Creating Platforms for Community + Artists

Sanitary Tortilla Factory
401-403 2nd St SW
Albuquerque, NM 87102

(505) 228-3749
stfsubmissions@gmail.com

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A Companion for Departure

(L) Billy Joe Miller. Window Soles, 2022;  (R) Bethany Springer. I Dreamt it Was a Dream that You Were Gone, 2022. Courtesy of the Artists

A Companion for Departure
Billy Joe Miller and Bethany Springer

October 8 – 29, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 8, 5-8 pm
Closing Reception: Saturday, October 29, 5-8 pm featuring Poet Lauren Camp

Sanitary Tortilla Factory is pleased to announce a new visual arts exhibition entitled A Companion for Departure by Billy Joe Miller and Bethany Springer. A Companion for Departure will be on display October 8th – October 29th with viewing hours Thursdays and Fridays, 12 pm-5 pm. Opening and closing receptions celebrating Springer and Miller’s A Companion for Departure will take place Saturday, October 8th from 5 – 8 pm and Saturday, October 29th from 5 – 8 pm. Poet Lauren Camp will contribute to the closing reception of a public reading of work that is produced from a collaborative exchange of ideas positing A Companion for Departure. This reception is free and open to the public.

In this collective moment of vulnerability, Springer and Miller lose themselves to embark on a shared journey that bridges the familiar and unfamiliar, seeking points of contact between the enigmatic terrain of the body, mortality, and a projected home in outer space. 

In a series of conversations spanning over a year, the artists shared experiences that ultimately and profoundly shaped the creation of work. These call-and-response discussions mined the limitations and possibilities of the body, thresholds of loss and resurrection, increasing competition for natural resources held by a planet in crisis, and wonder for the mysteries of the universe as they unfold. Music perpetually materialized as a point of departure and arrival – as a result, song lyrics are woven through the exhibition. Deciphering what was found, the created works coexist as coordinates in a synthesized map, as companions in a metamorphosis processing historical space, memorials, time capsules and artifacts in their wake. 

Artist Bios

Bethany Springer received an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Georgia and holds a Modern Dance minor from Virginia Tech. She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, Individual Fellowships from the Arkansas and Iowa Arts Councils, and a Community Research Award from the UA Community and Family Institute. She has been in residence at Full Tilt Creative Centre and Terra Nova National Park in Newfoundland, The Arctic Circle in Svalbard, the Fine Arts Work Center, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Tides Institute & Museum of Art, and Marble House Project among others. Exhibition venues include 21C Museum Hotel, Maryland Art Place, Boston Center for the Arts, the Delaware Contemporary, LHUCA, and most recently as a contributor to the Personal Structures exhibition at the 2022 Venice Art Biennale. Springer currently lives and works in Fayetteville, Arkansas and is an Associate Professor in Sculpture + Experimental Media at the University of Arkansas.

Billy Joe Miller is a self-taught interdisciplinary artist who creates sculptures, installations, and public art in response to the natural world. The themes of belonging, shelter, and sanctuary are integral to his work. As a hospice nursing assistant for many years, Miller accompanied people through the process of dying. His experiences in healthcare-related sites, as well as his diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in 2010, have inspired his desire to create accessible public art for parks, community centers, medical clinics, and hospitals. Originally from San Diego, California, Miller now lives in the East Mountains of Albuquerque, New Mexico. In addition to his studio practice, Miller creates collaborative community-based projects and produces public art. His work has been supported by New Mexico Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Meow Wolf, Bridge Projects, The Speranza Foundation, City of Palm Desert, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

ABQ Zine Fest 11

Posted in Community Event

ABQ Zine Fest 11

SANITARY TORTILLA FACTORY
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1ST
11am – 5pm

ABQ Zine Fest is back in full force this year with exhibitors on site! We are excited to be partnering with Sanitary Tortilla Factory in downtown Albuquerque to host the fest.

Be on the lookout for pre-zine fest events, workshops, food vendors, and other announcements!

Accessibility Requests and Considerations:
+Sanitary Tortilla Factory space and restrooms are wheelchair accessible and meet ADA requirements.
+Please refrain from wearing strong scents.
+N95 masks or equivalent are required.
+We ask that everyone exhibiting and attending be vaccinated and take a rapid test the day of the event, but we do not have the capacity to enforce this upon entry.

https://www.abqzf.com/

Wires Under Tension by Dylan McLaughlin

Posted in Exhibition

Wires Under Tension
September 2 – September 30, 2022
Reception: Friday, September 2, 5-8pm

Through sculptural sound installation and experimental music composition, Dylan McLaughlin’s new exhibition Wires Under Tension provides sonified meditations on stories of eco-violence and climate threatened place. The exhibition gives space to hear and feel warning signs of drought and die-off, as well as experience material investigations of disruptive communication technologies and sonic eco-violence. One work manipulates recorded sounds of bark beetle infested trees illuminating conversations about the effects of climate change on the Piñon Pine. Another makes audible the resilient calls of the endangered Piñon Jay, experiencing habitat loss. In this work, violence and beauty are not presented starkly. The sound of Bark beetles move from harsh hum to delicate sparse space, while fracking field recordings become an oppressive meditation. Wires Under Tension brings into conversation the magnitude and influence of the acoustic world, in its vulnerability, influence, resistance, adaptation, and transformation.

Bio:
Dylan McLaughlin (b. Navajo Nation) is a sound and video artist living and working in New Mexico. Looking critically to ecologies of extraction, his work weaves Diné mythology, open source ecological data, and environmental histories while holding space for complexity. What transpires is the sonification of relationships to land through experimental music composition, improvised performance, and meditations of new forms of cartography and viewing land. In his multi-media installation and performative works, McLaughlin looks to engage the poetics and politics of human relations to place. McLaughlin is a recipient of the Fulcrum Fund, and has done residencies at Mass MoCA, Slow Research Lab, and BOXO projects. He received his BFA in New Media Art from the Institute of American Indian Arts, and completed his Master of Fine Arts in Art & Ecology at the University of New Mexico in 2021.

Something Old. Something NEW.

Posted in Exhibition
Left: album cover, Zendaya; Right: Apolo Gomez, Homage to Cathy and Joey (self-portrait), 2021, Archival Inkjet Print, Courtesy of the Artist and Kouri + Corrao Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

Diego Alonso-Garcia, Apolo Gomez, Tommy Bruce, Travis Bruce Black, Beau Carey, Miguel Chavez, sheri crider,  Sean Hudson, Leighanne Langwell, Earl McBride, Delilah Montoya, Katie Morales, Kate Thiel, Amanda Dannáe Romero and Josh Stuyvesant

June 3 – July 30, 22

Reception: Friday, June 3, 5-8pm

OPEN STUDIOS: June 26, 11-2pm

Zendaya’s 2016 track, Something New was just one of 32 songs that sampled TLC’s, Creep. The familiar rifts of that epic 1994 song ripple through popular playlists and our collective memories. Similarly, artists replicate images, colors and subject matters connecting artists and their audiences to their past and present.  Who’s to say what’s old or new, especially after the time warp of the two plus pandemic years we have stumbled through.  

Please join the artists that occupy the studios of the Sanitary Tortilla Factory (STF) in our first group show of studio artists.  The exhibition includes work of legendary, first wave chicana feminist photographer, Delilah Montoya

往无咎 Walking On Transience

Posted in Exhibition

往无咎 Walking On Transience
Ranran Fan
March 25 – May 13, 2022

Reception: Friday, April 8, 5-8 pm
*Performance starts at 5:34 pm

Artist Talk: April 25, 4pm CTR ART2018 at UNM

Sanitary Tortilla Factory presents 往无咎 Walking On Transience an exhibition by
Ranran Fan. 往无咎 is a sentence from a hexagram, 履(Lv), in I Ching, meaning “going
forward with simple, humble steps, there will be no error”. This sentence has been
helping the artist to get through years of struggling on finding and walking the path as a
free individual under an oppressive political and patriarchal environment. It has provided
the strength to fight against racial discrimination and deal with personal traumas.  In
this exhibition, Ranran covered the gallery floor with floor tiles that could print texts
while stepping on them. She also made two small tiles that could be transformed into a
pair of shoes for walking on the area without floor tiles. The physical pain of stepping
on narrow, hard matrices with bare feet and wearing lumpy shoes resonates with her
emotional response to the traumatic experiences. But through this process, these
sensations and emotions become ephemeral. What truly remains is the act of walking. 

Walking on transience and keep walking.

*I Ching is an ancient divination book in Chinese culture. The hexagram, 履(Lv), literally
means “shoe”, and also refers to “treading, living and doing”.

Ranran Fan is the recipient of Sanitary Tortilla Factory’s 2022 Exceptional Visual Artist Scholar (EVAS) award. The EVAS series offers professional space for 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 connection to contemporary art practices.