By Arianna Sullivan/Photos by Amanda Tyler   “This,” says Marquita Sena, “is my favorite seal of the whole building.” We are standing at the edge of the balcony that stretches all around the circumference of the inside of Santa Fe’s Capitol building, The Roundhouse. The seal that Marquita refers to sits all the way down on the first floor, centered by the circular building “In the center we have both the American Bald Eagle and the Mexican Harpie,” begins Marquita, explaining her fondness for this particular seal, “and they are encircled by the Zia symbol—which represents the four points of a compass, the four periods of the day, the seasons of the year, the four stages of life.”  She tells us, with the same pride in her voice as when she had explained that all of the marble in the building is from New Mexico, that the seal is set in the floor with Turquoise—New Mexico’s state stone. “It is this representation of both the Native American and the American that the building does so well,” explains Marquita. Marquita’s eyes light up as she tells us how her husband used to take her flying over the roundhouse before she ever worked there. “From above we could see the shape that the building was designed to make—the shape of the Zia.” Marquita is not the only tour-guide for the Roundhouse who has a sense of personal pride for the building. The tour guides, who are seated around a long rectangular table chatting and enjoying each other’s company when we first approach them, become serious and full of praise when we ask them about their jobs. All around the table the women echo each other with variations of, “we love this building.” Several of the women are...

By Arianna Sullivan/Photos by Natalie Abel The Marion Center is alive with a plethora of energy when I enter. A group of Monte del Sol Charter School students grouped in the corner of the main gallery sing energetically, accompanied by an electric keyboard. The walls are filled, seemingly top to bottom, with an eclectic mix of different mediums—from photography to 3-D dolls—all a product of the spirited Monte del Sol art department, and the efforts of its two key players: Michael Webb and Nancy Sue Michels. The place is absolutely swarming with middle and high school students, Santa Fe University students and faculty, parents of the Monte del Sol students, and even Santa Feans who came to the Marion Center to view the two other shows opening in the space, and then wandered into the charter school’s show with pleasantly surprised looks on their faces. When Natalie and I finally track down Michael and Nancy Sue, they are both buoyant and enthusiastic about the show, and the turn-out for its opening. “This might be the best show we’ve ever had,” they agree, referring to the success of the Marion Center as a space to showcase their students’ work after 13 years of working together to put up an annual show of the student work being created in Monte’s art department. Nancy Sue is excited, she explains, by the energy that is constantly buzzing about the Marion Center Gallery. “Even when we were hanging the show the other day,” she says, “there were people coming through here, going about their business. It’s not like a gallery space that closes up at night and after that nobody sees the artwork. Plus,” she concedes with an almost mischievous smile, “it gives me this little flashback to being...

There is no sound. It is the CD release party of Rumelia, Santa Fe’s Balkan music group, and there is no sound. The members of Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s Balkan Music Ensemble, who have been invited as guests to this event, loiter on the Railyard Performance Center’s makeshift stage of rugs and platforms on the hardwood dance floor. “How are we?” asks Polly Tapia Ferber, the director of the ensemble. “Are we good?” The audience is restless and ready, but a shout from the sound techies makes it clear that they are going to have to wait for just “one more second.” “Well,” says Polly, “We’ve been here for hours trying to make sure this wouldn’t happen, but…” She wanders off in search of technical solutions for the lack of sound coming from the ensembles’ microphones. Rumelia’s Nicolle Jenson, a College of Santa Fe alum, comes to the stage to announce that, “it’s a good thing we have a few tricks up our sleeve!” The group of three female artists joins her to perform two pieces a cappella. The women are performing this evening to celebrate the release of their CD ‘Lost and Found,’ but it is clear that they hardly need their instruments and a recording studio to capture the odd-time signatures and tonalities of the Balkan region of Eastern Europe. Using nothing but their lungs as instruments, they weave their voices together and immediately capture the audience’s revered attention. When they finish Polly is still scurrying back and forth across the stage checking wires in an attempt to make everything come together. On stage, just a handful of members of the ensemble lounge with their instruments. The sound problem will be figured out eventually, but this is Santa Fe,...

Story by Arianna Sullivan/Photo by Natalie Abel “Really,” says Tony O’Brien earnestly, “enjoy the photography. Be who you are.” The Santa Fe University Photographic Society meeting is still for a moment, digesting, and then works itself back up into the excited planning frenzy that preceded Tony’s statement. “So what are we photographing,” inquires one student eagerly, “the people, the streets, of just everything?” Tony looks at the array of confused, enthused and jittery faces and responds simply, “as you see it.” The group has gathered to discuss the Santa Fe Grid Project—the photo department’s plan for involvement in this year’s Outdoor Vision Fest. Outdoor Vision Fest is an annual outdoor art show of design, animation, video, photography and other visual imagery, and the photo department is preparing to be a larger and louder presence in 2013 than it has been in past years. The project that the photo department has decided to embark upon, the Santa Fe Grid Project, has potential to grow in influence beyond the festival and even the campus as well. The Grid Project, brainchild of Photography freshman Chris Beran, will be a photographic documentation of Santa Fe’s neighborhoods by SFUAD Photo Society members. Photo students from the school will document designated neighborhoods of the city by means of whatever photographic medium speaks to them—be it still image, analog or digital, time lapse, alternative processing, with or without the accompaniment of interviews or music—as Tony O’Brien puts it, “as you see it.” Both Chris Nail and Tony O’Brien, the faculty members heralding the Photo Department’s involvement in OVF 2013, are enthusiastic about the project’s potential to be the beginning of a continued relationship between SFUAD and the city of Santa Fe. “It will be a living document, a sort of micro-version...