R U LOOKING?
Apolo Gomez, Max Sargent from Men at Work, 2019
“R U LOOKING?”
Apolo Gomez & Max Woltman
October 4 – 25, 2019
OPENING RECEPTION: October 4, from 6 – 8 pm
Queer Draw & Dance (in conjunction with the Way OUT West Film Festival): Date to be announced
The photography of Apolo Gomez and Max Woltman explores sex, dislocation, and desire. Apps and websites may have changed the way gay men are approaching hooking up. Through documentation and portraiture, the exhibition “R U LOOKING?” Celebrates and questions these encounters.
Know your status! During the opening reception, free HIV testing will be provided by UNM Truman Health Services. UNM Truman Health Services uses the latest research and developments in medicine to enhance the lives of New Mexicans living with HIV. Their faculty and staff of health professionals are committed to pursuing the treatment goal of virus suppression and improved immune system with compassion, respect for human dignity and the right to privacy.
Exceptional Visual Artist Scholar Award Recipients
Congratulations to University of New Mexico MFA Candidate’s Hazel Batrezchavez and Monica Kennedy on receiving Sanitary Tortilla Factory’s Exceptional Visual Artist Scholar Award! The Exceptional Visual Artist Scholar (EVAS) series offers professional space for two Master of Fine Art graduate students per year as their final thesis show. The culminating exhibition launches them into their profession as an artist. With the series, we underscore exceptional artists attending regional institutions while highlighting Albuquerque’s innovative contemporary art scene.
hazel batrezchavez received her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Studio Art and Anthropology from Grinnell College in 2017. Since then she has been a part of various group exhibitions and pop-up shows in the United States, specifically in California, New Mexico, Iowa, and most recently México City, and Michoacán, México. batrezchavez is a recipient of the Center of Fine Arts, Dean’s Travel Grant Award, MaryAnn Evans Grant and of both the Lucile Lattanner Reid Brock and the Betty Sabo Scholarship. At the moment batrezchavez is partnering with the Santa Fe Dreamers Project as part of her StoryMaps Fellowship at the Santa Fe Arts Institute (SFAI) to create a collaborative project, that centers the voices of humans that have been forced to migrate from their homelands. As she continues to prepare for a performance at the border ports of entry in El Paso and Brownsville, Texas following her own families migration. She currently resides in Albuquerque and teaches Introduction to Art Practices and Shop Foundations while working towards her MFA in Sculpture at the University of New Mexico.
MK (Monica Kennedy) is an artist living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2017, they received their BFA in Photography and Digital Media from the University of Houston andare currently attending the University of New Mexico for their MFA in Photography. They are originally from a small rural town by the name of Sulligent, Alabama, and this place has become a driving force for the mass majority of their work.
Using found items, stories, and the longing to be back with their family in this small town. They work in a variety of mediums ranging from photography, printmaking and sculpture in order to pursue and question their upbringing, identity, family, and the terms of loss and memory. They have shown at institutions such as the Blaffer Art Museum, The National Hispanic Cultural Center and SITE Santa Fe.
…Son, yáázh, mijo…
My favorite things to be called r Son, yáázh, mijo–they remind Me of when u wove ur fingers thru My hair..meanwhile these poems bloomed..bury Me with these poems..when i wake again the flowers will call me Son, yáázh, mijo and ill remember when u wove ur fingers thru My hair
Eric-Paul Riege
September 6 — September 27[2k19]
OPENING RECEPTION: September 6 from 6:00 – 8:00 pm
CLOSING RECEPTION & PERFORMANCE: September 27 from 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Where is My place to find solace? I think it lives in my process. My hands make make make and create create create to tell some sort of story that lets me know how much I love you. Where is My vulnerability and honesty lay? I think it lives in my actions. When my mind tells my body to move it’ll move. When my mind tells my body to see it’ll see. When you present a form of yourself to Me I trust myself enough to allow you in and see some form of empathy between us. I fell in love with you before we met and these objects materialize that. I thank you for creating these with Me.
Eric-Paul Riege (Diné) (b. 1994, Na’nízhoozhí, Gallup, New Mexico) is a weaver and fiber artist and outsider poet finding presence in his mind, body, and beliefs through performance, installation, woven sculpture, collage, and wearable art. For Riege his weavings pay homage and link him to generations of women weavers in his family and exist as living things that aid him in generating sanctuary spaces of welcome. Riege holds a BFA in Art Studio and Ecology from the University of New Mexico. His work has recently been exhibited in the SITElines.2018 Biennial at Site Santa Fe, NM, the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock AZ, the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, NM, and The Institute of Contemporary Art Miami in Miami, FL.
Black Hole/Atomic City (State of Decay)
The Black Hole in Los Alamos, NM, 2009. Photo by Jeff Keyzer
Black Hole/Atomic City (State of Decay)
August 2 – 30, 2019
OPENING RECEPTION: August 2, 6-9pm
Black Hole/Atomic City (State of Decay) is an exhibition dedicated to alternative stories related to “the nuclear business” in New Mexico since the dawn of the Anthropocene/Trinity test near Tularosa in July 1945. The combined burden of nuclear byproducts and waste that decays over tens of thousands of years weighs heavily on New Mexico, a “national sacrifice zone.” The show will be on view until August 30.
Impacts that largely affect Indigenous and rural communities from nuclear weapons and their production in New Mexico and around the world, are not featured in the celebratory story of the Atomic Age promoted by Los Alamos, set for the commemoration in 2020 of the 75th Anniversary of the Trinity Test and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first and only cities to be destroyed with atomic weapons.
What is the impact of the theft and decimation of sacred lands? How have involuntary radiation exposures from atomic explosions and contamination from mining and milling of uranium affected generations? What are the ongoing threats from transportation and storage of radioactive waste?
This will be one of numerous efforts to highlight alternative views of our nuclear world during the lead up to the Anniversary of the Nuclear Age. The Black Hole, a Los Alamos business known world-wide for recycling equipment and materials from the Los Alamos Scientific/National Laboratory, was owned by anti-nuclear activist Edward Grothus, who died in 2009. Artist and activist Barbara Grothus is the lead organizer of the project.
Artists include: Josh Atlas, Brandi Beckett, Mitch Berg, Anna Bush Crews, Sabrina Gaskill, Barbara Grothus, Sheri Inez deLopaz Kotowski, Sto Len, Melanie Mills, Santiago Perez, Thomas Powell, Rachele Riley, Yasuyo Tanaka, Jessi Walsh, Nora Wendl
This exhibition was made possible in part by the Fulcrum Fund. The Fulcrum Fund is an annual grant program, created and administered by 516 ARTS as a partner in the Regional Regranting Program of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Love, Art & Tortillas
Reception & Open Studios: Friday, July 5th, 2019 6-9pm
Exhibition: July 5-26, 2019
Kim Arthun, Frank McCulloch, Paul Akmajian, Inez Foose, Tina Fuentes, Larry Smith, Susan Ricker, Jeanette Williams, Wes Mills, and David Levinthal
Sanitary Tortilla Factory is pleased to host an exhibition of artists that shaped the historic path of artistic production in downtown Albuquerque. Deep creative roots and a commitment to artists was shaped by M & J’s Sanitary Tortilla owners Beatriz and Jake Montoya, Richard Levy and countless artists for over two decades. The exhibition includes many artists that showed work at the restaurant, historic images of the restaurant and lithographs created at 21 Steps.
February of last year, local legend, Frank McCulloch, stopped in at the current iteration of Sanitary Tortilla Factory. Frank had just attended the funeral for the owner of the original Sanitary Tortilla Factory, Jake Montoya. Coffee that brisk morning opened a time capsule of Art, Love and Tortillas. Frank’s stories, exhibition announcements highlighted a vibrant arts scene beginning in the early 1970s. Frank McCulloch and Tina Fuentes often “grabbed a taco” during a break from the studio and artist fondly remark that art returned from the restaurant carried the aroma of tortilla chips. In the late 80’s Richard Levy and Jeff Ryan of 21 Steps, a waterless lithography shop worked with renown artists including, Lorna Simpson, James Casebere, Wes Mills, David Levinthal, Thomas Barrow, Frank Romero and Patrick Nagatani.