Mixed Media Daughter of Rooms at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe
When Susan Ferguson was a little girl, her mother moved the family out West from Detroit. As a young woman, Ferguson went to Mexico and studied art at the Escuela Nacional Pintura y Escultura, an institution also known as “La Esmeralda,” under Frida Kahlo and Francisco Zúñiga. Ferguson met her husband, James, there, and they had a daughter, Catherine. Catherine became an artist and illustrator, and settled in Galisteo, New Mexico, while in her later years, Susan Ferguson split her time between La Jolla, California, and Tesuque, where she kept a home until she died in 2014. Now a multimedia exhibition at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe (555 Camino de la Familia), called Daughter of Rooms, showcases the elder Ferguson’s artwork and memorabilia from her years in Mexico, and features a visual and poetic installation, The Woman on the Bed, by Catherine Ferguson, as well as a selection of her retablos. Daughter of Rooms opens Friday, July 8, at 1 p.m., with a presentation of a collaborative video/poem project Catherine Ferguson created with Colleen Carias, a Santa Fe-based poet and filmmaker. In conjunction with the exhibit, Ferguson reads with poets Katherine DiBella Seluja and Tina Carlson in the theater at El Museo on Saturday, July 16, at 4 p.m. Carlson, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, is the author of Ground, Wind,
This Body, forthcoming from the University of New Mexico Press in 2017. Seluja, who is also a nurse practitioner, is the author of Gather the Night, forthcoming from the University of New Mexico Press in 2018. Daughter
of Rooms is on exhibit at El Museo through July. For more information, call 505-992-0591. — Jennifer Levin