TWO MINUTES (OR SO) OF FAME
SFAI 140
When Jamie Blosser, a former architect for the Santa Fe office of Atkin Olshin Schade Architects, took on the position of executive director at the Santa Fe Art Institute in 2015, the career move seemed a good fit for her. SFAI’s themed artist residencies — often developed around social justice and political issues such as water rights — were already in place when she began her tenure, but she has worked to expand the residencies to include others whose work concerns matters of social and political importance. Blosser said, “It seemed to me that the work I was doing as an architect, trying to address sustainability and affordable housing, really could expand here to multiple disciplines and have an international reach. In September, we will launch our fifth year in the annual thematic investigation with the Truth and Reconciliation Residency.”
The artist residences at SFAI are the institute’s flagship program and have been ongoing since SFAI’s founding by Pony Ault and William Lumpkins in 1985. In a given year, SFAI may sponsor 80 or more residents. “What tends to happen with the thematic residencies is that they’re here from one to three months,” Blosser said. “They’re on site, living here. There’s 12 private apartments with private baths; and then there’s a communal living space and kitchen; and then they have studios. They also have access to the gallery space and they schedule it with our other programming. We also have local artists who apply to that program. I would say 20 to 25 percent are local residents who don’t need lodging.”
The institute was started primarily as a visual arts program. Now, while many of the residents are engaged in creative and artistic projects, some are lawyers, architects, activists, educators, and community organizers. “Last fall we sponsored Robert Garcia, who founded The City Project in LA,” Blosser said. “He’s very dedicated to diversifying monuments and having a national conversation about the cultural narratives that monuments can represent. He was instrumental in getting the César Chávez monument and site completed in California. He’s a civil rights attorney, but he came because of this discussion about the broader cultural narrative in working with artists. He really has expanded his work considerably.”
The institute is located on the northwest corner of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design campus, and when the school closes this spring, SFAI won’t be going anywhere. Since 2009, when the College of Santa Fe shut down and the campus reopened as SFUAD (under the aegis of Laureate Education Inc.), the art institute remained a separate entity, as it is today. “We have a separate lease with the city,” Blosser said. “We are notched out of the campus. But, obviously, we have a high degree of interest and a stake in having a vibrant campus and good neighbors.” SFAI’s artists acted as visiting critics for some of the student work, and artists as educators would sometimes be invited to go into the classrooms and teach a class. SFAI also offered internship opportunities to students, who could get credit for the work they made on-site and could engage with professional artists. SFAI also had agreements for shared facility use with the university.
While these opportunities are going away, the door is open for a fresh vision. SFAI partnered with the city in the development of the Midtown Campus Project, looking at expansion and improvement of the SFUAD property, ownership of which reverts back to the city when the school closes. “We helped to pull together an RFP [request for proposal] for five architect teams to provide their visions based on community input and their own expertise,” Blosser said. “They will present those to the public in mid-April. That’s an opportunity for the public to see, visually, what those visions might look like. The city will pull that together into a broader strategic vision for the campus. It’s my hope that, with Mayor Webber and the council, a vision and a deeper process of what can happen here emerges.”
Meanwhile, SFAI is forging ahead with its current residencies on the theme of equal justice and preparing for the future. “We change the theme every year. Right now, we go from September through August. We just closed the call for applications for Truth and Reconciliation and had a record number of applications and are going through the adjudication process. We’ll announce those in April or May.” Residents come from all over the world. SFAI has hosted artists and other residents from Greece, Turkey, Taiwan, Africa, Europe, and Central and South America, to name a few. “It’s a really nice way to bring together the local community with national and international artists. Every month there’s a different cohort. Really, it’s about the conversations that happen between the residents about their own personal projects they’ve come here to work on, but because there is the thematic investigation, it extends to these broader issues that everyone’s trying to address, trying to speak about, vocalize, highlight, and elevate. It becomes this synergistic thing where every month, there are these different potential collaborations that we see and try to support, and support the dialogue as much as possible.”
One of the ways dialogue and conversation around issues addressed by residents can happen is through SFAI 140, a fun, fast-paced evening of 20 short, curated presentations — each one no longer than two minutes and 20 seconds. The event gives residents the chance to show the public what they are working on, and members of the community can do presentations on topics close to their hearts. “I did the first SFAI 140 in 2013, before I was involved here,” Blosser said. “It’s hard to distill your passion and your work into two minutes and 20 seconds. But I’ve used that presentation as a tool to talk about my work after that, because it’s such a honing of what sare the most essential aspects of what’s important to me. It’s a good skill to have. We videotape them, so each presenter gets that, if they want, to use in their portfolio or however they like.” The next SFAI 140 takes place on Friday, March 23.
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“We’re thriving. We want to make sure the Santa Fe community sees us as a resource and knows that we’re not going anywhere.” — SFAI director Jamie Blosser
SFAI currently has about a dozen residents attending as part of the Equal Justice Residency. Among them are Dafni Kalafati, a Fulbright Fellow based in Athens, Greece; Vancouver-based artist and writer Deborah Koenker; and Gabriel Sosa, a Boston-based linguist, artist, and curator. “Our Equal Justice residents are working on a wide range of projects that vary from things they’ve initiated here to continuing projects,” said residency program manager Toni Gentilli. “One artist, Ato Ribeiro, his work is really rooted in his own cultural hybridity. He was born and raised in the United States, but he also lived many of his formative years in Accra, Ghana. That’s where his father’s family is from. He utilizes his practice to explore traditional patterns in kente cloth as well as AfricanAmerican quilt designs. He transforms them into a really unique format that is composed of found and reclaimed wood that he puts together in these really intricate designs, they’re almost fractal-like — grids upon grids upon grids — to create these installations that are visually arresting and tactile. He’s in the third month of his residency and just delivered some of the pieces for a show in Arizona at the Lisa Sette Gallery. We also have Ann Lewis. She splits her time between Detroit and New York, and she has a multifaceted practice that developed out of guerrilla streetart tactics.” Lewis’ artwork has evolved into research-based installation work. “One thing she did was take toe tags suspended from the ceiling, and these were the names of all the individuals who had been incarcerated over a certain period of time,” Gentilli said. “What she’s doing at SFAI is taking an inward look at how her practice evolved over the last couple of years and the impact it has on her audience and looking at ways to reach people on an emotional, embodied, and experiential level with these installations.”
Another program at SFAI that launched this year is Story Maps, a 10-month fellowship program aimed at young leaders of color. Funded in part by The Ford Foundation, the participating fellows collect narratives from the Santa Fe community and do art projects in concert with various government departments within the city, culminating with a creative “mapping” of Santa Fe and an annual theme-based project. The long-term goal is to establish greater social equity. “We’re thriving,” Blosser said. “We want to make sure the Santa Fe community sees us as a resource and knows that we’re not going anywhere.”
details
SFAI 140 7 p.m. Friday, March 23 Santa Fe Art Institute, 1600 St. Michael’s Drive, 505-424-5050 No charge, suggested donation $10-$25; reserve a space at sfai.org/spring-sfai140