His paintings hanging on a wall behind him, Faustino de Vargas tells the woman in his barber chair that he became a better hairdresser after studying the visual arts.

Culture happens. That is, it can be curated, but it cannot be created intentionally. To be a part of culture, one has to be in it, participating. It doesn’t happen in newspapers or museums. Let me illustrate

Axle Contemporary had partnered with the New Mexico Experimental Glass Workshop for Vidrio y los Muertos, a Day of the Dead exhibition. Next to the workshop’s kiln, Axle’s mobile gallery—devised from a custom 1970 aluminum step van—featured the works of various glass artists on its shelves.

Among the eight finalists for SITE Santa Fe’s micro-granting initiative, SPREAD, one will walk away with…let’s see, the minimum ticket price ($15) times 350-ish people, factor in the sliding scale for tickets by income profiles, then…well, enough money to get his/her/their project through the proverbial door. The other finalists will have to settle for friends and family saying, “Just getting this far is an honor.”

As a whole, Agitated Histories puts history itself on the stand.

A self-described installation artist, MacQueen has turned the walls of Eggman’s side gallery into a picture window onto an imaginary landscape.

About three years ago, I found my way into art collecting through intaglio, aka printmaking. So given the opportunity to write my first art review for SFR on the sixth annual International Guild of Realism show at Sage Creek Gallery—a suggestion left on my suggestion-covered desk—or on Thayer Carter’s new woodcuts at Argos Studio & Santa Fe Etching Club, I chose the latter. 

Beautiful people and compelling portraiture don’t have to be synonymous, a point that Robert Henri’s portraits of Thomas MacNamara in From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri & Ireland firmly reinforce. As the subject of “Sandy” and “Portrait of a Boy (Sonny Mac),” MacNamara is woefully bucktoothed and maintains bemused, dopey expressions.

Trying to appreciate a pile of sticks hanging over a fishbowl without any context is an exercise both confusing and pointless.

“Lowbrow” is a word fraught with symbolism. The term, which originated in California in the 1970s to describe a wave of colorful, energetic art inspired by sundry slices of the zeitgeist—punk ro