Sixty-two-year-old Josie Lucero is used to the almost nonexistent foot traffic at Emmanuel’s, her Cerrillos Road frame shop. “Oh God, it’s gone down,” she says of the current state of the framing industry. “The economy is terrible, if this was my only income…forget about it.”

Manning the sleepy desk at the Plaza Galeria space where her first solo show, Innercapes hangs, Sarah Nolan is used to low foot traffic. “It’s mostly tourists and sandwich lovers,” she says, referencing the nearby Subway.

Continuing the lo-fi aesthetic of their latest exhibit, CutGlueFold, Axle Contemporary presents The Flatfile Show­, a paper-driven curatorial experiment that shines a spotlight on the most basic of mediums.

One step inside Stan Natchez’ gallery and it’s clear he’s not your conventional Native artist. “I paint to understand the world that surrounds me,” he says, as he swiftly applies gold leaf to an 8-foot-tall painting depicting Sioux warrior Lone Wolf.

“I’m a beadworker first. If you want to call me an artist, that’s fine,” Greeves says modestly, even though one of her pieces—a pair of beaded Converse high-tops—resides in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

As witnessed in his latest show, An American Knockoff, seasoned artist Roger Shimomura’s work walks the line between political statement and absurdity. A product, he says, that spawns from spending his formative years trying to find a sense of place.

It was billed as a homage to the likes of Ed Ruscha, Wallace Berman and Ed Kienholz, but Eggman & Walrus’ Ferus seemed marred from the get-go.

The first thing you notice upon entering Ben Haggard’s Second Street studio is a desk that’s seen better days, lined in freezer paper and covered with globs of colorful acrylic paint. “I call it my disposable palette,” Haggard says.

The energy inside Natchez Art Studio is palpable. A multigenerational exhibit consisting of 100-plus pieces titled Indian Without Reservation is going up in preparation for Indian Market.The term “wearable art” gets thrown around a lot these days (see designer Bob Mackie’s QVC Collection), but what the younger Natchez does is head and shoulders above anything else around.

Steve Lambert can’t hide his excitement as he approaches his monumental Capitalism: Works for me! interactive install—or as he simplistically likes to call it, “the sign”—located outside the Santa Fe Art Institute. Standing nine feet high by 20 feet long and adorned with blinking marquee-style bulbs, the aluminum behemoth—which asks passersby to vote true or false by pushing a game show-style button—is far from inconspicuous.