2018 Resolutions

Santa Feans talk about what they hope, plan and predict for the new year

Whether the New Year arrives with a bang or a blanket, arrive it must.

For many of us, 2017 was a doozy. Massive, huge, tremendous, terrifying policy shifts on the federal level trickled into our homes and workplaces. The city's annual fall Fiestas turned into a police state. The realities of widespread abuse of power and sexual misconduct are having their way with us. And now, the impending local and state election seasons with their soon-to-be-broken promises are looming.

Angry isolation simply won't do for Santa Fe, though. The days get long, cold and dark, and then they brighten and warm up. We're going to look forward even as we try to learn from everything that's come before.

Newsroom staff Aaron Cantú, Alex De Vore, Matt Grubs and Julie Ann Grimm spent a few days seeking out some of Santa Fe's movers and shakers to gather inspiration for you and from you, dear readers. A woman who's convinced/coerced someone under 25 to move to Santa Fe and helped them find housing and work for each of the last four years. Bravo! An artist who wants to exalt this place we share. Hip-hooray! A baker seeking more balance. Hear, hear!

We're not all going to get to some higher, happier realm all at once in 2018, we're pretty sure—but with a city like this, and by making, as artist Anastasio Wrobel suggests, "thousands of micro-movements," we can get closer.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Warren Langford

Senior Producer of Podcasting at
Meow Wolf

"Having this tabula rasa, this blank slate to explore, I would be pushing boundaries in as many ways as possible. To me, podcasting has barely scratched the surface of what it could be. If you build a genre, the fans will come—they'll seek it out. There are mysteries in New Mexico I've wanted to solve. Weird rumors I've heard over time like, was The Beach water park really a front for Mexican cartels and that's why they closed?"

Bill Smith

President and CEO of the Santa Fe Community Foundation

"I was trying to be an optimist because I am an optimist for the most part, but when I was thinking about predictions, I just keep coming back to: I think there is going to be some type of political cataclysm. Because, between the really reckless rhetoric and hyper-partisanship, it just doesn't spell a good future for us, particularly at the federal level. We are going to have new leadership in New Mexico and we will have new leadership here in the city, so I think we are excited here at the foundation in particular, to work with new leadership and to move New Mexico and Santa Fe forward. Resolutions: We have been thinking a lot here about, 'What is the role of the community foundation in addressing our affordable housing crisis?' So we will be launching some new initiatives in 2018 to help identify solutions."

Ken Baumann

Teacher, Co-chair for Democratic Socialists of America, Santa Fe

"In 2018 I'd like to see less fascism, more decentralized institutions. Less authoritarian impulses, less violent persecution of minorities. I'm not sure if one year is going to make any significant change, but I hope to help make some of that change next year. And less reliance on national institutions, which might not survive climate crises. More local sustainable enterprises that can keep people alive and thriving without global supply chains and stuff like that. I feel like Santa Fe is beginning to think that way in terms of water and has always been very savvy."

Claudia Flores

Co-owner of Toy Auto Man

"For my family, of course, health. As long as we are healthy, that's all we need. I lost my best friend two months ago, so I am more appreciative of time with family. Period. I think that's what matters. We are not promised a single day. [As far as predictions,] I think this side of town is going to continue to grow. When our previous owners moved down here from Second Street, it was a big deal. They kept hearing this was a bad side of town, but it's been wonderful."

Argos Maccallum

Co-founder and Creative Director of Teatro Paraguas

"I predict that the theater scene in Santa Fe is going to get even stronger with new companies coming in and possibly new theaters being built. I'm hoping that Teatro Paraguas will continue into its 15th season and be able to maintain its space and provide space for others to use as well, as we have in the past. There's a number of groups that we hopefully can come together with and do a big Day of the Dead in November with a parade and a full weekend of events. We've been working with Casablanca Studios in the past, we've done celebrations in the past, but we're hoping to make it much bigger and more public. It seems like there's always so much to do; I'm just going to keep plowing through and not worry so much about rocking the boat with resolutions. We're going to surprise ourselves with how much stronger theater becomes."

Honey Harris

Host of The Big Show on KBAC (98.1 FM) at Hutton Broadcasting

"My aspirations for 2018 would be to maybe pursue more creative things in my life, creative projects. My predictions: Things will change. And that's where I stand."

Martha Alcantar

Co-owner of Santa Fe Honey Salon

"For the next year, I hope for health and no violence, but I know it's a dream. I know we can't do it all in the next year. I imagine that educating my child [Xochitl Guadalupe] with love, to me that's how it can be done, that's what to do to get there. It's difficult, though."

Madeleine Carey

Greater Gila Guardian at WildEarth Guardians

"I'd like to qualify for the 2020 Olympic Marathon trials either at the Chicago Marathon or Cal International. I'll have to run 2:45 or faster. For every year I've been in Santa Fe [four], I've convinced/coerced another young person [under 25] to move here and helped them find housing or jobs. I'd like to keep a person per year going. I want to become a more vocal local advocate. I advocate a lot at the federal level for work and I'd like to be more of a constant pest at the city level. Bike infrastructure, event permits, zoning and public food councils are my pet issues. [A selection of] predictions: Patriots win the Super Bowl, Lobo women win NCAA cross country title, La Entrada has fewer than 50 people in attendance, no one rents the Flying Star space [in the Railyard], and rhubarb margaritas take Santa Fe/my backyard by storm."

Niomi Fawn

Founder, Show Pony mobile art gallery and Curate Santa Fe

"I think my major aspiration for 2018, as far as being a curator goes, is to really find new ways to support my artists. And by support, I mean help people be able to sustain what they're doing. What I'm seeing right now is kind of the same thing I was seeing last winter: people working so hard. Young people in this town are workaholics. They're just so tapped out. They're expected to do everything, and I just want to continue to pursue new avenues of holistic curation, which means looking at people as a whole and not just looking at their art and not just looking at them as a product. I'm always looking to work with people who I feel in line with their values, I'm excited to see that more in the world."

Jennifer Case Nevarez

Director and Lead Educator of New Mexico Techworks' Community Learning Network

"Personally, I work for the 'restoration of relation' in every possible way. So my aspiration is that we restore our capacity as humans to connect with ourselves and each other and even with the earth, with what is bigger than ourselves in a good way, with grace and integrity. I think we need that right now. I also work locally to reconnect young people with our community and with all ages, so that's another aspiration: to continue the work of restoring our love for where we live and reconnecting all generations to each other and to all the beautiful things about our community. … I also do see change for Santa Fe and I feel that there are ideas coming to fruition and there are micro-enterprises stirring and there are bigger efforts in technology rooting in our community and there is a buzz that is making it more vibrant and bringing the possibility of a tech economy more alive for more people."

Jonathan Medina

Employee at El Chile Toreado on the Plaza

"I think last year was a very difficult year for everybody with all the changes with the new president, and the different things that he's been changing. And for next year, I really hope that people have a little more consideration for each other, and have more understanding for where everyone is in their life; you can't judge someone for where they're from, and we need to have a little bit more compassion for one another, and that's the only way we're going to thrive. Because if we hold each other down just because of where we're from and everything, this place is going to go downhill really fast. And with different things going on with the government, it's making it more complicated for people to make their living and things like that. They're changing their homes, they're having to move out of places they've been for a long time just because of the fact they're not being accepted as they were before all these new changes happened."

Andrea Hanley

Membership and Program Manager at IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts

"For me, and I think this probably goes for the museum as well, creatively, I want to have more opportunities to connect and to learn and to reflect while trying to continue to do good in our community both big and small. When you talk about Santa Fe, your local, national and international community, that's what we try to do. For me, what's exciting in the field comes from me personally living and trying to be connected to my core tribal values and personal commitments. I think that's everybody who works here. That's why everybody here works for contemporary Native arts. We want to continue to support contemporary Indigenous artists in the best way we can. We're looking for the best ways to engage the public with new ideas. The work speaks for itself. I'm always trying to think up new ways to connect with the community. In 2018 I'd like to make more time for theater and reading and films and learning from my colleagues. To be a sponge for other peoples' creativity. … Hopefully my goals and my dreams both personally and professionally will manifest themselves in some sort of way that kicks ass this year."

Jason Silverman

Director of the Center for Contemporary Arts' Cinematheque

"It's kind of a prediction/aspiration: That people will spend less time expressing their outrage about the world on social media and more time actually making the world a better place. I'm constantly making resolutions. I make daily resolutions, I'm big on that. I'm going to try to eat less candy. I'm exhausted from our annual report, and I'm exhausted from all we did this year. And we want to do it again next year, because it's really fun. It was a really good year—it was our second biggest year just missing by a hair. We're in a nice place. [In 2018] there will be good films both old and new, and lots of projects with our beloved partners."

Annamaria O’Brien

Owner of Dolina Bakery and Café

"What I'm hoping for as a new business owner is that I can continue to bring people together over a good meal. I hope to come up with new recipes that are inspired by my culture, where I come from, to continue to source more ingredients locally. It's going well, and I'm just happy how it's stimulating me socially and on a creative level. It's been such a beautiful endeavor, but challenging as well. I like the challenge. It's stimulating in a good way. Just learning the process and learning how to deal with the good and bad makes me grow into a better person. As a mother, I'm hoping to balance my life a little better and be able to spend more quality time with my children. I'm hoping to find the balance. And to be able to run up the mountain and our beautiful trails."

Kinsey Brown

Property Broker at Varela Real Estate

"I'm just ready to meet more people and get smarter and stronger and build my business and really be a good mom and take care of my kids. As far as real estate goes, I think 2018 is going to be an awesome year. It's a seller's market so inventory is super low, so hopefully we can get more homes on the market. There are a lot of buyers out there."

Joel LeCuyer

Worker at Red River Mercantile, leather crafter and former SFR employee

"There's a lot of hate out there. There's a lot of animosity and a lot of lack of thinking, so it would be nice if people started treating each other with patience and temperance and kindness and generosity again, especially in our community. There's a sense of decency that's lost and it would be kind of nice to regain that. Nobody wants to talk about anything political or important, everybody's walking on eggshells. It just seems like everybody's living in a lot closer confines of their own construction than it used to be a year ago. Which is a bummer."

Amy Tischler

Co-founder of Simply Social Media

"I've lost sight of the fact that it's almost 2018, but it really makes me think about longer-term, bigger-picture. Personally, an aspiration for what we do, and something I'd like to see more and more of, is collaborations. I think that our creative community has a lot to offer, and I also think that by working together we can amplify what is happening so much louder. I'd love to see more out-of-the-box collaborations, like partnering businesses and people who might not ordinarily think of working together. There's a whole creative economy of makers and creators and finding ways to interweave that. The gig economy in Santa Fe is huge, and it has been for a long time, but as people are starting to accept it as a new economy, there's new and exciting things happening. Our business is still evolving, and I hope we keep that mindset of not limiting ourselves. It doesn't just extend to the structure of the business or organization, but across multi-generations. I'm a gen-Xer, [business partner Caitlin Jenkins] is a millennial, and it totally works for us to have these different experiences—I'd love to see more of that; none of us can do it alone."

Bess Murphy

Assistant Curator at the Ralph T Coe Center for the Arts

"The Coe Center is at a really exciting place where we're generating a lot of buzz and moving toward building a new space for our collection and activities and exhibitions and public programming. I'm very excited to help in all of those efforts, because I really see the Coe as a space that will continue to serve a really diverse group of local artists, students and visitors. Part of what we do is to try and say that the Native arts world is really huge; it's bigger than just Santa Fe. There are 560-some recognized tribes, and we have materials from not all of them, but a lot of them. We have materials that are historic and contemporary, and contemporary Native arts look different all across the platform. It's something we're actively working to unpack. We want to serve artists who work in all formats using all media, and we want to work with artists and community members who use our resources as a tool, but also to expand that conversation. We're going to have art in the Coe and out of the Coe; we're going to have art in surprising places."

Gloria Payne

Cashier at the Five and Dime

"I hope the economy continues to be good the way it is now, and the business [continues to be good]. I love to meet people from all over the world and all over the place, so I just hope that it continues to be as successful as it's been, maybe even more people would like to come and visit Santa Fe."

Andrea Abedi

Owner of The Temptress Private Chef and Catering

"Resolutions I never stick to. I think I would like to grow my business and keep people fed, keep them happy, keep them healthy. When I make anything, I feel the intention comes through in the food. If you're not feeling well, people feel the energy. If you're feeling great, it's nourishing. [Being a] private chef right now is my main focus; public events are going to be a focus. Catering is definitely picking up. I don't really do larger-scale functions, I like to keep it more intimate. Everything is handmade, everything is made from scratch, nothing is processed, everything is organic, mostly vegan, gluten-free and lots of love. Farm-to-table, obviously, is very important."

Anastasio Wrobel

Artist

"I am hopeful that this will be the year I begin to get paid for talking about what I think. I hope that this is the year for multiple folks to join arms together to continue working toward the betterment of our society. I hope to be more mindful. In my arts practice this year, I'm hoping to have more context in my work. One of my resolutions is to explain more. Instead of making a resolution that lasts me for a year, I resolve to make thousands more micro-movements that'll get me there. I want more action and less talk. I honestly think that the counter-culture is going to continue [in Santa Fe]—an expansion of DIY spaces showing up and showing things."

Jerry Wellman

Co-founder, Axle Contemporary mobile art gallery

"It's been an incredible year. It's unbelievable. I had a heart attack, for God's sake; we did a show at the Navajo Nation Museum, a project we've been working on the last couple years; and it looks like we'll be able to take the van down to Hobbs and Artesia. We've got a really full plate for next year. And it'll be, in some ways, installations—a piece we do with Currents [New Media Festival] and we'll be doing a piece this summer that includes storytelling and interviews. It's very community-building. We like to keep it unusual. The experience people have in Axle is, generally speaking, a bit different than in a gallery or museum, and we want to keep it that way. I'm finding there are certain inconsistencies in the art world wherein the basis of the art world is collecting, and I find that tends to be inconsistent with the desire to just make art. So I've been thinking a lot about that, and Axle has always been about that to a degree anyway. I'm thinking about how we can do that. What is the resonance of an image that gets people going? I certainly want to continue to find ways that we can build connections. I really want to find ways to exalt this place that we all live in and to recognize the blessings of this place. That sentiment in some ways sounds like a New Mexico new-agey sort of thing, but I really believe this.

Gary Cordova

Owner of 8-Bit Retro Video Games

"With resolutions, we don't really have any, we just try to be the best to our customers we can possibly be. As a store, I'm getting bigger—we're already busting out of the seams as it is, there's always room for improvement and to go bigger."

Eliza Lutz

Founder of Matron Records and music booker at DIY venue Ghost and Second Street Brewery's Rufina Taproom

"My biggest focus in the next year will be finding bigger audiences and putting out more music. Both Second Street Brewery Rufina and Ghost will be instrumental. I feel like in the past a lot of the legwork was having to coordinate venues, but having two locked in allows me to reach out to more artists. I'd like to bridge the gap between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Lastly, to use the art scene and music scene as a foundation for doing a lot more political community outreach. I'm working with a great organization called Changing Woman Initiative to do a pretty big two-day music festival at the end of March, so that'll bring a lot of Albuquerque and Santa Fe musicians together to support their project; they're raising funds to build a native birthing center, which is obviously really cool."

Dion Silva

Vice President of Los Alamos National Bank

"There is so much going on the world today you hope that there are some resolutions of—I wouldn't even say world peace, that seems to be an unattainable goal or a direction to ever meet—but at least to have some stability in life. It all seems to be so confusing right now and no one seems to know where they are at on so many levels. So an understanding and a better open dialogue between different people is what I hope for in 2018."

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