Santa Fe Arts Journal

Stephen Buxton views the upcoming celebration of his 60th birthday as a time to reflect on the thought processes that have been weaving through his artwork for the past decade. He’s re-visited earlier works in his studio, looking for common threads and new ideas that are integrated into his mixed media pieces.

Buxton has selected a group of mixed media pieces for his show “Ten Years On: 2008-2018,” which opens at 5 p.m. at David Rothermel Contemporary on August 17.

“I’m curious about what the viewer makes of the work,” says Buxton, who uses all kinds of items, including rubber, latex house paint, cut paper, pages from old discarded books and found objects, in his pieces. “I believe that the viewer finishes the work.” [Read More…]

Quinn Alexander Fontaine, a trans man with an arts background that includes standup, sketch and improvisational comedy, installation work and found object sculpture, wrote his solo show “Hung Like a Seahorse: the show+tell version,” as a companion piece to his book “Hung Like a Seahorse: A Real-life Transgender Adventure of Tragedy, Comedy and Recovery.”

The first run of his show, which reveals information about Fontaine’s past and his transformation from female to male that started four years ago, took place at Santa Fe’s Adobe Rose Theatre last April. 

“We’ve tightened up the show a bit since April, but I’m still doing a lot of improv in it,” explains Fontaine, who presents “Hung Like a Seahorse: the show+tell version” from August 23 through 26 at Warehouse 21. “Susan Mele, my director, plays the world’s worst therapist off stage. We’ve known each other for 25 years. She knows all my buttons.” [Read More…]

Good news for fans of traditional music! The Santa Fe Friends of Traditional Music have revived the Santa Fe Traditional Music Festival, which was held at Camp Stoney last August and will be held there again from August 24 through 26.

The Santa Fe Traditional Music Festival provides a venue for playing, hearing, teaching and sharing music with musicians and with anyone who loves traditional music.

“We had 850 people in attendance last summer,” says Phil Vergamini, the vice chair of the Santa Fe Friends of Traditional Music. “We expect to see approximately 1,000 people over the course of the weekend this summer.” [Read More…]

Sheryl Zacharia was living in Greenwich Village in New York City when a good friend suggested she take a clay class to help her satisfy a desire to get back into expressing herself through the visual arts.

For a decade, she studied the art of ceramics at Greenwich House Pottery. “I became addicted to clay,” says Zacharia, a Santa Fe resident for the past three years who opens her show of sculptural pieces, “The Enduring Vessel,” at Tansey Contemporary on August 10.

“Vessels were the forms I began with when I started working with clay,” she explains. “They’ve also been an important form through the ages. My show pays homage to this form.” [Read More…]

Native American artist Chaz John (Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska / Mississippi Band Choctaw) loves his two-year-old dog Eddie. When Eddie came into John’s life one year ago, he was very skinny and had what John describes as ‘weird behavior issues.’

“He was a rez dog,” explains John. The term “rez dog,” or reservation dog, refers to an outdoor, stray and feral dog living on Native American reservations in the U.S. and Canada. “He took well to me but he doesn’t like other people or other dogs.”

John has become fascinated with rez dogs and has fantasies of them running through galleries that display his work. Rez dogs are the stars of John’s new show of drawings and paintings at Ellsworth Gallery that opens on August 10.  [Read More…]

“Painted Places,” Sandra Pratt’s new show opening at Selby Fleetwood Gallery on August 10, showcases Pratt’s thickly-textured landscape paintings.

“I use palette knives because they allow me to get across what I’m trying to say,” explains Pratt, a mostly self-taught artist originally from Chicago and living in Boulder, Colorado. “I want my work to be simplified but make a strong statement.”

More than one dozen paintings of scenes from Colorado and the Southwest, the Pacific coast and French villages are on display. As Pratt travels to these different locations, she absorbs the colors and fascinating compositions she sees around her and registers these images in her mind. [Read More…]

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian presents the 18th annual Native Cinema Showcase from August 14 through 19, in conjunction with Santa Fe Indian Market.

More than 50 feature-length and short films that have been created by filmmakers from nine countries representing 33 Native nations are screened at the New Mexico History Museum.

This year’s theme is justice in Native life and communities. Films explore criminal justice, tribal law and government, the environment and LGBTQ rights. [Read More…]

Kristina Varjan has been dedicating herself to the art of making pine needle baskets for the past four years. 

It’s a labor-intensive experience that’s hard on the eyes. For an artist who spent years restoring Navajo rugs and never thought she’d be doing such meticulous and demanding work again, it’s turned out to be completely pleasurable.

“A stone, shell or fossil is the beginning point of each basket,” says Varjan, whose show “Presentations: Baskets of Peace by Kristina Varjan opens on August 3 at OTA Contemporary. “They help determine the shape of and colors within the baskets.” [Read More…]

Jamie Chase is a multifaceted artist, expressing himself through illustration, classical figurative work and abstraction. In his latest solo show at Mill Contemporary, which opens on July 27, viewers get a chance to see several sides of his artistic nature.

“In the beginning of my career I painted the figure in a way more classical style than I am now,” explains Chase, who enjoys pushing the limit on how the figure can be imagined. “I’ve tended to paint the figure in an expressionistic way for quite some time, but lately it’s become quite abstract. I’m challenging myself to keep the figure interesting for myself.”

The figures in Chase’s paintings usually relate more to feminine, rather than masculine, energy. Gender, however, is not what’s important. [Read More…]

The more than one dozen animal paintings in Tom Palmore’s show at LewAllen Galleries have been created since Palmore moved to Santa Fe last August.

“I have a beautiful new studio with wonderful views,” says Palmore, an Oklahoma native who trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in the late 1960s and whose works are in the collections of museums including the Smithsonian, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

“Animal Encounters,” Palmore’s show that opens on July 27, features all kind of animals, from a black panther to a bluebird. 

“I’m not a wildlife artist,” Palmore explains. “I do not paint in wildlife environments. [Read More…]