It is opening night, the house is open, and the set is not even finished. The director is exasperated. His stage manager informs him that the set was not finished because they “ran out of money.” “You finally get used to one way of doing things and they up and change all of the rules on you,” he exclaims. His writer, who is pacing the stage with loud nervous high-heeled clicks, turns on him. “There are no rules in art!” she shrieks, sounding half-insulted and half-horrified. The two are interrupted by their stage manager, who is trying to delicately remove them from the stage so that their play can commence. “There shouldn’t be,” she says, “but those days are past.” She shoos them off stage, the house lights dim, and the play within the play Gun Shy is finally allowed to begin. Gun Shy is a comedy written and directed by Joey Chavez, and performed by high school theater students at the Santa Fe charter school New Mexico School for the Arts. The play breaks the third wall and brings up questions about what constitutes art, and what is or isn’t allowable in art, over and over again. The answers to these questions, however, are perhaps more apparent in the people behind the play than the script itself. Before their performance, the cast paced, stretched, and applied last minute make-up or costume touch-ups while practicing a few last line-throughs—reciting their lines in order without blocking or acting through the entire play. Their director and teacher Joey Chavez entered the room intermittently and watched them intently, without interrupting the focus coursing through his students. Cris Lannucci, an NMSA senior who plays the author of the play within the play, is eager to sit for an interview,...

By Nick Martinez/ Photos by Luke Montavon Last weekend, ARTfeast was in full motion, including the gorgeous Art of Homes tour. The Art of Homes tour brought locals and visitors alike to check out some of Santa Fe’s most beautiful homes that are currently on the market. Arranged throughout these homes is artwork from local Santa Fe galleries. Before the tour commenced, there was a committee in place with the interesting challenge to decide which gallery would be paired with which house. “There are a lot of art collectors, from in and outside of Santa Fe,” said real estate agent Efrain Prieto. “It’s funny, because I’m a painter and have actually sold houses with my own paintings before.” If you took the tour in order, the first stop was at a lovely 3-bedroom, 2-bath, mid Century Modern estate on Camino Encantado. The home featured artwork from Beals & Abbate’s Fine Art gallery, including various cast stone statues. The gallerys are tasked with combing through the artwork from their galleys and combining them with the artwork already hung up by the home owners. “It’s nice to take a look at how they’re already decorated, then decorate yourself,” said Bobby Beals, owner of the gallery. Further along the tour was a 3-bedroom, 2-bath, El Torreon home on El Caminito, formerly owned by country music star Randy Travis. While there are many reasons why this home is beautiful, two features that stand out are the tower that the home was originally built around, which due to the lack of a bathroom I would suggest turning into a studio, and the metal tin work on the cupboards. The home featured artwork from the Worrell Gallery downtown, and the terra-cotta sculptures went hand in hand with the more storied...

By Mark Feigenbutz/ Photos by Tim Kassiotis     If you’re young and fancy yourself hip and find yourself in Santa Fe and want to find every other youngin hipster Santa Fean, get to a Meow Wolf event. If you’re young and fancy yourself hip and find yourself in Santa Fe and you don’t know what Meow Wolf is, then you’re either old or unhip or located somewhere other than Santa Fe. If you’re old, look them up in the Yellow Pages. If you’re unhip, Google them on your Blackberry. If you’re not located in Santa Fe, then you won’t understand Meow Wolf’s significance anyhow. What is Meow Wolf’s significance? Well, it’s, like, the only organization of its kind that gets young, hip Santa Feans together to do uniquely young and hip, Santa Fean shtuff. What kind of shtuff? Shtuff like trippy, artsy-rave shindigs where you put neon face paint on your face as a starting point for it to end up elsewhere, find yourself in no less than three conversations about The Universe (yes, The Universe is a pronoun) and dance your B.O. off until it coalesces into a wonderfully Santa Fean B.O. Jambalaya. Why do I keep asking myself questions that I inevitably answer and, more important, why do I keep employing the word “shtuff?” Because I’m young, I’m hip and I’m finding myself more and more “Santa Fe.” “Santa Fe” is less a physical location than an anomalous “Huh?” To illustrate, photographer Tim Kass and I showed up to the event at 9 p.m. because the bar owner said it started at 8 p.m., when, in actuality, it got rolling around 11-ish. I’ve only been in Santa Fe for one year and seven months and this did not phase me in...