One of my work projects is to put together the very first San Miguel County-wide Artist Guide, a full-color 68-page book of our artists, artisans, writers, poets, musicians, theatre folk. 188 artists are participating in the project, and even though this is a small town and a sparsely populated county, the number of artists we …

Please visit the new Underground Art Installation on Bridge Street – next to the Kiva Theater – and create some poetic love, Las Vegas style! The installation went up in the middle of last night. Wonder who created it? The project consists of velco attached to the plywood boarded windows of a vacant building, with corresponding velcro words, …

Two years ago, taggers hit the side of my garage that faces one of Las Vegas’ alleys, hit it with white aerosol spray in the shape of a Halloween ghost surrounded by bulging initials. It wasn’t the first time; black paint covered most of the space in a feeble attempt to cover a prior message. I gave up the ghost, …

The face of a man – curiously missing eyes, missing teeth, his brain seemingly evaporated – almost grins from a pedestal in Burris Hall. Spikes protrude from his head, evidence of a piercing gone mad, of the torture of migraine, of a troublesome mauling with oversized golf tees, perhaps, or martini stirrers. Matthew C. Wicker’s, “Stacks,” is both disturbing and hilarious at once. An artist from New York, Wicker is one of over eighty professional iron artists in Iron Tribe.

“I was trying to describe this group of people,” explains David Lobdell, NMHU Department of Fine Arts professor, and curator of the Iron Tribe exhibition, now on display through Friday, March 6. “We are willing to spend our extra money to do this – we’ll drive across the country, drive for 30 hours one way. We didn’t go to school together. I learned it after school, when I was just started out at Highlands. We’re not necessarily friends. We come together out of our mutual interest. The world Tribe seemed to suit the group best, especially for the name of a program that happens in New Mexico.”

An eight-year-old girl stares at the camera, the hot West African sun splashing across her shoulders like a translucent cape. Tightly braided hair hugs her scalp, accentuating a delicate forehead, a slightly furrowed brow. She wears a thin white wrap fastened around her neck with a fraying fiber cord. She shoots the lens an expression that almost approaches a smile, …

by Birdie Jaworski
A massive football player, his uniform black, heavy, robotic, runs through a modern city, a flutter of torn books beneath spiked shoes. He carries a graduation cap in one hand, stolen from the head of a statued scholar, the other hand extended in an evil claw toward a group of diminutive young children sitting at simple desk – …

by Birdie Jaworski
A tall man in a pink nehru shirt and wrinkled linen slacks stood at the edge of Ilfeld Auditorium’s stage, his head and shoulders cocked at an awkward angle, no other musicians at his side. He held a violin, a instrument that seemed tiny, insignificant, compared to his large frame. The audience shuffled program and purse as he …