Nathan Smerage: The No Land Sessions

Album Release Show

NO LAND
54 1/2 E. San Francisco St. #7

Thursday, December 21, 7 pm
$5-$10 suggested donation.

When Santa Fe guitarist Nathan Smerage left his rock band Venus and the Lion late last year, he went on the hunt for a radically different project. He spent the better part of 2017 composing acoustic guitar ballads, and emerged with nine songs inspired by classic ragtime music. “It was on my bucket list that I wanted to make a solo guitar record,” Smerage says. “Just guitar, no other instruments, no overdubbing. It was terrifying.” This summer, Smerage recruited local musician Luke Carr to help him record the album over two days at No Land art space. For the official launch of the album, titled The No Land Sessions, Smerage returns to the gallery to replicate the raw energy and unique acoustics of the recording. The album release show is at No Land on Thursday, December 21 at 7 pm. The gallery will ask for a $5-$10 donation, and The No Land Sessions CDs will be available for $10. 

“What can you do with just a guitar?” says Smerage. “That’s the question that kicked off the project, a little over a year ago.” He’d recently graduated from the Contemporary Music Performance Program at Santa Fe University of Art and Design, where he formed Venus and the Lion with three other students. As Smerage began composing songs for the solo album, he worked with former SFUAD professor and sound engineer Jason Goodyear to produce demos. “I was living across the street from Jason. Every month I would write a song, go to his place and record it. He was my coach,” Smerage says.

Smerage visited No Land for the first time early last summer, and re-imagined the art space as a makeshift recording studio. “I remember Nate walking through the gallery and snapping his fingers to check the acoustics,” says No Land Co-Director Jordan Eddy. “He was hearing something that we couldn’t, which was fascinating.” Smerage describes the space’s resonance as “wooden” and “old-timey”—a perfect complement to the ragtime-inflected soundscape of his compositions.  

Smerage and Carr sprung into action in July, recording about ten takes of each song in two eight-hour sessions. “It’s the first time I’ve ever done something like that,” says Smerage. “Usually any record I’ve worked on, we’d spend months to years finessing it. With this one, Luke was like, ‘Put down what you need to, and that’s it.’” The result is a 30-minute album that Smerage calls a perfect wind down after a long workday. It’s a world away from the electric grooves of Venus and the Lion, and part of a larger musical evolution for Smerage. “I’m challenging myself to become a master of my own instrument,” he says. “I want to really put my voice into it.” 

Bio

Nathan Smerage grew up in Chicago, and studied music at Santa Fe University of Art and Design from 2012 to 2016. Since graduating, he has toured the nation as a solo act and with Santa Fe band Storming The Beaches With Logos In Hand. He is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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Ariana Lombardi | I Know That I Am

NO LAND
54 1/2 E. San Francisco St. #7
November 4- December 3, 2017

Opening Reception & Performance: Saturday, November 4, 6-9 pm
performances at 7 & 8 pm

Writing Workshop: Thursday, November 9, 6-9 pm
Reading: Saturday, November 11, 7 pm

From Minos to the modern day, every good labyrinth has held two types of challenges: those of the physical world, and those of the mind and soul. Ariana Lombardi’s installation at Strangers Collective’s No Land art space is no different. For the gallery’s first-ever artist residency, the writer, performer and visual artist will build an immersive display of art objects that links to a winding path of words she spun over several years of international travels. I Know That I Am opens on Saturday, November 4 from 6-9 pm, with a performance of the poetry that is the basis for the show’s visual components by Lombardi at 7 pm and 8pm. She will occupy the space from November 4-11, with a writing workshop on November 9 from 6-9 pm and a reading from her forthcoming travel memoir on November 11 at 7 pm. I Know That I Am will be on view through December 3, 2017. 

“It strikes me that people think writers just sit and write, because language is everything,” says Lombardi. “If I’m out in the world, I’m writing. You’re not just writing when you’re sitting there typing.” This notion has guided Lombardi, who graduated from Santa Fe University of Art and Design in 2012, to develop a thoroughly mobile writing practice over the past several years. The pursuit has taken her across the United States, through Turkey and Europe, to Guangzhou, China where she has lived since 2015. Along the way, Lombardi has collected words and drawings in her notebooks and objects in her pockets. These elements converge in I Know That I Am, which will feature found object collections, visual art, installation art, poetry and non-fiction writing.

“Whatever medium I’m working with, the intent is the same. Each piece is a moment that captures a movement of the soul, of the self,” Lombardi says. “Here I am in this moment, and that moves me to the next one.” Lombardi has methodically collected meaningful objects since her childhood in New Jersey, when her mother gave her a special box to safeguard small treasures. When she enrolled at College of Santa Fe in 2008 to study writing, her conception of collecting expanded to encompass words and experiences. The school briefly closed and then reopened at the end of her freshman year, leaving Lombardi and a small group of classmates to rebuild the community. They held salons to share their work, mounted interactive art and writing projects, and collaborated on a digital publication for emerging creatives called KNACK Magazine. 

In Lombardi’s junior year, she studied abroad in Turkey. After graduating she traveled across Europe with her sister Liv Lombardi, a musician who was in the midst of writing an album. These adventures were so fruitful for her writing and language practice that she ventured even farther, moving to China to teach English. Guangzhou became her home base for work and travels in Asia. “When I came to China, I started a new salon series and it blew up,” she says. She found herself at the forefront of yet another community of emerging artists and writers. “That’s the beautiful thing about China, you say you are and so you are,” Lombardi explains. This radical self-invention helped inspire the title of her residency at No Land.  

Lombardi has big plans for her next artistic endeavor. She’s gearing up to move to Taipei where she will study Mandarin, launch a new iteration of The Salon, and put the finishing touches on her book. She aims to bridge far-flung creative communities through her projects, Home Is A Lonely Hunter and The Salon. At the moment, she’s busy consolidating her creative output since college for I Know That I Am. On the exhibition’s opening night, she will read a cycle of poems, or language meditations, titled Instructions. These works directly relate to the art objects and artistic journey on view. At the end of her week of engaging with the public, she’ll read from her recently completed manuscript, This Body of Water. 

“I Know That I Am is a culmination of a universe of creative output,” says No Land co-director Kyle Farrell. “Visitors will discover common themes that carry them from one body of work to the next, but the experience is as intuitive as it is intellectual. Ari will inspire you to surrender to the moment, and get back in touch with your senses and emotions in visceral ways.”

Workshop Details

Thursday, November 9, 6-9 pm
$10-$15 suggested donation

Lombardi will present a creative communication writing workshop called, "Hear It Is".  She'll invite participants to work with the sonics of language in experimental ways in order to write a poem which reflects one's innate sense of sound. How do you create meaning from sound? The event challenges participants to investigate and experiment with the narratives we construct, emotionally and definitively, when we are stripped of the facility to understand the meaning of the words being spoken to us. Attendees will be led by Lombardi in a discussion about issues and considerations of translation. You'll walk away from this workshop with a more attuned sense of the texture that sound makes and how to approach writing in unique and creative ways. 

Bio

Ariana Lombardi is a writer, artist and educator. She is a founder and the host of The Salon. She has hosted salons in Guangzhou, China and the States, as well as Salon-powered creative communication workshops. She is Co-founder and Executive Editor of KNACK Magazine and is member of Strangers Collective. She has interned at The Georgia O'Keeffe Research Center and SITE Santa Fe. Her writing has been published in That’s PRD, Strangers, Vol. 1, and The Laurel Review. She has been participant and performed in exhibitions in Guangzhou, China and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Some include, Embrace Ambition, (Arte Place Gallery at the Guangzhou Opera House), Fei Gallery’s, Pink Party Summer Festival (One Creative Community Art Park), and Art23 Contemporary Art Gallery. Ariana has been living in Asia since 2015.

Creature Feature

A Halloween Market
by Dandelion Guild

NO LAND
54 1/2 E. San Francisco St. #7
October 28-29, 2017

Market Hours: 11 am-5 pm

Witches form covens, vampires stick to their clans, and werewolves hunt in packs. In the village of Santa Fe, a group of wildly creative black sheep has established a guild. Calixte Raifsnider’s start-up, Dandelion Guild, sprung from a regional community of makers that was hungry to collaborate. The DIY project’s series of pop-up artisan markets has been building momentum since last spring, when Raifsnider garnered a spot in the 2017 bizMIX Startup Accelerator. This fall, Dandelion Guild unites local artists, vendors, makers and monsters for a Halloween pop-up market at Strangers Collective’s No Land art space on October 28 and 29. CREATURE FEATURE is open both days from 11 am to 5 pm, with tricks and treats provided by Afterlife Alchemy Jewelry, Ashley Blanton, The Bookman & The Lady, Cold Lantern Collection, Jenny Rocks and Lindsay Payton. 

“Each market we create adds another chapter to our story,” says Raifsnider. “This one is shrouded in shadows, but that’s where you find the best treasures.” From the talismanic accessories of Afterlife Alchemy Jewelry to the metamorphic, mixed-media collages of Ashley Blanton, CREATURE FEATURE is Dandelion Guild’s spookiest manifestation yet. Cold Lantern Collection contributes illustrations inspired by classic horror films, Lindsay Payton conjures dark fairytales in her narrative drawings, The Bookman & The Lady unveils a curated collection of horror and dark fantasy novels, and Jenny Rocks offers up beautiful and bizarre found object jewelry. “If you’re looking to gear up for Halloween, there’s be no better place to be on the weekend before the big day,” says Raifsnider.

Raifsnider worked with Betterday Coffee to put together the first Dandelion Guild pop-up last April, and collaborated with Eliza Lutz of Matron Records on a larger, more elaborate manifestation of the market at Ghost in mid-June. She’s been a purveyor of vintage apparel for years, and works with her partner Benjamin Bailey-Buhner to sell rare books under the moniker The Bookman & The Lady. They run both businesses online, but have dreamed of opening a brick-and-mortar location. 

“We found ourselves in the same boat as a lot of DIY vendors we know,” says Bailey-Buhner. “We couldn’t afford a space on our own, so pooling resources made a lot of sense.” Dandelion Guild was their solution, a DIY passion project with a seriously collaborative mission. The company’s name, inspired by Ray Bradbury’s 1957 novel Dandelion Wine, is a reflection of this philosophy. “Dandelion is a lovely, lyrical word, and Guild anchors it,” says Raifsnider. “Our events are really fun and lively, and they also provide support to these professional makers and vendors who are working hard to make a living. It’s hugely inspiring.” 

Dandelion Guild’s participation in bizMIX this spring and summer has helped transform the grassroots endeavor into a full-fledged business, though Raifsnider is intent on preserving the organic energy of her early events. “We want to maintain that dynamic, vibrant, community fun feel, but within a structure,” she says. The pop-up markets are part of Raifsnider’s long-term plan to open a storefront that connects local vendors with treasure hunters.

“Dandelion Guild harnesses the collective power of emerging artists and artisans, a mission we can very much identify with,” says No Land co-director Alex Gill. “We’re excited to add some Halloween mischief to Calixte’s magical brew.” As past Dandelion Guild markets have shown, there are some surprises in store during the weekend of CREATURE FEATURE. “Who knows, there might just be a séance,” hints Raifsnider. 

Poster art: Cold Lantern Collection, Made Like New, digital illustration, 2017, 8 x 10 in.

Dandelion Guild

Dandelion Guild is curated, collaborative retail committed to forwarding the interests of talented local vendors and makers in Santa Fe. With this in mind, we will combine our resources to create a unique retail environment featuring vintage and handmade clothing, jewelry, books and other accessible art forms.

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Afterlife Alchemy Jewelry

Afterlife Alchemy Jewelry is Nature-inspired, earth-embodiment adornment that invokes healing and medicinal protection through talismanic representations. Each Afterlife Alchemy design is cleansed and super-charged with earthen, solar or lunar energy. Jewelry is not just jewelry; it is mystical energy. 

"Jewelry holds power, intention and meaning, creating realms that can emit this magic." 
-Monica Watson, Creative Designer

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Ashley Blanton

Ashley Blanton creates metamorphic mutations that are seeking new homes in which to belong. These handmade, original, small mixed media collages on paper are macabre, magical mementos for your walls.

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The Bookman & The Lady

The Bookman & The Lady believe in the magic of real objects...be they books or vintage clothing or perhaps the odd bit of ephemera. Combining powers, the two specialize in uncommon and collectible books, with an emphasis on fantasy, science fiction and horror. They also curate a small but colorful explosion of vintage clothing for stylish and eccentric souls.

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Cold Lantern Collection

I design and illustrate distinct and sometimes subtle images based on the Horror genre, specifically films. Have been described by others as “Macabre. Comic Booky. Satanic. Eighties.”  Don’t listen to them, they don’t know me. -J.

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Jenny Rocks

Jenny Rocks is the alter ego of Jenn Ingram--hot yoga teacher, clerk at Art.i.fact, waitress at Jambo and pet sitter extraordinaire. Jenny Rocks is a jewelry company as diverse as her resume with a sweet side and an edgy side. "Gumball" necklaces, steampunk jewelry, headbands with giant plastic sharks, bug pins, gnome rings, flower clips, and animal barrettes. You never know what you will find at a Jenny Rocks booth! 

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Lindsay Payton

A locally based artist in Santa Fe, NM, Lindsay Payton has always found refuge from every day life in stories. The raconteurs that made up her childhood influenced an eventual need to express her own stories through fiction, and then art.

Two years ago, fiction was put on the back burner to make way for the illustrations that were quickly coming to life. Today, she continues her narrative illustrations featuring children lost in the woods, local urban legends, hidden creatures and ancient fears. Making life less mundane by bringing light to the darkest tales of old so they are never forgotten.

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Here Nor There

Adriana Barrios & Barbara Justice

An exhibition of experimental prints and photographs

NO LAND
54 1/2 E. San Francisco St. #7
August 19-October 1, 2017

Opening Reception: Saturday, August 19, 6-9 pm
Special Reception | Readings from Here Nor There: Friday, September 22, 7-9 pm

Like many early career artists, Barbara Justice and Adriana Barrios have blazed a trail with quite a few switchbacks. Since meeting at the University of Texas-San Antonio, they’ve lived in far-flung places, from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Madison, Wisconsin and Florence, Italy. This summer, Justice and Barrios return to New Mexico for a show of experimental prints and photographs. Both artists reflect on presence and displacement, competing forces that they must contend with as emerging artists. Here Nor There opens at No Land, Strangers Collective’s art space, on Saturday, August 19th from 6-9 pm. A special reception hosted by Katie Johnson and featuring readings from nine local writers will take place on Friday, September 22 from 7-9 pm. Featured writers include Austin Eichelberger, Melinda Freudenberger, Juro Gagne, Steffen D. Garcia, Bucket Siler, Stephanie Thompson, Michael J. Wilson, and Marina Woollven. Here Nor There is on view through Sunday, October 1st. 

Justice and Adriana Barrios are used to creating and exhibiting artwork together – this is their fourth duo show, and they have been a couple for almost ten years. They were married in Santa Fe last July. While studying art for their undergraduate degrees, they were involved in San Antonio’s art community, even running a gallery together for four years in a downtown 1,100-square-foot warehouse. “It was an exhibition space, studio space, and also our living space,” Justice says. Somehow they found the time to put on a new exhibition every month.  But as the rent went up, and the area became more and more gentrified, they decided to move to New Mexico – Justice is from Las Cruces – and they settled in Santa Fe for three years in an attempt to focus on their own artwork (this was from 2012-2015).  Since then, they both completed seven-month artist residencies in Italy, and Barrios was accepted into the MFA program at University of Wisconsin-Madison, which led them to their current location up north. 

Currently pursuing her MFA in printmaking, Barrios’s artwork in Here Nor There combines landscape-based cyanotype photography with patterns of intaglio-printed signs and symbols that play with repetition, variation, and layering. She began creating her ethereal images several years ago while she was completing her artist residency in Italy. “I was pulling out aspects of the landscape and trying to highlight others,” she says. “I’m interested in the lack of relationship that we have with the world around us, and looking at the way that this affects us all.” These one-of-a-kind prints are the result of a complex process that involves drawing, printmaking and photography, through techniques that span the historical and the cutting-edge. “Printmaking continues to change with technology,” Barrios says. “In that sense, past and present are always right there in the studio with you.” 

Justice is a photographer, and her large-format work in Here Nor There plays with double-exposed film. In her photographs, nature-based imagery is juxtaposed with what she calls ‘visual landmarks’ – momentary glimpses within her current urban setting that register to her as extraordinary.  Her time living in Madison has at times consisted simply of a search for the space and quiet that she remembers as being so bountiful in New Mexico: “It’s the space,” she says. “Where I am now, I can’t just go out to a desert where there’s nobody else around.”  Fittingly, when she goes out on a film shoot, she makes sure to do it in the early mornings, when it’s just her and the landscape. Even though her vividly colored double-exposures evoke a sense of overlap between two simultaneous realities, they also serve as a means of grounding herself in her current one, earnestly depicting her reflections on what it means to be present in an environment.  

Adriana Barrios

Artist Statement

Altered Landscapes: Over the years I have had the opportunity to spend time in many unique places: Diablo Canyon, Canyon De Chelly and the Black Place, all of which are located in the southwestern United States. For each of these visits, my initial reaction was an intense amount of excitement and fear as I was confronted with something which I recognized as much bigger than myself. I think these reactions were in part due to the vastness, overwhelming beauty, and sense of strength and power from the scale of these environments in comparison to my own body. I attempt to highlight these experiences through printmaking in hopes that they are more than documentations but rather a set of aesthetic experiences that emphasize a larger context. The act of making is an important aspect of my work: utilizing skill and interest in techniques I used printmaking and alternative photography processes to make this body of work. I stated with photographs and drawings that serve as notes and documentation of these experiences, then begin working in the darkroom and printmaking studio. Combining as interest in semiotics and geology I use repetition and layering as a way of formulating content and context. While making these prints, I took into consideration basic fundamental art principals such as form, space and color. I am also very interested in experimenting with composition and how it can impact the outcome of the work. The prints are often worked and reworked again and again until they have reached a point of completion.

Bio

Adriana Barrios was born and raised in San Diego, California. In 2009 she graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree with an emphasis in printmaking. In 2015 Adriana attended an international artist residency in Florence, Italy at Santa Reparata International School of Art. Currently, she is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts Degree at The University of Wisconsin-Madison where she is a recipient of the Education Graduate Research Fellow Scholarship. Her work has been exhibited regionally in Texas, New Mexico and Wisconsin and internationally in Italy and Mexico. Her most recent work involves her revisiting the coastal landscapes of her upbringing. She is interested in exploring the ways we observe, interact and respond to land in which we live in. She uses printmaking, photography and video to explore these ideas.

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Barbara Justice

Artist Statement

Be Excellent To Each Other is a visual collection of my experience in Madison, Wisconsin. I document surroundings of my new city by photographing details that have become familiar to me on a regular basis. These subjects have become guides for me; they are reference points, in my new environment, and with them I have established a sense of familiarity and comfort. Rather than looking outward into a vast desert southwest landscape of my upbringing, I am now focusing on a place that is new, and therefore attempting to characterize my connection to Madison. I photographed all of the images with a Mamiya RB67 ProS medium format camera and have carefully rewound and reused rolls of film to create double exposures. Although this is somewhat experimental in technique, the pairings of the images are deliberate and planned out. The results of two layered images reveal a visual metaphor for the time I have spent here, covering and uncovering relevant details that play a role in the discovery of my new home.

Bio

Barbara Justice (b. 1975, El Paso, TX) is a southwest native, who grew up in southern New Mexico and west Texas. At a young age, she discovered that making photographic images was her passion and thus completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Photography from The University of Texas at San Antonio in 2009. While living in San Antonio she created Justice Works Studio, and over the course of four years she exhibited emerging and established artists of south Texas. In 2015, Justice completed a seven month artist residency at Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy.  Her series On The White Sands was published in PRYME Magazine, a quarterly publication dedicated to instant film. She is a member of Film Shooters Collective an international collective of film photographers.  Her work has been exhibited in Oregon, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Texas.

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Ruminations & Remnants

A pop-up exhibition of illustrations & prints

by Kat Kinnick & Zahra Marwan

NO LAND
54 1/2 E. San Francisco St. #7
July 22-August 6, 2017

Opening Reception: Saturday, July 22, 6-9 pm
Closing Reception: Sunday, August 6, 6-9 pm with Lone Piñon

Kat Kinnick and Zahra Marwan met just a few months ago, and exhibited together for the first time in late June. The joint show was in a red barn at the Rio Grande Community Farm in Albuquerque, with illustrations and prints hanging from the rafters and pinned to alfalfa bales. In a new version of the pop-up exhibition, Kinnick and Marwan travel from the humble farm to a gallery on the Santa Fe Plaza. Though they’ve landed in a more traditional art venue, the artists maintain a down-to-earth philosophy about their work. Both of them blend natural imagery with personal narratives, seeking to connect with diverse audiences. Ruminations & Remnants opens at Strangers Collective’s No Land on Saturday, July 22 from 6-9 pm. The show’s closing reception on Sunday, August 6 features Albuquerque acoustic trio Lone Piñon. 

“It started at the farmer’s market,” says Kinnick. That’s where Marwan sells her illustrations, and Kinnick’s partner Jordan Wax sometimes performs with his band Lone Piñon. “Zahra saw an album cover I designed for Lone Piñon, and reached out to me to do a show,” Kinnick recalls. “She told me that she makes art as her living. I was like, ‘How does this person do this?’” They became fast friends, and have supported each other in their early careers as professional artists.“Kat calls herself an ‘in the closet’ artist, but since we did the last show she’s been making a lot more work,” says Marwan. “She’s inspired me a lot in so many ways as well.”

Kinnick grew up in Albuquerque, and her parents restore Navajo rugs. She studied art at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. Even in her time away from the high desert, she made paintings of New Mexico’s flora and fauna. Now living in Santa Fe, she continues to depict the natural world with the intention of bringing viewers back in touch with the wild. She works in watercolor and gouache to bring plants and animals to life on paper and board. “Creating culture is like creating a value system,” she says. “My work represents my heart and my values. I feel like if we knew animals and plants better, and were more connected to them, then we’d live in a healthier world.”  

Marwan was born in Kuwait, and moved to Albuquerque with her family when she was a child. Now an American citizen, she has traveled back and forth several times in the past few years to visit family. Her watercolor-and-ink illustrations capture everyday moments in both places, highlighting differences and similarities between the two cultures that Marwan moves between. Other drawings feature charming portraits of her friends, or scenes from her travels across the world. “I search for certain things that I remember, and invent things as well,” Marwan says. “I blend together real experiences with things that I imagine. Drawing helps gets these things out.” 

When it comes to selling their work, both artists prioritize accessibility. “At the market, some people are like, ‘You shouldn’t be selling your art at a place like this!’” Marwan says. “I’m like, ‘Why can’t it be sold like tomatoes?’”  

At the show’s closing reception on Sunday, August 6, Lone Piñon—who helped connect Kinnick and Marwan—will provide music. The group has revived and updated the Chicano stringband style that once flourished in New Mexico, bringing a devoted and explosive musicianship to Northern New Mexican polkas and chotes, virtuosic Mexican huapango and son calentano, and classic borderlands conjunto. Jordan Wax, Greg Glassman and Noah Martinez are the band’s members. 

Dancing Over 50 Book Launch

featuring co-author Emmaly Wiederholt
Saturday, June 17, 5-8 pm

NO LAND
54 1/2 E. San Francisco Street #7

To many professional dancers, early retirement seems like an inevitability. Santa Fe dancer Emmaly Wiederholt spent most of her 20’s in San Francisco, performing in contemporary dance companies. When she was 28, she moved back to her home state of New Mexico, but didn’t leave dance behind. Instead, she embarked on a quest to interview dancers who are decades past their ostensible expiration dates. 

On a series of crowdfunded expeditions through San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle, Wiederholt and photographer Gregory Bartning gathered the stories of 54 dancers ranging in age from 50 to 95. The words and images they captured became the independently published book Beauty Is Experience: Dancing 50 and Beyond, which makes its official debut at No Land on Saturday, June 17 from 5-8 pm. Wiederholt will speak and sign books at this special reception, and limited edition prints of Bartning’s photographs from the project will be available for purchase. 

“Our culture celebrates youth and athleticism, but what if we also celebrate the inherent wisdom that comes with a body that has life experience?” says Wiederholt. This idea first came to her in 2012, when she attended a retrospective performance by septuagenarian butoh dancers Eiko Otake and Takashi Koma Otake. The couple, known professionally as Eiko & Koma, have been dancing together for over 50 years. “I was really moved by their capacity as dancers to convey things so simply, clearly and powerfully,” Wiederholt says. “With life experience comes the capacity to emote and to creatively express something that maybe a younger person hasn’t fleshed out or even felt.” 

Wiederholt teamed up with Bartning and began interviewing older dancers for her blog, Stance on Dance. They called the project Dancing Over 50, and sought out practicing dancers in a variety of genres, from ballet and Argentine tango to African and contact improvisation. After each conversation, Bartning photographed the subjects in motion. “We were looking for people who’d been dedicated to understanding themselves through dance for a long period of time,” Wiederholt says. Early in the project, they connected with then 93-year-old Anna Halprin, a pioneer of postmodern dance. “Interviewing her was a pretty big turning point, because we had a big name,” she says. “That helped the project take shape, and other dancers started to come out of the woodwork.” 

By 2015, Wiederholt and Bartning had completed 32 interviews in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle. Late that year, they mounted a monumental road trip to all four cities and conducted 25 additional conversations. They also hosted a number of fundraising events to promote an Indiegogo campaign that would help them compile the Stance on Dance blog posts into a book. They completed Beauty Is Experience this year, and the book launch at No Land marks its official debut. The 210-page, 9 x 12 in., hardcover, full color photography book features 54 interviews and over one hundred photographs. The event kicks off Wiederholt’s book tour to each of the cities where interviews were conducted. 

“Emmaly has contributed powerful performances to a number of Strangers Collective exhibitions,” says No Land co-director Kyle Farrell. “When she showed us this project, we were blown away by the dynamic imagery and inspiring insight of these remarkable artists.” Strangers Collective's new art space, No Land, features solo and small group exhibitions by artists, writers and performers. Dedicated to those ready to take the next step in their careers, No Land invites emerging artists to develop and show complete bodies of work. 

For more information and high resolution images, please contact No Land co-directors Jordan Eddy, Alex Gill and Kyle Farrell at strangersartcollective@gmail.com. 

*All photographs courtesy of Gregory Bartning, Belle Images. 

Jesús Castillo: Remains

A poetry reading featuring Jesús Castillo and Sonja Bjelić
Friday, May 19, 8:00 pm

NO LAND
54 1/2 E. San Francisco St. #7
Current exhibition | Marcus Zúñiga: Ya Veo

 About seven years ago, Santa Fe poet Jesús Castillo bought a pack of index cards to take notes while he was reading. He was living in Berkeley at the time, in a house full of young writers who’d recently graduated from college. The city was buzzing with literary energy, and Castillo felt inspired to start an ambitious project: a book-length poem. “I realized that each of these index cards made a nice little stanza, and three of them fit on the page,” he says. “For two years after that, I just carried them around with me and filled them out whenever something came up.” The fragments were united in Castillo’s book Remains, which was published by McSweeney’s in early 2016. The book will make its Santa Fe debut at his reading with New York poet Sonja Bjelić at Strangers Collective’s NO LAND art space on Friday, May 19, 8:00 pm. 

“Strangers Collective has always worked to interlink emerging artists and writers in Santa Fe,” says Jordan Eddy, NO LAND Co-director. “When we connected with Jesús and learned about his collaborations with young creatives in the Bay Area, it felt like a perfect fit.” During his time in the Bay Area, Castillo helped organize ‘Lectric Collective, a collaboration that brought poets and visual artists together to produce exhibitions. The reading at NO LAND is a return to form: Castillo and Bjelić will read among the new media artworks of Marcus Zúñiga, whose solo show Ya Veo is on view at NO LAND through June 11. 

Jesús Castillo was born in 1986 in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. He moved to California with his parents and sister in 1998. In 2009, he graduated with a BA in literature and writing from the University of California-San Diego and moved to the Bay Area. There, he took an interest in the poetry of Ron Silliman and Ben Lerner. “They were working on this thing called the serial poem, which was not a single-page poem, but a long poem in sections, structured as a book,” he says. “I started messing around trying to see if I could figure out a way to create a longer poem out of short fragments.” That’s when the index cards floated into his life, and Castillo started spinning an epic poem on pages that could fit in his pocket. 

About halfway through the writing process, Castillo made a chance connection with an editor from McSweeney’s at a ‘Lectric Collective reading. They provided him with a small advance, and about four years later the poems were in print. “Castillo has created a sprawling contemporary epic that channels the mighty voices of the past (Ovid, Sappho) into a plainspoken song of our times,” writes McSweeney’s of Remains. “The book is lovingly relentless, quietly piercing. It is a terrifyingly recognizable call: it is filled with all of our voices, our panic, our modern love, our screens, our roommate’s cough, our melting icebergs, our planes and malls and frailties.” 

Each page of Remains is divided into three stanzas, a reflection of their origins on the index cards. “I wanted to make a complete landscape. If you have a larger canvas, you can say more stuff,” says Castillo. “Creating that structure actually allows for more freedom.” Castillo says the book captures an emotional arc in his life, though the stanzas were written to be broken apart and rearranged—much like shuffling index cards. “When I read from it, I like to read different parts of it, come up with new orders to see what happens,” Castillo says. “To me, the interesting parts are the jumps between stanzas, so messing around to see what different kinds of jumps you can find is cool.”

For more information and high resolution images, please contact NO LAND co-directors Jordan Eddy, Alex Gill and Kyle Farrell at strangersartcollective@gmail.com. 

Jesús Castillo

Jesús Castillo was born in 1986 in San Luis Potosí, Mexico and moved to California with his parents and sister in 1998. He studied literature and writing at the University of California-San Diego, and earned an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His first book, Remains, was published by McSweeney’s in 2016, and he was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 2017. He has worked at a counseling center for victims and perpetrators of domestic violence, in Santa Fe, NM for the past year.

Sonja Bjelić

Sonja Bjelić lives in New York City where she is earning an M.F.A. in Poetry from N.Y.U. She studied Poetry and Indigenous Liberal Studies at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and her poems have been translated into Serbian and Spanish. She is currently at work on her first book.

Marcus Zúñiga: YA VEO

NO LAND
54 1/2 E. San Francisco St. #7
April 8 - June 11, 2017

Grand Opening | Saturday, April 8, 6-9 pm
Artist Talk | Saturday, April 15, 6 pm
Closing Reception | Saturday, June 10, 6-9 pm

Strangers Collective’s NO LAND art space transforms into a futuristic planetarium for its inaugural exhibition. In his solo show Ya Veo, Marcus Zúñiga incorporates cosmic imagery into new media projections and sculptures, opening windows into the universe by manipulating footage that he captures through a telescope. Mapping the constellations has helped Zúñiga trace his Mexican-American roots—and tell a story that traverses human history. Ya Veo, meaning “I see” in Spanish, is an invitation to viewers to ponder their place in the universe.

The debut of the show on April 8 coincided with the grand opening of NO LAND on Saturday, April 8 from 6-9 pm, and it runs through June 10, 2017.  Zúñiga conducted an artist talk at NO LAND on Saturday, April 15, 6 pm. The exhibition's closing reception (June 10, 6-9 pm) coincides with the opening weekend of the Currents New Media Festival 2017. The two-week festival features new media art from across the world, and partners with art spaces around Santa Fe to present satellite shows and events. 

“My work is about perception of the universe,” says Zúñiga. “It’s part of a conversation that spans millennia, and can’t be resolved with a simple yes or no.” He first tuned into this cosmic exchange as a child growing up in New Mexico. Zúñiga was born in Silver City, and his family lived in seven different towns throughout the state during his youth. “I would win science fairs with projects about the solar system, and watch eight-hour documentaries on the chemical compositions of stars,” Zúñiga says. He was excited to learn that his Aztec ancestors were equally attracted to studying the stars. Perhaps cracking cosmological mysteries could help him understand his own DNA. 

In 2009, Zúñiga enrolled at the University of New Mexico to study video art. “I never pursued astronomy seriously because it always seemed too dry to think about it in a very scientific way,” he says. “Through art, I could experience concepts of the universe—and create those experiences. That’s what set me off.” Near the end of his time at UNM, he created a video collage of a hawk in flight overlaid on the sun. The piece felt like a breakthrough, and he tried to replicate its success after graduating with his BFA in 2013 and taking an internship at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson. It wasn’t until he moved to Santa Fe in summer 2014 that his first body of work started to take shape. After completing an internship with SITE Santa Fe, he took a job at Peters Projects, and connected with new media artists who became his mentors. 

“Peters had this five-monitor installation by Steina Vasulka,” he says. “It was an electronic, monumental piece with a very Fluxus feel to it. The fact that a gallery was supporting experimental art, that showed me new possibilities.” Another new media work by Lita Albuquerque inspired him to study her efforts to bring serious scientific conversations into the art world.

By summer 2015, he was spending his evenings with a camera pressed against the viewfinder of a telescope. He would capture cosmic events and send them spinning into the digital world, editing the imagery and inserting fragments of computer code to aesthetically communicate specific scientific concepts. “The technological aspect of video is, to me, what keeps the medium I work with so relevant to the world,” he says. “Video is so important to how we receive information every day.”

Ya Veo, Zúñiga’s first solo exhibition, represents two years of astronomical exploration. The eight works in the show include videos, photographs and new media sculptures. High quality prints will also be available for purchase. “Strangers Collective’s goal with the NO LAND project is to spotlight emerging artists who are ready for the next phase of their careers,” says Kyle Farrell, co-director of NO LAND. “Marcus showed us this rich, diverse body of work that is conceptually rigorous but also captures unbridled wonder.” He is currently in preparations to participate in the Art Center College of Design Graduate Art MFA program in Pasadena, CA for the fall 2017 term. Zúñiga has appeared in two Strangers Collective group shows: Narrows at Santa Fe Community Gallery in spring 2016, and Long Echo at Center for Contemporary Arts in fall 2016. 

To title his works, Zúñiga incorporates Spanish and Nahuatl (Aztec) words and phrases. It’s a nod to the highly personal experience of viewing the sky, which connects to a universal human experience. “This is what the moon is called in Spanish, or Nahuatl,” Zúñiga says. “It might feel foreign at first, but everyone has an experience of the moon. If we start thinking about the cosmos in ways that Egyptians or Chinese or Indigenous people think about it, all of these narratives converge. It just becomes this world in the sky.” 

For more information and high resolution images, please contact NO LAND co-directors Jordan Eddy, Alex Gill and Kyle Farrell at strangersartcollective@gmail.com. 

NO LAND Grand Opening

54 1/2 E. San Francisco St. #7
Saturday, April 8, 6-9 pm

Alternative art projects and collectives aren’t just making waves anymore in Santa Fe. They’ve arrived: Siler, Rufina, Hickox, and Baca all feature experimental art spaces and disruptive collectives that challenge the Santa Fe status quo. This spring, Strangers Collective opens NO LAND, an art space that signals a new phase of this sea change, with a location in the heart of the City Different—the Santa Fe Plaza. The grand opening of NO LAND is on Saturday, April 8 from 6-9 pm at 54 1/2 E. San Francisco St. #7.

Curated by Strangers Collective, NO LAND will feature solo and small group exhibitions by artists, writers and performers, and also host collaborative events with other local creatives. Dedicated to those ready to take the next step in their careers, NO LAND gives artists the opportunity to develop and show full-fledged bodies of work. NO LAND will also house a permanent zine library and merchandise store of affordably priced items.

Strangers originally used the ‘No Land’ title for their fall 2015 exhibition at Wheelhouse Gallery. “It evokes a no man’s land, an in-between place that emerging creatives often roam,” says Kyle Farrell, co-director of NO LAND. “We’re shining light on that space, and creating a platform for diverse voices that aren’t often heard in the Santa Fe art community.” 

Strangers began in fall 2014, in a living room in Santa Fe’s historic district. For the past two years, the group has worked with painters, printmakers, performers, photographers, writers, poets, and more, in venues from the Center for Contemporary Arts to Art.i.Fact. They now enter a space formerly used by prominent Santa Fe curator Eileen Braziel.

“It’s time for a new kind of artist to show on the Plaza,” says co-director Jordan Eddy. “We’ve been working hard to rally the emerging art community, and there’s a huge demand for fresh, multilayered stories in this town.” The existence of a permanent space downtown allows Strangers to synthesize all of these skills and interests in front of the world, right on East San Francisco St. The first exhibition in the space will be Ya Veo, a solo exhibition of new media by local artist Marcus Zúñiga, opening April 8th, 2017.