJASTROS

FESTIVAL FLAMENCO ALBURQUERQUE

TABLAO

The American Flamenco Repertory Company.

Blending tradition with innovation. Leading flamenco company in the Americas—since 1999.

Every June in Albuquerque, the most celebrated flamenco festival in the Americas brings world-class artists to teach and perform.

Every weekend at Hotel Albuquerque— an intimate flamenco dinner show featuring live music, dance, and Spanish cuisine.

From world-class flamenco to intimate tablao shows and education in the National Institute of Flamenco—a 501(c)(3) nonprofit—is your gateway to the living art of flamenco.

EXPERIENCE IT ALL nifnm.org

LIVE !

BY APRIL GOLTZ

A Tree Grows in Albuquerque

COURTESY CHRISTINA M. BROGDON OF BLUE LILLI PHOTOGRAPHY

The dynamic art form sinks deep roots in the Duke City, securing its place on the global stage

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nside a converted shipping container lined with mirrors in northeast Albuquerque, Fabian Sisneros is teaching his first-period flamenco class to a group of middle school students—including two of his own children. It’s his 14th year as a flamenco dance and English teacher at the Public Academy for the Performing Arts (PAPA). A native of Albuquerque with a poetic reverence for New Mexico, Sisneros is passionate about teaching his students to love where they’re from through the dual lenses of flamenco and literature. He highlights works relevant to the local landscape and authors who embody New Mexico’s

unique mestizo culture. Whether he’s immersing kids in local literature or teaching flamenco footwork, Sisneros sees his work as two sides of the same coin—both nurture a connection to home.

Backstage at Tablao Flamenco Albuquerque, the city’s premier, dedicated flamenco venue, Vicente Griego is shining his shoes. Among the most celebrated cantaores (flamenco singers) in the country, Griego is an invaluable pillar of New Mexico’s flamenco scene.

He is sharing the stage this evening with familia he grew up with in Dixon, New Mexico—guitarist Gabriel Osuna and dancer Elena Osuna. Griego remembers

discovering flamenco for the first time when he and Gabriel were on break from band practice. Their drummer happened to be the son of “El Pelete,” a Gitano flamenco singer from Extremadura, Spain, and his wife “Betty Jo” Lujan, a dancer from the Albuquerque’s Barelas neighborhood. Their chance encounter that day marked an awakening and a feeling of cultural kinship. “He felt at home with us, and we felt at home with him,” Griego remembers.

The Albuquerque collective Spanish Broom Flamenco, one of a handful of flamenco troupes now based in the city. trendmagazineglobal.com

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unique forms, or palos, expressing a full range of moods and emotions.

The f lamenco cuadro—the group of singers, musicians, and dancers— creates an intimate environment of mutual support in which musical conversation and improvisation can happen. The guitarist usually introduces the chosen palo, strumming its unique rhythm and melody. Next, one or more palmeros might provide palmas (palo-specific hand claps) to support the rhythm. The singer enters with a string of verses or letras, short stanzas which are often from a traditional canon. A flamenco singer’s artistry is revealed in their delivery of each letra in an intimate, personalized way. Depending on the palo and letra, cante can be intense and cathartic, quiet and introspective, or light and playful.

The same is true for the baile (dance), as the dancer calls for and interprets the letras, giving and receiving energy from the cuadro. A dancer’s baile consists of many different types of lyrical and percussive steps that serve to mark time and feeling, punctuate or respond to the letras, or invite the cuadro in a new musical direction.

Clarita García de Aranda, one of Albuquerque’s first flamenco dancers and teachers, and the root of the Encinias flamenco family.

Due to that kinship and the hard work of pioneering artists, the art of flamenco took root in New Mexico and grew into a majestic tree. Like many migrating plant species, flamenco found a familiar and responsive environment that allowed it to thrive. Today, Albuquerque is proudly known as the epicenter of flamenco in the United States: Its unmatched artistic and educational opportunities attract students and professionals from all over the US and Spain and provide a strong sense of community for hundreds of locals. For many, flamenco is as much tied 140

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to a sense of home as cottonwood trees, chile, or piñon.

Origins Flamenco arose from centuries of cultural convergence in Andalucia, a region in southern Spain. It is a profoundly expressive art developed by a historically persecuted ethnic group called the Gitanos, or Spanish Roma. Like many art forms developed by oppressed peoples, flamenco is dynamic and versatile; magical and medicinal. Centered on the cante or song, flamenco comprises dozens of

Flamenco rose in popularity in the US in the 1940s, partially due to an influx of Spanish dance companies and a number of Hollywood film appearances. In New Mexico, where Indo-Hispano dances have a long history, flamenco was embraced as part of the family. In Albuquerque, the García family established the roots of the city’s future flamenco tree. In the 1940s, Clarita García de Aranda and her brother Antonio García performed flamenco as part of a traveling show. They were influenced in part by their cousins, dancer Cándido and pianist Nino García, who were involved with Spanish music and dance on the East and West Coasts.

Back home in Albuquerque, Nino accompanied Clarita’s performances at the Blue Ribbon, a popular nightclub in the South Valley.

By the mid-’50s, Clarita was teaching out of her home on the corner of Edith

COURTESY NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FLAMENCO

Flamenco’s Albuquerque Roots

COURTESY NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF FLAMENCO (2)

and Candelaria. A sprawling, old hacienda-style adobe structure where international artists roomed for weeks or months at a time, Clarita’s house was where Albuquerque’s homegrown f lamenco scene took root.

Emerging local artists like Lili del Castillo, Luis Campos, John Truitt, Pablo Rodarte, and Vivian and Pedro Cuadra were frequent guests, all of whom became important figures of their era. Amidst the all-day rehearsals and all-night flamenco parties, Clarita was also raising her children. It was in this dynamic environment that her daughter Eva Encinias, the force behind Albuquerque’s now world-renowned flamenco community, came of age.

The Tree of Eva

Top: Eva Encinias performs with family and friends in the early 1990s. Bottom: Clarita García de Aranda performs with her young grandchildren, Marisol and Joaquín Encinias, circa late 1970s.

As a young woman, Eva Encinias began touring with her own company, Ritmo Flamenco, and teaching flamenco at the University of New Mexico. She would eventually become a full professor of dance and build flamenco into a degree-granting field of study. As founder of Festival Flamenco Alburquerque (the extra R is a nod to the city’s original Spanish spelling), founding director of the National Institute of Flamenco (NIF), and teacher to the youngest and tiniest students trendmagazineglobal.com

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Branching Out In arboriculture lingo, the primary branches that fork from the trunk are called leaders. If Eva is the trunk, then the leaders are her twin children, Marisol and Joaquín Encinias, both with unique trajectories supporting different parts of the tree. In 1999, Eva, Marisol, and Joaquín decided to expand flamenco ed142

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ucation outside of the university setting.

They founded the CFA, a branch of the NIF, which exemplifies the familial spirit of flamenco in Albuquerque. Open to everyone, the CFA is a busy community hub that is home to hundreds of students and two student performance companies. It also hosts three major performances per year, including La Estrella: A Flamenco Story of the Kings’ Quest, an epic, family-friendly winter holiday tradition.

Joaquín Encinias is also the founder and artistic director of Yjastros: The American Flamenco Repertory Company.

The name means “stepchildren,” signifying the company’s unique position related to, yet distinct from, Spain. Now in its 25th year, Yjastros is a living archive

of choreographies by master artists and an internationally respected company. It is also a tight-knit, hardworking family that dances, sweats, laughs, and cries together. Over the years, many members have come and gone, but others, like Kayla Lyall and Elena Osuna, have been dancing in Yjastros together for 20 years,

Isabella Nuanez (left) and Isabella Alderete perform with Yjastros: The American Flamenco Repertory Company, in 2024.

Opposite: Top: Carlos Menchaca, Kayla Lyall, Angel Ruiz, and Javier Saume Mazzei perform with Yjastros: The American Flamenco Repertory Company, in 2024.

Bottom: Jesús and Amalyah Muñoz with baby son.

AUDREY DERELL

at the Conservatory of Flamenco Arts (CFA), Encinias, now at 71, is still fueled by boundless energy and enthusiasm.

Having taught thousands of students over her career, she has not only inspired and changed lives, but also embedded the practice of flamenco into countless families over multiple generations.

and now have young daughters learning flamenco.

Marisol Encinias is an assistant professor at UNM, where she teaches courses in flamenco and directs the department’s Visiting Professor in Flamenco line of Spanish artists in residence. Following Eva Encinias’s retirement in 2019, Marisol also took over as executive director at NIF, where she leads a small but mighty team presenting an array of education and performance programs. Some of these include the CFA; Flamenco in Your Neighborhood, a free, statewide flamenco residency in schools and community centers; and Festival Flamenco Alburquerque, the largest and most esteemed flamenco festival outside of Spain.

TOP: AUDREY DERELL. BOTTOM: THAÏS COY

New Growth PAPA isn’t the only school in Albuquerque with a fully integrated flamenco program.

Tierra Adentro: The New Mexico School of Academics, Art, and Artesanía (TANM) is a public charter school offering a robust arts-based education including flamenco dance, guitar, cante, and cajón (a box drum). For well over a decade, TANM has been graduating skilled dancers equipped for advanced study at the CFA and UNM flamenco program. Today, PAPA and TANM both contribute enormously to Albuquerque’s flamenco culture by producing dancers and musicians, but also by cultivating afición for flamenco among young, arts-minded students.

A relatively new blossom on the Albuquerque flamenco tree is Spanish Broom, an exciting collective of flamenco artists dedicated to nurturing creativity and collaboration and to making flamenco art accessible. Since its founding, the group has shared its impressive artistry, experimental spirit, and playful energy in local businesses and community spaces across the Southwest. Spanish Broom has also inspired other members of the community to form cuadros and curate informal flamenco events at breweries and other public venues.

Two other flamenco organizations round out Albuquerque’s community of artists and educators. Flamenco Works, on Central Avenue downtown, is the project of dancers Jesús and Amalyah Muñoz, who, with trendmagazineglobal.com

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Clockwise, from upper left: Carmen Montes and Juani de la Isla of Casa Flamenca; dancer Kayla Lyall and her daughter Ruby; the Encinias family; Yjastros: the American Flamenco Repertory Company; and Gabriel Osuna, Vicente Griego, and Elena Osuna.

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CLOCKWISE FROM UPPER LEFT: RYAN FLANAGAN; THAÏS COY; THAÏS COY; FESTIVAL DE JEREZ; THAÏS COY

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their new baby son, form the heart of the Flamenco Works community. They welcome students of all ages and provide multiple performance opportunities throughout the year, including a free, outdoor community event in September called Fiesta Flamenca Burqueña, two children’s recitals, and a summer performance series featuring their resident company, Jesús Muñoz Flamenco.

Finally, Casa Flamenca with its polkadotted exterior is an unmistakable sight on Rio Grande Boulevard just across from Old Town. This cozy studio and venue is directed by Carmen Montes with the help of her husband, music director and guitarist Juani de la Isla. They offer family-friendly programming throughout the year including a summer workshop and performance series in July, a tablao season (an intimate, improvisational style of flamenco), and ABQ Flamenco Off, a series of all-star performances coinciding with NIF’s Festival Flamenco Alburquerque.

Seeds and Soil For generations in the Encinias family, sharing the beauty of flamenco with the people of Albuquerque has been their shared purpose and guiding star. Now, Clarita García de Aranda’s great-grandchildren are carrying on the tradition, each in their own unique ways. Through the dedication of so many individuals over time, flamenco has become part of the environment.

Back at PAPA, Fabian Sisneros shared an anecdote from former New Mexico Poet Laureate Levi Romero: “When the camposantos’ [burial grounds] crosses are filled with the names of your loved ones, you can say you’re from here.” Sisneros concludes. “We have flamencos [dancers, singers, and musicians] that are buried here, they are in our cemeteries. For me, that is enough to say that flamenco is now New Mexican.”

Author’s note: The Spirit of Flamenco: From Spain to New Mexico (2015), by Santa Fe-based dancer and historian Nicolasa Chávez, is the most comprehensive book to date on the history of flamenco in New Mexico. R

City of Albuquerque

Public Art Urban Enhancement Division

Supporting artists and arts organizations for over four decades

Since 1978, the Albuquerque Public Art Program has purchased and commissioned works of art for public spaces in the city of Albuquerque.

Learn more at www.cabq.gov/publicart

The Urban Enhancement Trust Fund (UETF) funds arts and cultural projects and programs through a two-year cycle.

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TUNES

BY BILL NEVINS | PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANIEL QUAT

New Mexico’s Jazz Man

GLENN KOSTUR

Sax player, keyboardist, vocalist, musical director, UNM professor, combo player—he fills a slew of roles in the regional music scene

G

lenn Kostur picks up his saxophone and settles into the front row of the bandstand at Uptown Sports Bar, where the 18-piece Albuquerque Jazz Orchestra (AJO) has set up for their monthly first-Tuesday concert in January.

Kostur has led AJO as musical director since 2010. Trend was in the audience enjoying a fine two hours of lively big band jazz, which included songs by vocalist Hillary Smith, who is a member of AJO and also leads her own band Chill House, in which Kostur plays sax. You may also be familiar with him for his sax and keyboard chops playing with New Mexico bands Calle 66, Baracutanga, Certified Organic, the Sidewinders, and The Pleasure Pilots.

Besides his “extracurricular activities” as a respected band leader and esteemed sideman, Kostur is an associate dean of fine arts at the University of New Mexico, who has served since 1995 as a professor of music and director of Jazz Studies at UNM. There, Professor Kostur teaches

improvisation, composition and arranging, jazz methods, and a popular course in music appreciation focused on rock and roll. He also coaches jazz combos.

A guest conductor of all-state jazz bands, he has also earned many dozens of conducting, performing, and performance-adjudicating credits, both nationally and in New Mexico. Along the way, he’s found time to compose jazz group pieces and to record jazz albums as band leader (The Way of It) and as a member of combos including hONEyhoUSe and the experimental sax quartet Thrascher.

Kostur also hosts the Friday edition of the KUNM-FM radio show All That Jazz and often visits Taos to play for the Taos Jazz Bebop Society.

Trend chatted with Glenn Kostur over coffee and pastry at Range Café Rio Grande in Albuquerque one January morning. Kostur took us through his unique career history, which began at age 6 in Salem, Oregon, when he picked up the saxophone and figured out how to play the movie tune “Raindrops Keep

Falling on My Head” from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. “My dad and older brother also played the saxophone and were into jazz, so I got exposed to jazz at an early age,” he explains, adding, “I’d been noodling around on the piano since I was 3, then my dad gave me an old alto saxophone, helped me begin to play it, and later got me private lessons.”

He played in various bands in high school, and after graduation, attended the University of North Texas near Dallas to earn his bachelor’s degree in jazz studies, “because college courses in Texas then were far more affordable than in Oregon,” he recalls. At UNT, he played in the One O’Clock Lab Band and from there, in 1988, was recruited into the pros, joining legendary trumpeter Maynard Ferguson’s Big Bop Nouveau band playing baritone,

Opposite: Glenn Kostur coaxes a few more sweet, jazzy notes from his sax in one of his many local appearances. Above: Vocalist Hillary Smith with an impromptu band, including Kostur on sax and Jon Gagan on bass, performing at Unit B in Santa Fe. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Kostur sings a song each set, as seen here performing with Chill House Band alongside Hillary Smith at Canvas Artistry; on guitar is Jim Casey, and in back on bass is Milo Jaramillo and J.D. Davis on drums. Top: Kostur conducts the Albuquerque Jazz Orchestra during a public performance in Albuquerque at the Uptown Sports Bar. Opposite: Kostur lets loose with a few riffs in his office at the University of New Mexico, where he teaches a number of music courses.

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tenor, and alto sax. He also got to play trumpet as a novelty addition to Ferguson’s lineup. “I’d play a few notes on ‘Glenn’s Den’ and on ‘Hey Jude’ in the band’s hit medley. Many people remember me more for those few measures of trumpet playing than for all of my saxophone work,” he laughs, recalling that Ferguson once gifted him a pro model MF trumpet that had spent time f loating in the band leader’s swimming pool. “I had to clean some green gunk out of it, but I got some good high notes out of that horn, which I still have.”

Kostur recalls that the audience’s enjoyment was key to Ferguson’s eclectic approach to music. “We played different styles, from Latin charts to straight-ahead swing. It was an entertainment event that used great music as the medium.”

One of Kostur’s lasting contributions to the Ferguson band’s repertoire was his original composition—the lively minor-blues show-opener “Get It to Go,” which Kostur says was inspired by their road manager urging traveling band members to grab quick lunches. Kostur toured internationally and played on three albums recorded by the Maynard Ferguson band: Big Bop Nouveau, Footpath Café, and Live from London.

Kostur says the Ferguson gig was more than a job. It was fun. “Maynard wanted the audience and his musicians to have a great time. He was very generous. We all got to be featured, and we all felt like we were making a contribution to the music.”

That musical generosity and team spirit clearly shows in Kostur’s own approach to teaching and to leading musical ensembles today. He expresses a similar generosity when doing his weekly All That Jazz radio show. “I want to give jazz fans some music they’ll enjoy and I also want to play music that might help recruit some new fans. Maybe help them move from pop tunes and Kenny G to other jazz artists.”

After three years working with Ferguson, Kostur enrolled in graduate school in Chicago where he earned a master’s degree in jazz studies at DePaul University with the goal of becoming a college music teacher, an ambition he achieved when UNM hired him. Along the way, he got married and played in “jobbing bands,” doing weddings and bar mitzvahs every weekend and sitting in with club combos each week.

Over the years, while maintaining his impressive academic links, Kostur has worked with jazz royalty including the Woody Herman Orchestra, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, Al Hirt, Randy Brecker, Bobby Shew, Bob Mintzer, Slide Hampton, and James Moody. With Thrascher, he has performed at the World Saxophone Congresses and recorded the albums Another Sound Thrasching and Axes of Evil alongside many other recording credits. One of Kostur’s wry road memories is of the 24 hours he spent alone in a Finland airport after missing a f light owing to a misplaced passport after a party. “Luckily, I didn’t miss a gig,” he says, smiling.

Besides blowing sax and playing keyboards, Kostur sings. “I grew up singing in choirs. In Texas I played in Top 40 bands where everybody could sing. In Chill House we sing backup, and to give our lead vocalist Hillary Smith a break.” In recent years, he has also become engaged in voice narration, which he calls “my COVID project.” During the lockdown “it dawned on me that files are sent digitally and there is a whole system doing voice-overs.

So I built a studio in my home.

I do mostly industrial training videos with some radio and TV commercials.”

He attributes his long tenure in New Mexico to the “thriving and diverse arts community here, so supportive of the arts.

When I first took the teaching job at UNM I didn’t imagine I would be here for 30 years but I came to realize there are not a lot of other places I would want to move to. It’s kind of unusual to have such a blend of creative artists and an appreciative community.”

He also remarks on the welcoming that is found in New Mexico of artists from elsewhere, including himself and his friend oud master Rahim AlHaj. “New Mexico is so open to new talent, including immigrants.”

Kostur’s advice for young musicians coming up is “to take a deep dive to listen to somebody you really love. Listen to them a lot and absorb what they do at as deep a level as possible. We all have access to any music in the world, but the downside is that it is really easy to get distracted by clicking to the next thing— wide exposure but not very deep. Back when all we had was vinyl, I would listen to a record all the way through and then listen again. I encourage young players to do a deep dive into an artist and then do another deep dive. So your concept and technique combine with the depth of other artists and become rich and real for you.” R trendmagazineglobal.com

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Designing with Heart and Mind These Albuquerque buidings celebrate human beings

BY GUSSIE FAUNTLEROY | PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBERT RECK Conjuring an image of a beautifully designed home is easy. But what comes to mind when we imagine the architectural design of a public middle school, or a small medical clinic, or an industrial woodworking shop? We might not think about such structures as intentionally designed to stimulate creativity or imbue their users with a sense of human dignity and joy.

But these kinds of ephemeral qualities are as important as functionality in the spaces where we reside. Here we present five buildings in Albuquerque designed by Albuquerque-based teams with a deep commitment to creating environments that support the best qualities of human life, whether at home, at work, on the road, or while seeking medical care.

DNCA Architects: UNM Health Medical Clinics

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he idea of a medical center that feels cold and confusing is inherently antithetical to such a facility’s purpose as a place where care and steps toward healing, or learning to live with physical limitations, take place. Devendra Narayan Contractor, principal founder at DNCA Architects, says the DNCA team aims to design medical facilities that encourage ease and wellbeing, both for patients and for the medical staff and others who work there. The team aspires to create an environment in which “intuitively, something about the space makes you feel good,” he says.

One such Albuquerque project, consisting of two adjacent medical clinics, is the University of New Mexico Hospital Nene and Jamie Koch Comprehensive Movement Disorders Center and the Senior Health Clinic. Contractor’s design earned national recognition with the 2023 NAIOP Award of Excellence, one of numerous top awards his firm has received since its establishment in 2002.

Born and raised in India, Contractor cites his family’s long history as temple builders as foundational in his desire to merge elements of spirituality, aesthetics, and compassion with practical functionality in his designs. His mother, Didi Contractor, was a self-taught architect and artist, beloved in her adopted country of India where she was honored with the highest civilian award recognizing the achievements and contributions of women.

Having grown up in New Mexico and Texas, Didi worked with simple materials including adobe, bamboo, and stone.

For Contractor, especially in facilities serving seniors and patients with mobility challenges, an important goal is to make the buildings friendly by creating spaces that minimize emotional or cognitive confusion and that feel nurturing and comforting, he says. To this end, DNCA’s design incorporated such elements as natural light, lushly planted courtyards, and interior colors that help patients navigate through the building.

Exam rooms contain windows high enough to ensure privacy, yet which allow in light and glimpses of sky. Some hallways feature artwork from UNM’s extensive collection.

“The power of art is not just about the presence of something stunningly beautiful, but about how it moves you to feel connected, to be a better human being,” the architect says.

His maternal grandfather was a noted German painter, and Contractor’s lifelong interest in fine art is also reflected in the contemporary art gallery, Pie Projects, that his wife, Alina Borsa, owns and operates in Santa Fe. Opposite and above: One of the two facilities recently designed by DNCA Architects for the University of New Mexico Hospital Comprehensive Movement Disorders Center and the Senior Health Clinic in Albuquerque.

Canopies create dappled shade over outdoor walkways and are built to accept photovoltaic solar panels at a later point, if desired.

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Contractor, with principal Deirdre Harris, approached designing the two UNM health centers with the same philosophy they previously employed for the Renal Medicine Associates clinic in Albuquerque. In each case, a strong connection with the outdoors was essential. Interior courtyards not only provide natural light and the color and life of vegetation, but are accessible for sitting outside while still within the clinic environment. Canopies create dappled shade over outdoor walkways and are built to accept photovoltaic solar panels at a later point, if desired.

As of summer 2025, the newest clinics have been in use for two years, and Contractor and the DNCA team have received positive feedback from patients and doctors. “People say they love the buildings, they love to come work here,” he says. “These are buildings that celebrate human beings, and as architects we take that as a responsibility—to bring people dignity and joy.”

Among the team’s other award-winning projects is Vladem Contemporary, an expansive addition to the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, executed with StudioGP Architect.

It earned five top awards including the 2023 AIA New Mexico Honor Award. Currently DNCA is working on the new Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, projected to open in late 2027.

New Mexico’s powerful sunlight is used creatively to project shifting shadow patterns around the structures, part of the close attention paid to light in general by the designers, including abundant interior natural lighting.

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Diego Handcrafted Homes: Sandpiper House

D

iego M. Ruiz’s higher education began with a fine art scholarship to the University of Albuquerque.

When the university closed two years later, he shifted to architecture, earning a degree from the UNM School of Architecture and Planning. But after five years as an intern architect with a large firm, Ruiz found himself missing art. So, he moved to Denver, studied graphic design and illustration at the Art Institute of Colorado and worked in commercial art for five years. But then he missed architecture, and Albuquerque, where he was raised after his family moved from Havana, Cuba, when he was an infant. Returning to his hometown, he took a job with a builder and gained hands-on construction experience.

All of Ruiz’s interests came together in 2002 when he established Diego Handcrafted Homes, an award-winning design/build firm that benefits from his passion for fine art, design, architecture, and high-quality craftsmanship. He brings in further inspiration from travels in places like Spain, Italy, and

Latin America, where architecture “incorporates the old and new together in harmony,” he says.

Sandpiper House, just west of the Rio Grande, which it overlooks, beautifully reflects the creative synergy of Ruiz’s diverse design influences and well-honed team, including subcontractors with whom he has worked for many years. The home, with interior design by Maria Khouri of San Franciscobased Maria Khouri Interiors, earned eight out of nine awards in the 2024 New Mexico Parade of Homes.

Ruiz describes the look of Sandpiper House as desert organic modern. Set in a high-desert environment with clean lines and a minimalistic approach, it incorporates earthy, natural materials for a warm, inviting feel. Among these are maple cabinetry and natural stone, including locally processed limestone block feature walls that continue from outside to indoors and blur the visual distinction between the two. A small atrium/courtyard at the entrance contains a lovely Japanese maple and serves as

Sandpiper House, on Albuquerque’s West Mesa, overlooks the Rio Grande and features its own water feature on-site— this lovely pool. Expansive outdoor covered spaces expand the footprint of the home, and blend indoor and outdoor life.

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Clockwise from left: A fireplace accentuates and rounds out the visual interest and comfort of the home’s common spaces. The streamlined kitchen carries on the use of wood finishes, oak acoustic ceiling, and white walls to link it with the adjoining living room and dining area. The living room has a high ceiling lined with horizontal windows that further expand the spacious feel of Sandpiper House.

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Above: The glass-walled entry reveals the atrium where the homeowners walk from the main public space to the private bedroom wing. A tree and rock garden with open access to the sky bring another reference to the outside world beyond the confines of the house.

Right: A bathroom continues the pattern of abundant natural light, here provided by a hidden skylight.

a light well, flooding the surrounding rooms with natural light.

With 14-foot ceilings in the great room and dining and kitchen area, Ruiz softened the auditory quality of the space with rift oak acoustical ceiling panels that waterfall down two walls. Acoustical panels between the dining area and adjacent game room ensure quiet for dining. They also hide a secret soft-close door, which opens into the game room by pressing on the panel.

All of Ruiz’s homes are designed and built to gold-certified green standards that include comfort, energy, and water efficiency, and indoor air quality. He also designs for aging in place. In a singlelevel home, he achieves visual interest by varying ceiling heights, wall angles, and surfaces. With no steps in Sandpiper House, two 16-foot-wide pocket doors allow the dining and great room space to flow seamlessly onto the patio.

Drawing on his love and knowledge of fine art, in particular the elements of light, shadow, and ambiance among the Old Masters, Ruiz aspires to produce homes that engage all the senses—from the colors, shapes, and fragrances of plants in the landscaping, to the drama of a light well, to the warmth and coziness of natural wood. His aim, he says, is to create a “livable work of art.” trendmagazineglobal.com

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Edward Fitzgerald Architects: Truman Middle School

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nnovative architecture and pleasing aesthetics in places like public schools are usually reserved for a city’s more affluent neighborhoods. With Truman Middle School on Albuquerque’s West Mesa, architect Edward Fitzgerald turned that idea on its head. Tasked with replacing (in stages) the aging school, Fitzgerald drew on almost 50 years of architectural experience and an award-winning integrative approach to create “something beautiful using simple materials,” the Albuquerque-based architect says.

Beyond functioning well, Fitzgerald’s design creates a strong connection between interior and exterior spaces and acknowledges the site’s relationship to the Rio Grande, Sandia Mountains, Rio Grande Valley, and solar orientation. It features expansive windows on most sides and a large, sunny, central courtyard around which the entire school is organized.

Meanwhile, the north-facing streetside façade is clad in metal panel. “It’s almost like a protective shell that serves as an intermediary between the surrounding neighborhood and school,” Fitzgerald explains. To enter the campus, all foot traffic must pass through the administrative area, adding to security as well as a feeling of privacy for students and staff.

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The first phase, completed early this year, includes a main building containing administrative, counseling, and library spaces, along with computer and art classrooms. Another new structure houses the cafeteria/performance space and kitchen, and classrooms for drama, orchestra and band.

Because classes had to continue during construction, parts of the original facility remained, with two second-floor enclosed bridges connecting new and existing buildings.

New construction will eventually replace the entire school, whose original structures date from the 1970s with portables and other buildings added over the years as the surrounding community grew. The replacement project’s initial design stage took two years, beginning in late 2017. When COVID hit, the project was put on the shelf for two years before starting up again. Among challenges the architects faced were budget constraints and a sloping property on which all the best construction sites were occupied by the school’s existing buildings —issues that required innovative thinking.

The project’s design team consisted of Fitzgerald as principal architect along with two associates, Jordan Fitzgerald and Farbod Norouzian Pour. Yet the firm’s interdisciplinary model

Lucky students at Truman Middle School on Albuquerque’s West Mesa are greeted by this impressive, elegant structure designed by Edward Fitzgerald and his interdisciplinary team. Plentiful natural lighting was one design goal, achieved here.

Right: The new courtyard with terraced seating.

Opposite: The new entrance to Truman Middle School provides access to administration and counseling offices, the library, cafeteria, and classrooms, and the new overhead bridge connects the second floor to the existing eighth grade building.

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The exterior curtain wall screens on the east façades provide protection from the sun while still providing expansive views of the Sandia Mountains.

Left: Splashes of bright colors enliven the interior spaces and their bold geometric forms.

meant involving other consultants from the start in such areas as interior design, lighting, plumbing, and electrical, along with the contractor Bradbury Stamm Construction of Albuquerque. This approach in the past has earned Edward Fitzgerald Architects a number of awards, among them two AIA awards for Albuquerque’s Stone Age Climbing Gym. The firm has designed numerous other commercial, public, and residential projects over the years, including all of Albuquerque’s Flying Star restaurants.

Truman Middle School currently serves about 670 students, many for whom English is a second language and a number with special needs. “These are all plusses to me,” Fitzgerald says, noting that creating a functional yet beautiful space for students who might not otherwise experience such a facility was immensely satisfying.

Rather than aiming to simply fill the school’s requirements and needs, his goal was to help facilitate a dynamic and interesting experience, “so the students would be stimulated by the architecture as they move around in it. It’s more than the sum of its parts.”

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Mullen Heller Architecture: Route 66 Visitor Center

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hen Mullen Heller Architecture first learned of the proposed site for a major Route 66 Visitor Center, the location choice seemed questionable. Battered with dusty west winds, the steeply sloped site in an agriculturezoned area was completely undeveloped—no infrastructure, no utilities, not even a paved road for access from Central Avenue on Albuquerque’s west side. As often happens as plans develop, however, many of the site’s apparent limitations turned into benefits.

The concept of what became a visitor center doubling as a community gathering space had deep roots in the city’s southwest quadrant. For decades, the area’s citizens had been trying to gather resources and interest in a community center that also celebrates car culture through its connection to Route 66. In 2018 there was finally enough support to bring in Mullen Heller Architecture, whose principals Michele Mullen and Douglas Heller established the firm in 2001.

The project’s first steps included a major traffic study to gain access to the site, work by utility companies, and zoning hearings for special-use permits. Then, as the architects

were completing the design phase and bidding was opened for a general contractor, the pandemic happened, leading to further delays and shortages of materials. Yet through it all, enthusiasm for the project was contagious. “We got caught up in the excitement of making something big for the community,” Mullen says.

The initial hurdles were overcome and in late 2022 construction was completed under Enterprise Builders of Albuquerque. Yet there was one more step before the facility could become fully operational. Although the architects’ original contract was with Bernalillo County, the county soon realized it wasn’t equipped to hire and oversee an event space operator capable of running the facility. So, in 2024, ownership of the Route 66 Visitor Center was transferred to the City of Albuquerque Department of Arts and Culture already operates such entities as the Albuquerque Museum and ABQ BioPark.

Initially open on a limited basis, the center officially begins full operations this summer as a welcoming space for travelers and locals. The 22,000-square-foot facility takes

The impressive approach to the 22,000 square-foot Route 66 Visitor Center, which includes a museum, an art gallery, a tap room, commercial kitchen, and space for hosting banquets or performance events.

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The visitor center perches on the West Mesa atop Nine Mile Hill overlooking Albuquerque, the Rio Grande Valley, and Sandia Mountains, immortalizing the first view of the Duke City for many travelers on historic Route 66 and today’s I-40.

Opposite: Outdoor, overhead metallic lattice will provide shade and shifting visual patterns throughout the day.

advantage of its location with spectacular views of the Rio Grande Valley, Sandia Mountains, and city lights at night— views “near and dear to locals and travelers,” Mullen says.

The first floor contains a museum dedicated to Route 66 memorabilia and vintage cars, a gallery for traveling exhibits, and a tap room and patio. Upstairs is a commercial kitchen and a banquet/meeting and performance space, available for large community events or smaller gatherings like family reunions and quinceañera celebrations.

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is reminiscent of mid-century gas stations. The sloped site allows for tiered parking, where car shows can take place, and a small amphitheater for musical events. Also, outside is a collection of vintage “Instagram-worthy” Route 66 signs, as Mullen puts it.

Among other work by Mullen Heller is the White Rock Visitor Center near the entrance to Bandelier National Monument, and adaptive reuse projects that give new life to old buildings.

The Route 66 Visitor Center was honored with a Regional 2023 Award by the trade magazine Engineering News-Record. “We’re very proud of that,” Mullen says.

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Sam Sterling Architecture: Insight Construction’s Millwork Division

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f it hadn’t been for restrictive zoning and space limitations, Insight Construction’s expanded/renovated shop may have ended up resembling any other industrial box. But challenges offer opportunity, and the design by Sam Sterling Architecture (SSA) not only met the project’s needs while presenting a visually interesting façade to a mixed-use Albuquerque neighborhood, it also earned an AIA design award—rare for this type of project.

Sterling, who established his firm in 2006, spent the previous 12 years working with the renowned architect Antoine Predock. Among other notable SSA projects are the Berna Facio Professional Development Center for the Albuquerque Public Schools, and three structures at Bachechi Open Space in the North Valley, both of which also received AIA awards.

Insight Construction’s expanded shop occupies the site of a former Fruit Basket and before that, a convenience store. The almost 5,000-square-foot space holds woodworking and steel fabrication shops, and the projects also called for upgrades to ventilation, mechanical, electrical, and fire prevention systems. The two shops are divided by a central partition

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containing all the “people spaces”—offices, restrooms, storage mezzanine—accessible from both sides. Each shop has large rolling overhead doors and natural light from skylights and clearstory windows.

All of this, utilizing low-cost, off-the-shelf, and some salvaged materials in a simple design, would have satisfied the needs of a busy contractor’s in-house shops. But because of zoning regulations and an extremely tight building site, there was a challenge: literally only three feet of space between the building’s front wall and parking. How to create a functional, visually interesting entrance in such a thin space?

Sterling and his team put their heads together. Using basic mathematics, they determined that a small section of the steel façade could be slightly “warped” to reveal the front entrance, as if the building’s skin has been peeled back. In reality, the tall, narrow raw-steel panels were not forced to bend any more than is comfortable for the material, “so it flows,” the architect says. The result is a visual twist that creates a human-scaled element, directs the eye to the entrance, and adds no cost, since it uses the “same parts and pieces” as a straight wall. It was, as Sterling puts it, “a great little experiment that worked.” R

Opposite: The renovation of a former fruit shop and convenience store by Sam Sterling Architecture garnered an AIA design award for the firm and an attractive, innovative, renovated building for a mixed-use Albuquerque neighborhood.

Clever use of an inclined, warped steel façade wall provides for a shaded and novel entryway for the working fabrication shops of Insight Construction.

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The Electro Receptor

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Meet Thomas Ashcraft, artist, scientist, maker of things, and an endlessly curious sentient being investigating cosmic life

BY DANIEL GIBSON | PHOTOGRAPHY BY KITTY LEAKEN

A transient luminous event (TLE) that Ashcraft captured in a 2020 photo of these rarely observed atmospheric discharges called sprites that can be as big as 60 miles in height and 45 miles wide at their base.

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celestial images selected as NASA’s “Photo of the Day” and posted online. But, he has also had exhibitions at the CUE Art Foundation in New York; New Mexico Museum of Art; Akron Art Museum, in Ohio; Massachusetts College of Art and Design, in Boston; Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe; SITE Santa Fe; Phoenix Art Museum; and in many art galleries. He’s been a star exhibitor at events ranging from Santa Fe’s InterPlanetary Festival to the American Society for Microbiology annual conference in Atlanta, and displayed his exhibition TOTEM: Bacteriophage at an Evergreen State College conference in Portland.

A human bridge between the unseen world and our perceptions, between science and art, he seeks to make the unknown known, and the invisible visible. He says of himself on the Santa Fe Institute’s website, “First off, I am an organism.

I am a mobile sack of salt water, guts, bones, nerves, microorganisms, and genes. I am an air breather. I am aware that I am a conscious assemblage of symbionts. My mind flows out into the vast biological commonwealth. I work toward a better feeling. I am an extrapolator. I chew Thinker’s Gum.” Clearly, he does not fit neatly into any boxes.

Residing some 15 miles southeast of Santa Fe in Lamy, with a laboratory of optical and radio telescopes out back, and his studio in Santa Fe, Ashcraft is a busy man. Now 73 and walking in sneakers with a bit of a stoop, a long graying ponytail draped over his shoulder, and with a slight quaver in his voice, he still charges around like a highly energetic particle shot from the sun. With decades of his work spread out before him, his mind leaps from point to point, making associations where few others dare tread.

For example: Ashcraft has been using radio telescopes for decades on systems he cobbled together with off-the-shelf materials as well as incredibly expensive instruments given or loaned to him by the likes of the US Air Force Research Laboratory operating out of New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, and NASA. He trains these devices on electromagnetic disturbances from sources as varied as the sun and asteroids, meteors and lightning storms. Regarding the latter, once located, he directs an array of customized optical cameras and video cameras that can “look” over the horizon as far as 300 miles in any direction.

Summer nights often find his instruments tracking and recording massive storm clouds that form over western Texas and Oklahoma. He will review these recordings, which are all given a universal time stamp and geographic coordinates, and if he senses something of import has occurred, he will contact the Air Force lab, which has a video camera called The Phantom that records at 100,000 frames per second, capturing incredibly short-lived aerial phenomenon. He will ask them to go to a particular split-second and location, and

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visitor to a sprawling studio tucked, appropriately, right behind Santa Fe’s Meow Wolf complex, is handed a present upon entering. It consists of small works on paper, like a “pack of supermarket coupons,” explains the host. This includes a ticket inscribed, “All Zone Pass to Heliotown: admit the bearer,” a ticket to the “Sky & Cultural Pavilion,” and a tiny abstract monoprint made with a sculpting compound often used by kids the artist has pressed into an ink pad and onto paper. It could be an image of one of the microscopic lifeforms he observes, one of the atmospheric phenomena like the “sprites” he studies, or “alien fingerprints,” he suggests.

“I don’t want to overly define it,” explains the artist-scientist.

Welcome to the universe of Thomas Ashcraft.

Inside the 2,000-square-foot warehouse, sitting on sheets of plywood propped up on sawhorses illuminated by old goosenecked table lamps, are several decades of his life’s work in all its complexity and connectivity. It is his efforts to capture some of the cosmos’s fantastic mysteries and bring them to consciousness and appreciation for himself, first, but also the world at large.

There are small and large metal sculptures of scaled-up microorganisms; photographs of celestial events like meteor bursts and moons transiting the surface of Jupiter, scale models of his radio telescopic antenna fields and observation stations; color videos of microscopic life squirming across a wall; drawings and prints. There’s jewellike works in metal, and tall waving rodlike sculptures; in the background plays a soundtrack he composed.

A true Renaissance man, Ashcraft has a creative mind that leaps from hard science to works of art, literature, and even music. David Krakauer, president of the Santa Fe Institute, the local scientific think tank that focuses on complex adaptive systems where Ashcraft has a longrunning position as an artist-in-residence, stated in an article by Robert Nott in the Santa Fe New Mexican in 2021 that Ashcraft’s on-campus studio is “a kind of imagination laboratory. When we want to think in a different way,” they visit him “to get an electric jolt of imagination.”

A 26-minute New Mexico PBS program in the ¡Colores! series that aired in 2017 calls him “a naturalist, artisan, scientific instrument builder … and one of the most prolific videographers in the world, who … over time has established an important niche laboratory in the Rio Grande research corridor.”

One of NASA’s elite citizen scientists, he has been featured online in WIRED magazine’s science section, on The Weather Channel, the websites SpaceWeather and Stardate, and on National Public Radio. He has seen several of his

The artist-scientist adjusts an antenna junction at his home observatory near Lamy.

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to review their footage. It is here that he, and a handful of others studying such events, have discovered previously unknown and unseen forces that have taken on fanciful names like sprites, pixies, green ghosts, trolls, and elves.

Sprites have become central to Ashcraft’s work and interest. They appear in conjunction with massive electrical storms. They occur immediately following superstrong lightning bursts and travel upwards from the burst some 60 miles into the mesosphere. Some are as large as 40 miles wide at their base and produce a variety of colored forms, including psychedelic jellyfish. They are part of The entryway to his in-town studio he has nicka class of aerial emissions labeled transient luminous events (TLEs). They named Heliotown, also were first observed in the 1980s but only in the past few years have they known as The Bunker, Lab, been given significant attention, and Ashcraft is one of the few people and Dream Hole. probing the edges of these mysterious occurrences.

He will ask the Air Force lab techs to provide prints of these TLEs, often beautiful and startling, and in turn he shares them with the world via his website, postings to other online databases, and in public art/science events.

“I began seeing faint sprites in the edges of some photos I shot around 2001,” he explains. “I didn’t seek them out; they came to me, appearing in my cameras.”

Scientists formerly called the mesosphere, the aerial zone some 30 to 100 miles above Earth where TLEs appear, the “ignoroshere” because so little seemed to occur there. But Ashcraft notes, “We now know it’s an ecological realm, home to many 172

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exotic events.” In fact, TLEs have serious implications for things like space travel, satellites, and weather, and are on the cutting edge of scientific discovery. His work in this field was the focus of a wonderful article on Sept. 28, 2014 by New York Times science reporter Sandra Blakeslee titled “On the Hunt for a Sprite on a Midsummer’s Night.”

Another example is his investigations headed in the opposite direction, from the macro to the micro. “I discovered a whole universe inside my rain barrel,” he says. “I spent a few years documenting the microbes I found living there.”

Using a borrowed custom-built microscope, which is extremely expensive, he isolated strain after strain of bacteria and organisms called bacteriophages Blue Whizzer TimeGum that feed on them. He photographed them with still cameras and with is the name of these video, which stand alone as beautiful works, but then went further and sculptural prototypes. enlarged them in the form of metal sculptures ranging from fist-sized The “gum” is made from Amazonian chicle tree sap and the to monumental scale, and in a series of bolo tie pendants. “I call this colored spheres are proprietary work ‘micro-monumentalism,’” he explains, “with each artistic iteraedible material he cooked up. tion also embodying important scientific data.” He trains a light on At this point, the work is really for mental chewing, not actual one small metallic sculpture, casting its shadow on a piece of paper. consumption, but is ultimately “Even its shadow contains information,” he notes. Everything is grist meant to be eaten or rather for Ashcraft’s mill. chewed. It is paired with writAll this fits neatly into his overarching credo: “Observe, Examine, ten instructions and background information.

Discover, Report.” The reporting, he’s come to appreciate, is the step many people pushing the boundaries of science, art, and other fields fail at.

He “reports” in scientific papers and in writing to his partners, but also to the public at large through his physical artworks and installations, as well as an immense trove of videos and still images posted on his website and elsewhere on the

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Another form of a spindly bacteriophage greatly enlarged and fashioned into the surface of an Ashcraft “coin.”

COURTESY THE ARTIST (2)

More of the world in his rain barrel: bacteria that he studied under a microscope and photographed, then transformed into a small metal token.

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The Within Within The Within is another of his tiny models that shows a person peering into a box where he or she will find more cubes with holes in them leading to more boxes. He has built full-scale replicas of these models.

Ashcraft says he “discovered a universe inside his rain barrel.”

Here we see a greatly enlarged bacteriophage that he has turned into a small metal sculpture.

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internet. In fact, he has more than 340 videos on Vimeo, and yet others on YouTube, documenting meteoric fireballs, gravity waves, sunspots, solar The “electro receptor” tunes into the “Jupiter coronal mass ejections, comets, sprites, and his microscopic studies.

Twitch,” an actual burst of One significant body of work centers on short videos he’s shot using energy and sound emanating from motion-triggered video cameras he has set up on the campus of the a certain sector of Jupiter as one of its moons passes overhead. He Santa Fe Institute and his own property. They carry titles like “Feral can record and share these Cat in the Middle of the Night,” “Badger Visits the Culvert,” “Nimble Fox transmissions. and Mouse,” and “Coyote Eating a Jackalope.” He explains, “These animals are on the move and I needed a way to slow them down, so I could film them. I made this fuzzy critter” that looks like a jackrabbit but sports horns, the mythical jackalope, “and put it out there.” Wildlife regularly stops to check it out, and one video shows a bobcat peeing on the sculpture. “It’s becoming a communication post of sorts,” he notes with pleasure. He compiles data on what has come to visit, when, and their numbers, mapping it out and building a solid record of information on local fauna, while the videos themselves are entertaining and even delightful, thus again blurring the line between science and art.

Yet another example of his reporting are the soundscapes he has creTop left: Ashcraft often works with minated. He began this work 50 years ago, recording and mixing natural iature models, both as a sound environments. More recently, he has taken electromagnetic means of working out concepts bursts from Jupiter’s moon Io as it crosses a particular region of the and as a form of art in and of itself.

Here we have one of his “listening planet and mixed them with other sounds he creates or manipulates stations” designed to allow in a process he describes as “sculpting sound sine waves.” Eleven people to tune into acoustic works are found on his website, ranging from ethereal and cosmic radio waves. beautiful to startling and discordant, musical and even jazzy, though he trendmagazineglobal.com

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Ashcraft peers up and out from his observatory near Lamy; the coils of electrical cable and complex machinery are integral media for his cosmic investigations.

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says modestly, “I’m not sure of that.” They are always playing in the background in his studio. “I use them to change my mood,” he explains, and points out they also have the beneficial effect of canceling out all extraneous noise in a very busy, loud part of town.

He also loves to dabble in the world of words. He has coined the term cosmodity, which refers to cosmic (space-related) commodities, which should be a going concern once Elon Musk fires up his Martian missions and space hotels are a thing.

Another form of a His studio is tagged Heliotown spindly (from bacteriophage the Greek word helios, sun). Years ago, he formed the imaginary Extrapolators Club and created a paper “pass” for it stamped greatly enlarged and fashioned into up surface with the words “Think Small.” He has set “listening stations” at public festiof an Ashcraft “coin.” vals tapping into energetic cosmic emissions with names like the Fast Drift Burst Observatory and the Sky & Cultural Pavilion—another way he honors his commitment to report his findings.

Always driving forward, he is reluctant to talk much about his past. But this much is known. He was born in 1951 in Springfield, Illinois, and obtained a BA in 1975 from McGill University in Montreal. He then moved to Arkansas to help A futuristic newspaper establish a utopian farming community with like-minded idealists, who even banner Ashcraft created created their own currency. There he became a skilled metalworker, operatwhen playing around ing foundries and producing utilitarian objects. This led him to be presented with AI prompts. with a substantial monetary grant handed to him by then-governor Bill Clinton for a solar biomass kiln Ashcraft invented. The large metal works brought him to artistic, smaller metal works, while he was also becoming enamored with radioastronomy—the study of the electromagnetic energy that pervades and drives our universe. He became fascinated by the sun, and this led him in 1987 to New Mexico, where the sun‚ as in ancient Egypt, rules supreme.

“I met my partner, muse, and steady friend, Lynn K. Larsen, here in Santa Fe in 1994,” he explains. “In an odd way the great comet Hale-Bopp brought us together.

I am thankful each day for this most fortunate serendipity.”

A visit to his Santa Fe studio is a trippy experience, a look into his magic crystal ball. Spread out across his studio are the fruits of decades of determined work, study, creation, and interpretation. “It’s mostly for my own edification,” he explains.

Seeing it all laid out stimulates his thought processes and helps him to link apparently dissonant trains of thought and investigation. “I walk around kind of looking at it all out of the corner of my eye, to see what comes next, what it feeds, what it inspires. Then, I leap.”

Ashcraft in his As one observes Ashcraft working across many scientific and artistic spacious studio in disciplines, seeking connectivity, considering the Big Questions, looking Santa Fe where his work is up and out, one wonders what he thinks about the existence of extraterdisplayed across a series restrial life. “I’m a believer,” he says with a bit of hesitation, concerned of illuminated makeshift tables; everything in its it might cloud his reputation in the science community. He mentions place and a place “radiopanspermia,” the radiating or dispersal of pollen, bacteria, viruses, for everything. and other possible microscopic life-forms in comets and asteroids. “It’s pretty obvious to me that’s going on.” And, does God exist, or is everything in the universe just a mechanistic process unfolding? “I don’t know. That’s the biggest question. If there’s nothing else there, there’s nothing to worry about. But, if there is something…” His voice trails off.

As a citizen scientist, Ashcraft says on his NASA web page that he’s learned “the value and necessity of producing impeccable data and the satisfaction of correlating and verifying with others. I’ve learned that cooperation and helpfulness are greatly rewarding and build a productive community.” This could be said of his role, too, as an artist and as a thinking person helping to open the world’s eyes to the wonders that surround us. R For more on the work of Thomas Ashcraft, visit his website: Heliotown.com. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Art Speak

Cultural conversations with five regional creatives on the state of the arts

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KATE RUSSELL

GINGER DUNNILL This is an important moment, not only for Santa Fe, but for the many cities to learn from, and advocate for, Indigenous people and their land. Within my own practice, it is energizing to be a part of regional and global partnerships with artists, activists, and community organizers from diverse classes and cultures who are coming together in a collective movement toward a more just future for all. I am inspired by current Santa Fe-based initiatives such as the O’ga P’ogeh Land Tax project and Vital Spaces arts initiative, which are shaping our collective accountability and promoting equity in the area’s cultural landscape.

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Originally from Maui, Hawaii, New Mexicobased creative Ginger Dunnill is a producer, story archivist, curator, community organizer, sound artist, and writer. Dunnill collaborates with artists and activists globally, creating work that inspires paradigm shifts, promotes plurality, and advocates for social justice.

She is the creator and host of the notable arts podcast, Broken Boxes, which features long-format conversations with regional and international contemporary artists.

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ISRAEL HAROS LOPEZ The realities of artificial intelligence, the collective traumas and exhaustion induced by the COVID pandemic, and global events have detrimentally impacted artists and the gig economy. At the same time, I believe these traumatic experiences will generate a plethora of healing arts. Human mark-making is part of all our lineage; this will never go away. How we move forward collectively in these times will require us to evolve our humanity. There will be a lot of precious healing to come in the next five to ten years, led by people residing on the land, artists, musicians, and cultural workers who embody the relentless hope of all our ancestors. They will generate the collective healing necessary to move forward.

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Israel Francisco Haros Lopez was born in East Los Angeles to immigrant parents of Mexican descent. He is a Chicano muralist, painter, poet, and art director of Alas De Agua Art Collective. He has been involved in community arts for 25 years in the Bay Area, Oakland, Los Angeles, and New Mexico.

Having lived in New Mexico since 2009, he has dedicated his arts practices to ensuring the creation of future art leaders in communities of color. He has received numerous awards, most recently the Santa Fe Mayor’s Award for Excellence for his work with Culture Connects, and an international award from the Kindle Project for his community arts engagement.

JADE BEGAY When it comes to the Native/ Indigenous aspect, while there are so many moments when our culture/art is celebrated, why does it feel, more often than not, like we’re alone (or seen as fringe) when it comes to protecting our lands, our rights, and encouraging this community to reckon with the past? It’s important to acknowledge that [cultural] silos exist in this community and these silos keep us reaching the goals that I believe this city strives for.

Part of Santa Fe’s charm is that we have certain cultural moments or events that are staples for the community, i.e., Zozobra, Indian Market, Folk Art Market. I think they help define some of our values and what we, as a community, prioritize. On the other hand, these cultural events can lose their appeal, especially to locals, when they refuse to respond to the current moment or reflect the larger cultural context we are in.

I’m inspired by the rise in “pop-ups” in this town, from late-night dance events to food pop-ups, etc. Even if I don’t attend all of them, these types of events make Santa Fe feel less “sleepy” and I think provide important spaces for the younger community to play and have fun.

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Jade Begay, of Tesuque Pueblo and Diné heritage, works at the intersections of Indigenous rights and climate and environmental justice, shaping national and international policy. Begay has worked with Indigenous-led organizations and tribes from the Amazon to the Arctic to advance Indigenous-led solutions and self-determination through advocacy campaigns, research, and storytelling. In 2021, Begay was appointed by President Joe Biden to serve on the first-ever White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and in 2024 served as the National Engagement Native American director for the Harris-Walz Campaign. Begay was an impact producer for the Oscarnominated documentary film Sugarcane. She serves on the board of Native Conservancy, Doc Society, Amazon Watch, Evergreen Action, and Bioneers.

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MATTHEW CHASE-DANIEL Here in Northern New Mexico, we are finally recovering from the tired trope of “three cultures living in harmony.” There are many cultures here and have been for many hundreds of years.

We strive for harmony, but we are energized and confronted by tensions. Can there be harmony without discord?

For the past hundred years, settlers and visitors have conflated our landscape and our culture. The land has been seen as beautiful and mostly empty, the local peoples picturesque and innocent of the complications of modernity. None of this was ever true. Our deserts are full in their own way. All culture is complicated. All human relationships held in tension.

Within five years, I hope we can build something here that values our lives, individual and collective, our human and nonhuman worlds.

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Since 1989 Matthew Chase-Daniel has lived in Santa Fe, making buildings, making family, making art, and enabling others to do so. His photography and sculpture have been exhibited across the United States and in Europe. His photography is represented in Santa Monica, California, by Craig Krull Gallery. He is the co-founder and co-curator of Axle Contemporary, a mobile artspace; a radio/ podcast host at Coffee and Culture; curator of The Lena Wall; and a member of the Railyard Art Committee—all in Santa Fe.

RAASHAN AHMAD The current cultural landscape in Santa Fe is vibrant and evolving, but there are layers to it. On one hand, we’ve got a beautiful arts scene that’s internationally recognized, with galleries, markets, and events that draw in people from all over. But, at the same time, there’s a need for more inclusivity and opportunities for local artists and creators outside of the mainstream. What’s working well is the community’s drive to support one another—so many people are doing amazing work, and wanting and making beautiful communities.

The future is about expanding access, developing infrastructure for emerging creatives, and fostering entrepreneurial growth alongside artistic development.

I also see more dance parties, more justice, more honoring of the land.

[

What excites me most is the raw talent and energy of this community—the people who are pushing boundaries and finding ways to blend the traditional with the new. It’s inspiring to see so many folks dedicated to building something that reflects the richness and history of this place while making room for fresh perspectives.

Raashan Ahmad is the executive director of Vital Spaces, where he connects art, culture, and community.

He supports local creatives, entrepreneurs, and artists, creating pathways for those often overlooked by the mainstream. As a renowned MC and DJ, five-time winner of Santa Fe’s Best DJ, and accomplished music producer, Ahmad’s musical background informs his leadership. He’s dedicated to empowering others and amplifying the voices of emerging artists. His work reflects a commitment to creating beautiful spaces where creativity and communities can thrive. R

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Currents ‘Verify You Are Human’

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This year’s artists comprising Santa Fe’s international art and technology festival grappled with the onslaught of technology— and slowing it all down

AUDREY DERELL

BY AMY BOAZ

stroll through the wildly imaginative, frequently head-scratching, and always thought-provoking installations and performances of Currents 25 in Santa Fe’s Railyard District in mid-June of this year took the measure of our collective human ingenuity. The annual festival invites artists from all over the world to unleash their most innovative and bold creations in technology—using holograms, sound and light experiments, film, video, digital, interactive and performative spectacle, generative artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR)—and challenge the frontiers of what we know and how far we dare to go.

As in recent years, much of the art underscored a tension and a kind of gnawing angst. For example, in counterpoise to the playful interactive generative audiovisual touchscreen work Synesthetica, fashioned by the Los Angeles-Albuquerque-based Artific3 collective, a favorite of Currents 2024, Santa Fe artist and Meow Wolf creative technologist Eric Heep offered sobering experiments with sound holograms in Memory Planes that simulated the degradation and decay of memory. In A Nervous System (Brain), a brain-shaped light sculpture (160 LEDS operating off a highly sensitive motion sensor) darted around more and more erratically the longer one stood in front of it—enacting Mesa, Arizona, computer engineer Priyanka Makin’s “social anxiety in sculptural form.” And an AI-generated opera All That Is Seen and Unseen by multiplatform Brooklyn artists Lauren Petty and Shaun Irons depicted Greek and Roman statues emitting breathless, repetitive monologues against an operative soundtrack—an eerie, enervating loop that plays with the “dangerous erosion of truth” in our consciousness.

“People’s imaginations are freeing up now! We’ve never seen that before,” Currents Executive Director Frank Ragano exclaimed over this year’s plethora of submissions— a record at 863. The annual international arts and technology festival in Santa Fe garners applications from practicing artists and professionals, students and faculty at high-tech schools, and this year again presented about 60–65 works of art, involving approximately 85–90 actual artists, as many are collaborations. Ragano and his partner, Mariannah Amster, have been organizing the annual media arts happening in this venue since 2010—produced by their nonprofit Parallel Studios—although the first Currents took place in 2002 in roving galleries and pop-ups. This year, Ragano was struck by the sheer “adventurous” quality of the work, especially driven by AI, VR, and AR.

Currents New Media co-founders Frank Ragano and Mariannah Amster have been organizing the annual nonprofit arts and media happening in Santa Fe since 2002.

“When we first launched Currents, much of the magic came from movement on a screen,” notes Amster. “Over the years we have watched artists develop intimate relationships with technology.” trendmagazineglobal.com

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While Ragano claimed there wasn’t any one theme dominating the festival save the valiant expressed support for “21st-century art-making and innovative creatives,” Trend detected a few departments heavily represented, such as installations probing truth versus manipulated reality, environmental anxiety, techno-feminist thought, and loss of memory—the last thanks to that very same technological revolution that is supposed to propel humanity. In contrast, there were many artworks that required a viewer’s absolute time and attention, a conscious plea for slowness, such as Chilean improviser Matias Vilaplana Stark’s mesmerizing VR arrangement of falling marbles within sound blocks in Unforeseen Collisions, or California State University digital media professor Elizabeth Leister’s 3-D experimental AR collage My Garland Is Also Blue, wherein domestic objects moved in a deliberate state of “knotting and untangling.” Indeed, the whole issue of speed and the internet was explored in depth during a two-day symposium June 14–15 at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe: “Art and Technology and the Culture of Speed.”

First, in what novel forms did the artists use AI developments?

Avital Meshi, pursuing her PhD at University of California, Davis, is a media artist exploring the impact of AI on human identity and “sociality” by conducting live 30-minute performances of what she called AI Seance. Strapped with an AI wearable device that transformed her into a spiritual medium, she spoke to famous, dead spirits chosen from the audience (these have included Michel Foucault, Leonard Cohen, and Marilyn Monroe) to ask questions and engage the spirit in real time. What could this performance reveal through the merging of technology and mysticism, Meshi wondered? Also, fEVER (a contraction of “fever” and “forever”) proved a trippy “pulsating audio-visual tapestry” generated by AI that seemed to simulate a collision between worlds, as envisioned by University of North Texas professor of composition and visual design, David Stout, cofounder of NoiseFold. The multimedia performance, explained Stout, ushers in “the network architecture of AI latent space as a technologically constructed terrain for dreaming awake.” And the Chinese American artist in Oakland, California, Susie Rong Fu performed a live drawing competition between an artist and a machine that has learned to draw like the artist; as each tried to outdo the other, the artist aimed to “investigate alternate selves, ones molded by oppressive forces in society.”

For accomplished digital artist Violet Moon Tower, who has a video installation at Meow Wolf, and is now living in El Prado, New Mexico, “AI acts as both a tool and a muse, guiding the creative process while allowing for spontaneous and unpredictable outcomes.” Her gorgeously weird Strange Fruit probed themes of sentience and consciousness, and defied category—was it plant or animal? For Denver-based Corrina Espinosa, a professor of digital art at University of Colorado, use of AI in her surreal animated short Domestication allowed her a truly “exquisite corpse approach,” featuring a lot of morphing Daliesque hilarity.

You could watch a visually arresting art film, An Ter Atamiso,

by Seattle artist and academic Robert Campbell, inspired by the compositions of Jarrad Powell, which took you through oneiric landscapes that might be the pages of a storybook—or perhaps a stage set? The title had no meaning or translation, noted Campbell, describing the film as “a series of lingering tableaux…[that] conveys a fragmented, dreamlike tension between reality and

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FROM TOP: ROBERT CAMPBELL/COURTESY AN TER ATAMISO; MEREDITH DRUM; AVITAL MESHI

From top: Seattle artist Robert Campbell presented the oneiric fantasy film An Ter Atamiso, inspired by the compositions of Jarrad Powell. Meredith Drum collaborated with a host of Bulgarian visual artists to fashion Revolving Red Monuments, a fluidly provocative AR sculpture garden of Soviet monuments in Eastern Europe accompanied by poems about war. California media artist Avital Meshi, here strapped with an AI wearable device that transformed her into a spiritual medium, conducts live seances with famous dead people. trendmagazineglobal.com

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MELISA SAYDI

illusion, the fragility of human relationships, and the question of what it means to experience time, to occupy space, and to exist within layers of subjective truth.”

As Currents co-founder Amster noted, “Not exclusive of technology, but in tandem with it, we have seen more and more artists re-engaging in more traditional artistic forms like paper construction, ceramics, fabric, and stitchery.”

She underscored how artists this year especially have been “reinvigorating their relationship with nature.” In that department, professor at Minneapolis College of Art and Design Ben Moren’s Birch Transducer, a seemingly innocuous lump of gnarled birch on the wall, actually summoned the viewer with chorus calls of the migratory bird the Veery, among others, via an audio voice coil that excited the birch bark hollow and transformed it into a speaker membrane. Moren’s subtly powerful work demonstrated one way of formulating “positive outcomes of a technology-based society,” as expressed by Amster. Out of University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, Mary Tsiongas and Jim Roeber’s series of astonishing black-andwhite prints stitched with sound-conductive thread, Silk + Sound Lab, featured the Bombyx mori, a flightless moth long engineered for its silk, as the work comments on the mechanized silk trade in Eastern Europe (via a residency at the Tbilisi Silk Museum, Georgia). The “soft speakers” alternately emitted field-recorded sounds such as notes from a Chinese opera, the clicking of a silk loom, or the whirring wings of the moth, and all added to the creation of a “living museum: one that evoked past states of being-in-relation-with technology.” New Yorker Julia Daser’s frighteningly relatable Flooded House managed a demonstration of NASA’s sea-level rise prediction as modeled by the flooding of her Brooklyn apartment, here exactly replicated in miniature. Her visualization can’t be “passively consumed,” she stated. “It invites

TOP THREE: JULIA DASER. RIGHT; RANGER LIU

From top: Julia Daser’s frighteningly relatable Flooded House demonstrates NASA’s sea-level rise prediction through the simulated flooding of her own Brooklyn apartment—inviting visitors to see up close what climate change looks like.

California astrobiologist Ranger Liu’s notebook for the class he taught/performed on “Quantum Romantics,” applying the principles of quantum physics to romantic love.

Opposite: An experimental animation series

by Turkish artist Melisa Saydi pursues her protagonist through a dystopian urban landscape, evoking an Orwellian angst.

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visitors to explore what climate change looks and feels like from a point of empathy and compassion, calling them to action.”

Several political statements of note pinpointed the experimental animation entry Cankus, by Türkiye-born Melisa Saydi, a series of Orwellian shorts mostly set in and around an Istanbul urban dystopian landscape where the authoritarian leader President Recep Tayyip Erdogan glared ever-present from screens and billboards as the bulbous-headed protagonist trudged about as if sleepwalking in a “psycho-political space.” Through generative visuals, Saydi explained how she became fascinated with “this interplay between the real and the digital. I was interested in creating a strong feeling of alienation or disconnectedness.” Meredith Drum’s Revolving Red Monuments involved an interactive AR sculpture garden featuring Soviet monuments in Eastern Europe—combining 3-D virtual sculpture with poems about war. Working out of Blacksburg, Virginia, Drum collaborated with a host of Bulgarian visual artists and employed poems by Paul Celan, Ilya Kaminsky, Denise Levertov, Du Fu, and many others. With this ever-changing, provocative work, Drum, who has worked with Civil War monuments in the US, hoped she “can contribute to a larger re-imagining of liberation.”

In the Going Back to School department, the most original entry was certainly the hour-long performative lecture by astrobiology PhD student at the University of Washington, Seattle, Ranger Liu, as he applied the principle of quantization—fundamental to quantum physics—to the behaviors of love and desire in people. He called the lecture “Quantum Romantics,” wherein he compared the same key processes from physics (motion and force in particles) to romantics (love and desire in persons), using models to predict behaviors. While studying quantum mechanics as an undergrad astrophysics major,

COURTESY AARON JONES ET AL

A collaboration by architects Aaron Jones and Bret Pfeifer, with a looping audio track by Mike Demps, Super Light Structure is an intricate suspended paper dome that “graphically maps and mutates an ecclesiastic interior into an immersive performance venue.” Opposite: New Mexico artist Violet Moon Tower uses AI as her muse to create gorgeously strange living flowers to probe themes of sentience and consciousness. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Albuquerque artist John-Mark Collins’s F.E.A.R. (Fracture, Extension, Assassin, Retaliate) merges live dancing and motion tracking in a claustrophobic 12' x 12' cube. Opposite: An AI-generated opera, All That Is Seen and Unseen, by Brooklyn artists Lauren Petty and Shaun Irons, plays with the erosion of truth through repetitive monologues by Greek and Roman statues against an enervating operatic soundtrack.

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JOHN-MARK COLLINS. TOP: DAVID STOUT

Visual designer David Stout’s pulsating audio-visual tapestry fEVER offers an AI-generated space for “dreaming awake.”

LAUREN PETTY AND SHAUN IRONS

and enduring an “intense” crush on a best friend, Liu “noticed a lot of parallels between the quantum behavior of particles and my own behavior in this relationship,” he explained. “What bizarre and paradoxical notions of love might be uniquely captured in these equations?” Liu pursued the application through a rigorous mathematical system he performed in several well-attended lectures. In another classroom performance, New York artist Nikita Shokhov offered an augmented reality lecture

by Tyechia Thompson of Virginia Tech on “Hip Hop Lit,” equipped with quizzes and sources—a bang-up way to stay awake in the classroom.

Several women artists manipulated AR in order to reference a kind of assault on the body, such as philosophy-trained, Brooklyn-based Zoe Cohen in her animated video sculptures. Her ceramic heads, faces, and mouths were embedded with a small screen showing her quirky hand-drawn videos that commented on “stories of invisible disability, girlhood, and womanhood.” Priyanka Makin, the Arizona engineer and specialist in kinetics, circuit boards, and audio devices, offered her Body of Work, consisting of a series of fanciful handmade “artifacts” depicting the generative functioning of her nervous system, stomach, womb (A Bun in the Washing Machine), and others, inviting the viewer to “engage with my embodiment… and touch base with their own relationship with their body.” It proved a playful, and, at the same time, unnerving, exercise.

Some riveting live performances included a collaborative dance and mixed-media project by a Mexico City-based group, Alias 2, in which a dancer, tracked by an infrared camera, directed 3-D cameras to render her movements as a digital sculpture that shifted with the performance—“offering a hint into what is possible for this emerging embodied audiovisual art.” Jamaica-born creative coder Chelsi Alise Cocking crafted an interactive movement

installation through AR that allowed us to view and play with once-invisible “wakes of motion” in a work she called Illuminate. And Albuquerquebased John-Mark Collins, marking his return to Currents this year, confined a dancer to a holographic 12-foot-by-12-foot cube in a performance called F.E.A.R. (Fracture, Extension, Assassin, Retaliate) that merged live dance and motion tracking as the dancer tried to break free of the cube that held her. The cube served in performances by several other artists like synthesizer ace James Coker on Albuquerque Night, June 21.

With all this furious onslaught of technology, as demonstrated by these brilliant artists, does AI really make us smarter and advance humanity? In the weekend symposium, “Art and Technology and the Culture of Speed,” which was forged as a collaboration by Ragano, his assistant Sarah Kim, and ChatGPT-4o, artists and scholars were invited to address the rapid pace of technology and its impact on creativity, well-being, and human connection. While on the one hand, noted Ragano, condensed and pithy platforms like Ted Talks, PechaKucha, and TikTok generate huge fandom, the movement toward slowness, such as slow food, slow aging, and slow fashion, puts the brakes on modern life and encourages attention and presence. In the symposium, artists Tsiongas and Jordan Eddy moderated, with panelists such as sound artist Ross Wightman, designer Alvin Ashiatey, and curator Jaime Herrell encouraging discussion—including a break inviting the audience on a tour of Currents exhibits that were relevant to the topic. Ragano emphasized that the festival offered plenty of spaces where one was required to sit and reflect, watch videos with headsets, and quietly ruminate. R For more on the artists and information about Currents, see the website at Currentsnewmedia.org.

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Must-Know Artists

Three emerging talents working across a diversity of media are worthy of attention

BY YLISE KESSLER | PORTRAITS BY AUDREY DERELL

New Mexico has long been a haven for artists drawn to its sweeping landscapes, rich cultural heritage, and boundless creative possibilities. In this dynamic environment, a new generation of artists is emerging, each bringing a distinct vision that reinterprets tradition, explores personal histories, and pushes the boundaries of their mediums. From sculptural works infused with symbolism to photography that captures the raw essence of lived experience, these three artists— Keaun Beacom, Jazmin Novak, and Esther Elia—are shaping the contemporary art scene in New Mexico and beyond. Their work is deeply personal yet universally resonant, offering new ways to see and understand the world around us.

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KEAUN BEACOM Keaun Beacom’s journey into photography began not with a fancy camera or formal training but with an insatiable need to process the world around him. Born and raised in Santa Fe, Beacom discovered photography as a lifeline during turbulent times. Whether capturing the breathtaking 70-foot jumps of Olympic skiers, the meditative stillness of fly fishing, or the vibrant artistry of lowrider culture, Beacom’s work is an extension of his passions. Each frame tells a story, one deeply intertwined with his own experiences and the people and places that have shaped him.

As a child, Beacom was drawn to skiing and skateboarding, both of which would later become key subjects in his photography. He began experimenting with photography by taking pictures and videos at the skate park and on the ski mountains around Santa Fe and Taos. He would often tag along with his older brother, Cooper, and his friends, who were avid skiers. In 2014, Beacom lost Cooper to suicide at the Taos Gorge Bridge. The loss was devastating, leaving him searching for an outlet for his grief. Photography became his refuge, a way to make sense of the world and his emotions. It was during this time that he found solace in astrophotography, as he was drawn to the vastness of the night sky.

“I think once my brother passed, I really started utilizing photography, especially astrophotography, as a way of processing grief,” Beacom shares. “Being outside at night, just me and the stars, gave me something to hold onto when nothing else made sense.”

Keaun Beacom, All Smiles on the Water (2025), digital print.

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With a camera in hand, he sought solace in the quiet of the desert, capturing time-lapse images of the night sky and stars. The deep blacks and shimmering blues of the cosmos mirrored the vast emotions he wrestled with, making these some of his most compelling photographs to date. Those early works, while deeply personal, set the foundation for his pursuit of photography.

Beacom’s photography extends beyond the stars. His passions have always guided his lens, and over the years, he has developed a diverse body of work that ref lects his lifestyle. Skiing remains a core part of his identity, and after moving to New Zealand three years ago, he found himself at the epicenter of some of the best skiing in the world. Living in Wanaka, a small mountain town in the South Island, he was surrounded by Olympic-level talent, and for the first time, he had access to elite athletes whose skill and precision elevated his work.

“Shooting skiing in New Zealand has been unreal. I’ve had the chance to work with some of my favorite skiers, people I’ve looked up to for years. It’s an entirely different level of access than what I had growing up,” Beacom says.

Ski photography, much like the sport itself, is dynamic and fast-paced. Capturing the perfect shot requires not only technical skill but also an understanding of movement and flow. Beacom quickly developed a style that accentuated the energy of the sport, experimenting with multiple exposures and layered compositions to create images that felt as kinetic as the skiers themselves.

While skiing occupies a large part of his work, Beacom is equally passionate about f ly fishing, another pursuit that has shaped his photography. The stillness of a river at dawn, the quiet patience required to catch a fish—these moments hold as much weight for him as the thrill of skiing. In both New Mexico and New Zealand, f ly fishing became another avenue for photography, allowing him to explore the untouched backcountry while capturing the sport’s delicate artistry.

“Fly fishing photography is about so much more than just the fish,” he notes. “It’s about the environment, the people, the experience. It’s a slower, more meditative form of photography, and that’s what I love about it.”

Between the mountains and rivers, Beacom’s work also

plunges into the dynamic world of music and festivals.

Capturing the energy of live performances, the raw emotion of musicians, and the communal atmosphere of festival crowds, his photography highlights the power of sound and storytelling through imagery. Another theme that Beacom often visits is the lowrider car culture of Española, New Mexico. Lowriders have long been a symbol of cultural pride, and Beacom has spent time immersing himself in the community, capturing the intricate details of the cars and the stories of the people who build and maintain them.

“These cars are rolling works of art. Every detail is intentional, every design tells a story,” he says. “Photographing them is about honoring that craftsmanship, that dedication.”

For Beacom, photography is more than just a profession, it’s a way of life. His ability to move between vastly different subjects, from the controlled chaos of skiing to the meditative patience of fly fishing and the electric energy of live music and festivals, speaks to his versatility and deep engagement with his passions.

Despite his successes, Beacom is still figuring out his place in the photography world. He acknowledges the challenges of balancing artistic integrity with the commercial side of photography. “There’s this constant tension between shooting what I love and figuring out how to make a career out of it,” he admits. “But at the end of the day, I know I’ll never stop taking photos.”

Much of his work remains unpublished, scattered across hard drives and notebooks. He posts on Instagram occasionally, but his ultimate goal is to create a platform to share his photography in a more meaningful way. “I’d love to put together a book or an exhibition that brings together all these different parts of my work and incorporates my passion for writing and painting,” he explains. “They’re all connected in some way. They all mean something to me.”

Through every challenge, Beacom’s dedication to photography remains unwavering. What began as a means of coping with loss has grown into a body of work that not only reflects his personal experiences but also tells the larger stories of the landscapes and New Mexico, or capturing the passion of lowrider culture, one thing is certain: Keaun Beacom’s photography is a reflection of the life he lives, and he’s just getting started.

Keaun Beacom, Taos Gorge Bridge (2022), digital print.

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Working from her home studio, Novak showcases her art at Indigenous markets like the Heard Museum Indian Fair and Market and the Santa Fe Indian Market. In 2024, her third year at Santa Fe Indian Market, she won a ribbon for her sculpture Coyote, recognized for its innovation and depth.

For Novak, her work is deeply personal. “These sculptures are a visual exploration of resilience and perseverance. They reflect moments in life that shape and alter us, embodying the balance between vulnerability and strength,” she explains. The juxtaposition of materials— glass for fragility and bronze for durability—mirrors her own journey. “Glass is so fragile. Bronze will last centuries.

That’s how I feel like I am.”

Opposite: Jazmin Novak’s, Endurance (2024), cast glass, aluminum, marble, and limestone.

Top: Novak with Ascending (2024), bronze, blown glass, and steel. Left: Perseverance (2024), cast glass, bronze. Right: Novak in her studio creating a cast form.

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COURTESY JAZMIN NOVAK

JAZMIN NOVAK From the first marks of prehistoric cave dwellers to the polished works of modern sculptors, animals have always captured the human imagination in art. Today, museums and galleries brim with animalistic sculptures, continuing a tradition that connects us to the natural world. But what drives an artist to contribute to this timeless canon? For Jazmin Novak, the answer lies in the Southwest landscapes she grew up in and the animals that inhabit them.

Novak’s Resilience series captures the spirit of creatures like rabbits, coyotes, squirrels, and foxes, sculpted with a remarkable blend of aesthetics and symbolism. Her distinctive process combines glass with bronze, aluminum, or stone, each medium painstakingly cast and assembled. The journey begins with a wax sculpture, where Novak meticulously captures every detail of her subject. The wax is divided into sections, which are then separately encased in a shell of plaster and silica. After the wax is steamed out, molten glass fills the hollow form and undergoes a slow two-week cooling process to prevent shattering. The bronze components are cast separately, and once all elements are complete, Novak assembles them into a seamless whole. Each sculpture takes months of dedication to create, resulting in one-of-a-kind works.

Novak, who is Diné, grew up in Albuquerque, where her creative instincts were evident from an early age. “I spent a lot of time outside, always making things with sticks and mud.

People told me I was going to be an artist because I was always building things,” she recalls. Her path began to take shape in high school when she learned to weld and later attended the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) upon her art teacher’s recommendation. There, she learned bronze casting, but it wasn’t until after graduation in 2021 that she began teaching herself the intricacies of glass casting. “I’ve had mentors who guided me, but most of it has been my own exploration—trial and error, reading textbooks, and experimenting.”

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ESTHER ELIA Immigration remains a sensitive and often polarizing topic in 2025, stirring up a mix of emotions and ideas influenced by both history and today’s realities. In the early 20th century, many immigrants to the US faced the challenge of starting over in a place where everything felt unfamiliar. To adapt, their children were often encouraged to embrace American culture, leaving behind their old languages and traditions. But for Esther Elia, a mixed Assyrian-Irish artist whose grandparents fled Iran during the Seyfo—the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocide of 1915–1916 carried out by Turks—her family’s journey was a little different.

Elia’s grandparents settled in Turlock, California, a farming community that reminded them of the land they’d left behind in Iran. “They transferred all of their skills and knowledge,” Elia says. “It ended up becoming what we call the Assyrian capital of the world. I grew up within a really vibrant Assyrian community and a strong sense of identity. That’s a huge part of who I am and the bedrock of everything I make art about.”

Her art is a mix of sculptural furniture pieces, clothing, and large-scale acrylic paintings, all of which draw on family folklore to explore the complexities of mixed ethnicity and what it means to be an Assyrian of the diaspora. While her earlier work focused on the refugee experience, her recent creations explore the ongoing pursuit of safety.

After earning her BFA at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, Elia realized she wanted an MFA to be taken seriously as an artist. In 2020, while exploring her options, she visited the University of New Mexico, one of the few programs she could see in person at the time, and found it to be a perfect fit. “They were so kind here,” she recalls. “I was looking for space to make bigger works, and New Mexico has so much space. In San Francisco, taking up space felt like you were doing something wrong. I wanted room to spread out, and UNM offered that. Plus, I was looking for an environment that wasn’t competitive, where I could learn to be an artist in a way that worked for me. And I love the people here.”

Elia enrolled in the painting and drawing program but quickly found herself drawn to new media and experimentation. “I’m most excited by new ideas; the unknown is always the most thrilling,” she says. The vastness of New Mexico inspired her to think bigger, leading her to sculpture. She took classes in various media and felt an immediate connection to clay, which resonated deeply with the landscape. Working with clay also helped her think more three-dimensionally.

A pivotal moment came when she took a Pueblo pottery class with Clarence Cruz from Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. “It was the first time I’d been in a classroom where an Indigenous professor was teaching Indigenous methods that were valued. That experience pushed me to look at my own people’s ancient works and find the through line—what we’ve always believed in, what we’ve always made. Historically, we’ve created monumental works, reflective of the Assyrian kingdom’s scale and resources.”

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Elia’s practice is deeply rooted in oral histories she has collected from her family. Her commitment to documenting these stories is part of a larger movement of contemporary Assyrian art. In her newer work, she draws from the grid structure found in rugs and Middle Eastern tiling practices to create blocky sculptures inspired by Afghan war rugs. Just as Afghan villages wove unfamiliar Soviet weapons of war into their kilims, Elia combines the ancient with the new, reflecting her diasporic environment alongside Assyrian tradition. The figures she creates are contemporary representations of Assyrian deities, hybrid creatures like lamassus and chimeras with eagle wings, lion tails, and bull bodies. These forms are imbued with ancient symbols and talismans, connecting the spiritual with the physical.

The 2020 war in Armenia, which shares deep historical ties with Assyria, has also shaped her work. The conflict sparked anger and grief for the women displaced by violence, facing heightened risks and trauma. Through her art, Elia channeled that rage, creating powerful female goddesses and warriors. These figures—muscular, multilimbed, and fierce—fight against the forces of war and oppression.

“I wanted to create imagery that speaks to what’s happening now in my community,” Elia explains. “But I also wanted to imagine a future where we are strong enough to protect ourselves, intimidating enough to deter harm, even strange enough to avoid being desired. A monument felt necessary—a pair of monumental statues representing the vastness of pain and our urgent need for protection.”

Elia has received numerous awards and honors recognizing her contributions to the art world. She was the recipient of the Svane Family Foundation Art Commission Award, the UNM Summer Dissertation Award for her Assyrian Prayer Bowl Archive project, and the Globally Engaged Research Award. Her project Native Soil took her to Iraq, where she

COURTESY ESTHER ELIA (3)

collaborated with Professor Cruz to hold clay harvesting and pottery-making workshops for Assyrian communities in Bebedeh and the surrounding areas. Elia was also awarded the Assyrian Academic Research Grant by the Assyrian Studies Association and was selected as a Facebook Artist in Residence. Additionally, she was named a SITE Santa Fe Scholar and participated in the Roswell Museum Emerging Artist Exhibition. Further enriching her experience, she took part in the Guggenheim Summer College Workshop, which culminated in her creating a mural in northern Iraq, a project she considers a love letter to her community. R

Clockwise, from top: Esther Elia, Among Monsters, installation view (2024), courtesy of Gerald Peters Contemporary. Lamashtu ou Bul Bul in the Garden (2022), acrylic on sewn textile. Elia with Palashta (2024), Mexican tile sculpture. Opposite: Esther Elia working in her home studio. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Inspired partnerships inform Santa Fe’s built environment

THIS HOME WAS DESIGNED BY ANTONIO AND MARGARET DE SOUZA SANTOS

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PHOTOS BY: KATIE JOHNSON PHOTOGRAPHY

Dos Santos

Antonio and Margaret de Souza Santos bring an international sensibility to New Mexico architecture 210

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BY JOAN CONROW | PHOTOGRAPHY BY KATE RUSSELL

T

hough the Buddha counseled “be where you are,” Santa Fe architects Antonio and Margaret de Souza Santos are inclined to adapt that sage advice to “live where you are.” By which, they mean a house that enhances a sense of rootedness to the surrounding environment— sunlight, shifting with the seasons, that filters through strategically placed windows, skylights, and clerestories; accent colors that harmonize with the near and distant landscape; interior site lines and exterior walls that draw the eye out to patios and gardens, then the mountains, and, above them, the sky.

“We use light,” Margaret explains. “Light makes space tangible and gives meaning to physical form.” Adds Tony: “Architecture is about layering, and it doesn’t stop at the walls. It encompasses the entire landscape.”

As keenly visual people, Tony and Margaret are attuned to such things. Their initial design sketches are repeatedly refined, then supplemented with handbuilt models to capture every detail that enhances that special interior-exterior relationship. The landscape and natural elements, together with functional requirements, drive the design process from the very start. “You listen to the land,” says Margaret, as Tony squirms, slightly uncomfortable with a concept sometimes described as woo-woo, but Margaret continues, undeterred. “You come to understand the topography and are guided by what it tells you.”

Tony elaborates, “If you are sensitive to the land, the sky, the environment, the climate, and you have a way of working with simple lines, you intersect them into a site with the seasons—to prevent cold, capture the light, orient to the views— coupled with the efficiencies and practicalities of the home.”

Even the reflections of walls, sky, and boulders seen here in the water feature add pleasing, ever-shifting visual elements to the de Souza Santos home. Opposite: Tony and Margaret de Souza Santos stand on the Sky Garden patio of the home they designed near Galisteo, now owned by their daughter. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Large covered outdoor living spaces, expansive glass elements, sculptural rocks, and the water feature reflect the de Souza Santoses’ aim to merge exterior and interior elements of their contemporary home into a seamless whole.

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Their visionary approach—and vision, as reflected in their home in the Galisteo Basin—wasn’t initially embraced by their Homeowners Association, which objected to raised clerestories that would illuminate the living room and studio while subduing the glare and intensity of the New Mexico sun. The HOA also rejected the red sienna color chosen for the exterior stucco, claiming it wasn’t a requisite “earth tone”—until Margaret showed them a specimen of clay in the same hue that she had collected at Cochiti Lake. “We were almost mischievous,” Tony says, recalling their efforts to persuade and pacify the HOA without compromising their proposals.

The neighbors eventually came around, with one later hiring them to design and oversee construction of a home just down the street, which the de Souza Santoses’ daughter recently bought, exercising the first right of purchase that her parents had added to their contract. Both residences are distinctive, their simple, clean lines and compatibility with the landscape setting them apart from other homes in the rural community.

Observes Margaret, “Those two houses are like brackets of the work we’ve done in Santa Fe,” which encompasses designing and building three other houses in town—including a white “mini-Modern cube” for their other daughter.

The couple, whose ideas have sometimes encountered opposition in academic and architectural circles, take it in stride.

“When you depart from the commonplace and innovate, you inevitably meet resistance, especially when it comes to the design of houses,” Tony muses. They’re confident, though not arrogant, in their dismissal of forms and styles that don’t meet their own high standards for aesthetics, functionality,

Margaret and Tony in their home studio working out the details of what they hope will be their daughter’s new house, to be built adjacent to theirs as a compound.

and architectural rigor. They’re not at all enamored of what they term the “so-called Santa Fe style,” but before the hackles start to rise, they’re referencing a mindset more than an architectural genre—a stagnancy and reluctance to innovate that tend to be grounded in sentimentality, nostalgia, and even misinformation.

“The imagery of Santa Fe style is a bee in our bonnet,” Tony says. “The closed-in plans and debased paraphernalia (such as purely decorative vigas) are anathema to us. It ignores the enormous possibilities of living in today’s world and actually prevents people from appreciating the authentic values of New Mexico’s cultural heritage and unique natural environment.

Despite the charm of the more sophisticated examples of Santa Fe style, it is difficult to think of it as an architecture for today and tomorrow.” trendmagazineglobal.com

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Outdoor garden areas surround the main de Souza Santos house and its indoor/outdoor patios.

They’ve been amused to discover that the rigid adherence to the Santa Fe style orthodoxy is sometimes grounded in mistaken views of what that concept means. When they designed a house in the Historic District, for example, the review board rejected the sharp corners and corner windows—until Margaret did some research and presented examples of both in the city’s early architecture. “Ideas about Santa Fe style are often unfounded, so they must be appealed on practical evidence,” Tony says.

The couple, who have designed and built internationally, are critical of imitation and overreliance on computers, as taught in many schools of architecture. They think it tends to kill creative thinking and perpetuate superficial imagery based on mediocre examples. As Tony sees it, “We as Americans are not visually sophisticated. We build shit 95 percent of the time.

There are some good architects in the US and the world, but they are a small minority.”

They intentionally eschewed the corporate route, choosing instead to follow their muse with an independent practice supplemented by tenured and adjunct teaching at prestigious universities. The arrangement freed them to expand upon their ideas without the necessity of constantly securing commission-based projects. “I couldn’t work in a commercial firm,” says Margaret, who did so for just one summer. “I was fortunate to find a kindred spirit in Tony. We’ve been itinerant practicing architects.”

They met at Rice University, where Tony was offered a tenured teaching position after obtaining his graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, building prolifically in 214

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southern African nations from the mid-1960s to early ‘70s, and teaching at both the University of Cape Town and Harvard University. Margaret recalls Tony, her professor, as irresistible, brilliant, and dashing—a Gauloises-smoking quick thinker who shared her passion for architecture. Born and raised in Mozambique under Portuguese rule, he was intensely individualistic—traits characteristic of children raised by political exiles to the African colonies, Margaret says. “He grew up with a notion of common humanity. That openness was quite unique.”

She was a New Yorker and an anomaly, one of the few women studying architecture at a time when 90 percent of the students were male, a figure now closer to parity.

The couple fell in love and eventually got married, but in between worked together in Mozambique and Saudi Arabia. When Mozambique gained independence from Portugal in 1975, they returned to the country of Tony’s birth, helping the revolutionary regime transform the caniços (informal reed settlements) into livable communities with running water, electricity, and selfbuilt house prototypes. Tony was employed as a United Nations consultant, while Margaret was a “cooperante” with the government. “We would literally draw in the dirt what a full-scale house would be like, even where the furniture could go, to show people how narrow and deep lots could benefit more people from the infrastructure,” Margaret says. “It was fascinating. They had just ended this brutal 12-year war for their independence. There was great excitement at the time. Primary and university education was a priority. The government was changing everything. People

The Sky Garden area of the de Souza Santos home is well-named with the azure blue above and below as reflected in the water moat that bisects the structure.

had ideas. I was a young graduate (of Rice), and I can remember Tony saying I was this raw American girl.”

They quickly adapted to daily life with Tony’s old friends in Maputo. “We lived with Tony’s childhood friend and colleague, José Forjaz, who was the National Housing director and later Mozambique’s only white minister,” Margaret says. “Apart from the intense work, the social and cultural life was amazing.” She recalls traveling in the bush with a conservationist working to save elephants and rhinos, authentic dances in tribal villages, and evenings as they played cards hosting people of many nationalities, including Scotch-drinking, Cuban cigarsmoking South African freedom fighters who recounted harrowing tales of prison and political intrigue. It was a heady time and auspicious start to a marriage and professional partnership that has spanned nearly five decades and taken them around the world, often with their two daughters in tow.

“Because of Tony’s international connections in Africa, Europe, and the US, he was asked to participate in several large projects in different places around the world,” Margaret says.

Tony is more circumspect, noting: “I’ve never sought recognition or work. People who got the big jobs knew I could deliver, and the work would be professional, done on time and on budget.”

Tony’s reputation earned him the chairmanship of architecture at the University of Toronto, where he reconstructed the curriculum. Growing weary of academic backbiting and vicious personnel conflicts, he returned to teaching and design, collaborating with Margaret as Santos Associates on several prestigious

projects. One of the first was Yanbu, a 2,500-home community to support Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning oil exports through a modern port on the Red Sea. One of three principals contracted by the Saudi Royal Commission to plan and design the first sector of the new city, Tony designed the master plan and headed the housing team from their then-home base in Athens. Margaret was part of his team and worked on multiple housing types. “It was a huge project, and very intense because of the short time frame,” Tony says. “The team grew to 110 from just six of us, and involved collaborating with several consulting firms from different countries. The project was built exactly as planned.”

Other projects took them to Tanzania, Swaziland (today’s Eswatini), Botswana, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Angola, Egypt, and back to Mozambique. Engaged by the World Bank, the UN Development Program, local governments, and various international agencies and firms, they designed urban projects and housing, a bush hospital, and the masterplan of the American University in Cairo, among others. “To evolve from being his student took years,” Margaret says of their 45-year marriage and collaboration. “I was younger and admired him so much.

It took a while for me to come into my own.”

Though they now often work across from each at a table in their home-based studio, “we have an independence as well as a collaboration,” Margaret says. “She’s an optimist and I’m a bit of a realist,” Tony interjects, as Margaret continues, “We respect each other after years of refining our work process. But it’s not without friction. We’re strong-minded people.” trendmagazineglobal.com

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CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA PROJECTS

Top: Rowan Lane, Cape Town, 1969-72. Though the houses are similar in accommodations and built with the same materials, they are quite different in plan, elevation, and details, giving each a distinct individuality.

Supported by green technology, Rowan Lane combines urban living with the amenity of a parklike natural environment.

Bottom: Rowan House, Cape Town, 1969-72. A cluster of five houses initially built for the client’s adult family on a lot with a mature garden surrounding a ruin: the house footprints, patios, and courts resulted in an interwoven fabric of open space and built form.

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Top: Stekhoven House, Cape Town, 1970–72. A five-bedroom house for a growing young family. An undulating two-story loggia protects all spaces from the sun, frames the view, and gives the upper floor bedrooms direct access to the garden.

Bottom: Iona Court, Cape Town, 1967–69. Twelve one-bed simplex and two-bed duplex flats plus a quadruplex owner’s apartment. The narrow 50-foot-by-200-foot lot required a unique design solution.

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The high-ceilinged living room of their home reveals their love of books and is also the perfect spot to display more of their collection of fine arts and crafts. Notice the small “keyhole” window on the upper left that helps to illuminate the ceiling.

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Use of frames within frames, and a mix of negative space and glass are common design elements of the de Souza Santos home.

Below: The main axis of the de Souza Santos home is filled with accents like an indoor atrium for plants and abundant shelves for the couple’s collection of folk art, while playing with one’s sense of space and depth by use of glass.

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The dining room of the de Souza Santos home is both intimate and, with its large glazed areas, expansive; the couple’s granddaughter, for one, seems drawn to the great outdoors!

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The airy nature of the de Souza Santos home includes the sleek Italian kitchen that opens directly into the dining area, allowing those cooking to interact freely with their guests. Note the lovely handmade baskets above the cupboards.

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The west spine of the de Souza Santos home ends with the living area to the left, the water feature extending out to the landscape beyond, and the main dining area and outdoor Sky Garden on the right.

“Architecture takes over your life,” Tony says. “It’s not a vocation. It’s your life.” Adds Margaret, “There’s great freedom in living your profession. There’s mental freedom. Each project is a new challenge with different constraints and possibilities.”

During a project, Tony visits the building site several days a week, going over the details with their trusted independent builder.

In addition to their architectural projects, they are currently writing a book entitled Building in Place, a reflection on their design process and the importance of integrating landscape/site and the structure. It encompasses much of what they’ve learned over their years of traveling widely to work, study, and view the designs of architects they admire. “You travel to experience, to see, to comprehend buildings and spaces in the time and places in which they were designed,” Tony says. “That is a fundamental part of being an architect. Young students believe they can create masterpieces, and some intuitively understand place, form, light, and shadow. But for most people, even experienced architects, it takes time to look with critical eyes. And not just look, but see buildings and places in a historical context. Margaret and I have spent considerable time looking with purpose.”

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video documentaries on various noteworthy figures, such as Federico da Montefeltro, the 15th-century humanist Duke of Urbino. “We don’t copy historical architecture,” Margaret says.

“What you learn from historical architecture is transformed by living in modern times.” While they staunchly resist imitation, the seeds that sprouted while living in dramatic landscapes and soaking up centuries-old structures impacted their process of design, resulting in an entirely new genre: modern, elegant, livable, place-based. “That translation of the old to the new is in a way what we’re trying to do in Santa Fe,” Tony says.

The couple acquired their property in Galisteo Basin 18 years ago while living in Princeton, New Jersey, when Margaret was teaching at Temple University and Tony was a professor of architecture and founding director of the pioneering Interdisciplinary Master of Infrastructure Planning program at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. They’d discovered New Mexico and the allure of the high desert landscape and light decades earlier while collecting Native American pottery and old kachina “dolls” that are informally displayed in their home alongside carvings and sculpture by Makonde tribespeople and other artifacts. Their collections also include elaborate processions of ceramic Portuguese folk-art characters that were the subject of a Canadian Broadcast Corporation documentary;

The de Souza Santos family and friends gather regularly during the warm months of the year in the Sky Garden, their outdoor living room, to socialize, dine, and enjoy the views and fresh air. Breaks in exterior walls act like window frames on choice views.

colorful dishware and textiles; Mexican retablos; watercolors by Margaret’s mother; a Bolivian miner’s mask; fragile Ndebele beadwork; and hundreds of books. It’s an eclectic mix, but it works, telling the tale of their unique interests and lives.

“I’ve got nothing against interior designers,” Tony says.

“They have to earn a living, too. But so often what they’ve done expresses nothing of the people who live there.” The opposite is true in the de Souza Santoses’ house, where their “accumulations,” as they like to call them, are as captivating as the architectural details that create a sense of movement and space that enlarges the structure beyond its 3,000 square feet.

The floorplan is open, with no corridors, yet the living, dining, and cooking areas feel distinct. “Doors for us are just privacy devices,” Tony says. “Interior and exterior visual and spatial connections are paramount in our designs.”

They splurge on architectural glazing that is strategically placed. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame the grandeur of the Ortiz Mountains and very small windows allow visual continuity along the horizon line. Multiple glass panes bring light in while drawing the eye out to the landscape, which is experienced throughout the house. A long banco beneath a west-facing high clerestory reflects the harsh western light onto a wall that is solid, save for a tiny window. “We work with datums—3 feet, 5 feet, 7 feet, 9

feet, 11 feet, etc.—which constitute site lines, ceiling heights, and exterior walls for outdoor living spaces while establishing design continuities and proportions,” Tony explains. “You walk into a space and there’s something about the proportions, the views and vistas that allow it to expand beyond the space. People have said they feel good in our house.” Adds Margaret: “It awakens something in visitors. It makes them feel alive, comforted, connected to the natural light and exterior gardens and vistas.

We have always used architectural elements, not decoration, to achieve an effect.”

They’ve created something similar, though on a smaller scale, at their daughter’s house down the road. In both homes, the front doors are painted red—a de Souza Santos trademark—and light plays a starring role. “It’s not decorative, but experiential,” Tony explains. “As natural light changes, new impressions come along that are cumulative in your mind. The movement of the person and the sun are all happening simultaneously as if in a subconscious dance.”

“We choreograph movement of people through space,” Margaret elaborates. “Experiencing architecture is a bit like seeing a movie. But instead of the camera recording the experience and the spectator passively watching on the screen, in architecture, the spectator is the camera.” R trendmagazineglobal.com

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HOW WE LIVE

BY BRIAN BIXBY | PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBERT RECK

Rolling S Rock House Jeff Maul and Lori Harnar build a striking, novel home and life together on a hillside perch above Santa Fe

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tep into the world of Lori Harnar and Jeff Maul, the proud owners of a recently constructed architectural marvel—their distinctive Santa Fe home nestled into the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

The house, a stunning example of contemporary architecture, is a product of a creative collaboration between Santa Fe-based architect Michael Krupnick and builder Maul, who also played a significant role in its design.

It is characterized by sleek lines and innovative use of materials, such as its extensive use of glazing. About 45 percent of the structure is glass, the maximum allowed by building codes. This design choice seamlessly brings the outdoors indoors, creating an environment that feels connected to nature even when you are inside.

“Now that we’ve built this house, we sometimes look at each other and can’t believe it,” Maul explains as a tour of the home unfolds. “Inside, the light changes spectacularly. When there’s snow on the ground, the reflection casts a soft blue light on the ceiling. Sunsets cast the house in a firelight, and nightlight reveals sculptural shadows and design details. It’s pretty incredible.”

Opposite: Owner, designer, builder, and artist Jeff Maul designed the steel sculpture to gently guide the visitor to the entry door.

Top: Lori Harnar sets the live edge walnut dining table; in the foreground are the “living” rocks that helped determine the home’s name. Sailboat rigging informs the architectural design. The table, hung from stainless-steel cables, rocks like a boat at anchor and the large translucent pivot door, beyond, is curved like sails on a ship underway. Bottom: Maul lights the wood-burning stove, which provides enough radiant heat for most winter days. trendmagazineglobal.com

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After a tour, we settle down and they offer up some details about their past and how they became a couple. “Lori and I have known each other for about 30 years,” explains Maul, “and I was at her and Jeff Harnar’s wedding 23 years ago.

We reconnected ten years ago. Time flies!”

Jeff Harnar was a renowned Santa Fe-based architect whose legacy work includes the remodel of the Jean Cocteau Cinema, the Santa Fe Children’s Museum, numerous Santa Fe homes and more. He passed away in 2006. Maul was very close to both Jeff and Lori, and in the years that followed Jeff’s death Maul and Lori Harnar found solace and strength in each other, embarking on a journey of love and support. Both have built, owned, and lived in homes designed by Jeff Harnar, and his aesthetic influenced their design choices, material selections, and construction techniques of the house they now share.

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Their home is filled with one-of-akind ideas, inventions, and prototypes, all f lowing together with a Zen-like coolness. Early in the design process, Maul connected with Mike Krupnick of Krupnick Studio Architecture. “He is a great architect and is open to collaboration, which makes our partnership very effective,” Maul notes. Krupnick’s wealth of experience and eagerness to collaborate were pivotal to the house’s success. Where Maul’s design and architectural knowledge fell short, Krupnick’s expertise filled the gap. Together, they crafted a design that exceeded everyone’s expectations.

After a year of design work, a home emerged that features a freestanding, cantilevered patio; and a ceiling incorporating a Cordeck pan that extends through a glass wall, supported by 11 I-beams and 22 columns—a cost-effective pan-building process Jeff Harnar

introduced to Maul in 2005. Another key feature is the home’s 16,000 pounds of concrete thermal mass in the ceiling above the 900-square-foot Great Room.

This maintains comfortable temperatures year-round with radiant heating and cooling, coupled with a wood-burning stove and an evaporative cooler. The design also supports cable-hanging furniture, such as a walnut dining table and custom shelving.

The guest room hides a completely novel feature: a ceiling-mounted bed!

With the press of a button, a bed descends to the floor, leaving visitors openmouthed. “This was Jeff’s vision,” Harnar notes. “When we met with the architect, I said, ‘I want a workout room,’” but they

Harnar and Maul get to work on some creative cooking, inspired in part by the steel tile and live edge plank counter Harnar made, which echoes the custom walnut cabinets.

also needed a guest bedroom. “So it became a versatile room,” continues Maul.

“We call it the flex room. We can use it as a workout space, and when guests visit, we can convert it into a guest room.” Harnar adds, “Jeff comes up with creative solutions, so we all get what we want.”

Custom solutions were developed for many features around the home, including the dining room table. Initially, the couple received a quote for a museumquality piece, but it was beyond their budget. They were then introduced to a man who salvages wood from Mennonite barns in Kansas. They purchased stunning black walnut pieces from him, which now grace their home’s dining table. The true value of these rough, unpolished pieces lies in their history and the stories they tell. Krupnick encouraged Maul to leave the wood unfinished, saying, “We should keep it rough because this house needs a bit of an edge.”

Walkways and paths meander around the house, branching out to the adjoining hills and other points and creating a living compound beyond the home. In fact, 30 percent of the living space under roofing is outdoors. This roof can collect up

Maul watering the lichen-covered granite rocks found on the building site. Top: The stainless-steel cable-hung bed gently sways in a summer breeze.

Middle: “Glamping” at its best! The outdoor feel of the primary bedroom welcomes the distant Jemez Mountain sunset and full-moon views from the hanging bed. Bottom: Spinning, yoga, stretching, or guest bedroom? The bed lifts to the ceiling to create a truly inspired, flexible room. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Under the cantilevered roof and behind the retractable shade walls, lounging and watching the sunset are what to do on the main portal at the end of the day.

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to 30,000 gallons of rainwater annually for gardening and food production, and the 400-square-foot covered back patio can be enclosed to serve as an atrium greenhouse.

Harnar mentions that she wants to get more into gardening now that they have completed their outdoor garden space.

However, their dog, Daisy, is the most enthusiastic about it. Daisy has already been eating strawberries right off the plants.

“I think I haven’t dived into gardening as much in the past because growing up on a farm in Kansas and having to do it as a kid felt like work—like taking out the trash.

I’d rather go for a bike ride.” But she vows she and Daisy are now up to the task.

Harnar is an avid cyclist who trains year-round and rides multiple times a week. She is now preparing for her next journey. Two years ago, she took Maul on a 400-mile trip along the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O Canal Towpath from Pittsburgh to Washington, DC. This spring, she hopes to ride the 400-mile Erie Canalway trail, which will include a visit to Niagara Falls. The couple have switched to e-bikes, which she prefers because “you can put more pedal to the metal!” Bicycling is about enjoying the journey, she insists. She emphasizes that even though they travel long distances, they take the time to appreciate the sights along the way, visit historical spots, and dine at local restaurants. “We ride about four to five hours a day, depending on our plans or how fast we need to go. We always stop to visit galleries, museums, or anything else that catches our interest,” she says. “It’s all about having fun!”

She has a similar philosophy for her living spaces: “I want it to be fun. We can host parties and large families here.

The house flows really well and is a great place to entertain.” Her eyes light up as she shows me a brightly colored wood sculpture and other unique curiosities that Maul has lovingly arranged on the living room shelves. “I’m truly grateful that he collects these things when we travel,”

she says. Each object tells a different story, including several sailing trips to Cuba.

Maul’s resourcefulness shines when it comes to working within a budget. “One thing about being on a budget is that if we couldn’t find something we liked, we built it ourselves, and it turned out much better than anything on the market, whether it’s a toilet paper holder, steel wall tiles, hanging beds, or interior doors,” he says. “I even fabricated our carpet. I took the basic carpet to my shop, cut it, contacted Cowgirl Carpet Binding from Albuquerque, and they helped me with the finishing touches.

Like many elements of the house, it required a lot of thought to design a carpet that fit this room, and went around the rocks.” Yes, rocks.

This is another of the bold design choices that characterizes the home: the two moss-covered rocks in the living room, each approximately six feet wide.

“The large rocks were here when I first visited the lot,” Maul explains. “I recorded their locations, and when we cleared the lot, I removed them but took care of them.

During construction, I placed them back in their original positions.”

The couple is considering naming this house Rolling Rock because the terrain is rugged and steep, and these giant boulders came tumbling down long ago from the ridge above. “We periodically water the rocks with rainwater that we collect from our cisterns out front,” adds Maul.

“We drench the rocks every few months to keep the lichen alive.” Adds Harnar, “Yes, and when you water the rocks, they light up and turn a bright green. I have to lay down towels to protect the carpet, then flood the floor as part of the process. It’s like a mini-indoor rainforest, with the rocks coming to life in vibrant green hues.”

As our tour of Rolling Rock concludes, we stop in the Great Room to take in the breathtaking view one more time.

We look forward to seeing what Maul and Krupnick Studio Architecture build together next. R

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ARTIST STUDIO

BY ANYA SEBASTIAN | PORTRAITS BY AUDREY DERELL

CHRISTINE CASSANO

Taking the Unseen and Making It Seen

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hristine Cassano is impossible to define as an artist. Painter, sculptor, ceramicist, jeweler, forager, philosopher, innovator, explorer... she embraces them all. There is no division between the right brain and the left brain, art and science; she engages both simultaneously. “I’m completely captivated by science and how it explains the unseen forces that shape our world,” she says, “but I’m also interested in philosophy and how our senses experience the world, how we perceive things, distinct from reality.”

In order to fully understand and appreciate Cassano’s exceptional artistic creativity, it is important to understand how she herself sees things. She was born with a neurological condition called synesthesia, which causes people to experience more than one sense simultaneously, such as tasting colors or seeing shapes when listening to music. In other words, the stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to an involuntary experience in another. “For me, sound is an incredibly visual experience,” she says, “meaning I get to watch sound move in 3-D form and I get to see it transcend into different shapes and colors. So that condition, combined with my interest in philosophy and science, is why I’m doing the work that I’m exploring now.”

Inspired by her interest in making sound visible, Cassano creates “sound paintings,” which also represent perfectly the connectedness she sees between art and science. “But I didn’t want to make the work about what I see,” she explains. “I wanted to take the idea from a scientific perspective.” That inspired her to obtain a range of signal waves from outer space, recorded and provided by astronomical observatories, which she projects onto an art panel surface,

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and with the aid of special sound equipment, converts into physical vibrations.

She then places a small, hand-crafted bronze sculpture, dipped in paint, onto the surface, where the vibrations cause it to move across the panel, creating trails, pools, and formations of sonic patterns, all shaped by sound. “I wanted to use information from the universe, the cosmos,” she says, “and make that visible.”

As a finishing touch, she goes into a meditative state and intuitively draws lines to connect the markings.

In her spacious studio in Eldorado, just outside of Santa Fe, the bronze mini-sculpture can be seen replicated countless times in white porcelain.

Cassano has named these forms noēma, a Greek word meaning a mental object; content of a thought. Formed individually

COURTESY CHRISTINE CASSANO (2)

Left: Transmission (2022), circuit boards and mirrors mounted on stems and tethered with copper twine on black panel. Top: Insterstellar Undertow (2023), another sound painting of gravitational waves of a black hole merger recorded in space, oil and acrylic on panel. Opposite: The artist is superimposed over her work Mapping Oscillations (2023), a “sound painting” of vibration acoustics from electromagnetic frequencies recorded on earth and in space, acrylic and metallic pencil on panel.

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by hand, their biomorphic shapes are primarily suggestive of bones, and, as she explains, there is a reason for that. “About 20 years ago I was involved in an accident that dislocated my hip and fractured my pelvis. I had a long recovery, followed by reconstructive surgery, so this form came out of a catharsis of dealing with that injury, working through the pain, and thinking about how I was going to be put back together.”

Since then, the noēma have become a much more abstracted version of themselves, and they are now objects for meditation. “I make thousands of them,” Cassano says, “and use them in many different capacities.” Although no two 238

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are alike, the noēma are very versatile; they can be interlocked, arranged in stacks, or linked to create larger biomorphic formations, all without the need for any kind of glue. Bronze noēma can be assembled to create suspended, kinetic sound installations.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the extraordinary range of materials Cassano uses in her artwork.

They include porcelain, wax, bronze, concrete, paint, glass, mirror, copper, clay, and even her hair. “I have a real curiosity about materials and what they can bring to the piece I’m working on,” she says. “I just pick up a material and know what to do with it. I don’t know

where that comes from, but I started out as a painter and just knew how to paint.”

She does have to learn the technical parts, however, such as how to work with all her various media, but says that during the almost four years she and her husband have lived in Santa Fe, she is lucky enough to have made friends with artists working in those fields. “If I need help with a technical question, I have resources,” she explains. “The rest really comes down to having a curiosity about the material and how to work with it.”

Cassano in her studio stacking hand-formed porcelain noēma, a work in progress for an upcoming installation. Opposite: Speculative Networks (2024), bronze relief panel mounted on steel plate.

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in order to regroup them in a completely different way, creating an abstract work of art.

The third approach of Cassano’s artwork consists of what she calls speculative networks, created in wax and cast in bronze. Impossible to convey in words, these bronze panels are heavily influenced by her love for aerial views. With deep family ties to aviation—her father was a pilot—she began photographing human-made marks on the earth below from her airplane window seats. As she explains it, “The theme inherent in this kind of work is the idea of simultaneous expression, bringing together circuitry and aerial views, and combining them with the human patterns we leave on the Earth’s surface: cities, cultural symbols, urban sprawls. I see these as components in conversation with each other. It could

Wu Wei, lost wax casting of bronze noēma on steel base (2024), edition 1/1.

be a language from the future or the past, from an ancient world or a future world, or a map of the unknown.”

Cassano’s art and installations are held by various private, permanent, and corporate art collections throughout the United States and abroad, including Wexford Science and Technology, Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, and multiple lobbies of Marriott Corporation hotels. As for what the future has in store for her, Cassano says she feels very comfortable with where she is right now. “I just want to spend more time with these three approaches, explore them, and go deeper with each one, and see where that leads.” R

COURTESY CHRISTINE CASSANO

Cassano was born and raised in Virginia, where she attended art school, and even then she had no interest in producing realistic images. What she was drawn to, and deeply influenced by, was Surrealism, the anti-establishment art movement that revolutionizes human experience by replacing a rational vision of life with one that asserts the power of the unconscious mind. That rejection of traditional art values is something she has continued to embrace throughout her career.

Something else she has always been drawn to is circuitry—and computer circuit boards and motherboards feature in quite a different kind of art form.

“I’m fascinated by different connection points,” she says, “and I spent years studying circuitry.” She acquires boards, both new and used, and dismantles them

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VENUES

BY BILL NEVINS | PHOTOGRAPHY BY LINDA CARFAGNO

Just Listen Four outstanding Northern New Mexico performance spaces where the music is the prime focus

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isten. It’s hard to do in the buzz and hum of everyday life. Yet close listening, especially to music and the spoken word, is a pleasure and, for so many of us, a necessity. Some otherwise enjoyable performance venues such as breweries and bars just don’t provide ideal conditions for intimate listening. Fortunately, New Mexico is blessed with several venues where the primary focus in on the audience hearing the music and words being offered and where small audiences are a virtue. Recently, Trend visited four such fine close-listening spaces.

A full and attentive house enjoys some fine dining, and the excellent acoustics of Unit B in Santa Fe. Sax player Glenn Kostur, drummer John Trentacosta, and vocalist Hillary Smith (seated) perform as a jazz quintet, along with guitarist Michael Anthony and bassist Jon Gagan (not pictured).

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The Outpost Performance Space: “It’s not just business, it’s family” In 1988, jazz musician Tom Guralnick founded the nonprofit Outpost Productions, Inc., which runs Albuquerque’s Outpost Performance Space, New Mexico’s longest-established listening room.

Guralnick, age 74, is still Outpost’s executive director today. Trend visited Guralnick in late December in the Outpost at 210 Yale Boulevard SE in Albuquerque.

With public support via memberships, grants, endowments, and donations, Outpost presents eclectic performances at this 160-seat, fully accessible location and at larger venues in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Outpost owns its building, which houses a state-of-the-art sound system, a video system, two Steinway pianos, and professional-quality instruments and equipment. Outpost’s education program includes jazz improvisation classes for adults and youth. Local visual artists display in the Inpost Artspace on the walls of the listening room.

Outpost presents a diverse array of artists ranging from international music stars such as Zakir Hussain and Rahim AlHaj, to jazz legends like Dave Brubeck and Wayne Shorter, to folk singers like Odetta and Eliza Gilkyson, and spoken word artists such as Quincy Troupe, Lisa Gill, and Buddy Wakefield. Outpost’s New Mexico Jazz Festival in Albuquerque and Santa Fe since 2006 has presented McCoy Tyner, Sonny Rollins, Cassandra Wilson, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and Pharoah Sanders. Rock and hip-hopfocused “Roust the House” nights and annual Albuquerque Slam Poetry Championships delight younger audiences.

Guralnick had both good news and sad news to share with Trend. First, the good news. “We have decided that instead of moving, we will renovate and expand this building, with construction to begin in fall 2025.” He continues, “The big change is that we will have an Education Center wing. Performances and our classes won’t have to share space as they do now. We’ll expand our educational and concert offerings.”

He smiles at this prospect, but tears come to his eyes as he tells us of the very recent death of Hussain, the world-

famous master of the tabla who performed for Outpost most recently in October 2024. “We presented him 15 times over the years. He was one of the greatest percussionists in the world and my dear friend,” Guralnick says, brightening a bit as he tells us he is planning his own eventual retirement and is optimistic about the future of Outpost. “Outpost is the community of people here: staff and volunteers, artists, audience, and students. This is family, not just business. Thirty-seven years now and some people come to every show! I started this place when I was 40, and much of the audience has aged with me, but Outpost will improve when a younger generation takes over.”

Asked what shows over the years he has enjoyed, Guralnick smiles again, and replies, “Max Gomez just last week did a great show and Mike Seeger gave us a memorable concert. I have produced great shows by Sun Ra and Woody Shaw, and Art Pepper. I’m thrilled that we are soon going to be releasing, in collaboration with KUNM and the Jazz Workshop, a recording of our 1979 Cecil Taylor concert at the KiMo.” Looking back to his own pioneering work securing NEA and other grant funding, Guralnick says, “You know something must support the music.

Historically, many jazz artists have per-

formed in bars and nightclubs and still do. I chose to offer an alternative and go the nonprofit route with Outpost, supporting the artists, paying them well, and providing a venue without distractions.

We have great shows, which due to the venue’s intimate size, sell a limited number of tickets, augmenting income with memberships and donations.

In 2025, he says he is looking forward to the New Mexico Jazz Festival, to be presented at Unit B in Santa Fe, where 90-year-old poet and jazz historian A.B. Spellman will present his composition “Passion for Bach and Coltrane,” with the Harlem String Quartet and Imani Winds, featuring Spellman’s daughter Toyin Spellman-Diaz playing oboe. Guralnick is a former touring experimental jazz star who came to New Mexico in 1977 and fell in love with this state, but who has not recently performed his own music. He reveals to Trend that he has begun playing his tenor sax at home. “I just may play a bit more on the stage here someday— after I slow down here as director at Outpost,” he says with a wink.

The founder of New Mexico’s original listening venue, and an accomplished musician in his own right and stalwart producer of the regional music scene, Tom Guralnick, in a hallway at his Outpost Performance Space in Albuquerque. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Mary’s Place: “It’s all just a gift” “Our commitment to the music of Mary’s Place is for the community,” Mary Domito tells Trend in an early January visit. Since 2023, her sprawling retail facility Taos Lifestyle has also been home to the listening room named Mary’s Place. “We have a dedicated f loor space for music performances, poetry readings, book signings, and the like, seating 130, and a high-quality sound system,” she notes.

It is located on Taos’s main thoroughfare, Paseo del Pueblo Sur, in the space of the former El Taoseño restaurant.

Domito recalls, “I saw that the Archuleta family had this restaurant property for sale. Although the COVID shutdown at first seemed a disaster for me and I was close to filing bankruptcy, my business rebounded as the mattress industry [her primary product] boomed with Americans wanting more comfortable sleeping spaces. This is my magnum opus,” she declares, noting how she saved many aspects of this building. “I slated the roof, redid the f loors, opened up the beams, and preserved everything I could. I even kept the signs from El Taoseño on the inside walls. There are peoples’ memories here, which I felt a duty to honor.”

Domito’s career path led her to create Mary’s Place. “I got into stereo sales and then a job in San Francisco as a district manager for Mattress Discounters. Everyone calls me Mattress Mary and I love it!”

Her music performance presentations began as a charitable fund-raising effort. “Fifteen years ago, I founded the Dog Days of Summer concerts to benefit Stray Hearts Animal Shelter with music shows at KTAO [the local FM radio station]. Our first concerts were by Max Gomez and by the Bone Orchard band.

In 10 years, we raised $175,000. Then I got the music show ‘buzz’ and started reaching out to agents to book concerts such as Dave Mason and Judy Collins.”

She adds, “Music is so great; it is medicine.” She tells how she added a gift shop to the store and then decided a music room would also help build community goodwill and bring in business. “We renovated and Eric Jackson, my sound guy, helped me buy excellent used equipment

so that I have professional-level sound here. The acoustics are fabulous. I named it after the Springsteen song ‘Mary’s Place,’ which includes the line, ‘Meet me at Mary’s place, we’re gonna have a party!’

We want everyone to feel comfortable. We offer soft drinks, beer, and nonalcoholic beer for free. Our commitment to the music of Mary’s Place is for the community. It is a good advertising investment.

All the ticket sales go to the artists. It’s all just a gift. I chalk it up to public relations.”

Domito selects the acts to perform.

“I have to like them and they have to be good,” she explains. “I want diversity and quality. Most shows come to me through agents. Some shows are booked directly from the artists. I get national artists like Tish Hinojosa, Bill Miller, Robert Mirabal.

There is a place for me in this business because there is so much young talent coming up. While the big concerts at the TCA [Taos Community Auditorium] and in Kit Carson Park are great, I offer a more intimate experience here, where audience members can meet the performers and chat.”

She cites some planned highlights for 2025. “We will have Jason Dea West in April; The Rifters in May; Terri Hendrix, Lloyd Maines, Aaron LaCombe, and Lisa The action gets underway for live music listening and dancing at Mary’s Place. Top: Founder and owner of Mary’s Place in Taos, Mary Domito, warms up for a show on the punching bag with her husband and gallery owner and artist Mark Gould, along with musicians Vito Trujillo Jr., on left, and John Vargas, right.

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VENUES Morales in June; and more music acts to be announced, and some spoken word events.”

Our visit ends with a guided tour of her gift shop and a sharing of Domito’s whimsical plans to create an imaginary Taos State University to celebrate the slogan she invented: A Taos State of Mind.

“I will be the dean of students,” she says with a smile.

Unit B at Chocolate Maven: “A lot of serendipity” Dharm Skotting-Segal laughs when asked how his dining/listening room venue Unit B at 821 West San Mateo Road in Santa Fe came into existence. “It was a lot of serendipity! It was never a business thing,” he explains. Talking with Trend in mid-January, Skotting-Segal reveals that a listening room was his longtime dream, which persisted through his family’s successful establishment of their bakery Chocolate Maven. “We bought the building in 2006, including this Unit B vacant space, which once had been a children’s theater,” he says. “We bought a piano, then we renovated the space to fit the piano and a stage. We installed a sound system, stage lighting, and comfortable seating. It’s a great stage to play on that sounds good, and where the musicians know they will sound good, and one with an active connection between performers and audience. We did a lot of work to make the space sound good for both the audience and the musicians, because

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when musicians are having a good experience, that turns into a better performance.

It opens up the possibility of that elusive magical synergy between performer and audience—when the audience can really engage with what is going on onstage, and performers are feeling the positive vibe from the audience. It’s very tangible as a performer. And that magic is what we are trying to achieve in Unit B. It’s rare and it’s wonderful.”

After a recent dinner concert by the brilliant Irish band Seanchai and the Unity Squad, the writer can attest that the feeling at Unit B is indeed “magical.” And the food is delicious.

Skotting-Segal credits a “team of brilliant women” for guiding his Unit B dream into reality: his wife Cassie Ramos, plus

Top: DJ Christina Swilley gets the crowd on its feet on the polished hardwood planks prior to a live music performance at Unit B in Santa Fe. Middle: James Raymond (son of the late, great musician David Crosby) on the piano, and drummer Mark Clark often perform with a changing cast of other players at Unit B. Botttom: A lively crowd takes to the floor for a performance at Paradiso.

their daughters Harirai and Saibi Khalsa, and marketing specialist Lisa Madison.

Unit B’s musical presentations began by hosting the New Mexico Jazz Festival in September 2024, and it will return in 2025. “I love jazz, but our music here won’t just be jazz,” he explains. “Our standard is high quality, such as the fine young players in the jazz group However.

We present Americana, Latin, R&B, DJs, and even Celtic music, stand-up comedy, and spoken word. We have hosted twostep dancing with Half Broke Horses.

This summer we will have a classical crossover group and a Ukrainian band.

And I may just do a solo performance [he plays the tenor saxophone] myself there if people keep asking me.”

The group Quintessential—Bob Fox on piano, Mark Clark on drums, Alex Murzyn on sax, Gordy Johnson on bass, and Robert Beasley on trumpet—with venue owner Lyra Barron at Paradiso in Santa Fe.

He plans to seek nonprofit status for Unit B and grants in the future. Unit B is open Thursday through Saturday evenings. “I am hoping people will come for the dining experience as much as the music,” he adds. “The dinner we offer is exceptional [everything from soups and salads to filet mignon in black mole or porcini truffle ravioli] and we serve alcohol, all from New Mexico brewers, wineries, and distillers.”

Skotting-Segal feels that Unit B is part of a welcome new surge of live music in Santa Fe. “Venues are popping up and each one helps. In this time when there is so much turmoil, art is vital. It’s what we can do that delights.”

Paradiso: “A real awakening” Lyra Barron tells Trend when we chat in mid-January that her cannabis dispensary business “birthed” the listening room/community space Paradiso at 903 Early Street in Santa Fe. “We moved into the building in 2012, and bought the warehouse next door a few years later,” she says, “but we had to clean it up and renovate it. I bought a bar that had been a western movie prop, put in a stage, tile floors, accessible bathrooms, and chandeliers. It’s forever a work in progress.”

She says Paradiso’s present formation opened in July 2023. “We started with small shows and they’ve grown into a

great variety. Jazz, world music, Latin, salsa, belly dancing, reggae, and even some rock, cabaret, comedy, and spoken word. I focus on New Mexico artists.

We have a digital recording system and I give the artists recordings they can release: Live from Paradiso.” Barron also says that she is proud to host screenings and special events at Paradiso for the annual Santa Fe Film Festival.

She continues, “I love to dance myself so we have one of Santa Fe’s largest dance floors. We also host screenings and events for the annual Santa Fe Film Festival, and we present students—who always get free admission—in our Emerging Artists series.”

Barron herself is an accomplished New Age-style recording and performing musician. “My inspiration for Paradiso was to serve the community and to coax myself back up onstage. At our Hurricane Helene benefit here, I performed for my first time in 20 years.”

Barron sees Paradiso’s alcohol-free policy as advancing positive change.

“People are moving away from alcohol and are more into healthful herbal cocktails, some of which are a bit mood-enhancing and relaxing. I am striving to change the paradigm. These are difficult times, with dark things happening but there’s also a real awakening. I just want to be part of that.” R trendmagazineglobal.com

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Venison carpaccio at Arroyo Vino sets the stage for elegant dining.

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Beyond Chile

By Ellen Ritscher Sackett

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Owner, founder, and chef Ahmed Obo of Jambo.

Top: Jambo’s black bean and sweet potato soup, its first winner of the Souper Bowl Award for the Santa Fe establishment.

TOP: RICHARD WHITE. BOTTOM: KITTY LEAKEN

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conversation about New Mexico cuisine is bound to begin with chile—referring to the state’s plentiful red and green peppers and the spices and sauces that its devotees can’t get enough of.

Which is better? Who has the best? These are topics of endless discussion where the consensus is to agree to disagree.

But chile is only one facet of what makes New Mexican cuisine distinctive. The region’s centuries-old Indigenous, Spanish, Mexican, Hispanic, and Anglo traditions are all powerful influences on today’s culinary trends. It’s not uncommon, for example, to see a sprinkle of nuts from the state’s official tree, the piñon pine, adding texture to a salad, or a medley of “the three sisters”—the Native American tradition of planting squash, corn, and beans together.

New Mexico’s fine-dining scene took off in the late 1980s, when a celebrity chef-restaurateur, already well established in California, brought his love for bold Latin and Mexican flavors to Santa Fe. Mark Miller opened Coyote Café in 1987 to rave reviews. As “the father of modern

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Chef Eduardo Rodriguez of Zacatlán. Left: The dining at Zacatlán pleases both the palate and the eye, as in this arrangement of Lubina al Posole Verde (branzino with green posole).

Southwestern cuisine,” Miller paved the way for others to build upon traditions and create their own culinary styles that reflect their backgrounds. Such innovations have garnered national attention, as New Mexican chefs and restaurants rack up James Beard Foundation nominations and awards.

One such person is Eduardo Rodriguez, who started out washing dishes at Geronimo and moved up the line to eventually become the executive chef at Coyote Café. In 2020, Rodriguez opened Zacatlán in Santa Fe’s Railyard District to share the culinary traditions he grew up with in Mexico with his own Southwestern-infused flavors. Every plate feels like a gift, elegantly presented with care. His are meals to savor, and his achievements have been duly recognized multiple times by the James Beard Foundation, including the restaurant being named in 2022 as a semifinalist for Best New Restaurant.

Another notable Santa Fe institution is chef-owner Joseph Wrede’s warm and inviting corner restaurant in Santa Fe’s Guadalupe/Railyard district, Joseph’s Culinary Pub. Wrede showcases his artistry by combining clean flavors, colors, and textures in ways that are often described as playful and adventurous, borrowing from global traditions.

The restaurant is almost always buzzy, the service friendly, and diners need to plan ahead to nab a table. In 2025, Wrede joined two other local restaurateurs, including Escondido’s Fernando Ruiz and Christian Pontiggia, from the former

Sassella’s, as semifinalists in the James Beard Awards Best Chef: Southwest category.

For something really different in the City Different, visit Jambo Café, a casual dining spot found in a strip mall shopping center on Cerrillos Road. Its award-winning chef and owner Ahmed Obo is originally from an island off the coast of Kenya. Obo’s homestyle cuisine is a fusion of Afro-Caribbean with Arab, Indian, and Mediterranean influences. The intoxicating aromatic spices envelop diners the moment they walk through the door. Specialties include Caribbean-spiced slow-cooked oxtail, goat stew, and allnatural grilled jerk chicken as well as plenty of gluten-free and vegan options. Not to miss is the curried black bean sweet potato soup.

One of Santa Fe’s most popular steakhouses is Market Steer, which moved from the Hotel St. Francisl to its new Washington Street location last year. Owners-partners Kristina Goode and Kathleen Crook brought their own brand to their new venture that clearly reflects their backgrounds. Goode, a Texan through and through, made hospitality her career, and Crook, a native New Mexican, raised cattle growing up and was a world champion breakaway roper before becoming a nationally recognized chef. As one might expect, the menu leans heavily on prime steaks and cuts paired with a variety of butters, glazes, and sauces as well as seafood options. For lighter bites and crafted cocktails, grab a seat in The Tack Room during happy hour. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Left: A longhorn cattle painting appropriately commands the dining room at Market Steer.

Middle: Prime filet, steak tartare, and roasted cauliflower at Market Steer.

Bottom: An endive salad at Arroyo Vino.

Another Santa Fe favorite is Palace. This downtown location has been through multiple incarnations during its nearly 200 illustrious years of existence, famously as Doña Tules’s gambling hall and bordello with saloon and opulent hotel in the 1800s, then the very popular Palace restaurant, and then Señor Lucky’s, sporting a mechanical bull. Since it opened as a traditional steakhouse in 2021, a slew of renowned chefs has graced Palace’s kitchen, most recently classically trained Angel Franco from Puerto Rico.

Franco revamped the menu; in fact, the only steak on the menu is a Basque-style bone-in rib eye for two. Rather, the offerings lean more on poultry, fish, seafood, house-made 252

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pasta dishes, and vegetarian fare. Of note is the restaurant’s formidable wine list, curated by sommelier Kristina Bustamante, and the monthly themed pairings of wine with appetizers.

Head west from Santa Fe toward Las Campanas to visit Arroyo Vino. This New American restaurant includes a delightful wine shop, stocked with more than 1,000 selections with an emphasis on small-scale, family-owned wineries, beers, and spirits. Match this with an elegant meal— the creation of executive chef Allison Jenkins. The seasonal menu incorporates locally sourced, beautifully presented

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ingredients, including those grown inside their kitchen garden. In warm weather, guests can enjoy their meal outside on the expansive porch, a delightful setting for wine tastings and seminars, family dinners, holiday-themed, and prix fixe meals.

Celebrated chef Graham Dodds left the Dallas hectic corporate culinary world in 2021 to open NOSA Restaurant and Inn, an intimate fine-dining restaurant and Airbnb surrounded by the serene high-desert bluffs of the Ojo Caliente Valley.

It didn’t take long for the word to spread that this drive roughly 45 minutes from Santa Fe is well worth the trip.

Dodds’s ever-changing menu is crafted around what’s fresh and in season, and is inspired by his many travels, from Scotland to Portland, London to Thailand. The restaurant offers five-course prix fixe meals only on the weekends;

seatings are by reservation only; overnight guests can opt for breakfast from the patio.

Albuquerque is home to many fine-dining establishments, among them Farm & Table in the bucolic North Valley. Owned by Albuquerque native Cherie Montoya, this organic spot sources most of its ingredients from area ranchers, farmers, dairies, and its own 12-acre farm. The romantic hacienda is a respite from its urban surroundings, adorned with simple white drapery and white lights strung overhead, terracotta floors, an enclosed courtyard, and an expansive view of the farm to the northwest. The servers are well-versed as to what’s on the menu and the intricacies of each dish. Selections are thoughtfully plated and complex, with an emphasis on fresh. Consider trying the sweet pork belly starter, which the waiter described as “breakfast for dinner,” or the barramundi, a light Asian sea bass accompanied by house-made potato noodles. R

Top: The patio at Farm & Table is an inviting space on one of Albuquerque’s many warm evenings. Its lawns and greenery provide an enticing place for large parties and receptions.

Middle left: Farm & Table’s chorizo and butternut squash cavatelli.

Bottom left: Palace’s whole branzino, served boneless, with crushed tomato, olives, capers, and onion. Bottom right: NOSA’s cast-iron roasted quail with Khalsa Farms’ snap peas, almond crema, and piperade sauce.

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TOP AND LEFT: JOY GODFREY (3). BOTTOM, LEFT: DOUGLAS MERRIAM. BOTTOM, RIGHT: CHEF GRAHAM DODDS

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Romancing the Plate

“W

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY GABRIELLA MARKS

ork is love made visible,” Kahlil Gibran wrote— words that especially resonate for couples who choose the passion and challenges of running a restaurant together. For them, work transcends traditional boundaries of hearth and home: it’s not just toil, but a shared expression of love, commitment, and identity.

Hardly a pursuit for the faint of heart, the business of running a restaurant can be unbelievably brutal. Razorthin margins, intense competition, and high operational costs contribute to stark statistics: barely 50 percent of new restaurants survive over five years. Now imagine doing this day in, day out, with your best friend, your partner, your spouse, your lover.

Mixing business with pleasure, and moreover partnership, adds a bracing dynamic to an already formidable undertaking. It’s a daily dance that requires mutual respect for each other’s talents and clear communication to sustain harmony both at home and at work. There is no set recipe, but on closer observation, clear patterns emerge. As both talented individuals and effective pairs, these couples navigate their roles with nuance, ensuring each partner has ownership of their domain. This structured compartmentalization often reflects the natural bifurcation already present in restaurants, famously divided into the “front of house” and “back of house.”

These familiar industry terms originated in theater— front of house being the public-facing auditorium, back of house referring to the unseen stages and backstage areas.

Likewise, in a restaurant, the front of house engages directly

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Couples tackle the rewarding and challenging work of running a restaurant together

with diners, managing atmosphere and guest experience, while the back of house focuses on the culinary performance.

Each partner typically oversees one of these critical arenas, establishing a clear division of labor that shadows familiar domestic routines of shared household responsibilities.

Humility and patience, and perhaps above all good humor, become as indispensable as a well-sharpened knife in the kitchen and a warm smile welcoming diners. “We live this restaurant,” one couple remarked, emphasizing that to run a restaurant together means embracing it fully into their lives—it becomes part of their family identity. The blend of personal and professional spheres creates a combustible new version of date night, bonding over shared victories and overcoming nightly hurdles together.

Patrons, too, become emotionally connected to the couple’s forged vision, fostering loyalty that transcends menus and culinary trends. Regulars return not only for dishes but also relate to the visible affection and teamwork of the owners. Observing the partnership behind the restaurant’s operation enriches the dining experience, adding another layer of engagement and emotional attachment.

Ultimately, thriving as successful culinary couples amplifies both the challenges and joys inherent in any partnership. It requires vigilant teamwork, unwavering mutual respect, and a shared passion that fuels resilience—all on a public stage scripted for hospitality. For these couples, that visibility extends beyond their cuisine, encompassing their very lives, relationships, and dreams.

Clockwise, from upper left: These restaurant couples have what it takes to thrive in a very competitive and stressful profession: Heather and David Sellers of Horno, Jennifer and Martín Rios of Restaurant Martín, Hue-Chan and John Karels of Alkemē, and Dakota Weiss and Richard Becker of Capital Coal Neighborhood Eatery.

Opposite, clockwise from top left: A delightful selection of special dishes from Restaurant Martín, Horno, Alkemē, and Capital Coal. trendmagazineglobal.com

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Passion of thePalate Weiss. “So we thought, why not create multiple concepts?”

When designing a new menu, or rather, four new menus, their own appetites drove the direction. “So then the conversation became, ‘What does Santa Fe need?’ And also, ‘What do we miss eating?’”

Their invention, which they coined a “micro food hall,” presents a new way to dine. Casual service begins by ordering at the counter from one of four large, themed menus featuring, respectively, Richie B’s Hot Chicken, Kimchi’s Korean BBQ, Santa Fe Salad Company, and the French dip sandwich-focused Frenchie’s Dips and Tots.

“The hardest part was figuring out the logistics—how to run different menus from one kitchen,” Weiss explains.

But the couple has a knack for troubleshooting outside the box, and inside the relationship. Although she wears the chef hat, their shared career prowess as key players in launching restaurants like Shake Shack and Sweetfin in Los Angeles means both work to support each other’s expertise. “He’s the idea guy—names, branding, uniforms, the chicken tender sweatshirts,” notes Weiss. “I handle the financials, mostly because I love spreadsheets.”

CAPITAL COAL NEIGHBORHOOD EATERY In a town known for posole and green chile, what do Korean bibimbap, French dip, and Nashville hot chicken have in common? Whereas “fusion” was once the culinary calling of combining such disparate flavors and cooking techniques, our insatiable tastes for diverse and authentic cultural experiences through food now seem to lead more toward well-executed standards representative of those regions. In the recent past, the proliferation of pop-up dinners and food trucks has contributed to focused specialization and experimentation with singular cuisines. Enter Capital Coal Neighborhood Eatery, the original food experience developed by Dakota Weiss and her partner in all things life and food, Richard Becker.

Inspired by the likes of food market destinations like Albuquerque’s Sawmill Market, where the old-school shopping mall food court has been given an epic update to offer carefully curated local food vendors serving reservationworthy delights, Weiss and Becker wanted to create a haven to serve their own varied cravings. Already ensconced in the Sawmill Market and around Santa Fe with their Catch Poke and Frenchie’s Dips and Tots offerings, the pair took the plunge when the opportunity to bring it all under one roof presented itself in the former space of the late locals’ spot, Zia Diner, in Santa Fe. The expansive location on Guadalupe near the Railyard District initially proved daunting for the experienced restaurateur duo, whose collective bona fides include RitzCarlton dining rooms from Atlantic City to Los Angeles and Houston’s Hillstone Restaurant Group, as well as Weiss’s recurring role as executive chef at Coyote Café.

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Capital Coal is located at 326 S. Guadalupe St. in Santa Fe. It is open Monday and Tuesday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Wednesday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Dakota Weiss and Richard Becker of Capital Coal share a rare moment of quiet. The tacodillas are the couple’s delicious take on tacos. Richie B’s Hot Fried Chicken is a house specialty.

Clockwise, from top: The spacious main dining room of Capital Coal Neighborhood Eatery includes booths and living room-like seating for dinner. Co-owner Dakota Weiss stands behind the classic stainlesssteel order counter, and, in the kitchen, she whips up another dish.

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RESTAURANT MARTÍN Chef Martín Rios’s CV has earned accolades too numerous to list, from being featured on Iron Chef America and a four-time finalist for the James Beard Best Chef: Southwest award to being recognized multiple times as Chef of the Year in Santa Fe and for the state of New Mexico.

Rios’s distinguished culinary path arcs across the globe, from his family’s candy shop in Guadalajara to working his way up the timehonored kitchen ladder from dishwasher to formal training at the Culinary Institute of America and externships in Europe. Rios held the helm of several executive chef positions before establishing his eponymous restaurant on Galisteo Street in the heart of Santa Fe’s South Capital district.

For more than 30 years, his wife, Jennifer Rios, has worked and lived this journey in tandem with Martín. The two first met at the Eldorado Hotel, where Jennifer’s Georgetown MBA found first-hand management experience through internships in different departments of hospitality, including culinary with then head chef Martín. Outside the kitchen, a chance summer soccer game afternoon turned into a dinner that both soon realized was a date.

Although both Jennifer and Martín had worked in separate facets of the restaurant world, with Restaurant Martín they were finally able to bring their talents to bear in collaboration on the same lifelong project: raising their children as they built their eminent dining destination.

Designating the restaurant style as “progressive American cuisine,” Martín draws inspiration and technique from his Mexican heritage and his American résumé, his French training, and his love of Asian ingredients.

More than three decades after their first impromptu date, how do Jennifer and Martín maintain a work-life balance? Jennifer chuckles at the notion: “We don’t. This is our home.” Martín elaborates, “We are always here.”

Restaurant Martín is located at 526 Galisteo St., Santa Fe. It is open Wednesday-Sunday, 5 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

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Jennifer and Martín Rios before a blooming fruit tree in front of their restaurant.

Clockwise, from upper left: Bartender AJ Turner of Restaurant Martín will cater to your every liquid whim. The front dining room is a cozy winter den; in summer, try the lovely patio. The restaurant’s toasted coconut cream caramel, hazelnut cremeaux, chocolate custard cake, and raspberry sorbet with chocolate crisp melts in your mouth. Start off with coffee-roasted organic beet salad with goat cheese, mousseline, lemon gel, seasonal leaves, and puffed seed crumble. trendmagazineglobal.com

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ALKEME Sometimes, passion can’t be paused. For Hue-Chan Karels and her husband, John, a workplace romance in Washington, DC, sparked a lifelong partnership that crossed industries and continents, culminating in their latest venture, Alkemē. This Santa Fe restaurant, a 2024 James Beard Award semifinalist for Best New Restaurant, celebrates the culinary heritage of Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Korean, and Hawaiian Pacific Rim cuisines in a modern context along the Alameda corridor in downtown Santa Fe. Unlike other culinary “power couples” where roles are mapped mainly between the “front” and “back” of house, the Karelses have delineated their roles to complement Hue-Chan’s fervor for food. Behind the scenes, John’s expertise encompasses permits, compliance, and maintenance, ensuring the seamless operation of the establishment, allowing Hue-Chan to focus her creative energies on the culinary arts.

Within the restaurant, Chef-Owner Hue-Chan Karels and Executive Chef Erica Tai perform feats of culinary alchemy, intertwining the essential elements of their respective

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homelands of Vietnam and Taiwan into a tasteful tapestry.

Building on the concept of “culture to table,” Karels and Tai cater to a kind of constructive memory—creating experiences for guests to remember based on ancestral recipes the chefs infuse with innovation, forging dishes that are both nostalgic and forward-thinking.

A sense of place defines, but doesn’t limit, the myriad menus and special event dinners they dream up to magnify the Southwestern lens through which guests experience Southeast Asian cuisine. Here, heritage cuisines are reimagined, like the unlikely tryst and taste that spans the globe of Fish Sauce & Mole, a multicourse collaboration with award-winning chef Fernando Olea of Sazón, who teamed up with Alkemē to create this meal that celebrates the deeprooted mother sauces of Vietnam and Mexico.

In keeping the culinary curiosity and penchant for selfreflection that resonates for so many hungry Santa Feans— locals and visitors alike—Chef Karels adds spiritual and intellectual dimensions from meditation to literature to enhance the experience, such as a Mindfulness Cooking

Class with life coach Todd Joseph. In May, they hosted a dinner party in conjunction with the annual Santa Fe International Literary Festival entitled “Taste of Nostalgia, Loss, and Resilience.” It celebrated the literary works of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, featured author at the 2025 festival.

By creating gatherings that combine self-reflection and literary narrative, Alkemē provides a venue not only for dining but for personal transformation that parallels the culinary process.

Throughout the journey, the Karelses’ connection proves magnetic. “Santa Fe guests love that personal connection,” Hue-Chan explains. “We build close relationships with our guests—they want to see us, talk to us, be part of our world. It creates an intimacy that’s rare elsewhere.”

Opposite: Hue-Chan and John Karels of Alkemē. Top: Chá cá—crispy turmeric and dill cod. Middle: A fennel-jicama-green apple slaw with pickled red onions. Above: Chef Hue-Chan Karels enjoys a moment with guests. Right: Bánh Xeo, a French-inspired Vietnamese crêpe made with rice flour, served with braised pork belly and fresh herb pesto.

Alkemē is located at 227 Don Gaspar Ave. in Santa Fe. It is open for dinner Tuesday-Saturday, 5 to 8:45 p.m, and for brunch on Saturday, 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

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HORNO RESTAURANT During the pandemic, at a time when it seemed like a dark curtain had been drawn on life, especially on the dining culture of every city, Heather and David Sellers had the audacious idea, and the opportunity, to open a new restaurant in Santa Fe. From the signing of the lease on the winter solstice in 2020, through the lengthening days of the ascending sun to a soft open on the summer solstice, the Sellerses dreamed Horno into being.

Named after the New Mexican adobe oven used in cooking and baking, Horno brings a classic bistro aesthetic to the bustling Marcy Street block of downtown Santa Fe. Nominated for a James Beard Award in 2023, Chef David Sellers offers elevated American comfort food, ranging from miso-roasted vegetables and smoked chicken wing starters to a bodacious “smackdown” burger and squid ink capellini big plates.

With a shared commitment to community development in the nonprofit sector, the Sellerses bring those values of social engagement to their home away from home. A warm sense of casual camaraderie greets guests of Horno, where locals gather and tourists are drawn to the lively outdoor dining at sidewalk tables.

As a couple, their complementary skill sets bring balance to the day-to-day rigmarole of running the restaurant. Above all, the key to the Sellerses’ success—across multiple restaurants and states over more than two decades, and now honed with Horno—is simplicity. As David says, “We intentionally keep things simple: no unnecessary extras. A streamlined menu, a small but curated wine list. That keeps things efficient and less stressful.”

Horno is located at 95 W. Marcy Street in Santa Fe. It is open Monday-Saturday, 5 to 9 p.m. R

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From top left: Heather and David Sellers of Horno Restaurant prepare with coffee for the onslaught. The restaurant’s squid in capellini with rock shrimp and Nduja salami is popular. A miniature and fully functional horno (oven) gifted by a traditional horno builder to the Sellerses when they opened the restaurant

Clockwise, from left: Horno can be a quiet enclave at times, but brisk and bustling at others. Its intimate, seven-chair bar is a great place to snag a drink downtown. A mobile provides an interesting accent between dining rooms.

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MUSEUM HILL CAFÉ C e l e b r a t i n g 1 5 Ye a r s o n M u s e u m H i l l

7 1 0 C am i n o L e j o, S ant a Fe , N M 8 7 5 0 5 505.984.8900 w w w. Mu s e u m Hi l l C afe . n e t

Serving what we consider comfort food, simple food done well.

The pictures tell the story.

Whether it’s lunch Tuesday through Friday or brunch/lunch Saturday and Sunday, we have your afternoons covered.

Museum Hill Cafe, 100 miles of views and one of Santa Fe’s largest covered patios.

We have an outstanding wine and beer list.

Plenty of free parking.

Tuesday through Sunday, 11-3 Reservations suggested, call 505-984-8900 We reserve our evenings for your private parties.

ADVERTISERS Alvin Gill-Tapia / Manitou Galleries alvingilltapia.com; 505-986-0440...........................................16

Albuquerque Little Theatre albuquerquelittletheatre.org; 505-242-4750.........................136

Art Mosaik Fine Art Gallery 4artmozaik.com; 505-980-7136.............................................22

Albuquerque Museum albuquerquemuseum.org; 505-243-7255.............................137

August Muth / Pie Projects Contemporary Art augustmuth.com; 505-372-7681...........................................27

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Carole Laroche Gallery laroche-gallery.com; 505-982-1186.................................10–11

National Institute of Flamenco nifnm.org; 505-242-7600.....................................................138

Charlotte Shroyer charlotteshroyer.com; 575-751-0375..............................12–13

ONE Albuquerque cabq.gov/publicart; 505-768-2000.......................................145

Cre8 House of Art cre8gallery.com; 808-383-0883...........................................111

The Railyard Santa Fe railyardsantafe.com; 505-982-3373.......................................41

Dineh & Company / Michael Billie dinehco.com; 505-810-7848..................................................18

Santa Fe County santafecountynm.gov; 505-986-6200..................................IFG

Kate Rivers / Kay Contemporary Art kaycontemporaryart.com; 505-365-3992..............................24

Santa Fe Farmers’ Market santafefarmersmarket.com; 505-983-4098...........................40

Counter Intelligence ci4usantafe.com; 505-988-4007..........................................235

Manitou Galleries / Ethelinda manitougalleries.com; 505-986-0440..............................16, 19

Santa Fe Film Festival santafefilmfestival.com........................................................247

Custom Window Coverings cwcsantafe.com; 505-820-0511..........................................234

Mary Stratton marystrattonart.com; 575-770-0760....................................101

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Michael Billie / Dineh & Company michaelbillie.com; 505-810-7848...........................................18

SITE Santa Fe sitesantafe.org; 505-989-1199...............................................80

New Concept Gallery newconceptgallery.com; 505-795-7570................................79

Taos Ceramics Center taosceramics.com; 575-758-2580.......................................100

Niman Fine Art / Arlo Namingha / Dan Namingha / Michael Namingha namingha.com; 505-988-5091............................................6–7

TOURISM Santa Fe / Margarita Trail santafemargaritatrail.com; 505-955-6215.......................56–57

ANTIQUES, HOME FURNISHINGS, RUGS & ACCENTS

Bosshard Gallery Insta: bosshardgallery; 505-685-0061...................................83 J. Douglas Design jdouglasdesign.com; 505-780-5070.........................................9 Santa Kilim santakilim.com; 505-986-0340....................................226–227 Xanadu xanadusantafe.com; 505-982-1001.................................28–29 ARCHITECTS, DESIGNERS, BUILDERS & MATERIALS

Annie O’Carroll Interior Design annieocarroll.com; 505-983-7055........................................234 Archaeo Architects Archaeoarchitects.com; 505-820-7200...............................235 Architecture Alliance archallinc.com; 505-988-5269.....................................208–209

Diego Handcrafted Homes diegohandcraftedhomes.com; 505-573-8888...............118–119 H and S Craftsmen handscraftsmen.com; 505-988-4007...................................235 La Luz Artful Lighting laluzsf.com; 505-954-1149...................................................235 Max Vasher Architect maxvasherarchitect.com; 505-615-0696...............................45 MTZ Collaborative / Lisa Martinez mtzarchitecture.build; 505-470-7888...........................224–225 Pella Windows & Doors Southwest pellabranch.com; 505-474-4112..........................................234 Santa Fe Awning santafeawning.com; 505-474-6460.....................................206 Santa Fe by Design santafebydesign.com; 505-988-4111..................................235

Prescott Studio prescottstudio.com; 505-424-8449.............................108–109 RAD Galleries santaferailyardartsdistrict.com..............................................26 Sandbar Trading sandbartrading.com; 316-655-7477.......................................67 Somers Randolph somersrandolph.com; 505-690-9097...............................30–31 Stan Berning’s ART BOX stanberningstudios.com; 928-460-2611..............................4–5 Tatiana Klimov / Art Mozaik Fine Art Gallery tatsart.com; 505-661-6161....................................................77

Spears Horn Architects spearshorn.com; 505-983-6966......................................20–21

TCC Gallery taosceramics.com; 575-758-2580.......................................100

Tierra Concepts tierraconceptssantafe.com; 505-989-8484..........................234

Thom “Tex” Wheeler thomwheeler.com; 575-737-1260.........................................35

Urbanna Landscaping urbannalandscaping.com; 505-919-8222....................166–167 Victoria at Home victoriaathome.com; 505-365-2687.......................................81 Woods Design Builders woodsbuilders.com; 505-988-2413.......................................33

Vera Neel / Art Mozaik Fine Art Gallery veraneel.art; 505-980-7136.................................................272 Wiford Gallery / Jeremiah Daniel Welsh / Estella Loretto wifordgallery.com; 505-577-0888.......................................2–3 Ylise Kessler Fine Art & Advisory ylisekessler.com; 505-930-1039............................................55 CAR DEALERSHIPS

ARTISTS & GALLERIES

516 Arts 516arts.org; 505-242-1445..................................................125 Alexander Brown Sculpture alexanderbrownsculpture.com; 505-466-8177........................8

Sandia BMW sandiabmw.com; 505-884-0066.................................150–151 CITY SERVICES, EDUCATION, EVENTS & MUSEUMS

Abiquiu Studio Tour abiquiustudiotour.org.............................................................91

Town of Taos taos.org; 800-732-8267...................................................92–93 DINING, ENTERTAINMENT & LODGING

AMP Concerts ampconcerts.org; 505-232-9868.........................................245 Alkemē alkeme-santafe.com; 505-982-9704................................14–15 Blackstone Hotsprings blackstonehotsprings.com; 575-894-0894...........................113 Chocolate Maven chocolatemaven.com; 505-984-1980....................................38 Dr. Field Goods drfieldgoods.com; 505-982-3033.........................................248 Farm & Table farmandtablenm.com; 505-503-7124...................................123 Izanami at Ten Thousand Waves tenthousandwaves.com; 505-982-9304..............................255 Kakawa Chocolate House kakawachocolates.com; 505-982-0388...............................270 Los Arcos Steak & Lobster losarcossteakhouse.com; 575-894-6200.............................112 Midtown Bistro midtownbistrosf.com; 505-820-3121..................................253 The Mine Shaft Tavern & Cantina themineshafttavern.com; 505-473-0743...............................76 Museum Hill Café museumhillcafe.net; 5050-984-8900..........................266–267 Sandia Resort & Casino sandiacasino.com; 505-796-7500...........................................1

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ADVERTISERS Santa Fe Pro Musica sfpromusica.org; 505-988-4640............................................47 Sweetwater Harvest Kitchen sweetwatersf.com; 505-795-7383......................................235

K a k a w a

Chocolate House

Tulsi tulsisantafe.com; 505-983-9627...........................................65 Travel Bug mapsofnewmexico.com; 505-992-0418................................66 Unit B unitbsantafe.com; 505-984-1980..........................................39 Video Library Insta: videolibrary_santafe; 505-983-3321...........................66 FASHION, JEWELRY & ACCESSORIES Double Take of Santa Fe santafedoubletake.com; 505-989-8886..................................51 FoxFire Designs foxfiredesigns.my.canva.site/about.....................................233 Lee Michaels Fine Jewelry lmfj.com; 505-208-4500.......................................................117 John Rippel USA johnrippel.com; 505-986-9115...............................................23 Quintana Optical quintanaoptical.com; 505-988-4234......................................75 W Department wdepartment.com; 505-954-9500.........................................BC Wearabouts wearaboutssf.com; 505-982-1399.......................................241

Chocolate • Flavorful • Family • Friends Quality • Details • Relationships • Love • History

REAL ESTATE

Jack Swonson / Sotheby’s jackswonson.com; 713-456-9381.........................................17 PET ACCESSORIES

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END QUOTE

How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection…. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers.

The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.

–Isaac Asimov August Muth, Reverence (2023), hologram image. trendmagazineglobal.com

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At SOAR Wellness, we don’t just treat symptoms we uncover and correct the root causes of aging, fatigue, hormone imbalance, and skin concerns using a comprehensive, inside-out approach.

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Every treatment plan is personalized and led by a Nurse Practitioner with advanced training in both regenerative functional medicine and aesthetics — using tools like AURA 3D imaging and Fit 3D body scanning to guide and track results.

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6855 4th St. NW, Suite B2 Los Ranchos, NM 87107

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THE PLAZA

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