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
The sky above Jim Alford’s head provides most of the wonder and inspiration that Alford needs for his paintings. Residing on 40 acres off Highway 14 south of Santa Fe, Alford has a life filled with daily rituals that involve observing and photographing the ever-changing heavens.
“My paintings are literally inspired by what I look at outside my back door,” says Alford, who’s lived in his house for decades. “I never get tired of looking at clouds. I’ll sit down in a chair in the evening, have a cocktail and look at the clouds.”
Hat Ranch Gallery, which is located just a few miles from Alford’s home, features a solo show of his sky paintings from December 16 through January 16. [Read More…]
Music/Visual Art
Chris Jonas is a man on the move, constantly going from working on one exciting collaborative project to another one.
He’s the co-founder and executive director of Littleglobe, a non-profit organization partnering with local, national and international communities to create interdisciplinary collaborative art projects that foster connections and understanding of diverse communities.
Jonas is also an active musician and a painter.
“I grew up in southern California with a split personality, doing both visual arts and music during high school,” says the Santa Fe artist, who continues to work in a variety of media. [Read More…]
The music in the Santa Fe Desert Chorale’s 2018 Winter Festival focuses on children. “Celebremos El Niños” (Let Us Celebrate the Child), which is presented from December 15 through 23 at two venues in Santa Fe and also in Los Alamos and Albuquerque, includes traditional carols and lullabies from the Americas. [Read More…]
La Fonda on the Plaza is the setting for the 2018 Winter Indian Market, which is presented by the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) on December 14, 15 and 16. A select group of 150 Native artists sell jewelry, pottery, paintings, weavings and more at this much smaller version of the summer market. [Read More…]
Visual Art
Rio Grande weavings by Dayna Fisk-Williams are part of the show “A Fusion of Color” that runs through December 30 at 7Arts Gallery.
“Rio Grande weaving is a tradition in Northern New Mexico from the early days when the Spanish settled in the area,” explains Fisk-Williams, who learned how to weave at the Tierra Wools weaving center in New Mexico’s Chama Valley.
“They brought churro sheep with them from Spain. It was a food source for them on the ships, and once they got here, they used the wool for weaving floor coverings for the dirt floors of the adobe homes here.” [Read More…]
Visual Art
With hundreds of artworks in its permanent collection, the Museum of Encaustic Art (MoEA) is on track to fulfill its mission to grow the largest and most extensive collection of encaustic art in the country.
The brainchild of encaustic artists Douglas and Adrienne Mehrens, MoEA has a spacious facility at 632 Agua Fria Street in which artists display and sell work and students of encaustic art have the opportunity to take workshops with accomplished practitioners in the field.
“Everything has grown more than I ever thought it would,” says Douglas Mehrens, who founded the museum’s umbrella organization, the Encaustic Art Institute, in 2005 in his studio south of Santa Fe located in the village of Cerrillos. [Read More…]
Dance
“I feel that my mission should be to preserve the legacy of flamenco culture of Santa Fe that Maria Benitez had created, to the authenticity one would find in Spain,” says Antonio Granjero, an award-winning choreographer and the founder of the Santa Fe-based company Entreflamenco, which won a 2017 Mayor’s Arts Award.
“My ambition as a director, choreographer and performer is to present projects for the community to enjoy flamenco in its most authentic and purest form ranging from flamenco’s most traditional, unchanged form to its more modern, innovative side.” [Read More…]
Theater
Real-life love stories published in the “Miss Lonelyhearts” column in the Winnipeg (Canada) Free Press inspired actor Talia Pura to write “Perfect Love,” a comedy exploring the imperfections found in relationships that premieres at Warehouse 21 from December 6 through 23.
Starring Pura, along with local actors Amanda Cazares, Tyler Nunez and Hamilton Turner, “Perfect Love” features 17 short scenes based on relationship problems that Pura, who moved to Santa Fe from Winnipeg, Canada several years ago, read about in the newspaper’s popular column.
“Each scene is about a relationship issue at a point of crisis,” explains Pura. [Read More…]
Theater
Barbara Hatch loves classic plays and is delighted to be directing the Santa Fe Playhouse’s new production of Oscar Wilde’s popular comedy “The Importance of Being Earnest,” which opens on November 29 and runs through December 16.
“The Importance of Being Earnest” is an 1895 farce about two young gentlemen in London who are leading double lives and creating elaborate deceptions to escape their social obligations.
The play, which addresses the institution of marriage and social expectations and satirizes Victorian upper class customs, focuses on Algernon and Jack, who lead double lives and are members of England’s upper class. [Read More…]
Music
“When I do a solo show, I don’t have a planned set,” explains banjo and guitar player Tony Furtado, who appears at GIG Performance Space at 7:30 p.m. on December 13. “I pick instrumental and vocal tunes from different albums, whatever I feel like doing at the moment.”
A banjo player since the age of 12 who writes that he was inspired to learn the instrument after watching the television show “The Beverly Hillbillies,” Furtado plays original and folk cover tunes as a solo, duo and trio act and with his five-person band in venues around the country. He’s also an accomplished slide guitarist who’s very attached to his 1944 Martin O-17 guitar that he found in a store in Salt Lake City. [Read More…]
Photography
“Hearts and Bones,” a mid-career retrospective of work from nine different photographic projects by award-winning photographer Tom Chambers, is presented at photo-eye Gallery from November 30 through January 5.
“I like to say that instead of taking a photo, I am making a photo,” “says Chambers, whose work is often called magic realism. “A story is usually the beginning of a photo. I get an idea, sometimes when I’m half asleep, and let it course through my brain. The idea is to make images possible but improbable.” [Read More…]
Jewelry
form and concept’s first annual “Macrocosm” group exhibition that opens at 5 p.m. on November 30 includes oversized jewelry made out of clay and metals that are produced by the partnership of Steven Ford and David Forlano.
Approximately eight brooches, pins, earrings and necklaces created by Ford/Forlano are part of an exhibition that also features work by Debra Baxter, Kat Cole, Robert Ebendorf, Bunny Tobias and Robin Waynee.
“Our artistic collaboration began in 1984 when we met in Rome during a year abroad program through Tyler School of Art,” explains Forlano, who lives in Santa Fe and works long distance with Ford, whose studio is based in Philadelphia. [Read More…]
Visual Art
“The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come” is the name of Robert Gaylor’s sculpture installation with Axle Contemporary that opens at 5 p.m. on November 23 at the Railyard plaza by the water tower.
Made in 2012 from a steel armature covered with aluminum mesh and illuminated with LED lights, Gaylor’s scene features a life-size male figure pushing a grocery cart filled with items.
Friends modeled for the form of the man. The man’s head was molded from a reproduction of a life mask of the head of Abraham Lincoln that Gaylor purchased online. [Read More…]
