Five Santa Fe art groups awarded $170,000 from NEA

Five Santa Fe arts organizations hauled in a combined $170,000 in National Endowment for the Arts grants announced Wednesday..

The Santa Fe Art Institute got the lion’s share, an $85,000 grant from the NEA’s Our Town program, which supports partnerships between arts organizations and municipal governments to revitalize neighborhoods. This money will go toward “culture asset mapping” and community events geared toward future redevelopment of the city-owned former college campus property off St. Michael’s Drive.

“The NEA Our Town grant will help us to connect the arts and local culture with equitable development of the midtown campus,” said Jamie Blosser, the institute’s executive director. “We will invite the community to deeply engage in imagining new possibilities for the midtown district.”

The art institute was one of 57 awardees nationwide to receive shares of $4.1 million in Our Town grants, which ranged from $25,000 to $200,000.

“With asset mapping, instead of looking for problems, you look for assets,” Blosser said. “You recognize all the assets you do have and how they can come around to support the midtown campus.”

The institute, a tenant on the campus for 20 years, has played a role in shaping a community vision for the property that once housed the College of Santa Fe and subsequently the Santa Fe University of Art and Design.

Continue reading “Five Santa Fe art groups awarded $170,000 from NEA”

May 19, 2019May 19, 2019

Why So Many Artists Have Been Drawn to New Mexico

For generations, artists from Georgia O’Keeffe to Ken Price have followed New Mexico’s magnetic pull, finding inspiration in the high desert’s expansive vistas, quietude, and respite from social and market pressures.

Several months after photographer-gallerist Alfred Stieglitz presented O’Keeffe’s first New York solo show, in April 1917, the 29-year-old painter embarked on a trip across the American West with her youngest sister, Claudia. While they’d planned to head straight from Texas to Colorado, their train detoured to Santa Fe. New Mexico’s vast, mercurial skies and incandescent light mesmerized the artist. “I’m out here in New Mexico—going somewhere—I’m not positive where—but it’s great,” she gushed in a letter to Stieglitz, dated August 15th. “Not like anything I ever saw before.”

“There is so much more space between the ground and sky out here it is tremendous,” she continued. “I want to stay.” By 1949, O’Keeffe had made the New Mexican high desert her permanent home, indelibly tattooing its landscape to her work, identity, and legacy.

Portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe in Abiquiu, New Mexico, 1974. Photo by Joe Munroe/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

Continue reading “Why So Many Artists Have Been Drawn to New Mexico”

April 30, 2019April 30, 2019

Tamarind Institute: No Modifiers

Tamarind Institute
May 2 – May 8, 2019
Reception: Saturday May 3, 6 – 8pm

2500 Central Avenue SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106

Tamarind Institute is pleased to present No Modifiers, an exhibition showcasing lithographs by professional guest artists, created in collaboration with the Tamarind Institute Printer Training Program. No Modifiers, refers to the collaborative testing of skills between an artist and printers as they work towards creating a final image.

Tamarind guest artists are Jill Christian, Paul Leibow, Willy Bo Richardson, and Sarah Smelser. Tamarind printers in the training program are Roma Auskalnyte, Elena Carrasco, Mike Feijen, Jon Greene, Perry Obee, Arel Lisette Peckler, Jenni Viita, and Jesse Wood.

Tamarind’s gallery is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and by appointment.

Tamarind Institute, a division of the College of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico, is a nonprofit center for fine art lithography that trains master printers and houses a professional collaborative studio for artists. Founded in 1960 in Los Angeles, Tamarind is recognized internationally for its contributions to the growth of contemporary printmaking around the world and continues to provide professional training and creative opportunities for artists.

For more information on Willy Bo Richardson’s 2019 Tamarind Institute Residencey

February 28, 2019March 29, 2021

No Architect Today is Capable of Buildings Like Luis Barragán’s

The sensual and autobiographical qualities of the house Mexican architect Luis Barragán built for himself are rarely found in today’s buildings, says Aaron Betsky.

If you are going to make real architecture today it better be damn real. In a world of instant images whose truth you can never ascertain, delicate structures just won’t do. You need something that will convince and persuade, stand and deliver.

While you can make such forms by engaging in all kinds of acrobatics (cantilevers and off-kilter, stacked boxes), or by making super clean and empty boxes for super thin and the empty-brained, you can also achieve a sense of here- and now-ness by heightening the effect of every element, every detail, and every surface to the point that the building stands as refutation of the evanescence of our society.

But how? A recent visit to see Luis Barragán’s House and Studio in Mexico City, Casa Barragán, reminded me of the power of pieces over whole, effect over means, and the beauty of what Robert Venturi called “the difficult whole”. It also made me realise that I can think of no single architect working today who is capable of such architecture. Does that mean it cannot be done? I certainly hope not. Continue reading “No Architect Today is Capable of Buildings Like Luis Barragán’s”

November 4, 2018

Farolito Walk

CANYON ROAD IS ALIVE ON CHRISTMAS EVE!

Canyon Road, Santa Fe
Saturday, December 24th
5 – 8pm

Enjoy Canyon Road on Christmas Eve – see the world’s tallest Elf, enjoy the sounds of roving brass musicians and warm your hands by the bonfires! Join friends and family for the annual Farolito Walk on historic Canyon Road; many galleries will be open into the evening hours, serving hot drinks and snacks; for a list of participating galleries visit the Canyon Road Merchants Association website at www.visitcanyonroad.com.

The walk begins Saturday, December 24 at 5:00 p.m. and lasts throughout the evening. For more information, contact Sara Shawger at 505-577-0175.

Participating merchants include:

Ronnie Layden Fine Art
Canyon Road Contemporary Art
Mark Navarro Gallery
Turner carroll Contemporary Art
Cafe de Artists
Frank Howell Gallery
Pippen Meikle
Mark White Fine Art
Waxlander
William&Joseph
Alexandra Stevens
Brad Smith Gallery
Tresa Vorenberg Goldsmith
Selby Fleetwood
New Concept
Nambe
Gallery 822
Chalk Farm
Vivo Gallery
Darnell Fine Art Gallery – open until 7pm Christmas Eve

Please join the Flying Farolito Brothers horn quintet this year as we again play traditional Christmas music up and down Canyon Road on Christmas Eve. We go from bonfire to bonfire playing beautiful 5-part versions of favorite traditional carols. If you spot a group of 5 cold, but happy looking musicians surrounded by a hundred or so people singing along, that’s probably us, feel free to join!

For more information, contact Mary Bonney at The William&Joseph Gallery 727 Canyon Road
t 505.982.9404.

Canyon Road Decorating Contest

Winner: Curiosa
Runners Up: Adobe Gallery and Chalk Farm Gallery

July 19, 2018July 19, 2018

Opening Night Party of SITE Santa Fe’s 2018 Biennial! Featuring DJ SKRATCH BASTID!

SITE’s Biennial Is Here! Let’s Celebrate!
Join us at the opening of Casa tomada, the third installment in SITE Santa Fe’s biennial series, SITElines: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas. The exhibition will feature more than 20 artists from 8 countries and 8 new commissions organized by a team of three international curators.

Thursday, August 2, 20186 pm General Admission ($100)
Enjoy cocktails and hors d’oeuvres while touring the new exhibition with the artists and curators.
Music by DJ Yon!

9 pm Late Night Admission ($25)
Dance Party! Food Trucks!
Admission includes one drink!

9:15 pm Skratch Bastid!

BUY TICKETS HERE!

June 4, 2018June 4, 2019

ClampArt: Willy Bo Richardson: Colophon, Artsy exclusive

ClampArt
May 9 – June 21, 2019

ClampArt partnered with Artsy, a free online platform for collecting and discovering art.

Willy Bo Richardson describes his paintings of vibrant, vertical bands of color as “philosophy in motion.” Working solely within the framework of vertical strokes, the artist uses color, proportion, and line to create works that have a physical and emotional impact on the viewer. He characterizes his practice as “a sort of meditation, a give-and-take with gravity and the universal laws that determine our experience of the physical world.” By intentionally veering away from representational or narrative imagery, he seeks to confront and convey an enduring fascination with the unchanging mind itself, actualizing through the use of color and line “a humming field [that] suspends the sensation of time.”

Artsy’s search engine and database draw connections and map relationships among works of art. Artsy is powered by The Art Genome Project , a collaboration between art historians and engineers. The Art Genome Project draws upon art-historical scholarship and artificial intelligence to assign values to artwork based on over 1211 characteristics or “genes.” These genes range from color to “Content: Private of Personal Space” to period to “Technique: Documentary Photography” to “Group Portrait.” The Art Genome Project aims to help users uncover works of art based on personal taste and preference to facilitate education and discovery of art. Matthew Israel serves as the Director of The Art Genome Project and Artsy’s Lead Curator.

View the exhibition on Artsy.