Summer 2025

2025 / Vol. 130 / No. 2

The essays and articles in this issue affirm the necessity of creation for surviving and thriving.

  • An article about Indigenous science and astronomy, written by RoseMary Diaz, reveals the deep connections between the earth and skies, as told through the Makowa exhibition at the Museum of Indian Arts & Cuture.
  • Lazarus Letcher blends essay and research to tell the history of Cathay Williams, the woman who dressed as a man to join the Buffalo Soldiers in New Mexico.
  • Navajo Nation Poet Laureate Jake Skeets writes about  trans artist Chris E. Vargas’s work which explores the possibilities of speculative queer storytelling.
  • An essay about artist and educator Janet Stein Romero, beloved in Northern New Mexico, written by her son Simόn Romero.
  • A profile written by Jamie Figueroa of Dr. Greg Cajete reveals his dedication to the process of art making—rather than the result.
  • An article by Gina Rae La Cerva interrogates the false categories of craft and fine art and shares the story of Aboriginal artist Cynthia Burk and the arts collective, Tjanpi Desert Weavers.
  • Poetry by Michelle Otero captures a deeply felt sense of place.
Read Held in Warmth, Held in Motion Thermal image of the sky showing temperature variations with cooler blue and warmer red areas; power lines are visible in the foreground.

Held in Warmth, Held in Motion

By Zuyva Sevilla Energy moves through us and beyond us, slipping from form to form, never still. It stretches across steel, rises from bodies, and presses into the air. Heat is a material in its own right, sculpted by every touch and shaped by every presence. It is in the warmth of our skin, in the dim glow of a town at night, in the slow burn of a star an unfathomable distance away.

By Zuyva Sevilla

Categories: Framework

Read Poetry by Michelle Otero Painting of a rocky canyon landscape with boulders, shrubs, and distant mountains under a partly cloudy sky.

Poetry by Michelle Otero

The poem wants to drink water from the stream running through land that hasn’t been in the family since   the gringos came but will settle for lead-free pipes and no rotten-egg smell to visit a doctor when her bones ache and her head burns without waiting or worryingwhat they might find because she might not have the cash but would

By Michelle Otero

Categories: Poetry

Read Cathay Williams Two men stand at a wooden table outdoors, speaking to a uniformed officer; trees and sky are visible in the background.

Cathay Williams

By Lazarus Letcher Illustrations by Adri Norris "Can the class touch your hair?” I was sitting in my high school sophomore year of U.S. History when I first heard of the Buffalo Soldiers. It was a rare moment in my Indiana education when we touched on African American history that took us beyond or outside of victimhood. My teacher’s question quickly dashed my joy at this rare reflection of myself in my curriculum.

By Adri Norris and Lazarus Letcher

Categories: Uncategorized

Read Dancing with the Masters Three small painted wooden plaques hang from a shelf, featuring two illustrated faces and one palmistry hand design, with various blurred objects in the background.

Dancing with the Masters

By Simón RomeroPhotographs by Adria Malcom The sun was setting over Santa Fe’s Canyon Road. An opening at Ernesto Mayans Gallery had attracted an assemblage of artists and collectors who were sipping wine from plastic cups and energetically discussing art and politics as cigarette smoke wafted overhead. The year was 1981. “Not again,” I remember mumbling to my ten-year-old self. My mom, Janet Stein Romero, a Brooklyn-born artist who followed her star to New Mexico in the 1960s, had been dragging me to gallery openings for as long as I could remember.

By Adria Malcolm  and Simón Romero

Categories: Featured

Read Symphonies in the Skies A large, jagged rock formation rises from a flat desert landscape under a purple and red star-filled night sky.

Symphonies in the Skies

By RoseMary Diaz Growing up in Santa Clara Pueblo, I listened to my grandmother tell the stories of our Tewa ancestors. From her I learned about how the Old Ones came from the north and built their homes in sandstone cliffs and atop high desert mesas of the Southwest; how they nurtured close relationships with the land and the animals and plants who also call it home; how they learned to read the weather and the seasons, hunt, and plant crops of beans, squash, and corn in a rainbow of sacred colors; how they shaped a rich legacy of language, song, and dance; and how they developed complex cosmocentric ceremonial and religious constructs that continue to define Tewa culture and belief today.

By Marlon Magdalena, RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara Pueblo), Stan Honda, and Steven J. Yazzie

Categories: Uncategorized

Read Community of Craft An older woman sits outdoors on red soil, weaving a large basket from natural fibers, with dry grass, a tree, and a vehicle in the background.

Community of Craft

By Gina Rae La Cerva One of Cynthia Burke’s many creative endeavors is hosting a radio show for her town of two hundred people in the Australian outback. Called “CB” by her friends, she loves playing country and gospel music ranging from the 1950s to 2000s. She tells me this as we sit on a stone bench at the 2024 International Folk Art Market (IFAM), eating popsicles and watching the first day of the market begin to buzz with energy.

By Gina Rae La Cerva

Categories: Uncategorized

Read Undoing Dominant Narratives Exhibit entrance designed as a black-and-white illustrated archway with green information panels; artwork and objects displayed inside and on surrounding walls.

Undoing Dominant Narratives

What does it mean to build a museum? For video maker and interdisciplinary artist Chris E. Vargas, building a museum means critiquing the institution itself, where the museum as an artifact interrogates the power of its presence, questions its authority, and reveals its limitations. As the founder and director of the Museum of Trans Hirstory & Art (MOTHA), a conceptual museum “forever under construction,” Vargas reshapes how we think about the role of institutions in preserving, categorizing, and exhibiting marginalized histories.

By Jake Skeets

Categories: Uncategorized

Read Pathway and Relationship Art-filled living room with paintings, shelves of figurines, framed photos, potted plants, and a drum arranged against a white wall.

Pathway and Relationship

By Jamie Figueroa Green, yellow, and red outline three edges of the canvas. The flat expanse of turquoise sky holds a small, distant sun. Red, orange, then yellow—circle inside of circle inside of circle—black thin spokes reaching from its circumference. Above the clouds, above the mountain, is a Divine presence, the largest and most colorful figure. Below, what is life-giving and life-sustaining—corn growing.

By Isabel Miranda and Jamie Figueroa

Categories: Uncategorized