Located in a basement, right beneath West San Francisco Street in the heart of downtown Santa Fe, lies The Matador bar & lounge, (The Matador, 116 W San Francisco St, 984-5050). It’s easy to miss the cement stairs that lead you below unless there’s a bartender on shift, and then you’ll be sure to hear music blaring up through the stairwell. The staff at the Matador is a group of uniquely diverse individuals and each one provides something for just about everyone. Some of them are experts in culinary arts and could teach you how to properly butcher your own pig, while others can offer mechanical advice on how to build a motorcycle. An added bonus is the varying musical preferences from the bar that range from outlaw country to funk and soul, which brings in a wide range of customers. The Matador is great place to grab a drink and take a break from Santa Fe, all while being taken back to that bar that reminds you of home. It’s a little divey, but isn’t that what makes it feel like our...

Shayla Blatchford captures a day in the life for Mike Lucero, campus security guard.

Studio Art major Jessica Gulliford is currently working on her BFA thesis show, a “grand performance” that will focus on inviting her audience into her artwork. The show will consist of installations and performances incorporating “stanchions, ticket booth, photo ops, fog machines, red and pink lights… a bunch of rock’n roll’n.” In the meantime, Gulliford will be offering free portraits to anyone who wishes to visit her during her posted hours. Her next portrait session will be from noon to 2 pm, Nov. 7 in the Fogelson Library. Participants can pick up their portraits at her show, where they will be separately...

  Originally from New England, Erin Currier is currently a Santa Fe resident who graduated from the College of Santa Fe in 1997 with a BFA in Theater Design. As a child, Currier grew up drawing, painting and collaging alongside her mother, who was a huge influence on her. While working in a coffee shop, Currier was “struck by how much trash was thrown away every day.” It was the packaging and the overall aesthetic of these articles that caught her attention. She began to collect particular pieces of trash, which purposefully made their way into her collaged paintings of Buddhist deities and Taras. Within a year of graduating, Currier had her very first solo show in Taos. With great response, her work had made it to the cover of the newspaper and onto the radio. Since her debut, Currier has been able to follow her childhood dreams of making art and traveling the world. Over the years her work has “shifted from Easter spirituality to a much more outwardly sociopolitical bend.” Currier had a recent show at Blue Rain Gallery in Santa Fe, where she is a featured artist....

Photographer, teacher and alumni Mike Webb talks about his experiences making art and in the...

By Shayla Blatchford Even though the props and events of Fiesta have packed up their bags and gone, the spirit of Fiesta never departs. Over the past few years, I’ve been able to observe the various ways in which locals celebrate and interpret the cultural holiday. For some, it’s about family and culture, a deeply rooted appreciation for their town and history. Others may find Fiesta as a time to simply celebrate life and share it with friends over seasoned corn in a cup along with some agua fresca. Either way, during this week of festivities, it seems as though the whole town comes together as family. With the highlight of the week being Zozobra, friends and families trickle down and around Fort Marcy Park to watch a 40-foot effigy of Old Man Gloom go up in flames. The giant paper mâché puppet represents the troubles and gloom of the past year and once it goes up in flames, so does your gloom! In some aspects, it is very much a communal and religious ceremony. Everyone admits to experiencing some gloom by simply attending the burn. I even heard a young woman comparing Zozobra to Santa Claus as a child. Until this day, she still believes that “Zozo” will take away her gloom each year and she can move on and start over. Some people choose to officially attend Zozobra by buying a ticket that allows you an up-close experience. From an aerial view, you can see that the entire Fort Marcy baseball field is packed with families, 20-somethings, and food vendors of all sorts. For those who prefer not to pay the $10 entrance fee, Fiesta parties can be found at every house lining the road that leads you to Zozobra. This year, I...

Cliff Shapiro graduated from the College of Santa Fe, now known as the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, in 2010 with a BFA in Photography. He is a New York native but has recently planted some rivaling roots in Santa Fe. Like the rest of us, the land has enchanted him beyond his expectations and he has been living and working in Santa Fe for the past five years. Working like a true photographer, he has enrolled in classes at the Community College to grasp a better understanding of his newest photographic subject… food.  Not only has he enrolled in culinary classes to broaden his understanding of food but to fine tune his existing skills in the kitchen. He has hopes of someday combining his two passions of food and photography by finding his way into what I imagine would be a fine art/fine dining...

By Shayla Blatchford Last weekend, High Mayhem Emerging Arts hosted duo CD releases with local artists iNK oN pAPER and soloist Luke Carr. Located just south of Santa Fe’s downtown area, High Mayhem is an arts studio tucked away in an industrial dead end off of Siler Road. The volunteer staff accepted a suggested donation of $10 at the door, which included a digital download of each band’s newly released album. Luke Carr opened the show with his battery charged guitar, which became the first of many instruments to be looped as part of his full band. In between sets, the audience drifted out of the venue and into the fenced-in “front yard” with a bonfire as its centerpiece. As iNK oN pAPER closed the evening, the looping continued with Carlos Santistevan on bass and manipulated drum beats by Milton Villarrubia III. In comparison to Carr’s building layers of looped instruments, which become the foundation of his track to top with vocals, iNK oN pAPER created a technical depth to their process of loops and samples that are only intended to be ripped to shreds in their experimental electronic battle of drum and...

By Shayla Blatchford On a day like this, just near the halfway mark of the legislative session, there is never a dull moment at the State Capitol (Roundhouse) in Santa Fe, NM. The happenings range from union workers taking a stand and confronting their senators outside the Chamber House doors, to the continuous inside jokes that run through the mailroom during the dispersing of bills. In addition to the constant waves of people flowing from one committee hearing to the next, the Roundhouse has also made time to celebrate its culture and history later this afternoon. It may seem like a stiff environment when looking in from the outside, but once you get to know how accessible everyone is, especially within the senate, you begin to realize how you can truly be heard as an individual. The ties and suits may seem a little intimidating at first, but those who work within the Capital are just doing their jobs like the rest of us—except some of them are doing it for close to nothing. Per diems, for some, don’t always cover the cost of lunch and just to give you an idea, you can buy the cheapest B.L.T. in Santa Fe at the Roundhouse for close to $2.50. In addition to paying for a hotel for up to two months and getting by on a few dollars for meals, the hours are long and there are no breaks. Outside the double doors, it’s hard not to notice the group of men in their cowboy hats, boots and belt buckles and you start to wonder who these men are. They’re not in suits sitting behind a desk reviewing bills or taking a breather in the exclusive lounge located behind the Chamber House doors.  They look...

Story by Brandon Ghigliotty/Photos by Shayla Blatchford   I had the opportunity to interview Donna Ruff, printmaker, illustrator and Art Department faculty member of nearly two years at Santa Fe University of Art and Design. Ruff, with an MFA from Rutgers, has more than a decade of teaching experience spread throughout New England. On a late Sunday morning, openings in our schedules converge to allow me to get to know more about her work. What drew you to printmaking as a medium? Donna Ruff: Rutgers has an important printmaking department. At the time they had the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, but it’s now called the Brodsky Center, after one of my professors, Judith Brodsky. They bring in artists from New Jersey and New York on grant programs to do projects in printmaking, with papermaking as an element if the artist wants to do that. I had professors who were well known in that field—besides Judy, I had Lynne Allen as a professor. She was a master printer at Tamarind at UNM for years and we discovered we had mutual friends in Albuquerque. I had never tried lithography—it seemed quite daunting, as it involves some alchemy—the print results from oil and water not mixing, and is planographic. So there are a lot of ways it can become a big mess on the plate. I was an older student and Lynne took me in the darkroom and showed me how to make a photographic litho, which changed my work in a huge way. I also learned to make paper, and understand its particular qualities. Printmaking departments, even at Rutgers, are having a hard time holding on. It’s thought of as too “old school” or something. Colleges are scrambling to build New Media departments, and...

Story by Brandon Ghigliotty/Photos by Shayla Blatchford The main lobby of the Thaw Art History building greets me with a faux bathroom. In place of a mirror, a screen plays looped video above its sink. The installation crowds the main lobby and forces visitors into the rest of the building. A large piece beckons at the end of the hallway, a many doored wooden box around five feet tall—its flanks draped in black cloth. Rusty hinges flex while the apparatus behind it ticks and strains. The work in the hallway, part of a joint exhibition entitled Range that will be shared with Universidad del Mar in Chile, continues past the restrooms with the sketch of a tree trunk. The illustration’s color defies the verdant nature of the piece, with its bruised, purple coloration exacerbating the veins of the tree’s trunk. While examining the piece, a figure approaches from my peripheral vision. I shift my weight and scoot out of her way, greeting her. She nearly passes before I recognize her: Linda Swanson, chair of the art department. I begin to introduce myself, but I’m interrupted by her. “If you want to talk, you’ll have to keep up,” she says. I roll to the balls of my feet and spring up after her as she strides down the passageway. Photographer Shayla Blatchford and I follow Swanson to the building’s kitchenette. She multi-tasks while speaking to us. Swanson punches the microwave and trades out mugs, before she splits tubes of instant coffee over them. She tells me about a recent event within the Art Department. Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s Kristaan Villela, who holds a doctorate with an emphasis in Pre-Columbian Art, hosted a lecture on the role of the Apocalypse throughout mankind’s history. The...