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...

By Luke Montavon After nearly two semesters of hard work, Water is finally here. Water is the story of the village of Agua Fria and their struggle for existence after losing their water rights to the city of Santa Fe. The play is split into two parts. Part one encompasses how different cultures celebrate having water as a resource. Part two details the story of the villagers of Agua Fria, a people without water as a resource. Water  raises the question of “what happens both as an individual and a community when a basic natural resource is taken away?”. The play was created entirely from found written documents and transcripts taken from interviews conducted by students of the documentary theater...

By Charlotte Martinez/ Photos by Christopher Stahelin It’s all about timing and planning for the unexpected. That’s the movie business for you. The sky is clear at 3:30 p.m., Feb. 24 on the Santa Fe University of Art and Design campus. The Screen, SFUAD’s independent movie theater and my work place, has a sidewalk leading to the entrance and though the concrete is cracked and dusty, I feel like I’m passing Hollywood’s red carpet. There’s a lot of excitement the day of SFUAD’s Oscar Night, but like I said, the movie business isn’t predictable. Here at the Screen, Oscar Night means a live stream of the 2013 Academy Awards for students and faculty of the Film Department. In addition, this event premieres the Film School’s first Shoot the Stars production, two student-made films featuring big name actors Wes Studi, from Avatar, and Canadian actor Luke Kirby. My red carpet disappears, however, when I’m told we’re running 20 minutes behind. Peter Grendle, manager of the Screen and professor at the Film School, strides in with his usual short-breathe grin (I’m convinced he runs everywhere). I tell him our last movie will let out 20 minutes late. He says he knows and we make a plan. It’s 3:45 p.m. I smile at the gathering audience and promise that they’ll be let into the theater soon. There’s some confusion as to when the student films will begin. “We’re playing it by ear,” I say. This turns out partially true. For the first 30 minutes my ear stays glued to the theater’s closed doors, behind which Peter struggles to stream cable to both the Screen and the monitor down the hall in Studio C, where the Oscar party begins. This party is legit! Red carpet, decorations, paparazzi, finger...

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...

By Clara Hittel/Photos by Sandra Schoenenstein At 7:30 on a Saturday morning, I parked my car and trudged over to the Driscoll Fitness Center. If this is how early students have to leave to go to Ski Santa Fe, it’s no wonder they aren’t willing to wake up in time to go to Taos or Angel Fire. A few kids sat around the picnic table out front, adjusting to the chill outside in preparation for the slopes rather than huddling inside with hands wrapped around warm mugs of coffee in fear of the cold. I joined them at the table. The conversation I entered into was about what snow-appropriate garments we were lacking. Some people needed gloves, others hats. The immediate camaraderie of the trip goers was cheering so early in the morning. People began offering clothing and advice. I needed waterproof pants, as I have sadly outgrown my own super-official snowboarding pants. Sandra Duran graciously lent me her spare pair. The Feb. 2 journey up to the mountaintop felt like a summer-camp outing to a lake or other body of water where warm-weather activities might take place. The sun had risen with a vengeance and the radio offered what I would consider beach jams, such as Knee Deep (Feat. Jimmy Buffet) by the Zac Brown Band and Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Then again, we were all in parkas and woolen hats, and as we gained elevation the snow finally made its appearance. Pine branches drooped around us, burdened with winter, festively welcoming the line of cars that slowly ascended the mountain. My thoughts turned to ski trips of the past as the alpine scene crawled past my window. Growing up on the East Coast, my parents took me to the...

By Charlotte Martinez/Photos by Michelle Rutt It was a Girl Scout camping trip and patriotism was lesson number one. Salute the flag of the United States of America, count the stars, sing the anthem, pledge your allegiance. As a Girl Scout I was very good at the triangle fold- holding both ends of the flag, folding twice vertically then tip to edge until the last corner can be tucked in.  A fellow Girl Scout was not good at this and she accidentally flung a flag into the mud. Our scout leader rushed to pick it up, but the mud had seeped through the stars, it was damaged beyond repair. We were instructed to spread the flag over a picnic table and once this was done our leader set the corner ablaze. I stared as the stripes burned in the evening light, until there was nothing left. It was a retirement ceremony, our leader explained. It looked tragic, but I stood by, like loyal subject over a defeated king. Sappy maybe, but I was a Girl Scout and I was proud of my flag. John Rodriguez stands proud under his US flag too. Literally, Rodriguez stands beneath the US flag and beneath the Brazilian, German, Australian, British, and Mexican flags that he’s hung from the ceiling by his office at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. After some greetings beneath the flags, I asked the former International Director who’s idea it was to hang them. Rodriguez smiles. “It was my idea.” Currently director of Campus and Residential life, Rodriguez says he placed flags in areas like administration and the upper floor of the library to “encourage the concept of one student body,” even though, he explains, students come from everywhere. He looks up...

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,...

By Nick Beckman/ Photos by Tim Kassiotis He neared the end of his cigarette when the truth really came out. “I was walking around my backyard…back home…” he began. Home for Tyler Sherek is the same as my own: Louisville, KY . “Then I stepped up to this big ol’ bush that we’ve always had and out flew this massive bumble-bee. I’m talking big.” He motioned with his hands the size of a volleyball. “That was pretty damn scary so I ran back into the house and closed the door. I was kind of freaked out so I decided to get a bowl of cereal, but when I poured it into my bowl, they all spilled onto the floor. Then, out of nowhere, every little Fruit-Loop had a face and they were all squealing. That was pretty crazy.” Tyler was telling me about some of the dreams he had been storing in his Dream Journal. While this one stuck with me for its peculiarities, it also spoke volumes about his character. I met Tyler in 2005 when we were both in the same science class. I had noticed one day that he and another friend of mine, were going bat shit insane on a craw fish that we were dissecting in class. They named it Macy Cray. From then on, I knew we would be pals. Eight years later, we are still best friends and collaborate on comedy projects in our spare time so I was rather hesitant choosing him for an interview. Here was someone I’ve known like a brother, but the thought struck me that, perhaps, there was more to learn. The basics I knew: favorite movies, music, how hard his punches were when exchanging a friendly game of “licks” and how when...

By Nick Martinez/Photos by Christopher Stahelin “Hell is other people,” the famous line from Jean Paul Sartre’s classic one act about three damned souls psychologically torturing each other, serves as the perfect coda for the play. Ironically enough, it also serves as the perfect antithesis to SFUAD’s current production. Even though the show was opening on Feb. 15, senior Corbin Albaugh, the show’s director, graciously allowed me to sit in on their most recent rehearsal. My only knowledge of the play before hand was through brief summaries on the Internet and conversations I’ve had with Albaugh in previous days, so I was going in blind. Albaugh called for his small crew to take their positions, because today they were going to run through the entire piece straight. Taking the stage first was junior transfer student Michael Phillip Thomas as the coward Crodeau. “At the top of this play Crodeau built up this view in his mind that was really manly and macho, which you and I do everyday,” said Thomas. “Through this plays process you see him stripped of that, and he’s really this scared coward of a man that in every turn in life ran away.” Thomas certainly played Crodeau in this way, as his acerbic monologues would not be out of place in a Brett Easton Ellis novel. Joining Thomas on stage later was sophomore Chloe Torblaa as the scheming Ines and freshmen Tristine Henderson as the seductress Estelle. “The show is about three way dynamics and that’s kind of the way the world works,” said Torblaa about the show. The threesome breezed through the show without any mishaps to my untrained eye, and the show climaxed with Torblaa’s character Ines delivering a gleefully psychotic rant to Thomas’s Crodeau. “That’s why Ines is...

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...

By Charlotte Martinez/Photo by Michelle Rutt His humble demeanor complements his exterior; short black dreadlocks topped with a beanie, a leather jacket that gives him the “Ghost Rider” edge, a cross hanging from his neck, and casual yet calculated steps. Calm. Alive. Inspiring for all International students at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. “Come to my office,” he says. “You have an office?” “Yeah.” He smiles. “I coordinate the sound studio.” On the way, a music professor shakes his hand and a fellow student smiles at him like an old friend. The encounters are brief, but reverent, a reverence which Peter Mugga has earned and will not brag about. He has his own office! Second door to the right in a Benildus hallway. Small, but personalized. Like the influences of his two worlds, Uganda and the US, Mugga’s office seems to co-exist between his love of culture and his love of technology. His bookshelf holds several versions of a harp-like instrument called Ndungu, the likes of which resemble a human spine, but when played produce music suitable for Mount Olympus. A guitar leans in its holster, traditional and worn. Two others lie by his desk. To his right, the beads (perhaps shells) of his Shekere shaker sleep on a chair after a hard day’s rattling. Giant speakers and audio equipment fill the other half of the room. By the door, a giant drum called Mgoma, his favorite instrument, waits for him like an obedient canine. One semester away from a bachelor’s degree in Contemporary Music, the musician admits that his passion for recording, technology and sound was not “something I grew up with, but I found.” What Peter Mugga grew up with was a father who, in their home village, taught...

By Nick Beckman/Photos by Tim Kassiotis Dancing around a muddy puddle next to the fenced-off Michaels Brothers’ house, Jess Cornelius noticed her brand new Doc Martens. She showed brief hesitation before crossing the muddy path. I felt guilty for taking this strange and, sometimes-creepy walk around the backside of campus, but Jess was undeterred by a little mud. “I only got these a few days ago…and I’ve already had to wash them, so no worries.” Jess is a second semester freshman here at SFUAD, in the Moving Image Arts department. Her short hair, tinted blue and gold, is only a slight indication to her focus within the school, special FX and make-up. Revealed underneath her right sleeve, she showed me a scar she had gotten cheerleading in 7th grade. “My bone was sticking out of my arm…there was blood everywhere! Some of the girls started to scream and the coaches were freaking out!” At this point, I had to stop and get a closer look. The scar had run from the top of her wrist, down to the beginning of her elbow. More fascinating than the scar itself was Jess’s comfort talking about it. “Have you seen my scar?” she asked with wide-eyed anticipation that my jaw might hit the concrete upon first glance. To my surprise, this was not her inspiration for wanting to do special effects make-up. In fact, it is quite the opposite. “I don’t want to do gore or horror stuff. I like fantasy.” Her favorite film that have utilized special fx/ make-up are the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and Edward Scissorhands. “Cinematography wise,” she says, “ I’d have to go with Wes Anderson’s style, like in Moonrise Kingdom. The shots are brilliant.” Since starting last fall, Jess has helped...