Creative Coverage of Santa Fe's Arts Communities
Welcome to Santa Fe Arts Journal, an online magazine focused on Santa Fe’s visual and performing arts community that’s written and curated by Emily Van Cleve, an artist and journalist with 24 years’ worth of experience writing about the arts for local, regional and national publications. Enjoy reading about select upcoming shows and performances in SFAJ’s LOOK, LISTEN and LEARN MORE sections below!
Emily Van Cleve
Founder/Editor
Visual Art
KEEP Contemporary’s 3rd Annual Abstract Art Invitational Group Show features a wide range of abstract and and surrealist work created by 25 artists, including Shakti Kroopkin, Dirk Van Lach, Sergio Moyano, Lea Anderson and Zac “Wonky” Hyde.
“For me, the imagination explores the interaction between what is real and what can be imagined,” explains surrealist artist and poet J. Karl Bogartte, who has two works in the show.
A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Bogartte moved to Santa Fe six years ago “on a whim.” [Read More…]
Dance
Dancing Earth’s production “SEEDS: RE GENERATION” is a work that’s been developing for many years. It has emerged from the interactions that the company’s dancers have had with Native American elders, farmers, seed savers and members of food and water justice groups. At its heart is the theme of resilient adaptability.
Wise Fool New Mexico hosts “SEEDS: RE GENERATION” on April 20. After presenting it in Santa Fe, Dancing Earth heads to Washington, D.C. to perform the work at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. [Read More…]
Visual Art
Although photographer Natalie Christensen lives in the desert Southwest, she is mesmerized by swimming pools. “I am repeatedly drawn to the swimming pool as a subject of my photography because for me they are a metaphor for the unconscious,” she says about her work on Turner Carroll Gallery’s website.
From April 20 through May 13, Turner Carroll Gallery features Christensen’s pool paintings in the show “Natalie Christensen: Last night I dreamt I knew how to swim.” [Read More…]
Music
A former member of Ricky Skaggs’s Grammy-winning band Kentucky Thunder, Scott Mulvahill is touring to promote his September 2018 release “Top of the Stairs (EP).” AMP Concerts presents Muvahill on April 25 at GIG Performance Space.
It was during the time he toured with Skaggs that Mulvahill started writing his own songs on his upright bass. [Read More…]
Theater
Teatro Paraguas presents “El Coquí Espectacular and the Bottle of Doom,” Matt Barbot’s play about a Nuyorican comic book artist down on his luck who becomes the city’s newest superhero.
Directed by Roxanne Tapia, the play stars Miles Blitch as Alex Nuñez the comic book artist. In the process of searching to discover his true identity, Nuñez becomes El Coquí, a superhero named for the iconic Puerto Rican tree frog. [Read More…]
Visual Art
“Spaces in Between: Following the Route of Keystone XL” is 5.Gallery’s exhibit of Mary Peck’s photographs that document the route of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
Opening on April 19, the show features images from the Alberta refinery in Canada to the Steele City Pumping Station in Nebraska. Peck, a photographer for more than 40 years, began her journey in Alberta. She wanted to see what happens at the refinery above ground and how the land where the oil comes from is treated. [Read More…]
Visual Art
Gregory Horndeski enjoys celebrating spring by creating a group of paintings that convey his excitement about the approaching season.
“Vernal Paintings” is Horndeski’s new show of spring-inspired work that opens at Horndeski Contemporary on April 12.
“My first spring paintings were painted in 1982, when I was living in Dallas,” he says. “In March of 1996, my wife and I moved to Santa Fe, just in time to catch the beginning of spring-like weather here. After a long winter in Santa Fe, it’s very difficult for me to resist painting spring-time motifs. [Read More…]
Visual Art
“The Ratio of People to Cake” is the title of Ellsworth Gallery’s two-artist exhibit featuring work by friends Jared Weiss and Owen Marc Laurion, who met when they both went to graduate school at the San Francisco Art Institute. The show opens on April 12.
Weiss, who paints people in scenes, moved to Santa Fe after earning his master’s degree in 2015. Laurion, who creates ceramic-based pieces and also earned his master’s degree in 2015, moved to town a little later with Weiss’s encouragement. [Read More…]
Music
Dwight Loop has had a lifelong interest in electronic and experimental music.
He expresses his passion through writing original compositions, playing with his trio The Rampant Egos, broadcasting radio shows and presenting musical acts at Paradiso through his new No Compromise! 2019 series of concerts.
“Paradiso wanted live music, and I was looking for a place that would host a new series of concerts,” says Loop. “It’s a terrific partnership.” [Read More…]
Visual Art
“Past and Present” is Randall Reid’s solo exhibition of mixed media work that opens on April 5 at Nuart Gallery.
These “new” artworks are made from wood and steel parts of historical objects.
Reid has used everything from pieces of old signage, Cold War era panels and Victorian instruments to printmaking tools and parts of structures that could have barns and boathouses. [Read More…]
Theater
Andrea Yates, a former resident of Houston, Texas who drowned her five children in their bathtub in 2001, was the inspiration behind Talia Pura’s play “Demons of the Mind.” Yates had suffered from severe postpartum depression.
“It’s a very visual, thoughtful piece but not depressing,” explains Pura, who presents the two-actor play at Warehouse 21 from April 18 through 28. “The play explores what a woman in the throes of postpartum depression is going through. [Read More…]
Visual Art
Ryan Singer’s colorful acrylic paintings combine traditional Navajo images with contemporary imagery. They’re on display in the show “Childhood Mythologies,” which opens at form & concept on March 29.
Now a resident of Albuquerque, Singer spent his childhood both on and off the Navajo reservation. He enjoyed summers with his grandparents, who lived west of Tuba City, Arizona and raised sheep.
“I would gather my toys and take them with me while I herded sheep all day for my grandparents,” recalls Singer, who often depicts his childhood toys in his paintings. [Read More…]
