It’s a nippy January morning and Elizabeth Gaylynn Baker, Jack of many trades, is standing by the Plaza obelisk giving away free hugs.

She’s accompanied by a man wielding a sign advertising the offer and another recording the events on an iPhone. “Free hugs, just for being alive!” the first one hollers at passersby.

Edie Tsong appears to be a little frantic as she spreads out 10-inch-tall cutout letters transported inside an SFR back issue. The clock is ticking, and she has less than two hours to use them to stencil a poem—using canned spray snow as a medium—in the street-facing windows of the Teen Court building.

Being an art and culture authority (in a city that lives and breathes it) is no easy task. Especially when my personal definition of art goes far beyond a painting hung on a perfectly lit wall, or a poignant poem slammed on a stage.

Organizing your junk drawer? No, you’re curating your expendables. Planning a kiddie party? Nope, you’re curating it—that clown ain’t gonna hire itself. The term “curator” is so overused these days that the profession itself, it seems, has devaluated

For the last 15 years, a 1948 red GMC truck has permanently decorated Ray Herrera’s driveway. “It’s a one-owner,” Herrera boasts, explaining that he inherited the vehicle from his father after he passed. Next to it, there’s a hand-built shrine to St. Francis that Herrera built himself. A vintage, paper-stuffed Santa Claus is propped against the pickup’s driver’s seat. “Everyone thinks he’s gross because he’s falling apart."

Hal Kahn has an issue with the digitally retouched, wrinkle-free world in which we live, and his self-funded photography exhibit, Faces of the Elderly, reflects it. “I want to show the wrinkles,” the 60-year-old says of the forthcoming show, which consists exclusively of portraits of senior citizens.

Picture postcard from the 2012 USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellowship.

When it comes to mainstream appropriation of another culture’s imagery, few groups seem to be targeted as often as Native Americans are. One of the latest examples to make a splash is No Doubt’s video for “Looking Hot,” which featured singer Gwen Stefani—who has borrowed from cholo, seapunk and Indian (dot) cultures before—dressed up in stylized Native garb.

Chuck Cover gets a twinkle in his eyes when he leads visitors to the backroom of his Seton Village home. “This space was the main selling point,” he says, walking towards his impressive model railroad layout.

When Frederick Prescott first came to Santa Fe 30 years ago, he fell in love. “I’d heard about Santa Fe, but I didn’t know what it was,” the Bay Area native says. A day and a half in our town, and Prescott was “mesmerized.”