stop. look. feel.

Taos and the arts are like sugar and cinnamon: separately they are copacetic, but together they are divine. Art is a major ingredient in the making and sustaining of Taos. You see it every day in gallery windows, in painters setting up their easels alongside a road, in murals and museums, onstage, on screen and in books.

Our unique mecca consistently inspires. Taos is home to artists of every character and style. From traditional artistic disciplines handed down for generations to edgy works, there is something that will command your attention — make you stop, look and feel.

Inside this edition of Artes (Arts), you’ll meet one of our many brilliant creative visionaries such as artist and galley owner Georgia Gersh and Taos Pueblo’s Eva Mirabal, the first Native female cartoonist. You’ll be taken back in time to the birth of The Harwood Museum when it was just a library and you’ll see the history in pictures of the role Northern New Mexico has made in the film industry. In the music realm, get to know violinist and instructor Audrey Davis, and we take a look back at the ties Doug Sahm — considered one of the most important figures in what is identified as Tex-Mex music — had to Taos.

The challenge for any artist is to take a leap into the dark, break some rules and, sometimes, reinvent. It is in the artists’ glory of expression, of the trials and beautiful mistakes, and in the sharing of their gifts and knowledge that we continue to honor and encourage them.