Santa Fe Arts Journal

Wild Child’s founders Alexander Beggins and Kelsey Wilson had very different musical backgrounds growing up in Austin, Texas.

Wilson is a classically-trained violinist. Beggins is a primarily self-taught musician playing a variety of stringed instruments who started his first (“absolutely terrible,” he says) band when he was 11 years old.

The two musicians were hired to play with a Danish band called The Migrant, which had stopped in Austin and needed several musicians for their upcoming eight-week-long tour. They began collaborating on new songs during the tour and discovered it was a magical experience. They knew they had to keep working together.

Meow Wolf presents Wild Child, which is now a seven-piece mini-orchestra, on May 8 to play a concert of its unique blend of indie-pop. [Read More…]

Being the son of legendary sarode maestro Ali Akbar Khan (1922-2009) has been an honor and privilege for Alam Khan, who continues his father’s tradition of playing classical Indian music with heart and soul.

“My intention is to emulate the teachings of my father,” says Khan.

GIG Performance Space presents Khan, who teaches advanced instrumental classes at the Ali Akbar College of Music in San Rafael, California, on May 5 in performance with drummer Javed Butah, a disciple of world-renowned tabla master Pandit Anindo Chatterjee. [Read More…]

Talia Pura’s theater career unofficially launched when she was five years old and invited to appear in an 8th grade class play directed by her father. She spoke one line in German.

“I was hooked on theater after that experience,” she recalls.

Pura, who moved from Winnipeg, Canada to Santa Fe two years ago with her husband William Pura, a visual artist, stars in Edward Morris’s new one-woman play “The Passion of Ethel Rosenberg,” which receives its national premiere at Studio Center of Santa Fe and opens on April 26. [Read More…]

Although Jessica Haring earned a degree in cultural and linguistic anthropology at Loyola University in 2012, it’s theater that’s capturing her heart these days.

“I did my first play at the Adobe Rose Theatre when I starred as Cherie in “Bus Stop”  a year ago,” says Haring, who has lived in Santa Fe for the past four years. “While I was working on the play, I heard about “H2O” by Jane Martin. I was looking for a future creative challenge and decided to start Vixenlocks Production company and have “H2O” be the first play.”

“H2O” is presented May 3-5 at the Zephyr Community Art Center and stars Haring as Deborah Elling and Julian Fontaine Fox as Jake Abadjian.  [Read More…]

On April 21, the Santa Fe Society of Artists (SFSA) kicks off its 37th year of offering fine art shows to the public from mid April through mid October in downtown Santa Fe. 

On display are paintings in all media, sculpture in bronze, stone and clay, prints, traditional and digital photography and mixed media works by the 75 local artists who are part of the non-profit collective.

“Thirty or more of our members are on-site at each of the season’s 22 weekend shows,” explains SFSA’s president Judy Boyd, who creates bird portraits in watercolor. “This year we’re excited to introduce more than a dozen new artists.” [Read More…]

Keep Contemporary’s new show “Through the Darkness” features work generated from personal struggle and adversity by artists Lea Anderson and Rachel Rivera.

Rivera’s challenges have been obvious to all who know her. She lost her husband and the father of her daughter in 2014.

“This work is inspired by the resulting myriad of overwhelming feelings I have, including loss, anger, added responsibility and depression,” explains Rivera, who grew up in Albuquerque and studied studio art with an emphasis on printmaking at the University of New Mexico. 

In her latest 2D work, Rivera explores the idea of mourning hats as a visual representation of how she feels.  [Read More…]

Large-scale limited edition prints made from images found in zines created by artists including Meshal al-Obaidallah, Evar Hussayni, Nasreen Shaikh Jamal al Lail and Younes Zemmouri are on exhibit in East of West’s show “Mother Tongue: The Art of Printed Language,” which opens on April 13.

“Mother Tongue explores the intersection of language and aesthetic through the intricacies of printed word as art,” explains East of West’s founder and director L.E. Brown. “The subjects of the zines focus around personal experiences and identity.”

The exhibit acts as a preview for the multiple zines that the gallery is releasing at the Santa Fe Zine Fest on April 14. Zines are noncommercial, often homemade or online publications usually devoted to specialized or unconventional subject matter. [Read More…]

Watercolor painter John Jason Phillips approaches each of his paintings with an open and clear mind.

A work often begins on an easel so paint will run down the paper. First, there’s a shape. Then comes texture. Colors communicate feelings.

“I love watercolors because they’re constantly dynamic,” Phillips explains. “I’m a strong proponent of painting with watercolors.”

More than a dozen of Phillips’s latest works are on display in “Legends,” which opens at 7arts gallery on April 1. On exhibit are paintings of legends of the Old West. [Read More…]

It’s fair to say that California-based ceramic artist Wesley Anderegg has somewhat of a love/hate relationship with the state of Arizona.

He was born in Phoenix, graduated from Arizona State University and lived in the area for more than 30 years. His show “Arizona” at form & concept, which opens on March 30, pokes fun at life in his birthplace.

“I love the desert,” he explains. “From January through March, there’s no better place to be. When I grew up there in the 1950s, we lived at the edge of town. The desert was a great place to raise hell.” [Read More…]

Katie O’Sullivan moved to Santa Fe three years ago to focus on her career as a painter. What she didn’t expect to happen was to find female figures appearing in her work and see sadness in many of their eyes.

“When we’re out and about in the world, we always put on a happy face,” she says. “So when I saw sadness, struggle and fear in the eyes of the women I was painting, I started looking inside to learn more about myself.”

O’Sullivan displays her latest paintings in the two-artist show “Symbols of Our Inner Truths,” which opens on March 24 at TERRA Santa Fe. [Read More…]