SFR Picks: Never-Moments

Renowned realist paints things that don't exist

Looking at one of Daniel Sprick’s portraits is like looking into the eyes of someone you know; when you can see a feeling move across their irises and, without a word, know what they’re thinking. Sprick’s oil paintings feature human faces, still-life scenes and skeletons in a manner that is familiar, yet ethereal and haunting all at once.

Sprick has that scattered-thinker thing going on during a phone interview: He rustles and moves constantly, speaking about his stunning works of realism quietly and carefully over the background noise. "It's interesting to take something, to take your visual stimuli and internalize them, and form something that's based on reality but nothing that ever quite existed," he says. "I think that's even the purpose of art: to make some sort of exaggerations on what's there and to take out things."

The deductions he makes and the magic he adds to his scenes transform them into elevated versions of reality. "It forays into some other world that I am sort of in touch with that I don't necessarily know how to articulate," Sprick says. So, he articulates it through painting. "It's kind of a non-verbal response to the poetry of things."

The Colorado artist was 18 when he started practicing his craft. "It's really the only thing I've seriously done," he tells SFR. His upcoming solo exhibit at Peters Projects features 18 new works painted in the past few years, but nothing created more recently than one year ago; he prefers to sit with his work for at least that long before letting it out into the world.

And though his visions are inspired by reality, the people and moments on his canvases have never been, and will never be. "It's this kind of moment that could be a composite of moments, but it's not one that ever really existed. It's kind of made-up, but based on reality," Sprick says. "And it kind of takes you somewhere else." (Maria Egolf-Romero)

Daniel Sprick: Recent Works
5 pm Friday March 24. Free.
Peters Projects,
1011 Paseo de Peralta,
954-5800

It’s a Drag

All the glitz and glamour of the music-heavy, dance-laden world of drag explodes onto the Skylight stage with that long-beloved local troupe, Jewel Box Cabaret. Fabulous drag heroes such as Madame Marie Antoinette Du Barry, CoCo Caliente and Lucy Fur will be there presiding over song and comedy routines and, at least for everyone who loves fun and friendship, good times shall be had. Bring your sense of humor and a love for kitschy camp, they’ll bring the bonkers high heels, beautiful dresses and, we can only assume, glitter. (Alex De Vore)

Jewel Box Cabaret:
8 pm Saturday March 25. $20.
Skylight,
139 W San Francisco St.,
982-0775.

Dance, Speak, Listen

Were you aware that Native American Week kicks off in Santa Fe this week? Well, it does, and the Santa Fe Community College is the place to be for the opening action. Dancers from Pueblos including Cochiti and Pojoaque will be in attendance, and lecturers Charles Van Pelt, Cassandra Perez and Benjamin Shendo Jr. provide a glimpse into today’s issues, including language, colonization, decolonization, Standing Rock, identity and much more. Learn more about this fascinating culture while maintaining our social conscience? Sold! (ADV)

Native American Week Celebrations:
10 am-3 pm Monday March 27. Free.
Santa Fe Community College,
6401 Richards Ave.,
428-1000.

Santa Yay

No big—just one of Santa Fe’s most talented writer-historians closing out the Las Golondrinas winter lecture series with a talk on the cultural significance of Santa Fe women who contributed to the arts during the 1900s, including the founding of Las Golondrinas itself. OK, so maybe it is big. Join Carmella Padilla (who wrote the fascinating 1999 book

Low 'n Slow: Lowriding in New Mexico

and others) as she tells the tale of social butterflies Eva Scott Fényes, Leonora Scott Muse Curtin and Leonora Frances Curtin Paloheimo. “They certainly were not dilettantes,” Padilla says. “They didn’t just come and visit museums, they invested in the arts and culture community.” (ADV)

Carmella Padilla Lecture:
6 pm Tuesday March 28. Free.
St. Francis Auditorium,
107 W Palace Ave.,
476-5072.

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