Pasatiempo, Dec. 8, 2023

The New Mexican’s Weekly Magazine of Arts, Entertainment & Culture

December 8, 2023

YOUR SEASONAL GRAVITY GUIDE PAGE 28

December 8, 2023

22 Tours of duty by Robert Nott

14

New Mexico’s brigade of volunteer docents serve as connectors to culture and ambassadors to the community.

24 Homecoming by Brian Sandford

24

To Make, Unmake, and Make Again brings the works of ceramicist Rick Dillingham back to the community that informed his art.

28

ON THE COVER

Roll out the white carpet by Spencer Fordin Grab your poles and gloves and get your cold-weather gear ready.

Ski season is officially underway in New Mexico, and many of the local ski resorts are ready to welcome winter sports enthusiasts to the slopes.

32 Getting in on the act by Brian Sandford

OUT THERE 8 Santa Fe Symphony’s Sounds of the Season 8 A Very LALIAS Christmas 9 Santa Fe Christmas Bird Count 10 Flamenco singer/guitarist Juan José Alba 10 Head south for the holidays 10 Lights of Gisewa in Jemez Springs 11 Schola Cantorum sing around town 12 Santa Fe Artists’ Medical Fund show and auction

IN OTHER WORDS

Family Theatre plays for Peanuts to draw theater lovers of all ages.

14 Essay Remembering author

34 Five great operas by Mark Tiarks

16 Review Brave the Wild River

Make it your New Year’s resolution to explore some operatic roads less traveled.

18 Roundup Giving the gift of

MOVING IMAGES

EXTRAS

40 Review The Boy and the Heron 42 Review The Curse 44 Streaming roundup 46 Chile Pages In theaters and

John Nichols

by Melissa L. Sevigny

words to young readers

40

4 Editor’s Note: Seeking warmth 48 Star Codes 50 Pasa Week 52 Pasa Planner 55 Final Frame

special screenings

18

Cover: A colorful assortment of snowboards and skis await their owners at Ski Santa Fe. Photo Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican Cover design by Taura Costidis

PA S AT I E M P O MAG A Z I N E.CO M Visit Pasatiempo at pasatiempomagazine.com and on Facebook ©2023 The Santa Fe New Mexican Pasatiempo is an arts, entertainment, and culture magazine published every Friday by The New Mexican, P.O. Box 2048, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87504.

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EDITOR’S NOTE

Seeking warmth

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We rolled into Santa Fe around dusk, snowflakes falling like wet feathers all around us. The heaviness of the clouds and snow muted cars and conversations (although there weren’t many of them), giving us a sense that we might be the only ones left on earth — or at least in this Plaza perimeter.

The spouse and I had made a hasty escape from our home base in Los Angeles, seeking a salve for our souls that we knew only our home state of New Mexico could provide. We dropped our young kids with my mom in Las Cruces and shot northward.

We didn’t have much money — just enough on our credit card to book a lastminute room at The Eldorado. So we dropped the bags there and threw ourselves into the winter evening, hoping the city would grab us in a much-needed bear hug.

We found food (I don’t remember where after all these years, but I’m sure it was gloriously red and green) and were immediately caught in a trance. Everything — hotels, gallery windows, cafes, small adobe homes, heck, even the Five & Dime — sparkled in holiday glory like a high-powered Instagram filter.

I wasn’t accustomed to the cold and was woefully unprepared in my SoCal sweatshirt and sneakers, but I don’t remember that it much mattered — I was enraptured by a place that was far more magical than my current city’s Magic Kingdom.

As a Las Cruces kid, trips to Santa Fe were always dreamy escapes to an exotic land. One time I came here with my Camp Fire Girls troop — I was about 12, and we were serving as pages for the Legislature — for my introduction to state government and our venerable Roundhouse. Afterward, our leader took us to the Pink Adobe for lessons in fine dining. After that trip, Las Cruces felt like a blackand-white photo compared to our state capital.

After having spent the better part of my adulthood in the sprawling, traffic-choked City of Angels, I jumped at the chance a few years ago to move to Santa Fe. I didn’t expect it to hold up to my memories, but now, bathed in the glory of a Northern New Mexico winter, it far exceeds them.

But just last month, I was lamenting Santa Fe’s utter lack of Halloween spirit. Sure, there were smatterings of pumpkin displays and scarecrows … I even saw a giant inflatable turkey perched atop a house near Old Pecos Trail. But it’s no Nightmare on Elm Street display with homeowners handing out candy in full costume with (fake) knives for hands. I felt sad as I carved an Albertsons pumpkin for my chickens to peck at, not even bothering to buy candy for the nonexistent trick-or-treaters who wouldn’t dare make the trek up my dark dirt road for a miniature Snickers.

But once October slipped behind us, the Santa Fe sparkle began to emerge.

First, strands of white lights appeared around thick adobe windows. Shortly after, the Plaza took on its annual glow. And then, with the help, I’m sure, of magic elves, rooftops everywhere became festooned overnight with perfectly spaced strands of farolitos.

The magic extends beyond downtown. Weck’s near St. Michael’s Drive, aging strip malls on Cerrillos, fast-food joints, and state buildings — they all offer some variation on paper-bag lights or a festive something-or-other.

And these are not the obligatory, “We’d better get the lights up, Clark” sorts of displays. Rather, they seem to represent the heart of the city, lighting a path for all toward that warm bear hug we all are in search of this time of year.

Carolyn Graham, Editor cgraham@sfnewmexican.com

311 Montezuma Avenue Santa Fe | 505.467.8174 4

PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

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PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

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7

OUT THERE

LISTEN UP

Acting musician PHOTO SARAH MCINTYRE PHOTO KATHRYN NUN

Actor Rod Harrison’s recent role in the New Mexico Actors Lab’s production of The Nether required a lot of shifting in his seat and appearing defensive.

In his next project, he’ll look a lot more comfortable.

Like many artists in Santa Fe, Harrison has more than one creative outlet.

Harrison and multi-instrumentalist Ross Hamlin, a guitar teacher and former Santa Fe University of Rod Harrison (bottom right) performs Art and Design professor, perform as a duo called in the New Mexico LALIAS and will take the stage Thursday, December Actors Lab 2022 production of Conor 14 at San Miguel Chapel.

The duo’s show, A Very LALIAS Christmas, is MacPherson’s The Seafarer. their second timed with the holiday. They describe their music as atmospheric soundscapes with storytelling/incantation. The stories include pieces of Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, as well as writings by Jeff Resta and Melody Sumner Carnahan. — Brian Sandford 7:30 p.m. Thursday, December 14 Teatro Paraguas, 3205 Calle Marie, Suite B

‘TIS THE SEASON

Classic carols

4 p.m., Sunday, December 10 Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street $25-$92 (505) 983-1414; boxoffice.santafesymphony.org/8730 8

PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

sfnm.co/LALIAS

PHOTO LYNN ROYLANCE

Find a spot underneath the mistletoe.

Christmas will come early at the Lensic Performing Arts Center when the Santa Fe Symphony performs its annual holiday show, Sounds of the Season, on Sunday, December 10.

The symphony, which is performing in its 40th season, will The Santa Fe Symphony perform “White Christmas” and selections from Tchaikovsky’s Chorus performs at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Nutcracker Suite as part of its holiday program. Later in the Francis of Assisi. show, the body of professional musicians will play sideBottom: The chorus is by-side with the Santa Fe Youth Symphony on a pair of led by director Carmen selections by Camille Saint-Saëns and Leroy Anderson.

Flórez Mansi.

Music director Guillermo Figueroa will greet the public at 3 p.m. to chat about the performance. Double-bassist Toby Vigneau, the senior division winner of the symphony’s inaugural concerto competition, will perform Giovani Bottesini’s Double Bass Concerto in B Minor. Vigneau is the son of Kim Fredenburgh, the symphony’s principal violist. — Spencer Fordin

$15-$20

NATURE NOTES

Beak counting season

PHOTO T. JAY ADAMS

Birds spotted during previous Christmas counts include the green-tailed towhee (top), a sapsucker (inset), an immature Cooper’s hawk (left), and a song sparrow (bottom).

PHOTO TOM TAYLOR PHOTO RENE LAUBACH

PHOTO MIKE GREER

Christmas doesn’t only mean gifting socks, eating too many cookies, and watching reruns of The Lord of the Rings on the sofa. To some across the nation, the Americas, and the Caribbean, Christmas also is a time for counting birds. And if you’re a birder like Lonnie Howard — a member of the Sangre de Cristo chapter of the National Audubon Society and the organizer of the Santa Fe Christmas Bird Count — ’tis the season of birding “holy days.”

The National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count (CBC) program began in New York in 1900. Now in its 124th season, it is the longest running community science project in the U.S. Its goal is to assess the health of the bird population and to help guide conservation action. In 2021, 76,880 birders participated across the Americas and the Caribbean, with 64,882 in the field and 11,998 at feeders.

In Santa Fe, the first CBC took place in 1949 and, save for a few years of god-awful weather that subdued even the most stubborn of birders, has run for 70 seasons or so. This year, the Santa Fe CBC takes place from midnight to midnight on December 29. Participation is free, and all are welcome.

Howard, who sets up teams for the Santa Fe CBC, tries to pair beginners with experienced birders. For this reason, the earlier you sign up, the better. To sign up, shoot her an email. “One week before would be great,” she says. But “you can also sign up the night before.” Once you’ve signed up, Howard sends instructions.

The important part is that you do sign up ahead of time, Howard says. If you don’t, the National Audubon Society will not add the birds you identified and counted to the official CBC data.

The bird count is inclusive too. “You can learn to identify a bird by their sound,” Howard says, adding that people with visual disabilities can fully participate. As can birders who may find walking restrictive — they can sign up to count birds in their backyard or at feeders or request a team that will do less walking.

At the very least, participants will need warm clothes, comfortable shoes or boots, a charged phone with a camera (in case they spot an “unusual” bird), pen and paper, water, a thermos with tea or coffee, snacks, and food for counters who have to be out for more than a few hours.

No special equipment is required, although binoculars can enhance the experience. “Binoculars make birding more fun,” Howard says, “but there’s a lot to see and hear and become aware of even without them.” There’s no need to buy binoculars to participate, but if you do, Howard recommends lightweight 8x42 binoculars that are easy to focus.

Last year in Santa Fe, 61 birders identified 6,362 birds and 77 species. One team even spotted a golden eagle. The birds that are less common to the area are always fun to spot, such as the green-tailed towhee, which birders saw for the first time on a Santa Fe CBC last year.

“The resident roadrunner is always a treat to see, perhaps because there are not that many in Santa Fe,” Howard says. “Same for the merlin, a wintering bird here. Santa Fe is on the edge of red crossbill year-round and winter ranges, but they are not frequently seen because they’re so nomadic.”

If you’re lucky like I was during last year’s Christmas Bird Count, you might even see my favorite: the emoji-like ruby-crowned kinglet. The male has a hidden tuft of red feathers on its little head that it reveals when it’s excited.

— Ania Hull/For The New Mexican

Santa Fe Christmas Bird Count: Anytime between midnight and midnight, December 29 Most locations are within a 15-mile radius of the city center To sign up, email Lonnie Howard, lonnieh@cybermesa.com Other Christmas Bird Counts in New Mexico, including in Española and Los Alamos, take place between Thursday, December 14, and January 5, 2024 sfnm.co/NM-ChristmasCount, sfnm.co/ChristmasBirdCount

PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

9

OUT THERE ‘TIS THE SEASON

A partridge and a parade

PHOTO NÍA ROSAS

FOR THE EARS

Spain-made, Santa Fe-inspired Noted Spanish flamenco singer/guitarist Juan José Alba has his own take on what “Santa Fe Style” means.

It’s the title of the first single from his new album Intraverso. The Cadiz native is in the Land of Enchantment as a guest performer at El Flamenco Cabaret, which brings Spanish musicians to live and work in Guitarist, composer, Santa Fe temporarily. The Santa Fe-inspired track was singer, and musicolorecorded at Diablo Canyon Recreation Area northwest gist Juan José Alba is of the city, Alba says via email, and can be purchased a guest performer at or streamed via juanjosealba.hearnow.com.

El Flamenco Cabaret.

Alba is set to perform 19 more times in December as part of Antonio Granjero + Entreflamenco at the Spanish restaurant: Friday and Saturday, December 8-9, then nightly December 15-31. — B.S. El Flamenco Cabaret

There probably won’t be any snow in this place renowned for its natural hot springs, but Truth or Consequences is ready for the holidays.

The town’s 15th annual Old-Fashioned Christmas event will take place from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, December 8.

Main Street and Broadway will be closed from 5 p.m. to allow for setup of the event, and several area stores and galleries will be open as part of the festivities.

Truth or Consequences will light its Christmas Tree around 6 p.m. at Evelyn Renfro Park, and there will be a Parade of Lights after that. Families can get a picture taken with Santa Claus starting at 7:30 p.m. at Healing Waters Plaza.

On Saturday, December 9, revelers can visit Elephant Butte Lake Sate Park from 5 to 8 p.m. for the 28th annual Holiday Luminaria Beachwalk.

Twenty-five bonfires and 3,000 luminarias will be set up, and hot cider, hot chocolate, chile, posole, and green chile stew will be available. — S.F. You can learn more about Truth or Consequences’ Old-Fashioned Christmas by visiting the Main Street Truth or Consequences page on Facebook.

Call (520) 471-0134 or visit Friends of Elephant Butte State Park on Facebook for more information about the Luminaria Beach Walk.

Downtown Truth or Consequences will light up for the holidays during the town’s 15th annual Old-Fashioned Christmas.

Tickets start at $25 135 West Palace Avenue 505-209-1302; entreflamenco.com

WORTH THE DRIVE

A rite of springs COURTESY NEW MEXICO DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS

At any time of year, a drive from the Santa Fe area to the village of Jemez Springs is a journey through some of the most dramatic scenery Northern New Mexico has to offer.

On Friday, December 8, and Saturday, December 9, the Jemez Historic Site within the village will be lit up with farolitos, making the journey and its culmination even more rewarding.

Tickets to the annual Lights of Gisewa in Jemez Springs offer 30 minutes of access to the lighted site. Visitors are asked not to use tripods or flash photography, and pets are not allowed, with the exception of service animals. — B.S. 5-9 p.m. Friday, December 8, and Saturday, December 9 Jemez Historic Site, 18160 Highway 4, Jemez Springs $10-$20, my.nmculture.org/overview/20953

10 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

ANCIENT NOTES

Amplifying sacred music

COURTESY SCHOLA CANTORUM

Billy Turney believes live music is best when performed in the venue for which it was created, which is why Schola Cantorum of Santa Fe sounds particularly good under the soaring, vaulted ceiling of Loretto Chapel.

After all, Loretto Chapel, 207 Old Santa Fe Trail, is a replica of the French Gothic Sainte Chapelle in Paris, completed in 1248. At that time, the ancient sacred music Schola performs was the norm rather than the rarity it is in modern Santa Fe, and churches were designed to amplify and enhance the sound.

But after performing in Loretto for about two decades, Schola found itself in search of a new venue this year when the chapel stopped hosting outside musical groups. As a result, Schola is all over the area this holiday season, performing at places as varied as the San Miguel Mission, the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, Santa Barbara Mission Church in Silé, the New Mexico History Museum, the Palace of the Governors, and even the Railyard.

Turney founded Schola in 1990 while serving as principal organist and director of music at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis (a hard place to sing, he says.) He had studied Gregorian chant and polyphonic music of the Lucinda Sydow (from Renaissance at the Pontifical Institute of left), Jackie Mattos, Billy Sacred Music in Rome and wanted to Turney, Anna George, and Denise Moore will bring the form alive in Santa Fe’s chapels, perform with Schola missions, cathedrals, and basilicas. Since Cantorum at various then, the group has performed all over venues in and around Northern New Mexico and in Colorado, Santa Fe this holiday season.

Italy, and Ireland.

A decade ago, Schola had more than 20 members, all local residents. Today, it’s down to six (and one of those is out through December due to illness), but while Turney says he’s always open to audition interested local singers, what’s more important than size is having the right people in the ensemble who can cover all four of the major vocal ranges; soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. He says he has that.

The slimmed-down Schola ensemble fit nicely when it performed by candlelight in October in the chapel at Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine at Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. The Gothic chapel was built in 1889 by the same folks who built Loretto Chapel but on a tiny scale — it can seat only 110 people, creating an intimate, beautiful setting.

After first naming Our Lady of Lourdes as his favorite New Mexico venue, Turney quickly backtracks: “My favorite is wherever the people can hear it and enjoy it because that’s what makes the music right there,” he said.

And that’s why Schola performed Christmas songs at the Railyard on Black Friday with plans to do the same this month at the history museum and Palace of the Governors (both on December 16.)

Still, Turney betrays a prejudice for venues with lots of hard surfaces, which are acoustically superior for unamplified voices like those of Schola. One of those is the chapel or santuario at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, which was built in the late 1700s but improved acoustically in a renovation that added hard slate floors.

“It’s so fun to sing there,” Tuney says. “You can do a lot musically, and there’s room for everyone.”

The church sanctuary can seat 670, and there’s ample free parking outside for what Turney calls Schola’s “gift to Santa Fe” concert at 2 p.m.

December 17. While the event is free, goodwill donations are appreciated.

In case you don’t like free, Schola’s ticketed Christmas in Santa Fe 2023 concert ($25-$30) will be special for another reason: Old meets old when the ensemble performs its ancient music in the oldest church in the United States: San Miguel Mission. That concert is at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 13.

San Miguel is a traditional adobe church with thick walls and timbered ceiling; with room for just 120 people, it’s the intimate setting Schola likes.

“People say they like the acoustics, but it’s actually a really hard place to sing,” Turney says. However, because Schola has performed there so many times over the years, “we got the hang of it,” he promises.

— Judy Robinson/For The New Mexican Schola Christmas in Santa Fe 2023 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 13 San Miguel Mission, 401 Old Santa Fe Trail $30 with discounts available

Schola Christmas Music Concert 2 p.m. Dec. 17 Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, 417 Agua Fria Street Free (goodwill donations appreciated) View the rest of Schola’s holiday schedule at schola-sf.org/

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11

OUT THERE

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Cissie Ludlow’s Party Girl/Barbie Goes Trashique (above, 1985, photograph) and Erin Currier’s Venus (left, collage) are among the small works being auctioned to benefit the Santa Fe Artists’ Medical Fund.

Santa Fe’s strong & vibrant theatre scene welcomes you!

JUST CAUSE

Taking action via auction Proceeds from an auction this weekend will benefit artists, but not in the way one might think.

The Santa Fe Artists’ Medical Fund Celebration 6-inch-by-6-inch Show and Silent Auction is a major money-raiser for the namesake fund, which was founded in 1996 by Armond Lara and Jack Stamm. They formed it after an artist friend had broken his leg and needed medical care.

In the first year, a group of the artist’s friends created small paintings to be auctioned. The show now features traditional 6-by-6-inch works by various artists, 8-by-10-inch photography, small sculptures, and wine and snacks. — B.S. 3-5 p.m. Sunday, December 10 Site Santa Fe, 1606 Paseo de Peralta Free

We represent over 20 theatre companies!

For company into, show listing and to join our email newsletter Visit www.Theatresantafe.org 12 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

Joseph Riggs, 505-710-6362, santafeartistsfund@gmail.com, santafeartistsmedicalfund.org

NATIVE AMERICAN PORTAL YOUTH WINTER SHOW Saturday, December 9, 10 am–4 pm Sunday, December 10, 10 am–3 pm The event fosters the development of young artists who are descendants of current Native American Artisans Portal Program members and celebrates the importance of the continued traditions of Native American artistry. Free admission to the museum and show all day.

nmculture.org/traditions

PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

13

IN MEMORIAM

A MAN OF

LETTERS James McGrath Morris l For The New Mexican

For the last six years the scarred wooden tray on my desk that serves as an in-box has contained a handful of letters from writer John Nichols.

I felt honored to have had a chance to correspond with him but never resolved what to do with the letters. So the letters have remained there, bound together with a paperclip, until word reached me last week that Nichols had died.

A much-admired author, especially among writers, Nichols penned more than a dozen novels along with a number of nonfiction works. On hearing the news of his passing, Nichols’ fans probably looked on their bookshelves to see if they still had a copy of his first novel, The Sterile Cuckoo, which was made into a popular movie starring Liza Minnelli. New Mexicans, however, were more likely to reach for their dog-eared copy of The Milagro Beanfield War. This, too, was made into a movie directed by Robert Redford.

Instead of turning to his books, I took the letters he wrote to me out of the tray and reread them in the quiet of my living room.

As a biographer, my work calls on me to read letters, thousands upon thousands of them, to gain insights into my subjects. My small cache of letters from Nichols told me a lot about him.

From the first letter I received in 2017, Nichols’s humbleness was inescapable. The three-page, single-spaced, typed letter was in response to my queries about Tony Hillerman, whose biography I was writing. He spoke in a deferential tone about Hillerman and said that, like the mystery author, he always remained willing to provide a leg up to an aspiring writer by writing a comment that could be used to publicize the new work.

“I thought if I ever wrote an autobiography, I should simply call it The Blurbist, or Memoirs of a Blurbist,” he told me.

His letters revealed that he also shared with Hillerman a delight in telling a self-deprecating tale. He recounted how in the early 1980s, he served on a panel at a Western Writers Convention where he spoke out in a fierce and accusatory tone about racism implicit in books by older Western writers. “But the funny thing (at least to me!) is that after I shot my self-righteous mouth off,” he wrote, “I pushed my chair back from our table in triumph, forgetting that we were on a stage that dropped off right behind

14 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

Left: A Hermes Rocket typewriter was used by John Nichols to type The Milagro Beanfield War. It is among the writer’s memorabilia and papers housed at the UNM Center for Southwest Research & Special Collections. In his correspondence with James McGrath Morris, Nichols (pictured above) included doodles such as the ones above and on the opposite page.

us, and so I stumbled over backwards, and I believe the audience cheered wildly because I had gotten my comeuppance!”

Nichols’ reading of my book about the friendship between writers Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos prompted him to tell me of his first visit to Spain in 1960 following Hemingway’s path and literary tracks. Nineteen years old at the time, Nichols attended a bullfighting school and ran with the bulls for six

As a biographer, my work calls on me to read letters, thousands upon thousands of them, to gain insights into my subjects. My small cache of letters from Nichols told me a lot about him. of the seven days of San Fermin. “So,” he said, “I practically memorized The Sun Also Rises, and Death in the Afternoon was my Bible for a while.”

Each letter contained a gem like this, displaying a consuming passion and a reverence for the written word. But he resisted solemness common to many authors and his notes to me celebrated life’s funny moments. Readers wanting to sample Nichols’ hilarious tales of his writing life can find them interspersed in his brutally honest memoir I Got Mine: Confessions of a Midlist Writer, the last book he published.

I know I am not alone in being so lucky to receive letters from Nichols, always delivered by mail as he chose not to use email. “I have many correspondences with people I’ve never met, but we’ve exchanged three-page typed letters for 40 or 50 years,” Nichols told Lynne Robinson of the Taos News. “Just people who write to thank me for this book or that book, or say they felt a bond with me. All writers have experiences like that. I can’t imagine what someone like Tony Hillerman or Rudy Anaya have gone through.

Thank God I’m not famous.”

Our final exchange of letters centered on making plans, cautious plans because of COVID and his ill health, to meet for a meal in Taos. Our meeting never happened. I should have picked up on the clue he provided when he confessed to me that he had studied the bibliography in my Hemingway book to speed his search for something to read. “Obviously,” he said, “my time is running out.” ◀ James McGrath Morris is a biographer and writer of narrative nonfiction.

IAIA | 9 am–4 pm DEC. 9 SFCC | 9 am–5 pm

Get your holiday shopping done at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and Santa Fe Community College (SFCC) this year on Saturday, December 9!

Over one hundred artists will set up shop at the IAIA Holiday Art Market and the SFCC Holiday Arts and Crafts Fair.

Admission and parking are free at both events, which are only a six-minute drive apart.  www.iaia.edu/holidaymarket

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15

IN OTHER WORDS Carina Julig l The New Mexican

A tale of two trailblazers Pioneering botanists navigated a river and gender barriers in the pursuit of science Science journalist Melissa L. Sevigny was searching through the online archives of Northern Arizona University when she stumbled on something unfamiliar — papers botanist Lois Jotter donated to the university about her scientific exploration down the Colorado River.

Jotter and her mentor, University of Michigan botany professor Elzada Clover, set out in 1938 along with a crew of four men to raft the Grand Canyon. The two became the first people to conduct a formal study of the plant life of the Grand Canyon and also became the first two women to successfully raft the entire canyon.

A science reporter at Flagstaff-based KNAU radio station, Sevigny grew up in Arizona and wrote a previous book about the Colorado River.

“Clover and Jotter lived at a time when they were not being invited to do this. They had to make it happen for themselves, but they were being told that because of their gender they didn’t belong in that place. And thank goodness they ignored that advice.”

PHOTO ALEXIS-KNAPP

— Author Melissa L. Sevigny If anyone had heard about Clover and Jotter, it should be her — but she hadn’t.

“I was just really astonished I had never heard either of their names before,” she said.

She started looking for more information about the two women but there wasn’t much out there, particularly regarding the scientific implications of their research.

“It dawned on me slowly that I was going to have to write it myself,” Sevigny said.

She started out with a long-form article about the expedition for Atavist Magazine, but still felt like there was much more to say and signed a contract to write a full-length book about the trip.

That turned into Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon (W.W. Norton & Company), which was published in May. Books such as John Wesley Powell’s The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons and Wallace Stegner’s Beyond the Hundredth Meridian 16 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

Science journalist Melissa L. Sevigny

have become classics of Western exploration literature. Brave the Wild River is a much-needed addition to the canon.

The book is partly an adventure story about the chaotic nature of the trip — there was conflict among expedition leader Norman Nevills and some other members of the crew, and at one point the group was several days late to a checkpoint and presumed dead — and partly a detailed look about the women’s scientific accomplishments, which are still considered significant by botanists and ecologists.

Their study of the plant life at the bottom of the canyon was more important than even Clover and Jotter realized at the time. The expedition was conducted before the Hoover Dam, which closed its gates in 1936 and took years to fill, forever changed the ecology of the Colorado River and gave future researchers a benchmark for what the plant life along the canyon used to be like.

Despite the lack of current-day knowledge of the trip, at the time it was a media sensation. The expedition was covered in newspapers from coast to coast, and the women briefly become celebrities.

“I guess today it would be like if we sent someone to Mars,” Sevigny said. “The idea they would do this, and specifically that women would do this, was just considered very outlandish.”

Much of the coverage, which Sevigny described as “utterly sensationalized,” was not welcomed

by Clover and Jotter. As Sevigny’s book details, both felt ambivalent about their role as the first two non-Native American women to traverse the Grand Canyon.

Unlike some other female explorers who broke boundaries, they weren’t making the trip to prove a point that women could do anything men could do. They were scientists, and their key focus was on conducting research in a heretofore-unexplored region of the country.

“My sense is they both felt they should be treated equally and be respected for their capabilities,” Sevigny said. “They were both aware they were being treated differently because they were women and at every opportunity insisted they had as much right as a man to be there.”

Despite the boundary-breaking nature of the expedition, it was quite traditional in other ways.

Clover and Jotter did all of the cooking for the

entire group throughout the expedition on top of their demanding scientific work, something it seems they grew quite tired of by the end of the trip.

Hopefully Clover and Jotter themselves would be pleased with Sevigny’s book, which doesn’t shy away from the gendered nature of their accomplishment but in large part focuses on their scientific pursuits.

Along with contemporary media accounts and the archives both women donated to universities before their death, Sevigny drew in large part from the diaries both Clover and Jotter kept of the trip. In fact, the diaries were all she had to go on for a while — she signed the book contract in the spring of 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down access to many archives for more than a year.

“All I had were the diaries and parts of Lois’ archive; that’s all I had to work with for first year and a half,” Sevigny said. “That was not my plan, but I think it worked out for the best, because it made sure the women’s voices were very central to the story.”

As she conducted her research, Sevigny said she realized she would need to embark on her own rafting trip through the Grand Canyon to truly understand her subjects. She signed up with a botany crew and in the fall of 2021 spent two weeks rafting down the canyon while weeding out the invasive species Ravenna grass.

The work-based focus gave her a little semblance of what Clover and Jotter’s trip might have been like, she said, as well as the fact she didn’t have any previous whitewater rafting experience.

“I think it was good I went into it like that because that must have been what Elzada and Lois felt as well — they really and truly didn’t know what they were getting into,” she said.

The ecology of the Grand Canyon has changed significantly since 1938, in large part due to how much of the Colorado River is now an engineered system in thrall to the 35 to 40 million people who rely on the water it provides.

As the many different entities with rights to the river’s water struggle to negotiate how to go forward at a time of historic drought, Sevigny said Clover and Jotter’s story can serve as a powerful reminder that everyone, from researchers and scientists to the Indigenous communities who have lived along the river for millennia, needs to have a seat at the table.

“Clover and Jotter lived at a time when they were not being invited to do this,” Sevigny said. “They had to make it happen for themselves, but they were being told that because of their gender they didn’t belong in that place. And thank goodness they ignored that advice.” ◀

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505-988-8011 Author Melissa L. Sevigny drew on a library of ecology books while writing Brave the Wild River, including many about previous river explorations. These are the ones she said most inspired her work: • Downcanyon: A Naturalist Explores the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon by Ann Zwinger (University of Arizona Press, 1995) • Raven’s Exile: A Season on the Green River by Ellen Meloy (Henry Holt & Co., 1994) • The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko (Scribner, 2013) • Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Milkweed Editions, 2013)

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Giving the gift of words 15 books for kids and tweens and teens (plus a few banned books too) Ania Hull l For The New Mexican Books don’t just train a child’s mind and imagination — they also grow their heart. If you’re still looking for that perfect book for a child you love, rejoice! Pasatiempo put together a list of 15 off-thebeaten-path books, most new or very recent and all sure to delight small and not-so-small readers.

The following books are set in New Mexico or the Southwest or are related to our region in a surprising way. They are also either by local authors, local publishers, or writers whose lives our state or region touched for the better. We’ve included the titles of some challenged and banned books that might prompt the special child in your life to start their very own revolution.

2-6 YEARS OLD SOUTHWEST SUNRISE (picture book); Nikki Grimes (writer), Wendell Minor (illustrator); Bloomsbury Children’s Books; 2020; 40 pages; 3-6 years Jayden is not too happy about moving from New York City to New Mexico. Until, that is, he begins exploring his new surroundings and finds birds in piñon trees, adobe houses, the gigantic blue sky, and colorful flowers. Nikki Grimes and her illustrator, Wendell Minor, bring about the beauty of New Mexico and the Southwest on every page.

FRY BREAD: A NATIVE AMERICAN FAMILY STORY (picture book); Kevin Noble Maillard (author), Juana Martinez-Neal (illustrator); Roaring Brook Press; 2019; 48 pages; 2-6 years A moder n Nat ive Amer ican family celebrates old and new, traditional and modern, similarities and differences. Author Kevin Noble Maillard wrote Fry Bread in powerful verse, hoping to offer young readers like his own children a story packed with contemporary and non-mythical Native characters.

STILL DREAMING / SEGUIMOS SOÑANDO (picture book, bilingual); Claudia Guadalupe Martínez (author), Magdalena Mora (illustrator); Lee & Low Books; 2022; 40 pages; 4–7 years A young American boy is forced to leave Texas and the only home she’s ever known and move to Mexico. Her story, and that of other families the little girl meets on the road, illustrates the heartbreak of the Mexican Repatriation, a long-forgotten chapter of U.S. history that began during the Great Depression.

6-9 YEARS OLD UFOHS! MYSTERIES IN THE SKY; Deborah Blumenthal and Ralph Blumenthal (authors), Adam Gustavson (illustrator); University of New Mexico Press; 2023; 40 pages; 6-8 years UFOhs! cuts through pseudo-science and speculation to discuss phenomena seen and documented by people all over the world. Both authors are journalists, and their gorgeous and well-researched nonfiction book for children will have family members big and small talking about all the things they see in the sky.

CHESTER NEZ AND THE UNBREAKABLE CODE: A NAVAJO CODE TALKER’S STORY (picture book); Joseph Bruchac (author), Liz Amini-Holmes (illustrator); Albert Whitman & Company; 2018; 32 pages; 7-10 years (grades 1-5) Chester Nez was a little boy when he was forced to leave the Navajo/Diné reservation and sent to boarding school. And although he was taught that his native language and culture would never serve him, Chester refused to give up

18 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

on his Native heritage. When he grew up, the U.S. Marines recruited Chester and other Navajo/Diné men like him during World War II to use the Navajo language to create an unbreakable military code.

REMEMBER; Joy Harjo (author), Michaela Goade (illustrator); Random House; 2023; 40 pages; 4-8 years The poem “Remember” by U.S. Poet L aureate Joy Harjo — beautifully i llustrated by Michaela Goade — invites readers of all ages to reflect on the beauty and wonder of our world, to remember that they matter and to never forget that their place in the world is important, too.

ELAN, SON OF TWO PEOPLES (picture book); Heidi Smith Hyde (author), Mikela Provost (illustrator); Kar-Ben Publishing; 2014; 32 pages; 5-9 years (kindergarten – grade 3) Elan lives in San Francisco with his Jewish father and his Native mother, who is a member of the Acoma Pueblo. In 1898, he celebrates his bar mitzvah in San Francisco and travels to New Mexico to celebrate his coming-of-age and be welcomed into the Pueblo. The story is based on the life of a 19th-century Jewish man who became a Pueblo governor.

9-12 YEARS OLD

TORTILLA SUN; Jennifer Cervantes; Chronicle Books; 2014; 224 pages; 9-12 years Izzy’s dad died before she was born, and one of the only things she has to remind her of him is an old baseball with “because magic” written on it. Her mother won’t share much with her about her father, but when 12-year-old Izzy spends the summer in her Nana’s remote village in New Mexico, she discovers long-buried secrets that begin to take shape in a landscape of red mountains and tortilla suns.

THE HAT DIARIES — THE SECRET LIFE OF RYAN RIGBEE (THE HAT DIARIES BOOK 1); Nadine Haruni; Speaking Volumes; 2023; 252 pages; 8-12 years Ryan Rigbee is a 13-year-old boy who grieves his father’s death, gets bullied, and has a difficult time — though only by day. By night, Ryan and his dog, Shadow, go on fantastical adventures about which Ryan writes in his diary and which help him gain confidence to face the world that awaits him during the day.

ACROSS THE DESERT; Dusti Bowling; Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; 2021; 320 pages; 8-12 years Jolene, a 12-year-old girl in Arizona, often watches livestreams of pilot Addie Earhart flying her ultralight aircraft over the desert. One day, Addie’s engine stops and the video goes dark. No one believes Jolene that Addie’s plane crashed, so Jolene sets out by bus, on stolen motorcycles, and on foot in search of the aviator.

THE DAY IT SNOWED TORTILLAS / EL DÍA QUE NEVARON TORTILLAS (folktales in English and Spanish); Joe Hayes; Cinco Puntos Press; 2003; 144 pages; 10–12 years (grades 4-6) This collection of folktales is by none other than our very own local storyteller Joe Hayes, who adds a modern twist to ancient stories to the delight of old and young. In the title story, a woman saves her husband from a group of thieves by making him believe that it’s snowing tortillas; in another story, La Llorona searches the river for her lost children.

THE STORM RUNNER (BOOK 1 OF THE STORM RUNNER SERIES); Jennifer (J.C.) Cervantes; Rick Riordan Presents; 2018; 448 pages; 8–12 years Fourteen-year-old Zane Obispo has a limp and walks with a cane, and other children bully him for it. To escape them, he spends his days exploring the dormant volcano near his home in New Mexico.

He soon finds out that the volcano is an ancient prison for the Maya god of death.

12-18 YEARS DISPLACEMENT (graphic novel); Kiku Hughes; First Second; 2020; 12–18 years; 288 pages While on vacation in California, Kiku falls through time to the continued on Page 20

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Gift of words, continued from Page 19 1940s, to the Japanese American internment camp where Ernestina, her now late grandmother, was imprisoned during World War II. Kiku soon finds herself stuck in time and watches her grandmother and other prisoners being denied their freedom and civil liberties and doing the impossible to survive.

The graphic novel’s narrative may not take place in the Southwest per se, but it speaks of the universal reality of Japanese American internments camps, just like the one in Santa Fe. MEXICAN WHITEBOY; Matt de la Peña; Ember; 2010; 272 pages; 14-17 years Danny struggles to find his identity in a world that’s determined to define him. His mom is blond and has blue eyes, whereas Danny is brown, tall, and skinny. He is half-Mexican but doesn’t speak Spanish and believes that his father now lives in Mexico because of Danny’s half-whiteness. The summer Danny spends with his father’s family in Mexico helps him shape and define who he is.

A SNAKE FALLS TO EARTH; Darcie Little Badger; Levine Querido Publisher; 2021; 384 pages; 12-18 years Nina is a Lipan Apache teenage girl who’s looking for her voice as a documentarian. She tries to find out more about her family’s history and her relatives’ stories, many about animal people and the Reflecting World. In a parallel world, Oli — a young cottonmouth snake — tries to find his way and soon learns of the danger his own friend and Nina’s grandmother are facing because of climate change on Earth.

START YOUR VERY OWN REVOLUTION WITH THESE BANNED AND CHALLENGED BOOKS STREGA NONA — AN OLD TALE RETOLD (picture book); Tomie dePaola; Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers; 1975; 32 pages; ages 2-6 Banned in several U.S. school libraries for allegedly promoting witchcraft.

DRAMA (graphic novel); Raina Telgemeier; Graphix; 2012; 240 pages; ages 8-11 Banned for including LGBTQ+ characters.

NEW KID; Jerry Craft; Quill Tree Books; 2019; 256 pages; ages 9-12 Challenged for allegedly containing Critical Race Theory.

THE HATE U GIVE; Angie Thomas; Balzer + Bray; 2017; 464 pages; ages 15+ Widely banned for its depictions of racism and anti-police views. ◀ Ania Hull is an Albuquerque-based freelance writer and avid reader.

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21

PHOTO GABRIELA CAMPOS/THE NEW MEXICAN

Robert Nott l The New Mexican

T

Tours of duty

here was little that Holly Henry could do but stand by and watch as Julio Caban cried at the sight of the artwork.

Caban wept as he listened to Henry talk about the Luis Jiménez sculpture Border Crossing, which depicts a man carrying a woman on his shoulders as he crosses a barrier — the river, perhaps? — to a new country in hopes of finding a better life.

Henry — a docent at the New Mexico Museum of Art, where the work is exhibited — told about 10 people taking a recent tour that Jiménez was trying to put a human face to the story of the many migrants who seek refuge and comfort in a land that is not their own.

That was enough to move Caban, a New Jersey resident who was on a Henry-led docent tour of the downtown Santa Fe museum. Following the end of the roughly 45-minute tour of the museum, he says taking a docent-led tour of a museum is “like therapy.

22 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

New Mexico’s brigade of volunteer museum docents serve as connectors to culture and ambassadors to the community You go in not knowing what to expect, then you’re crying, then you’re laughing. You’re emoting.

“It’s a nice ride,” he says, a smile coming to his tear-streaked face as he stands next to companion Deana Moore.

Henry likes taking people on that kind of a ride.

After working more than 35 years in human resources for a variety of private businesses, the Washington,

D.C.-born resident of Tesuque decided upon retirement she wanted to do two things: Learn. And teach.

And what better way to do both, she says in an interview at the museum on a recent cold and cloudy day, than to volunteer as a docent?

She says she was captivated by the numerous tours she took of museums as a child with her mother, who wanted her to learn about art and culture and history though the museum system in D.C. and elsewhere.

“I was captured, curious, mesmerized, fascinated,” Henry recalls. “The artwork came alive for me in museums.”

She still recalls, some 10 years or so later, visiting the exhibition Becoming Van Gogh at the Denver Art Museum and becoming captivated with the way the paintings in the exhibit were displayed to show the evolution of his talent. “The labels and interpretive panels described his motivation, experimentation, detours, and inspiration,” she says.

They receive courses in public speaking, the architecture of the museum, and its influence on other architectural elements in the city (Henry made a point of talking about this on the tour), and the artistic movements of modernism, impressionism, and realism, among other styles.

Among the questions the training staff asks trainees is what exhibitions they remember as museum visitors and whether they thought of the role of the curator in those presentations. Henry says museum staff, from curators to librarians (there’s a kind of secret art library in the basement of the museum that insiders can access), continue to “urge us to do research,” including through visits to local art galleries and other museums.

At the top of her tour, Henry — who exudes a confident sense of welcoming that suggests she’s leading her friends around the site — connects with each visitor, asking where he or she is from and whether they’ve been to the museum before. She then lays out — in an easy, informal, and assured tone — the post-railroad history of Santa Fe and the events leading to the formation of the museum way back in 1917, when artists were eager to come west to carve out their own frontier of creation expression.

She is clearly not afraid of learning as she teaches: When a museum security guard spontaneously offers insight into some work created by New Mexico artistic icon Georgia O’Keeffe, Henry listens, incorporates the information into her talk, and thanks the gentleman for the additional data. (He later says he worked at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum for years before moving over to the art museum.)

Aware a local photographer is on her tour, Henry asks the woman to comment on what she likes about the focus of a Manuel Carrillo (a Mexican modernist photographer) image in the museum. Henry continually asks visitors about their thoughts on the work in the museum, drawing them in as partners for a room-by-room tour of the works.

She talks about artistic themes such as tribal rights, border crossings, and racial inequity as she leads her guests through an artistic expedition of a jungle of creative wonders.

For Caban, the tour offers the chance to have someone more intimately connected with the works on the wall “shed light on the state’s art and history.”

His partner, Moore (they’ve been dating for about 18 months, and it seems to be working out pretty well, they both note), says the tour gave her a chance to rethink the way she teaches art to elementary-level children in the public school system where she works.

“It’s inspiring to me as an arts teacher to pass on the history of art to my children,” she says.

Henry thinks the fact she and the other docents are volunteers works to the advantage of the program.

“We have an emotional connection to what we are doing,” she says. “People volunteer with their hearts.” ◀

Left: Julio Caban, visiting Santa Fe for the first time from New Jersey, studies a painting while being led on a tour by Holly Henry, a docent at the New Mexico Museum of Art. Below: According to Henry, Luis A. Jiménez Jr.’s sculpture Border Crossing (1989, polychrome fiberglass) puts a human face to the story of migrants seeking refuge and comfort in America.

Opposite page: Henry tells guests about a fresco on view at the New Mexico Museum of Art created in 1998 by Frederico M. Vigil.

PHOTO CAMERON GAY/COURTESY ?NEW MEXICO MUSEUM OF ART

PHOTO GABRIELA CAMPOS/THE NEW MEXICAN

Henry is one of about 45 volunteer docents in an arts museum program (that includes the relatively new Vladem Contemporary) that has been running about 30 years.

Many — but not all — of the state’s other museums also have docents. The New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum in Las Cruces has 10, for example, while the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture has nine, according to Greg Gurule, spokesperson for the Department of Cultural Affairs.

Sarah Zurick, museum educator and volunteer coordinator for the New Mexico Museum of Art, says the docents act as “ambassadors to the community.”

They provide a link between the works on the wall, she says, and the people who are there to see them.

The art museum’s commitment to recruiting, training, and retaining docents is particularly important as other museum and cultural institutions around the country scale back, seriously cut, or outright cancel docent programs, she says.

In October, the Portland Art Museum announced it was doing away with its current docent program in favor of hiring “learning guides” from local colleges instead. Last year around this time, the Oakland Museum of California did the same thing, while other museums around the country have moved to paid college-guide programs.

But New Mexico’s state museum docents program continues to draw volunteers who are, like Henry, looking to educate and learn at the same time. Zurick says she already has a line-up of “interested people” wanting to train as docents next year. (Trainees need not have any artistic or art history background, she notes.)

The docents go through an eight-month training period during which, according to a syllabus Zurick provided, trainees meet with and hear from everyone, from museum division directors to curators to cashiers.

Each New Mexico state museum oversees its own docent and volunteer programs. Visit newmexicoculture.org/ about/contact for a list and contact info for state-run museums, including the New Mexico Museum of Art, Vladem Contemporary, and other museums.

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23

Brian Sandford l The New Mexican

HOMECOMING for DILLINGHAM

To Make, Unmake, and Make Again brings the ceramicist’s works back to the community that informed his art

A

fter prolific Santa Fe artist Rick Dillingham died in January 1994, many of his ceramic creations migrated into the hands of collectors many states away.

When New Mexico Museum of Art assistant curator Katie Doyle began work on Rick Dillingham: To Make, Unmake, and Make Again, she identified a three-word goal: bringing Rick home. While the museum houses hundreds of Dillingham’s works, she had her sights set on a series of four pots he created shortly before his death, simply called the AIDS Series.

Dillingham famously broke and reassembled his pieces, then painted them. Doyle was able to track down three of the AIDS Series pots and secure two for the exhibition, which runs through June 16, 2024. It was a coup for Doyle, who says she was as much an “art detective” as a curator as she prepared her first exhibition at the museum.

It was a big job; Rick Dillingham: To Make, Unmake, and Make Again is billed as the largest-ever exhibition of the artist’s work. Doyle, who joined the museum in July 2022, chatted with Pasatiempo about the goals for the exhibition, Dillingham’s complexities, and what the artist might have done next had he not died from AIDS complications at age 41. (Her responses were edited for length and clarity.)

24 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

Some Santa Feans will remember interacting with Rick, while others arrived here well after his death. Did you face a challenge of appealing to multiple audiences?

I didn’t know Rick [personally]. It took me a long time to realize I was telling multiple stories. I realized there’s Dillingham the artist; there is Dillingham the queer cowboy man; and the queer potter. Then there’s Dillingham the scholar of Indigenous art and Dillingham in his private life. So it became my goal to find a way to communicate the complexity of his story. He was so many other things in addition to being an artist. He was an advocate. He was an activist. He was, you know, a weirdo. He was a trash talker.

So much progress has been made in the treatment of AIDS that some visitors might not realize the disease was a death sentence only a generation ago. Does the struggle show up in Rick’s work?

Toward the end of his life, Dillingham made the four pots called the AIDS Series. They were about his struggle being a man with AIDS in the early ’90s. He was making these things at a time when people were still on [AIDS drug] cocktails, and there wasn’t really a definitive treatment plan. Having AIDS meant you were going to die. He lived his life for as long as he possibly could. [His health struggle]

doesn’t really show up in his work until the last two years of his life.

Are there any elements you opted not to include, because of privacy or emotional impact?

One of the reels that we had was labeled Rick IV, and this is not something that we’re probably going to exhibit ever. It’s Dillingham in the morning, waking up and self-administering his cocktails, putting on a shirt, and going into the kitchen.

PHOTO KEVIN BELTRAN/COURTESY NEW MEXICO MUSEUM OF ART

What’s so distinctive about the pots in the AIDS Series?

They’re black, and there’s this sort of uranium yellow that is leaching through the black in some places.

There’s this silvery glow coming from the interior.

Some of them show that silver more than others.

Dillingham only made four of these, and he showed all four of them in 1993, a little under a year before he passed away. They all sold to private hands.

Where did you track them down?

One found its way to Arizona State University [in Tempe, Arizona]. Another one found its way to Scripps College’s art collection [in Claremont, California]. The other two are in private hands. This became kind of like my white whale. I was searching desperately for these works, and I was able to get two into this show.

Dillingham spent a lot of time around Indigenous people and was inspired by their work. He was a white man creating and collecting a type of art that Indigenous people had pioneered. Would this be considered problematic in 2023?

I did want to talk a bit about his relationship with Indigenous communities — he had a very close and loving relationship with many families and elders — and also speak about the visual aesthetic that can happen, especially in ceramics. Anytime you’re sharing a workspace, it requires teamwork.

Oftentimes, you’ve got a lot of people sharing studio space, and people share their glaze recipes; people share their firing methods. There is no doubt that from a craftsmanship perspective, Indigenous communities and those aesthetics and methods rubbed off into his practice. Whether it was appropriative, I want to leave up to the viewers. I don’t want to villainize Dillingham, but I also want to interrogate how well some of what he chose aesthetically holds up in the 21st century. ”Villainize” is an interesting word. What are your own feelings toward Dillingham’s work, and have they changed?

Some of Rick’s aesthetics really rubbed me the wrong way. I started by looking at the work, and my first reaction was, “I hate this.” The next step was research.

I hit the books hard. We are lucky at the New Mexico Museum of Art to have Rick’s archive, which he gifted to us, so we have his letters; we have his glaze recipes; we have photos and slides. We have his term papers from when he was at [the University of New Mexico].

I read through everything.

Did you uncover any surprises?

The first hook that grabbed me was his correspondence with Beatrice Wood. She was one of the original Dadaists. She’s a very significant person, and Dillingham first met her when he was 15. Their history goes way back, and in her letters to him, there was such a kindness, a tenderness, and a closeness.

I was uncovering things about the art and realized, “Oh, this is bigger than the things that were making me upset. This deserves care and time and attention.” So I started doing deep dives into the people he knew whose letters kept showing up in my research.

You’re piecing together a story based on one side, because I don’t have access to the letters that he sent to these people. I only have the information that was coming in. So to fill in some of those other pieces, I started conducting oral history interviews with people in Santa Fe who have living memories of Rick.

I also found a 16-millimeter documentary film of Dillingham in 1993. It is the last film footage of him, and that is in this exhibition.

Many of the featured items obviously came from your museum’s collection. Where else had they been stored?

When Dillingham passed away, his bequest split his artwork up between the Albuquerque Museum, the New Mexico Museum of Art, and the [University of New Mexico] Art Museum. A lot of the work in the show has been loaned from the Albuquerque Museum and the UNM Art Museum. His personal collection of Indigenous pottery went to the School for Advanced Research and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture and got split kind of in half.

If Dillingham hadn’t died, he’d be 71 now. As you delved into his work and life, did you get a sense of what he might have worked on next?

It just breaks my heart that he died so young.

Especially in the later works, he was getting silly and goofy with some of his forms and really aggressive with his colors.

The 30th anniversary of Dillingham’s death is January 22, 2024. Was the exhibition timed to align with that or anything else?

I feel like it’s one of those moments of kismet; like, stuff just lines up. What I got really hung up on was Pride. Initially, we were going to close the show before Santa Fe Pride. I said, “Absolutely not.” I advocated, probably to the point of bugging some people, that we keep the show open through June.

How do you think Dillingham would view this exhibition?

I think he would have liked it. He would probably call some of my decisions into question, but I feel like I represented his work as well as I could. We’re not shying away from the complexity of him. ◀ Rick Dillingham: To Make, Unmake, and Make Again Through June 16, 2024 New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W. Palace Avenue $7-$12 505-476-5063; nmartmuseum.org

A new exhibit at the New Mexico Museum of Art dedi-cated to the late ceramicist Rick Dillingham is billed as the largest-ever exhibit of the artist’s work. Among the pieces in the exhibit is Globe (1977), a kiln-fired reassembled glazed ceramicc.

Opposite page: The exhibit, To Make, Unmake, and Make Again, represents a homecoming of sorts for Dillingham, who died from AIDS complications in 1994.

Bottom left: Dillingham’s Flame Gas Can (1982) is reassembled, kiln-fired clay with slips, glazes, and metallic leaf.

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SKI SEASON IS OFFICIALLY UNDERWAY IN NEW MEXICO Spencer Fordin l The New Mexican

PHOTOS THIS PAGE GABRIELA CAMPOS/THE NEW MEXICAN

Thanksgiving Day marked the beginning of the 2023-2024 season at Ski Santa Fe. Top: A skier casts a shadow while making their way down the mountain on November 23. Above: A young ski student carries skis and poles up the bunny slope for a lesson. Left: Skiers and snowboarders ride the lift up the mountain as they hit the slopes on opening day.

28 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

rab your poles and gloves and get your cold- region,” says Dant of the modest ticket increases. “All weather gear ready. our costs have increased, but we were able to keep It’s officially ski season in New Mexico. our ticket prices with a less than $10 increase on our Thanksgiving and the first big snowstorm of day ticket price.” the season have come and gone, and five of the If things are still ramping up in New Mexico, they’re state’s eight ski areas have already opened their slopes. already in full swing at Wolf Creek Ski Area in Pagosa Ski Santa Fe opened up over the holiday weekend, Springs, Colorado. and Mother Nature cooperated by dropping nine Ninety percent of Wolf Creek’s 960 skiable acres inches of snow on its trails. were open as of press time, and the resort already has Only two of the state’s ski areas — Angel Fire Resort had 55 inches of snow dropped on it. and Pajarito Mountain — plan for an opening in “We always say we try to get things rolling on mid-to-late December. the first Friday in November. But sometimes we In addition to Ski Santa Fe, Ski Apache, Taos Ski have even opened on Halloween,” says Rosanne Valley, Red River Ski & Summer Area, and Sipapu Ski Haidorfer-Pitcher, the vice president of marketing & Summer Resort opened in November. and sales for Wolf Creek Ski Area. “We’re known “People don’t realize that we’re part of the Rockies for our early openings on natural snow. We do make too,” says Jack Dant, mountain manager at Ski Santa snow in that beginner area so we can start with Fe. “For the comparative amount of lessons right away.” mountains that we have, we’ve got some Wolf Creek added a new chairlift this For more information great ski areas in New Mexico. We’re season, The Tumbler, that was built to about New Mexico’s typically not as crowded as the frontgive beginning skiers a relaxed learning various ski resorts, you can visit skinewmexico.com. range areas. One thing we’ve done is environment of their own. The ski area If you’re looking for ticket not join these big ski pass groups; that added RFID ticketing in 2022, and now prices and snow reports keeps our traffic more localized.” tickets can be printed on-site at the for Ski Santa Fe, you can Dant, a New Mexico native, has been Base Camp Building. The Wolf Creek access them at skisantafe. working at Ski Santa Fe since 2002, SuperSaver Season Pass costs $974, and com. Information about Wolf Creek Ski Area can be and he says the slopes employ between the Peak Advantage Season Pass costs found at wolfcreekski.com.

375 and 425 people in a variety of roles $1,297. Day passes range from $89 in ranging from parking and lift crews to regular rates to $100 in peak season. snowmaking and trail grooming.

Haidorfer-Pitcher says that Wolf Creek currently gets “I came for the pass, and I stayed for the career,” more than 400 inches of snow per year, and before the he says. ski area opened, skiing was just a way of life.

This year, Dant says, Ski Santa Fe has improved its The ski area began in 1938 with a humble Chevy visitor experience by adding a new ticketing system truck used to tow skiers to the top of the trail, and it’s that includes RFID gates and a direct-to-lift option. Ski developed into a huge industry over time.

Santa Fe had opened five of its seven lifts and 22 of its 89 “People were using skis to deliver the mail and just trails at press time, and Dant says the season typically to get around,” says Haidorfer-Pitcher. “Wolf Creek ramps up around Christmas and lasts all the way until grew organically. It wasn’t like some places where April. Ski Santa Fe’s Platinum Pass, which includes no they put in the villages and the trails and the lifts all blackout days and direct-to-lift options, costs $879 for at one time. the season. Ski Santa Fe also sells weekend half-day “We’ve been around for a while and have slowly ($84) and full-day ($105) passes. been getting busier and busier and with COVID, all “We tried to be very reasonable in terms of com- of a sudden, mountain towns just kind of exploded paring what we were doing with other ski areas in the with people wanting to spend more time outside.” ◀

PHOTO COURTESY JUST POINT IT

g n i l t Rol e p r a c e t whi e h t t u o G

THE ART OF SHREDDING It started as a catchphrase among three Taos-based skiing brothers, and it developed into a company they created together to celebrate art and their home state.

Just Point It, a limited edition skiing and apparel company started by Ted, Nick, and Joe Wolff, is now in its seventh season selling intricately designed skis and snowboards. Most years, Ted says, they make 50 sets of skis and 50 snowboards, and most years, he says, they sell out.

“Honestly, we were a small gang of skiers that liked extreme skiing,” he says of the company’s origins. “We found an outlet just by going into the mountains. It just started that way. We went skiing all the time in Santa Fe and Taos. And we decided to make a company out of it.”

Joe, the eldest brother, is now based in Costa Rica, Ted says, but the company is still run by Ted and Nick. The art chosen for this year’s design — a purple and orange landscape — was made by Taos-based muralist Sean Carpenter, who goes by the tag name JISK. Carpenter originally depicted a wolf to honor the founders’ surname, but they wound up going with an evocative sunset and night sky motif. The underside of the design, as is common for Just Point It, houses the Zia symbol.

“We like to get art that symbolizes where we come from,” Ted says. ”Each year we decide to take art from one local artist in New Mexico. We give them an idea, and they produce something we like. Next year, I think we’re going to do a competition and put it out to more people so we have variety. We’ll have a winner and pick one we like, or we’ll put it out to the public and let them pick.”

The 2024 JISK Point It snowboard is listed at $599, and the skis are currently listed at $777. There are a few models left over from past seasons, but the company’s mission is made a little bit easier by just focusing on the art. They outsource the actual manufacturing of the skis to a Colorado-based company. ”I didn’t know I was going to have a ski company,” says Ted, who conceived Just Point It as an apparel company.

“I got an opportunity to work with Never Summer, a company out of Denver, and they were willing to make me a small run. And that’s really hard to do; making skis isn’t an easy task. We weren’t making them in the garage; we were thinking about it and these guys were like, ‘We have the factory to build them to your specifications.’”

For more information about Just Point It, visit the company’s website at justpointit.com. Information about Never Summer Industries can be found at neversummer.com.

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Brian Sandford l The New Mexican

Getting in on the act FAMILY THEATRE PLAYS FOR PEANUTS TO DRAW THEATER LOVERS OF ALL AGES

Hannah Machado plays Snoopy’s Flying Ace in Family Theatre of Santa Fe’s production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

Opposite page: Jeannette and Mark Kolokoff founded the nonprofit theater company to stage family-friendly productions.

32 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

J

eannette and Mark Kolokoff moved to Northern New Mexico about four years ago after long careers as producers and directors in Colorado, then surveyed the Santa Fe theater scene to determine where they might find a niche.

The result is Family Theatre of Santa Fe, a nonprofit company founded by the longtime educators that primarily features adult actors in family-friendly shows. Its first production, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, begins Friday, December 8.

“We have noticed that a lot of the theater in Santa Fe is very oriented toward adults,” says Jeannette Kolokoff, a former musical theater program director at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.

“We don’t want to do any toe-stepping on other theater companies here. There are a couple of companies that only do shows featuring children, and we want to do something different.

“We want theater that anyone can go to and have a good experience and laugh a lot, or it might have a message that people talk about later.

It’s not really focused on children, per se. It could be seniors; it could be anybody.”

Family Theatre had been set to make its debut at Theatre Walk Santa Fe in late September but had casting issues, Kolokoff says, adding that all performers are paid. Charlie Brown, based on the long-running Peanuts comic strip, features faces familiar from other companies’ 2023 productions, including Hannah Machado as Snoopy (seen in Tri-M Productions’ Kinky Boots), Riley Samuel Merritt as Charlie Brown (Santa Fe Playhouse’s Santa Fe Fiesta Melodrama), Miles Blitch as Linus (Santa Fe Classic Theater’s Much Ado About Nothing), and Ali Esmeralda Marin as Lucy (Tri-M Productions’ A Grand Night for Singing).

The production serves as a trial balloon for Family Theatre; Kolokoff says the company will gauge response before planning any 2024 productions. Charlie Brown will be staged at the New Mexico Actors Lab. She’s aware that while most theater companies hobbled by the pandemic have reopened, some key venues remain closed.

“You’ve heard it over and over again: The big issue for theater companies in Santa Fe is venues,” Kolokoff says. “I think there are 23 theater companies and essentially three venues. So we’re all vying for space in those venues and trying to create theater in other spaces when possible. It’s a big challenge. So we’re not planning too far out. We want to see how this goes.”

Family Theatre also is vying for donor contributions. Kolokoff acknowledges it’s a challenge for a new company.

“You’re faced with the [Santa Fe] Playhouse, which has been here 100 years,” she says. “They have their group of donors who have been with them for many, many years. I came from an orchestra that was 60 years old, and some of our donors had been with us 60 years.”

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The Kolokoffs have two adopted children, both now adults. Jeannette Kolokoff will focus more on musicals in any future company presentations, while Mark Kolokoff’s specialty is plays, she says.

Charlie Brown is more her bailiwick.

“I expect people, when they’re leaving, to feel incredibly happy and joyous about a great musical experience,” she says. “The music in the show is very integrated. There are very few scenes that don’t have some music under the speaking.”

While Charlie Brown isn’t exclusively a holiday show, Jeannette Kolokoff says, it’s appropriate for the season because “the message is so positive.”

Merritt has a thick head of hair, while the character he plays is famously bald. Kolokoff laughs when she’s asked if he dons a flesh-colored skull cap for the show.

“He asked me, ‘Are you going to make me shave my head?’ I would never do that,” she says. “I mean, if this were a touring Broadway show, maybe. But no.”

Kolokoff spoke with Pasatiempo more than two weeks before the production’s opening night, as actors were starting to fine-tune their performances.

“We are to the point now where I really have fun,” she says of preparations. “We’re to the point of running scenes, and that’s when I really get to direct and the actors get to play. I believe in theater being a very cooperative art form, so I encourage the actors to try things. If they don’t work, we won’t use them, but sometimes they have better ideas than I do.” ◀ Family Theatre of Santa Fe presents You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown 7:30 p.m. Friday, December 8, and Saturday, December 9, as well as December 15-16; and 2 p.m. Saturday, December 9, and Sunday, December 10, as well as December 16-17

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33

operas

Five great

you’ve probably never heard (of)

COURTESY SANTA FE OPERA

Mark Tiarks l For The New Mexican

THE

“towering masterpiece” syndrome foisted on the public by symphony orchestras, opera companies, record labels, and their paid agents in marketing and public relations has obscured the fact that there are many worthwhile pieces that fall into the A-minus and B-plus realms that should be much better known and more often performed.

And, of course, some of what’s in the masterpiece canon doesn’t really belong there either, but that’s a subject for another story. Meanwhile, here are five highly worthwhile but lesser-known operas for your consideration: Rossini’s The Turk in Italy, Weber’s Der Freischütz, Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, Ravel’s L’Enfant et Les Sortilèges, and Thomson’s The Mother of Us All.

The Turk in Italy

Robert Indiana created iconic designs for The Mother of Us All, which traced the life of activist Susan B. Anthony.

A few decades ago, Gioachino Rossini seemed like a one-anda-half-trick pony, famous for the often-performed Barber of Seville and the overture to William Tell, while his many other operas languished. That’s not the case today, when Tancredi, Semiramide, Cinderella, and The Italian Girl in Algiers are frequently performed, among others — but there’s still a curious exception.

It’s The Turk in Italy, an 1814 comedy that followed The Italian Girl by just one year and suffered from the mistaken perception that it was simply an inversion of the earlier opera’s locale and storyline, with a lot of recycled music as well. (Rossini was sometimes guilty of the recycling charge, but not here.)

For one thing, it’s Rossini’s most Mozartian comedy, reflecting especially the ironies and intricacies of Così Fan Tutte, which was being performed at La Scala in the months before The Turk in Italy’s premiere there. The preponderance of ensembles in Rossini’s opera is also believed to be a Mozart and librettist Lorenzo da Ponte influence.

In addition, it’s a piece of zany meta-theater, thanks to the early appearance of Prosdocimo, a playwright in search of a comic story drawn from real life, and, as luck would have it,

MAKE IT YOUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION TO EXPLORE SOME OPERATIC ROADS LESS TRAVELED 34 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

PHOTO MATTHIAS CREUTZIGER

From left: Carl Maria von Weber (in a portrait by Caroline Bardua) composed the German-language opera Der Freischütz, which premiered in 1821 to great acclaim.

The Dresden State Opera staged a production featuring former Santa Fe Opera apprentice Sara Jakubiak.

Hunter’s Bride is a recommended film adaption of Der Freischütz.

he’s just stumbled into a Neapolitan gypsy camp full of romantic and sexual intrigue.

Prosdocimo is sometimes part of the action and sometimes a Greek chorus-style commentator on it, delightedly proclaiming “Local color!” when he first spies the gypsies and later explaining to a pair of lovers that a chair needs to be found posthaste, since they’ve almost arrived at the moment when the heroine typically faints. (Her subsequent failure to do so elicits complaints from the playwright about the heroine not following the rules of drama.)

There are actually two Turks in this Italian opera.

The first is Zaida, who was once engaged to Prince

Selim but had to flee Turkey when jealous rivals convinced her fiancé to sentence her to death. The second is Selim himself, whose arrival cranks up the intrigue level several more notches until he and Zaida are finally reconciled. As they sail back home, Prosdocimo dots the i’s and crosses the t’s on his comic drama.

Most of the The Turk in Italy score is Rossini at his finest, often in the madcap-energy vein, but also when he steps back, à la Mozart, for reflective moments of great beauty and sensitivity. Recommended CDs are either of the recordings conducted by Riccardo Chailly, as well as Sir Neville Mariner’s set on Philips;

good DVDs are on the Arthaus Musik label from the Teatro Carlo Felice and on the Naxos label from the Rossini Opera Festival.

Der Freischütz

The greatest German-language opera composed in the 50-plus years between Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman is undoubtedly Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz. continued on Page 36

From left: An excellent Teatro Carlo Felice production of The Turk in Italy is currently available on DVD. Maria Callas and Nicola Rossi-Lemeni perform in a 1954 staging at La Scala, which brought the opera out of decades of obscurity. Rossini (in a portrait by Friedrich Lieder, 1822) was known to recycle music from other productions, but that is not the case with The Turk in Italy.

PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

35

PHOTO BRESCIA AMISANO

Above: A worthy CD version of L’Enfant et les Sortilèges is one conducted by Lorin Maazel.

Right: The child and his furniture confront each other in Laurent Pelly’s Glyndebourne Festival staging of the 1925 opera by Maurice Ravel.

Five great operas, continued from Page 35 The title means “The Marksman,” and the opera premiered in 1821 to great acclaim, becoming the most frequently performed German opera of the 19th century. (By 1850 it had been staged in locales as remote as Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, and Sydney.)

Weber’s melodic skill was part of its success. He was often called “The German Bellini,” and his tunes in Der Freischütz are so memorable and spontaneous sounding that many commentators mistakenly believed they were folk songs. He was also a pioneer in the idea of combining dramatic, musical, and design aspects into a unified whole, as well as a superb orchestrator.

The plot is based on a ghost story of the same name, published in 1810, and involves a love triangle between two of the village’s most acclaimed hunters, Max and Kaspar, for the hand of Agathe, who earlier rejected Kaspar. He’s now in league with the devil Samiel and lures Max to the ominous Wolf’s Glen, with the promise of casting seven magic bullets that will help Max win a shooting contest and thus wed Agathe.

Terrifying apparitions visit Max and Kaspar while they cast the bullets. Unknown to Max, Samiel will guide the final bullet in the contest to hit a dove, representing Agathe, who will die. Fortunately, the dove is only wounded, and Samiel claims Kaspar’s life in place of Agathe’s. The local prince promises to let Max wed Agathe after a year of probation.

The Wolf’s Glen scene is the musical and dramatic high point of the opera. Weber used inventive harmonies and orchestrations, monotone choruses, 36 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

spoken and sung dialogue, and leitmotifs to create an atmosphere of increasing terror, conjuring up trampling horses, wheels of fire, thunder, lightning, hail, meteors, and fire.

Like Otto Nicolai (See The Merry Wives of Windsor, below) Weber died before his 40th birthday, robbing the German lyric theater of an extraordinary talent.

There are several good options when it comes to CDs of Der Freischütz, including the versions conducted by Sir Colin Davis (Philips), Marek Janowski, with the red-hot soprano Lise Davidsen as Agathe (Pentatone), and Nikolaus Harnoncourt (Teldec.)

On the DVD side, the best contemporary versions come from Naxos (a La Scala production) and Unitel (a Dresden State Opera production with Sara Jakubiak, a former Santa Fe Opera apprentice, as Agathe.)

Traditionalists when it comes to stage direction and design may prefer the 1960s-era video that’s been released as a DVD on the Arthaus Musik label. (It’s the one conducted by Leopold Ludwig.)

There’s also a good film version of the opera, Hunter’s Bride, shot on location in Germany and boasting a fine cast; it’s available as an Arthaus Musik DVD.

L’Enfant et les Sortilèges

Charm. Wit. Wisdom. Variety. Tunes galore.

Unforgettable orchestral sonorities. Bravura theatricality. Magical transformations. All those attributes and more grace the 45 minutes of L’Enfant et les Sortilèges, a 1925 opera by Maurice Ravel with a text

by Colette. (The hard-to-translate title literally means the child and the magic spells, which in this case refers to objects that come to life and animals that suddenly can talk.)

The opera’s theme is the moral awakening of a young boy, who discovers for the first time the profound impact of his destructive actions.

Sent to his room without dinner by his mother, the child lashes out at his possessions, which suddenly start coming to life. The armchair, clock, teapot, a Chinese cup, and two cats all have a short solo or duet in which they describe the injuries they’ve suffered at his hands. Even the numbers in his math book and the shepherds and shepherdess on the wallpaper rebuke him.

He fares no better in the outdoors, where he encounters trees he’s carved into with a knife and a dragonfly and a bat whose mates he killed. As more of his victims surround the child, a squirrel injures its paw, which he bandages. Astonished by the show of kindness, the animals have a change of heart and gently lead him back to his home and his mother.

Ravel began work on what was originally conceived of as a fairy ballet in 1917, then set it aside for several years. During the early 1920s, he became entranced by ragtime, jazz, and American musical comedy, especially those by George Gershwin.

In 1924, he and Colette returned to the piece, recrafting it as an opera in which dance retained a major role. At the time of its premiere he wrote, “Our work requires an extraordinary production: the roles are numerous and the phantasmagoria is constant.

Following the principles of American musical theater, dancing is continually and intimately intermingled with the action.”

A superb st aging by L aurent Pelly for the Glyndebourne Festival in England is available at encore.glyndebourne.com. It’s a reasonably priced subscription service at $8.99 per month with many

recent productions, and it’s cancelable at any time.

(Pro tip: Skip any of the DVD versions currently available on Amazon.) Worthwhile versions on CD include those conducted by André Previn and Lorin Maazel, both on Deutsche Grammophon; by Leonard Slatkin on Naxos; and by Simon Rattle on EMI Classics.

The Mother of Us All

In 1934, the premiere of Four Saints in Three Acts, with music by Virgil Thomson and a text by Gertrude Stein, knocked the American music world on its ear.

An avant-garde theatrical event of the first order, it combined Stein’s non-linear text, featuring more than 20 saints, at least four acts, and lines such as “Pigeons on the grass alas,” with Thomson’s seemingly simple, diatonic score, and visual artist Florine Stettheimer’s scenery, most of which was made from that new-fangled invention, cellophane.

Some were puzzled but many were entranced and emotionally moved by the pageant-like production, which featured an all-Black cast and transferred to Broadway for a 38-performance run. Despite its success and their mutual intentions, Thomson and Stein didn’t collaborate again until 1945, on The Mother of Us All. (The composer later wrote, “I am sorry now that I did not write an opera with her every year. It had not occurred to me that both of us would not always be living.”)

Thomson suggested 19th-century American political oratory as the central sound for their second opera, and Stein proposed basing it on the life of the suffragette Susan B. Anthony. She finished the libretto shortly before her death in July 1946.

Thomson, a flinty Missourian, coupled her text with marches, waltzes, sentimental songs, patriotic ditties, and hymns redolent of his Southern Baptist and Midwestern upbringing; it premiered a year later in a professional production at Columbia University in New York City.

Their opera is peopled with supporting characters real (Daniel Webster, Andrew Johnson, and Lillian Russell, among others), imaginary (Jo the Loiterer and Indiana Elliott), and autobiographical (Gertrude S. and Virgil T., who function as interlocutors). It kaleidoscopes through late 19th- and early 20th-century American history and attitudes as Anthony fights to secure women’s voting rights, which finally happened in 1920, 16 years after her death.

The Mother of Us All is especially notable for Thomson’s musical setting of the sounds and rhythms of American English and for the cumulative emotional impact of its quiet finale, in which a ghostly Anthony reflects on her life and struggles while a statue of her is unveiled at the U.S. Capitol. Music critic John Rockwell has rightly called it “one of the most moving concluding scenes in all opera.”

The Santa Fe Opera staged a celebrated version of the opera for the American Bicentennial in iconic designs by Pop artist Robert Indiana. A recording of the 1976 production received mixed reviews at the time. It has been reissued on CD, but, like L’Enfant et les Sortilèges, The Mother of Us All really must be seen for its full impact to emerge, especially at first acquaintance.

The best available (and cheapest) way to go is free on YouTube — a complete performance by advanced students from the Juilliard School that takes place

in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American wing sculpture court. Check it out at youtube.com/ watch?v=d9ZeuWYZhb8&t=547s.

First Runner-Up: The Merry Wives of Windsor

Quite a few opera professionals share the same dirty little secret. They greatly admire Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff, but the comic opera about Shakespeare’s very errant knight that they enjoy just as much, if not more, is Otto Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, which is remarkably faithful to its source in dramatic construction and characterization.

A German-language singspiel with dialogue instead of recitative, it feels like the sort of opera Mozart would have written had he lived into the early Romantic era, with many brilliantly constructed ensembles and act finales. (Sadly, the 38-year-old Nicolai died two months after the opera’s 1849 premiere.)

The Merry Wives of Windsor would absolutely have been in the top rank if good audio or video versions of it weren’t so hard to come by. Sometimes copies of the CD conducted by Bernhard Klee, with an all-star cast including Edith Mathis and Hanna Schwarz in the title roles, plus Peter Schrier, Bernd Weikl, and Kurt Moll as Falstaff, show up on Amazon or other resellers. If they do, grab one.

The only downside of Klee’s version is a minor one indeed; there’s narration between the musical numbers rather than actual dialogue. The upside is that it moves things along even more quickly. Once you hear The Merry Wives of Windsor, especially in this recording, you’ll forever wonder why it isn’t performed much more often. ◀

Far left and center: The Santa Fe Opera staged a celebrated version of The Mother of Us All for the American Bicentennial in 1976. Far right: Composer Virgil Thomson and librettist Gertrude Stein’s second collaboration resulted in The Mother of Us All.

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38 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

DOVER QUARTET Sunday, December 10, at 3:00 pm Featuring music of Haydn, Shostakovich, and Florence Price’s String Quartet No. 1 Simms Center for the Performing Arts, Albuquerque Academy quartet reckonwith…for with…for me, nirvana.”

“A “A quartet totoreckon me, this thiswas wasstring stringquartet quartet nirvana.”

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Join us for the national premiere screening of MINIATURES from the PBS award-winning series Craft in America SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9 · 2:00 – 4:00 PM FREE MUSEUM ADMISSION ALL DAY Generously sponsored by Craft in America

2:00 PM · PREMIERE SCREENING

Featuring New Mexico artists and organizations: Alexander Girard’s worlds in miniature, Museum of International Folk Art Gustave Baumann’s beloved marionettes, New Mexico Museum of Art International Folk Art Market artists working at a diminutive scale, including Cuban artist Leandro Gómez Quintero

3:00 PM · PANEL TALK

With Laura Addison, Museum of International Folk Art; Stuart Ashman, Artes de Cuba Gallery; Nadia Hamid, International Folk Art Market; Thomas Leech, retired, New Mexico History Museum; Maureen Russell, New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. Led by Patricia Bischetti, executive producer and director of Craft in America.

LIMITED SEATING RSVP REQUIRED SCAN HERE TO REGISTER

On Museum Hill in Santa Fe · InternationalFolkArt.org · (505) 476-1204

Funding for this event provided by International Folk Art Foundation.

Above: Leandro Gómez Quintero, Truck. Photo by Mark Markley.

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39

MOVING IMAGES I REVIEW

The Japanese master of animation Hayao Miyazaki comes out of retirement (again) with The Boy and the Heron, another magical, otherworldly tale.

A masterpiece for most, middling for Miyazaki THE BOY AND THE HERON

Lucas Trevor I The Washington Post Hayao Miyazaki faced an impossible task with The Boy and the Heron, which comes 10 years after his contemplative and staggering masterpiece, the Oscarnominated The Wind Rises — which the master of Japanese anime said at the time would be his final feature.

What can a director do after already saying goodbye?

Miyazaki’s 2013 film — a fictionalized version of the life of Japanese aircraft designer Jiro Horikoshi — felt like his last. It dealt with the complex life of an artist and the consequences, both intentional and unintentional, of creativity. If Wind was Miyazaki’s swan song, then Heron is the old master bursting back into the room to tell one more beautiful, otherworldly tale.

Set during World War II, the film follows Mahito, a Japanese teen who moves with his father from the city to the country after the death of his mother. While struggling to fit in at his new school, Mahito becomes fascinated with a gray heron living near the river.

There begins the boy’s journey into a magical world lurking just below the surface of our own.

Mahito, a character on the cusp of change, is a classic Miyazaki character: someone looking to find his place in a new and confusing world. (Think Howl in Howl’s Moving Castle, Mei and Satsuki in My Neighbor Totoro, Chihiro in Spirited Away.) Mahito enters the movie

40 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

as a nearly silent protagonist, occupying the corner of scenes, a passive observer of events. Over the course of the plot, though, he changes. Mahito never becomes an action hero, but his choices are important, causing ripple effects throughout his world and the larger universe.

Despite Mahito’s sometimes limited dialogue, we gradually come to understand the character deeply.

Early in the film, he picks a fight at school, where he doesn’t fit in and lashes out. Later, as he’s walking home, he picks up a rock and slams it against the side of his head, blood flowing out and covering his face. It’s shocking, but it reveals the grief he’s hiding.

Moments like this give the character a depth rarely achieved in animated films. (That quality is underscored by the voice performance of Soma Santoki in the subtitled Japanese-language version; an Englishdubbed version is also available.)

In tone, The Boy and the Heron is indebted to such books as The Chronicles of Narnia, Alice in Wonderland, and A Wrinkle in Time, where the supernatural lurks just past the fence and a little way into the woods.

Grand battles are fought by children with a little too much time on their hands. The story is a throwback, depicting a world filled with magic arrows, pirate ships, and a Parakeet King. As in those stories, the fantastical is a way to process the real in a tale in which the hero’s journey is a way to come to terms with a pain that is both personal and national.

There are also moments of real fear here. This is not a happy-go-lucky story, but an old-school fairy tale meant to frighten, confuse, and excite. It’s the good kind of scary: the kind that helps prepare children for the terrors of the real world.

Like all of Miyazaki’s films, Heron serves as a gateway, introducing young audiences both to international cinema and to a pioneer of the animation medium. (Can you remember a rainy day or slumber party without Howl’s Moving Castle or Spirited Away?)

The character design and composition are daring: Colors bleed outside the lines to illustrate chaos, characters hunch in impossible contortions to show the effect of age, and the camera tracks an arrow flying through the air. As the film progresses to its triumphal conclusion, the medium twists in new and exciting ways. If Miyazaki, at 82, is an old master, he is far from out of new tricks.

It may sound unfair, but when held up to Miyazaki’s earlier work, the film falls somewhere in the middle.

The ending ultimately becomes a little plotty, but scattered throughout the film are moments of undeniable ecstasy. What for any other director would be a masterpiece is just another day at the office for Miyazaki.

There are rumors that Miyazaki, despite having promised retirement multiple times — and then broken those promises — is already working on his next film. And yet the final act of Heron feels as much like closure as anything he has done: The film’s most lasting image is of a tower of blocks toppling over for a new generation to rebuild.

Whether this towering if imperfect film is the end or not, Miyazaki leaves behind 12 films, with a couple of unquestionable masterpieces among them and generations forever changed by his work. ◀ Fantasy/adventure, rated PG-13, 124 minutes, Violet Crown, 3.5 chiles

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MOVING IMAGES I STREAMING REVIEW

Española, Emma Stone star in bizarre dramedy THE CURSE

James Poniewozik I The New York Times “It’s a mishegas,” Whitney Siegel (Emma Stone), a convert to Judaism, says to her husband, Asher Siegel (Nathan Fielder), as they do a good deed for a needy family. “Mitzvah,” Asher corrects her. “Mishegas means something else.” (It means, roughly, “craziness” in Yiddish.)

The Curse, which had its streaming premiere on Paramount+ with Showtime and its on-air premiere on Showtime in November, is also something else — several things else. It’s a dark satire of performative philanthropy and exploitation. It’s a psychological horror drama about marriage. It’s a reflection on the power of TV to create illusions. It is also other wild things that I am bound by strongly worded spoiler embargoes not to reveal.

But Whitney’s malapropism cuts to the heart of it.

Above all, The Curse is an unnerving, erratic, dizzyingly original exploration of the fine line between mitzvah and mishegas.

In the New Mexico town of Española, the Siegels are shooting Fliplanthropy, the pilot of a series they hope to sell to HGTV about converting decrepit buildings into energy-sipping, high-tech Passive Houses, “saving the world one kilowatt at a time.” As they pitch it, the upscale project will also — somehow — benefit the community they’re gentrifying.

A Judaic concept of the mitzvah holds that it is a higher form of charity to give anonymously. In the Siegels’ world, however, it is as important to seem good as it is to be good.

And the mitzvah business ain’t easy. Their producer, Dougie (Benny Safdie), Asher’s childhood frenemy, is an emotionally damaged manipulator determined to spike the production by seeding conflict between the hosts. Their houses are mirror-wrapped monstrosities that are fussy to maintain and murder birds. Their buyers insist on sullying these eco-temples with air conditioners and gas ranges. The network focus groups pick up on a lack of chemistry between the extroverted Whitney and the awkward Asher.

The vibes go further off after a contentious TV interview in which the reporter asks about Whitney’s parents, notorious local slumlords. Dougie sees an opportunity to soften Asher’s image by filming him giving cash to Nala (Hikmah Warsame), a Somali girl selling sodas in a parking lot. But Asher botches the moment by handing her his only bill — a $100 — then snatching it back to make change. With quiet fury, she pronounces, “I curse you.”

Whether Asher is actually cursed is an open question. And if you are familiar with Fielder’s work, you know that the search for the answer will involve a long walk down a hall of mirrors.

There is a creeping sense of racial tension and condescension around the Siegels, who are disrupting a

42 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone play aspiring HGTV hosts pitching a series set in Española about building eco-friendly homes to benefit — and gentrify — the New Mexico town.

largely Latino and Native American community in the name of saving it. They recite land acknowledgments at their construction sites while filling their houses with Native art they got on bulk discount. Whitney cultivates a friendship with Cara (Nizhonniya Luxi Austin), an Indigenous artist whom she treats like an accessory. And when the couple takes an interest in helping Nala’s father (Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips), you sense that they expect some kind of karmic applause for it.

Whitney does seem to sincerely want to change the world — even if it’s a way of rebelling against her parents. Asher is deeply concerned with being a good person — even if out of an uxorious desire to be worthy of his wife. But they have the familiar contradictions of white people who want to atone for their privilege while gaining from it, of idealists who love humanity but can’t deal with people.

Stone is marvelous as Whitney, an influencer for whom life is a permanent livestream; she’s always on, always microcalculating her affect. Stone’s laser-precise performance puts across both Whitney’s lack of self-awareness and her genuine charm.

Fielder is a more limited, stiff actor. (His credits include Dean Fleischer-Camp’s surreal 2016 web series David, which prefigures the horror-comedy of The Curse.) But he custom-fits Asher to his deadpan manner, like Bob Dylan writing for his own gravelly voice. Asher is as diffident as Whitney is self-assured.

(His insecurity seems rooted in his having a small penis, an attribute The Curse allows us to verify up close.) You get the feeling he felt cursed long before his encounter in the parking lot.

You might wonder, like the HGTV focus group, why Asher and Whitney were ever together in the first place. He’s painfully needy; she feels a disconnect

with him that festers into resentment. But somehow their wrongness is just right. The end of the third episode, in which they try to re-create a playful moment for her Instagram feed, with disastrously uncomfortable results, is a stunning and revealing set piece.

The difference between delight and disaster, the scene suggests, is often a matter of framing. The Curse, mostly directed by Fielder, emphasizes this theme visually: Characters are shot through windows, reflected in mirrors, espied through chain-link fences, caught in the rectangle of an iPhone. Asher, whom Dougie is gradually making into the villain-fool of his own TV show, sits down for makeup on set, and we see him distorted by the metallic panels of the house into a somber ogre.

The Curse is disorienting and unshakable. Is it good? Remarkably — and also questionably. The first few episodes are tours de force. The middle stretch is impressive but repetitive. The rest — I’ll be honest, I am still sorting it out. The 10-episode season becomes more inscrutable as it goes on; the loose ends accumulate; Whitney is made more cruel and Asher more pitiable.

But for days after I finished, I could not stop thinking about it, turning over its layers of meaning and poking at the lingering unease. When it’s over, I expect viewers will spend a lot of time arguing about what they’ve just seen.

Like its mirrored houses, The Curse is an ambitious construction, but it’s not an easy place to get comfortable. ◀ The Curse, TV-MA, 10 episodes with new episodes airing weekly through January 14, 2024, on Paramount+ with Showtime and Showtime

FREE MINI CONCERT FOR CHILDREN & FAMILIES!

Celebrate the holidays with the young music-lovers in your life during our FREE mini-concert for children and their families on Saturday, December 16, 2023 at 3pm at the Gallery of the Center for Contemporary Arts.

Experience the Beauty and Power of World-Class Choral Music

INSIGHTS & SOUNDS Sponsored by Felicia and Dan Morrow

Capacity is limited. Doors open at 2:30pm.

Admission is pay what you wish.

Sign up in advance at desertchorale.org

Chicago Meets L.A. at

Photo: Tira Howard Photography

CANDLELIGHT CAROLS

COME CELEBRATE WITH US! Enjoy our New Year’s Eve Prix Fixe Wine Dinner & Performance Featuring Chicago Jazz Vocalist Ivette Camarano accompanied by L.A. Pianist Kyle Moore as we count down to welcome in 2024 with a Champagne toast!

IVETTE CAMARANO Chicago Jazz Vocalist

Chicago Mezza-Soprano, Ivette Camarano’s voice is a masterpiece with a rich, textured quality that goes beyond mere singing—it ignites the soul with a powerful fire in the belly, an instrument of pure emotion. Ivette will be accompanied by L.A. musician and visual storyteller, Kyle Moore, together they create a dynamic musical atmosphere at Vanessie Santa Fe, where the audience can expect a fusion of soulful vocals, intricate piano melodies, and the magic of storytelling—a celebration of two distinct yet harmonious musical journeys exlporing a songbook of traditional Jazz standards, Broadway show and Pop tunes.

4-COURSE PRIX FIXE DINNER & CHAMPAGNE TOAST

Catch a Glimpse of Snow and Evergreen this Holiday Season December 9-22, 2023

Santa Fe Concerts at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi

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Santa Fe Desert Chorale is supported in part by New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts. Funding is also provided by the City of Santa Fe Arts and Culture Department and the 1% Lodgers’ Tax.

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MOVING IMAGES I STREAMING

Beyond the algorithm Jason Bailey l The New York Times

A

pair of charming Gotham-based character comedies are among the highlights of this month’s under-the-radar streaming recommendations.

MISTRESS AMERICA (2015)

Mistress America

Barbie is the current commercial and critical triumph of the screenwriting (and real-life) partners Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, and Frances Ha is their origin story. But comparatively little ink is spilled these days on their middle feature (which Baumbach directed), a delightfully funny comedy that turns the tropes of the college coming-of-age movie and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl on their heads. Lola Kirke stars as Tracy, a college freshman new to New York City who gets a whirlwind introduction to the city via her soon-to-be-stepsister Brooke (Gerwig). Gerwig and Baumbach’s wise screenplay delicately dramatizes how Brooke first seems like Tracy’s platonic ideal of the young urban woman, then slowly reveals herself as messy in a multitude of ways.

Gerwig’s multilayered performance is one of her best, while Baumbach orchestrates the picture’s shifts from character drama to door-slamming farce with bouncy ease. Stream it on Max.

TRAMPS (2017)

All My Puny Sorrows

Adam Leon is a New York filmmaker of the old school; like his contemporaries the Safdie brothers, he’s working in the Cassavetes mold, telling ground-level stories about hustlers and grinders who can take whatever the city throws at them (though not without some complaint).

He followed up his acclaimed feature debut Gimme the Loot with this scrappy, playful story of two strangers (Callum Turner and Grace Van Patten) on a seemingly simple criminal errand who screw it up and have to make it right. Turner and Van Patten’s chemistry is off the charts, the supporting cast is entertaining (particularly comedian Mike Birbiglia as a perpetually harried middleman), and Leon’s direction is economical and enchanting. Stream it on Netflix.

X (2022)

The gifted genre director Ti West writes and directs this giddy, gory cross between Boogie Nights and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, in which a group of DIY filmmakers and exotic dancers trek out to the backwoods of the Lone Star state to make a low-budget porn movie.

Little do they know, the older couple in the nearby farmhouse are a bit more spry — and murderous — than they might imagine. West’s script and direction are marvelously film-literate, filling the frame and soundtrack with sly in-jokes and references, and his cast is delightfully game; the Wednesday star Jenna Ortega is a sublime scream queen, Brittany Snow revels in the opportunity to send up her typical persona, and Mia Goth is pitch-perfect as both the final girl and (under heavy makeup) another key player. It’s not for all tastes, but if you’d like a little sex and violence on your holiday viewing menu, both are in plentiful supply here. Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.

ALL MY PUNY SORROWS (2022)

The Zero Theorem

44 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

Alison Pill is one of those actors who should, by all rights, be a major star — she’s charismatic and credible in every role, and can execute comedy and drama with equal aplomb — but rarely gets a role that properly showcases her considerable skills. She gets one in Michael

McGowan’s adaptation of a Miriam Toews novel, as Yoli, a writer whose sister Elf (Sarah Gadon) is a famous concert pianist. Elf has also recently attempted to end her own life, not for the first time and, per her assurances, not for the last; she wants her sister’s help traveling to Switzerland for an assisted suicide. It’s not the cheeriest topic for a motion picture, and the cinematography and Canadian settings are properly dour.

But Pill and Gadon are excellent, vividly conveying a familial bond of warmth, empathy, and exasperation in equal doses. Stream it on Hulu.

THE ZERO THEOREM (2014)

Terry Gilliam’s later work hasn’t met with the same critical or commercial adoration as earlier efforts like The Fisher King and 12 Monkeys. But his customary visual inventiveness and narrative ingenuity are on full display in this futuristic tale of a computer operator (Christoph Waltz) enlisted to mathematically prove the nothingness of existence. The cast is loaded with familiar faces (including Matt Damon, Lucas Hedges, Tilda Swinton, and David Thewlis) but Gilliam is, as ever, the real star here, loading his frames with outdated technology and dystopian signifiers, crafting a world that’s both familiar and foreign, fascinating and terrifying. Stream it on Peacock.

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LOVE TO LOVE YOU, DONNA SUMMER (2023)

Roger Ross Williams opens his bio-documentary of the “Queen of Disco” with the original vocal tracks of the title song, which are aggressively and unapologetically sexual, and reminds us of what a revelation her sound was at that particular moment (in the music industry, and in our culture in general). Love to Love You spends a fair amount of its running time in that kind of micro-exploration of her biggest hits and how she built them. But Williams is more interested in her enigmatic inner life (Brooklyn Sudano, one of Summers’ daughters and the film’s co-director, can only describe her as “complicated”). Drawing on home video footage, archival interviews, and audio recordings, Williams and Sudano attempt to not only encapsulate Summers’ life but understand it — a much more difficult task. Stream it on Max.

WHAM! (2023)

Documentary filmmaker Chris Smith (American Movie) adopts a similar approach to his portrait of the English ’80s hit machine, mostly eschewing contemporary talking head interviews in favor of an archive-heavy approach, primarily to give equal voice and weight to the memories of George Michael. The music is fizzy and the videos retain their period kitsch, but Smith stays firmly centered on the friendship between Michael and his bandmate Andrew Ridgeley — specifically, what becoming international superstars did to that friendship. Wham! moves at lightning speed while telling their story with impressive depth, particularly Michael’s difficulties balancing his sexuality with the image he had to present in that wildly homophobic era. It’s an irresistible doc, cheery and charming and warmly affectionate toward its subjects.

Stream it on Netflix. ◀

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MOVING IMAGES

CHILE PAGES compiled by Holly Weber

CLOSER LOOKS SERIES AT CCA CONTINUES Next in the Center for Contemporary Art’s Closer Looks: Cinema + Conversation series is French director Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995, not rated, 98 minutes) on Thursday, December 14, at 6 p.m.

Kassovitz took the film world by storm with La Haine, a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at the racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France, specifically in the low-income outskirts of Paris.

Aimlessly passing their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz (Vincent Cassel), Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui) give human faces to France’s immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their marginalization slowly simmering until it reaches a climactic boiling point. A work of tough beauty, La Haine is a landmark of contemporary French cinema and a gripping reflection of its country’s ongoing identity crisis.

The film was selected by one of the series’ curators, David N. Meyer, who writes: “Winner of the Palm d’Or and Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival and of the César — France’s Oscars — for Best Picture, this is where the revolution begins. Teenage best friends – one African, one Arab, one Jew – live bored, desperate lives in the banlieue, the high-rise ghetto encircling Paris. During an anti-police riot, one of the friends steals a cop’s gun — death incarnate. La Haine follows the trio’s dire and hilarious adventures around Paris — a city on a knife-edge as police battle the banlieue kids.

Director Kassovitz’s groundbreaking, thrilling B/W camera movement, street dialogue, and gritty realism is a lightning bolt, a youthquake, a cry of rage.”

Closer Looks is an in-depth cinema series curated by award-winning filmmaker and editor Paul Barnes, film critic and writer David N. Meyer, and founder/ programmer of the local microcinema No Name Cinema, Justin Clifford Rhody. The series showcases a broad range of classic films, all unified by their integral contribution to the history of cinema as an art form.

Each film screening begins with an in-depth talk and slideshow about the film and is followed by a conversation between the presenters and the audience about the qualities and importance of the film.

Opening THE BOY AND THE HERON Twelve-year-old Mahito struggles to settle in a new town after his mother’s death. However, when a talking heron informs Mahito that his mother is still alive, he enters an abandoned tower in search of her, which takes him to another world. A semi-autobiographical fantasy about life, death, and creation, in tribute to friendship, from

46 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

Anne Hathaway stars in the psychological thriller Eileen.

the mind of Hayao Miyazaki. “This is not a happy-go-lucky story, but an old-school fairy tale meant to frighten, confuse, and excite. It’s the good kind of scary: the kind that helps prepare children for the terrors of the real world.” (The Washington Post) Fantasy/adventure, rated PG-13, 124 minutes, Violet Crown. Review Page 40 EILEEN Eileen is a peculiar young woman — aloof and unfazed by the gloomy nature of her job at the local youth prison.

But something in her changes the day that the new counselor, Dr. Rebecca St. John (Anne Hathaway), arrives. She is instantly captivated by Rebecca’s glamorous, enigmatic presence. As the two women grow closer, Eileen is inspired to explore new facets of her own personality and desires.

But her metamorphosis takes a twisted turn when Rebecca reveals a dark secret — throwing Eileen onto a much more sinister path. “Eileen is a mean movie, but I intend that as a compliment: There’s no lesson here, no revelation, no good vibes to wander away with. Spiky and cold, it’s a bitter holiday treat.” (The New York Times) Mystery/thriller, rated R, 96 minutes, Violet Crown MAESTRO The biographical drama Maestro centers on the relationship between American composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montealegre. Directed by Bradley Cooper from a screenplay he wrote with Josh Singer, the film stars Carey Mulligan as Montealegre alongside Cooper as Bernstein .

Maestro uses the love story between Bernstein and Felicia — complicated by Bernstein’s bisexuality — as the impressionistic framing device to cover the renowned conductor’s five decade career. The film features compositions handpicked by Cooper from Bernstein’s musicals and operettas, as well as extended performances of orchestral pieces including Mahler’s Symphony No. 2. “Cooper throws himself into the role of Bernstein and delivers one of his finest performances, playing a complicated family man who desired men and couldn’t deny that desire even while loving his wife.” (Observer) Musical/romance, rated R, 129 minutes, CCA

THE OATH In 400 A.D., during a forgotten time of ancient America, a lone Hebraic fugitive must preserve the history of his fallen nation while being hunted by a ruthless tyrant.

But rescuing the King’s abused mistress could awaken a warrior’s past. Action/drama, rated PG-13, 104 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10

Special Screenings BATMAN RETURNS (1992) Friday, December 8, through Sunday, December 10 The monstrous Penguin (Danny DeVito), who lives in the sewers beneath Gotham, joins up with wicked shockheaded businessman Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) to topple the Batman (Michael Keaton) once and for all. But when Shreck’s timid assistant, Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer), finds out and Shreck tries to kill her, she is transformed into the sexy Catwoman. She teams up with the Penguin and Shreck to destroy Batman, but sparks fly unexpectedly when she confronts the caped crusader. Action/sci-fi, rated PG-13, 126 minutes, Jean Cocteau Cinema ELF (2003) Friday, December 8, through Sunday, December 10 Buddy (Will Ferrell) was accidentally transported to the North Pole as a toddler and raised to adulthood among Santa’s elves. Unable to shake the feeling that he doesn’t fit in, the adult Buddy travels to New York, in full elf uniform, in search of his real father. As it happens, this is Walter Hobbs (James Caan), a cynical businessman. After a DNA test proves this, Walter reluctantly attempts to start a relationship with the childlike Buddy with increasingly chaotic results. Comedy/ holiday, rated PG, 95 minutes, Jean Cocteau Cinema

SPICY

MEDIUM

MILD

BLAND

HEARTBURN

Continuing DREAM SCENARIO Hapless family man Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage) finds his life turned upside down when millions of strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams. When his nighttime appearances take a nightmarish turn, Paul is forced to navigate his newfound stardom. “Cage is comedy gold in one of the year’s sharpest comedies yet.” (HollywoodReporter) Comedy/horror, rated R, 102 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10, Violet Crown GODZILLA MINUS ONE Post-war Japan is at its lowest point when a new crisis emerges in the form of a giant monster, baptized in the horrific power of the atomic bomb. “Godzilla Minus One” offers an alternative to shared universe syndrome. It’s an artfully made throwback to kaiju classics and likely the first Godzilla movie that dares to make you cry. See it on the biggest screen possible.” Adventure, rated PG-13, 125 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10, Regal Santa Fe Place 6, Violet Crown THE HOLDOVERS A curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school remains on campus during Christmas break to babysit a handful of students with nowhere to go. He soon forms an unlikely bond with a brainy but damaged troublemaker, and with the school’s head cook, a woman who just lost a son in the Vietnam War. “This is [director Alexander] Payne’s first movie set in any kind of past … But it doesn’t feel stuck there.” (New York Times) Comedy/drama, rated R, 133 minutes, Regal Santa Fe Place 6, Violet Crown THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES Years before he becomes the tyrannical president of Panem, 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow remains the last hope for his fading lineage. With the 10th annual Hunger Games fast approaching, the young Snow becomes alarmed when he’s assigned to mentor Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler) from District 12. Uniting their instincts for showmanship and political savvy, they race against time to ultimately reveal who’s a songbird and who’s a snake. “Feels like a natural extension of the saga, balancing bloodsport, endangered young love and a heightened level of political commentary that respects the intelligence of young audiences as only Collins can.” (Variety) Action/adventure, rated PG-13, 158 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10, Regal Santa Fe Place 6, Violet Crown KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON Based on David Grann’s broadly lauded bestselling book, director Martin Scorsese’s adaptation is set in 1920s Oklahoma and depicts the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, a string of brutal crimes that came to be known as the Reign of Terror.

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, and Lily Gladstone. “As a work of history and heightened political consciousness, Killers of the Flower Moon is beyond reproach; it dramatizes a grievous truth — about the depravity, destruction and self-deception that undergird the American idea — that has been buried for too long, especially in movies.” (The Washington Post) Crime/drama, rated R, 206 minutes, Violet Crown

NAPOLEON A look at the military commander’s origins and his swift, ruthless climb to emperor, viewed through the prism of his addictive and often volatile relationship with his wife and one true love, Josephine (Vanessa Kirby). Ridley Scott directs; Joaquin Phoenix stars. “Here is a sweeping historical tapestry — no one does it better today than Scott — with a damning, almost satirical portrait at its center. That mix makes Napoleon a rivetingly off-kilter experience.” (Associated Press) War/drama, rated R, 158 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10, Regal Santa Fe Place 6, Violet Crown OPPENHEIMER Christopher Nolan’s biographical feature film about American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and his role in the development of the atomic bomb. With Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, and Florence Pugh. “Murphy embodies Oppenheimer so naturally that you may start thinking you’re watching documentary footage of the real thing. The film humanizes Oppenheimer. … Murphy’s perfect portrayal leaves us with an image of a brilliant mind put to work to kill a nation, a people, and maybe the entire world. There’s a price to pay for that kind of knowledge.” (Robert Nott/The New Mexican) Drama, rated R, 180 minutes, Violet Crown PRISCILLA When teenager Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) meets Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi) at a party, the man who’s already a meteoric rock ‘n’ roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, and a gentle best friend. Directed by Sofia Coppola. “Priscilla is neither lurid nor sugar coated. It’s a sensitive, if slight, look at a young woman rousing from a dream and confronting waking life.” (Vanity Fair) Drama/romance, rated R, 110 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10 RENAISSANCE: A FILM BY BEYONCÉ Pop superstar Beyoncé performs hit songs in concert and discusses the creative process behind her world tour. “It’s satisfying without being indulgent, but most of all, it’s a monument to Beyoncé’s status as one of pop’s most

Box office Center for Contemporary Arts Cinema, 1050 Old Pecos Trail, 505-982-1338, ext.105, ccasantafe.org Dreamcatcher 10, 15 State Road 106, Espanola; dreamcatcher10.com Jean Cocteau Cinema, 418 Montezuma Ave., 505-466-5528, jeancocteaucinema.com No Name Cinema, 2013 Piñon St., nonamecinema.org Regal Santa Fe Place 6, 4250 Cerrillos Road, 505-424-6109, sfnm.co/3o2Cesk Violet Crown, 106 Alcaldesa St., 505-216-5678, santafe.violetcrown.com

enduring figures, and everything it takes to get there.”

(Variety) Music documentary, not rated, 168 minutes, Regal Santa Fe Place 6, Violet Crown SALTBURN Academy Award-winning filmmaker Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) brings us a beautifully wicked tale of privilege and desire. Struggling to find his place at Oxford University, student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) finds himself drawn into the world of the charming and aristocratic Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), who invites him to Saltburn, his eccentric family’s sprawling estate, for a summer never to be forgotten. “Come for the class warfare and the occasional shots-fired zingers about the rich being different than you and me. Stay for Keoghan.” (Rolling Stone) Comedy/drama, rated R, 127 minutes, Violet Crown THE SHIFT In this modern-day retelling of Job, Kevin Garner embarks on a journey across worlds and dimensions to reunite with Molly, his true love. The narrative unfolds as a dystopian drama and sci-fi thriller, where a mysterious adversary, The Benefactor (Neal McDonough), disrupts Kevin’s reality. Faced with infinite worlds and impossible choices, Kevin must navigate through an alternate reality, resisting The Benefactor’s tempting offer of wealth and power. As survival hangs in the balance, Kevin fights to return to the familiar world he cherishes and the woman he loves. Sci-fi, rated PG-13, 115 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10 THANKSGIVING An axe-wielding maniac terrorizes residents of Plymouth, Mass., after a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy. Picking off victims one by one, the seemingly random revenge killings soon become part of a larger, sinister plan. With Patrick Dempsey. “It offers plenty of cheap thrills, or more accurately cheap kills, presented with the sort of attention to bloodthirsty detail that horror aficionados crave.” (Hollywood Reporter) Horror, rated R, 106 minutes, Violet Crown TROLLS BAND TOGETHER Poppy (Anna Kendrick) discovers that Branch (Justin Timberlake) and his four brothers were once part of her favorite boy band. When one of his siblings, Floyd, gets kidnapped by a pair of nefarious villains, Branch and Poppy embark on a harrowing and emotional journey to reunite the other brothers and rescue Floyd from a fate even worse than pop culture obscurity. “The film is gloriously odd in its own candyfloss-coloured trippy way.” (Guardian) Comedy, rated PG, Dreamcatcher 10, Regal Santa Fe Place 6 WISH Young Asha (voice of Ariana DeBose) makes a wish so powerful that it’s answered by a cosmic force, a little ball of boundless energy called Star. With Star’s help, Asha must save her kingdom from King Magnifico (Chris Pine) and prove that when the will of one courageous human connects with the magic of the stars, wondrous things can happen. “As Disney celebrates its 100th year, Wish serves as a throwback to the past, a celebration of the present, and a gentle push into the future.” (IndieWire) Musical/fantasy, rated PG, 95 minutes, Dreamcatcher 10, Regal Santa Fe Place 6, Violet Crown SOURCES: Google, IMDb.com, RottenTomatoes.com, Vimeo. com,YouTube.com PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

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MOVING SALE SANTA FE HOME 50% 70% OFF Furnishings, Accessories, Art 241 Delgado St., Santa Fe

Tina Davila Pottery Open House December 9 & 10 10am-4pm 14 Avenida Campo Verde 505-913-1702 tinadav@q.com

STAR CODES THIS WEEK RIDES IN ON A GLITTERING SLEIGH and finishes on a more silent night. Get seasonal presents in the mail this weekend or early next week. Celebrate solstice festivities with friends under the new moon in Sagittarius on Monday and Tuesday, then prepare to slow down and take a break as Mercury turns retrograde, slows down the busy world, and turns our thoughts inward.

The glittering lights can lighten our hearts this time of year though there are some deep undercurrents running below the surface. Venus in Scorpio can bring a world-weariness; our hearts hurt with the world’s disasters, and we can occasionally need to just shut down. While all this Venus helps us deal with the real problems of the world, it also stirs up those primal protective emotions and runs hidden agendas. Luckily, Mars is now in more upbeat, honest Sagittarius and can help us move through it all — as long as we’re conscious of those undercurrents.

Get organized over the weekend with Mercury in competent Capricorn.

Creative projects, stringing popcorn, working with our art supplies — all offerings to Venus can help us connect. People aren’t always owning how they’re feeling with Venus in Scorpio, even to themselves, so watch behavior to see what’s really going on.

Monday and Tuesday are great for solstice gatherings with friends, office parties, or travel plans before Mercury turns retrograde under the new moon in Sagittarius. Implement Mercury retrograde habits; to avoid accidents and arguments, make life a meditative dance of attention.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8: Hum Christmas carols while doing the necessary this morning. Emotions begin to swell tonight as the moon squares Pluto then enters deep Scorpio. We may be suddenly painfully aware and ready to deal with a real issue. Honor rather than ignore any somber notes.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9: Still waters run deep as the moon conjuncts Venus in Scorpio this morning. Notice but don’t believe the darkest thoughts; give that Scorpio a mystery to solve instead. Watch the tendency to drag up thorny memories just for the sensation. Meditation furthers. Beauty and compassionate art can warm the heart and redirect the focus.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 10: Expect snarky comments and a need or desire to change plans this morning; make sure to do it for the right reasons, not just in reaction, as the moon opposes Uranus and unsettles the status quo. Allow people to drift or find solitude to collect ourselves toward dinner as the moon trines dreamy Neptune.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 11: Engage this quirky, erratic, creative, restlessly humorous day under the moon in upbeat, honest Sagittarius. Mail packages and look for easy conversation around lunch as Mercury sextiles friendly Venus.

Be more careful with words tonight as the sun quincunxes Uranus and brings erratic humor and nervous thoughts.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12: Listen to the rumble in the psyche after an overnight moon-Mars conjunction stirs the pot. Heed a change in plans, a sudden side agenda that needs attention, or whispers of the unexpected under this afternoon’s new moon in Sagittarius.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13: Keep it slow and steady, make lists, and move with calmness as the Capricorn moon conjuncts retrograde Mercury. Instead of initiating new action today, take up the satisfying challenge to finish a project already begun. To push or rush is counterproductive.

#!#"

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enewmexican.com 48 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

HO NO CO NT RIB RIN G TH OS E WH O UT E TO OU R CO MM UN

ITY

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 14: Keep plans loose, deal with urgent matters, and let the nonessentials go. Spiral inward toward chosen family and respite; to continue business as usual will take more energy and attention. Honor strong emotional undercurrents, but don’t let them run the show. ◀ Contact astrologer Heather Roan Robbins at roanrobbins.com.

santa fe women’s ensemble

Linda Raney, Music Director

Winter Lights First Presbyterian Church 20 08 Grant Ave, Santa Fe, NM

Sundday December 10 (3:00 p.m.)

Tuesday December 12 (6:30 p.m.)

Saturrday December 16 (3:00 p.m.) and Suunday December 17 (3:00 p.m.)

Discounted Tickets: $30 (advance purchase at sfwe.org) Tickets at the Door: $35 Students/Teaachers/Military/Veterans Tickets: $12 (inn advance and at the door)

Foor tickets & information: sfwe.org or ccall 505-303-8648, Mon-Sat 9-5 This project is supported in part by New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

NM residents use code MONDAYFUNDAY for half price admission from 3pm-8pm meow.wf

Holiday ay Gift Guide

2 0 2 3

PICK UP YOUR COPY SUNDAY, DEC. 10, 2023

Get your tickets at meow.wf/santafeshows PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM

49

compiled by Pamela Beach

A R T S . E N T E R TA I N M E N T. C U LT U R E .

FRIDAY 12/8

Young Voices of Santa Fe Opera

Body of Santa Fe, 333 W. Cordova Road, 505-986-0362 Free holiday caroling; 5:30-6 p.m.

Gallery and Museum Openings

Something Must Be Wrong With My Mistletoe

Aurelia Gallery

414 Canyon Road, 505-501-2905 Colors Gone Wild, group show; through Feb. 4; reception 5-7 p.m.

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 New Mexico Gay Men’s Chorus; 7:30 p.m.

(Albuquerque performances Saturday and Sunday); $20-$60; nmgmc.org.

Electra Gallery

825-D Early Street, 505-231-0354 Illumination: the sacred aspect of light, group show; through Jan. 14; reception 5-8 p.m.

Nightlife

Annalisa Ewald

Gerald Peters Gallery

Agave Restaurant & Lounge, Eldorado Hotel & Spa, 309 W. San Francisco Street, 505-995-4530 Classical guitarist; 6-9 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays; no cover.

1005 Paseo de Peralta, 505-954-5700 Cabinet of Curiosities, group show; through Feb. 2.

Giacobbe-Fritz Fine Art

702 Canyon Road, 505-986-1156 24th Annual Small Works Holiday Show; through December.

DJ Boost

Tesuque Casino, 7 Tesuque Road, 800-462-2635 Spinning dance tunes; 7:30-11 p.m.; no cover.

Hat Ranch Gallery

Robert Fox Trio

27 San Marcos Road West, 505-424-3391 Group show; through Sunday; reception 4-6 p.m.

Club Legato, 125 E. Palace Avenue, 505-988-9232 Jazz pianist; 6-9 p.m.; no cover.

Jude Hunt Studio

Those Guys

821 Canyon Road, second floor, judehunt.faso.com Paintings by Jenn Cunningham; through Sunday; reception 3-6 p.m.

La Fiesta Lounge at La Fonda 100 E. San Francisco Street Country-rock; 6:30-9 p.m. today and Saturday; no cover.

Nüart Gallery

Zydeco Squeeze

670 Canyon Road, 505-988-3888 Converging Dialogues: The Defining Edges of Contemporary Art, group show; through Dec. 24; reception 5-7 p.m.

Chomp Food Hall, 505 Cerrillos Road, chompsantafe.com Local trio; 7-9 p.m.; dance lesson 6 p.m.; no cover.

SATURDAY 12/9

Obscura Gallery

1405 Paseo de Peralta, 505-577-6708 Danny Lyon: Prints and Photographs 1963-2023; through Jan. 13; reception 5-7 p.m.

Phil Space

Giacobbe-Fritz Fine Art (giacobbefritz.com) shows paintings by JC Spock through December.

1410 Second Street, 505-983-7945 Who? What? Really?, drawings, sculpture, and paintings by Carl Johansen; reception 5-8 p.m.

and Sundays through Dec. 17; $27, students $7; theatresantafeorg/calendar.

In Concert

Evil in Our Midst: A Close Reading of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt” (1943)

Keenan McDonald Jazz Quintet

Paradiso, 903 Early Street, 505-231-0087 Emerging Artist Series; 7-10 p.m.; $20; paradisosantafe.com.

Theater/Dance Bathsheba

Venue information available with reservation Exodus Ensemble’s twist on the Biblical tale; 7:30 p.m; donations accepted; exodusensemble .com.

EntreFlamenco

El Flamenco de Santa Fe, 135 W. Palace Avenue, 505-209-1302 Featuring Antonio Granjero and Estefania Ramirez; 6:15 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through December; $25-$45; entreflamenco.com/tickets.

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown

New Mexico Actors Lab Theater, 1213 Parkway Drive, 505-395-6576 Family Theatre of Santa Fe presents a revised version of Clark Gesner’s musical; 7:30 p.m.

Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays

CALENDAR LISTING GUIDELINES

50 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

Books/Talks

Great Hall, St. John’s College, 1160 Camino de Cruz Blanca, 505-984-6000 Religious studies scholar Jeffrey Stout examines the psychological thriller; 7 p.m.; no charge.

Lisa Lucas and Debrianna Mansini

Collected Works Bookstore, 202 Galisteo Street, 505-988-4226 That Time We Ate Our Feelings: 150 Recipes for Comfort Food from the Heart authors, 6 p.m.

Events

Ceramics demonstration

Andrea Fisher Fine Pottery, 100 W. San Francisco Street, 505-986-1234 Storyteller and Santa figures by Jemez Pueblo artist Diane Lucero; noon-4 p.m.

Happy Holidays

500 Below: Affordable Art Bazaar

Smoke the Moon, 616½ Canyon Road, 978-578-4939 50-plus artists, food, drinks, and music; 3-9 p.m., noon-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Chancel Bell Choir

First Presbyterian Church, 208 Grant Avenue Christmas music of Wagner, Dobrinski, Honoré, and Beatty; 5:30 p.m., doors 5:15 p.m.; donations accepted.

Eleventh Annual A Musical Piñata for Christmas

Teatro Paraguas, 3205 Calle Marie, 505-424-1601 Compañia Chuscales y Mina Fajardo, JoJo Sena Tarnoff’s play A Christmas Carol on Airport Road, Ballet Folclórico de mi Pueblo, poetry readings, and Santa Claus; 7 p.m. Fridays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Dec. 17; $15.

The Night Before Christmas

Santa Fe Playhouse, 142 E. De Vargas Street, 505-988-4262 An irreverent holiday comedy by Andrew Neilson, directed by Emily Rankin; 7:30 p.m. ThursdaysSaturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Dec. 23; $15-$75; santafeplayhouse.org.

Prairie Dog Glass Holiday Show

2820 Cerrillos Road (inside Jackalope), 505-216-1699 Cookies and hot cider served; 9 a.m.-5 p.m. through Sunday.

Email press releases to pambeach@sfnewmexican.com at least two weeks prior to the event date.

Gallery and Museum Openings

Aaron Payne Fine Art

1708 Lena Street, Suites 202 & 203, 917-319-5430 Group show; through Feb. 3; on view noon-6 p.m.

Tina Davila Pottery Studio

14 Avenida Campo Verde, Tesuque, 505-913-1702 Open house 10 a.m.-4 p.m. today and Sunday.

Opera in HD

The Met: Live in HD

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street Florencia en el Amazonas, Daniel Catan’s 1996 opera sung in Spanish, with soprano Ailyn Perez; 11 a.m.; $22-$28; 505-988-1234, lensic.org/events.

Classical Music Chatter North

Center for Contemporary Arts, 1050 Old Pecos Trail, 505-982-1338 Alban Berg’s Traumgekrönt, Peter Lieberson’s Rilke Songs, and Franz Schubert’s Introduction and Variations on Trockne Blumen; 10:30 a.m.; $5-$17; chatterabq.org/boxoffice.

In Concert

New Mexico School for the Arts Funk Project

Paradiso, 903 Early Street, 505-231-0087 Emerging Artist Series; also, Ray Charles NM Tribute Orchestra; 7 p.m.; $20; paradisosantafe .com.

Inclusion of free listings is dependent on space availability.

Nosotros 29th Anniversary Party

Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery, 2791 Agua Fria Street, 505-393-5135 New Mexico Latin band playing rock, salsa, jazz, and cumbia; 8 p.m.; $15; nosotrosmusic .net/shows.

Theater/Dance Jayson

Center for Contemporary Arts, 1050 Old Pecos Trail Exodus Ensemble’s contemporary and immersive version of Euripides’ Medea; 7:30 p.m. today and Sunday; donations accepted; exodusensemble .com/tickets.

Events

Contra Dance

Odd Fellows Hall, 1125 Cerrillos Road Traditional folk dance; music by The Cheap Shots, calls by Will McDonald; beginners lesson 7 p.m.; dance 7:30 p.m.; $10; folkmads.org.

Paint & Sipz

Rainbow Rainbow at Meow Wolf, 1352 Rufina Circle, 505-395-6369 Artist Olivia Jane leads a 21+ class; 4-7 p.m.; $48 includes materials and a drink.

Wine and Design

Museum Hill Café, 710 Camino Lejo, 505-884-8900 Wine tasting, small plates, and floral designs; 4-6 p.m.; $150; contact Carole Áine Langrall, 443-257-8833, carolaine@santafebotanicalgarden .org. Checks accepted at the cafe.

Happy Holidays

Cirque Musica Holiday Wonderland

Hilton Santa Fe Buffalo Thunder, 20 Buffalo Thunder Trail, 505-455-5555 Acrobats and aerialists; 8 p.m.; $49-$69; holdmyticket.com/tickets/407815.

Family Photos with New Mexico Center for Therapeutic Riding

St. Bede’s Episcopal Church, 550 W. San Mateo Road Holiday-themed photos with NMCTR’s horses; 11 a.m.-3 p.m. (rescheduled from Nov. 25); $40 for five; proceeds benefit the nonprofit.

IAIA Holiday Art Market and SFCC Holiday Arts and Crafts Fair

Institute of American Indian, 83 Avan Nu Po Road, and Santa Fe Community College, 6401 Richards Avenue Jewelry, woodcarvings, pottery, tinwork, and other gift items created by 100-plus artists and craftspeople; 9 a.m.-4 p.m. .

Native American Portal Artisans’ Winter Youth Show

New Mexico History Museum, 113 Lincoln Avenue, 505-476-5200 Works by the children and grandchildren of the Palace of the Governors Portal Program artists; 10 a.m.-4 p.m. today and Sunday, in the main lobby; no charge; nmhistorymuseum.org.

Santa Fe Desert Chorale

Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, 131 Cathedral Place Candlelight Carols; free, pop-up concerts and ticketed performances: 7 p.m. today, 4 p.m. Sunday, encores Dec. 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, and 22; $10-$100; 505-988-2282, desertchorale.tix.com.

Nightlife

City Different Jazz Duo

Chili Line Brewing Company, 204 N. Guadalupe Street, 505-982-8474 Guitarist and saxophonist; 7-9 p.m.; no cover.

Shane Wallin

Tesuque Casino, 7 Tesuque Road, 800-462-2635 Singer-guitarist; 6-9 p.m.; no cover.

SUNDAY 12/10

Happy Holidays

Books/Talks

Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, 131 Cathedral Place Christmas carols; lead by Carmen Flórez-Mansi, with pianist Paul Roth; including John Rutter’s Gloria; accompanied by the Syphony Brass & Organ; 7 p.m.; pay what you wish.

Re-Worlding

Geronimo’s Books, 3018-D Cielo Court, 505-467-8315 Reading by poet Stella Reed (We Are Meant to Carry Water); Hugo Reed reads from his works in progress; 4 p.m.

Santa Fe Free Thinkers’ Forum

Unitarian Universalist Santa Fe, 107 W. Barcelona Road The humanist discussion group’s speaker: Mary Feldblum, executive director of Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign; noon; no charge; 505-438-6265, meetup.com/freethinkersforum.

Santa Fe Distinguished Lecture Series

Distinguishedlectures.com New York Times writer Isabel Kershner on The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel’s Battle for Its Inner Soul; 11 a.m.; no charge; ron@tolerancestudies.org.

Events

Santa Fe Artists’ Medical Fund Annual Art Show & Auction

SITE Santa Fe, 1606 Paseo de Peralta Silent auction of small paintings, photographs, and sculpture; wine and snacks served; 3-5 p.m.; sfcf.org; santafeartistsmedicalfund.org.

Happy Holidays

Bells of St. Francis & Santa Fe Flutes

Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, 131 Cathedral Place Seasonal favorites, children’s holiday songs, and traditional carols; 2 p.m.; no charge.

Chanukah on the Plaza

Downtown Annual celebratory lighting of the Giant Chile Menorah, with fire dancers, and refreshments; 3 p.m.; santafejcc.com.

Santa Fe Symphony

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 Sounds of the Season, holiday pops and winter favorites, 4 p.m.; $35-$92; lensic.org/events.

Santa Fe Women’s Ensemble

First Presbyterian Church, 208 Grant Avenue Winter Lights, holiday selections; 3 p.m. today, 6:30 p.m. Tuesday; continuing Dec. 16 and 17; $30 in advance, $35 at the door; 505-303-8468, sfwe.org.

Nightlife

Doug Montgomery

Rio Chama, 414 Old Santa Fe Trail, 505-955-0765 Pianist-vocalist; Great American Songbook; 6-9 p.m. Sundays and Mondays; no cover.

MONDAY 12/11 Books/Talks

Southwest Seminars

Hotel Santa Fe, 1501 Paseo de Peralta, 855-825-9876 Valles Caldera: Visions of New Mexico’s National Preserve, with photographer Don J. Usner; 6 p.m.; $20; 505-466-2775, southwestseminars.org.

TUESDAY 12/12 Books/Talks

Gudrun Johnston & Mary Jane Mucklestone

Beastly Books, 418 Montezuma Avenue, 505-395-2628 The knitwear designers sign copies of Grand Shetland Adventure Knits; 4:30-6 p.m.

Natalie Goldberg and Roshi Joan Halifax

Collected Works Bookstore, 202 Galisteo Street, 505-988-4226 The author and Buddist teacher in conversation; 6 p.m.; collectedworksbookstore.com.

Santa Fe Symphony & Chorus

Nightlife

Flashbacks Duo

Tesuque Casino, 7 Tesuque Road, 800-462-2635 Oldies, country, and standards; 6-9 p.m.; no cover.

WEDNESDAY 12/13 In Concert

Santa Fe Desert Chorale & Young Voices of Santa Fe Opera

Santa Fe Public Library Southside Branch, 6599 Jaguar Drive, 505-955-2820 Free holiday caroling; 5:30-6 p.m.

Theater/Dance

Jayson

Center for Contemporary Arts, 1050 Old Pecos Trail Exodus Ensemble’s contemporary and immersive version of Euripides’ Medea; 7:30 p.m.; donations accepted; exodusensemble.com/tickets.

Books/Talks

Douglas Preston

Collected Works Bookstore, 202 Galisteo Street, 505-988-4226 Reading from Lost Tomb: And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burial, and Murder; 6 p.m.

Happy Holidays

New Mexico Governor’s Mansion Holiday Open House

1 Mansion Drive Art collections, historic furnishings, music, and refreshments; 1-3 p.m.; no charge; contact Mary Brophy, 505-476-2800, mary.brophy@gsd.nm.gov.

Schola Cantorum of Santa Fe

San Miguel Chapel, 401 Old Santa Fe Trail Carols, sacred music, and Northern New Mexico Christmas favorites; 6:30 p.m.; $25 and $30; schola-sf.org. Free concert Dec. 17 at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Nightlife

Henry Sutro & the Nouveau Hippies

La Fiesta Lounge at La Fonda 100 E. San Francisco Street Classic ‘60s and ‘70s hits; 6:30-9 p.m.; no cover.

Instrumental Jazz Jam

Club Legato, 125 E. Palace Avenue, 505-988-9232 Robert Fox Trio hosts; 6-9 p.m.; no cover.

Queer Night

Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery, 2791 Agua Fria Street, 505-393-5135 Winter market and music; 6 p.m.; $10-$20.

Wine & Jazz Night

Tesuque Casino, 7 Tesuque Road, 800-462-2635 Dimian DiSanti Trio; 6-9 p.m.; no cover.

THURSDAY 12/14 Events

Pottery demonstration

Andrea Fisher Fine Pottery, 100 W. San Francisco Street, 505-986-1234 Acoma Pueblo potters Sancra Victorino and Cletus Victorino; noon-4 p.m.

Happy Holidays Chanukah on Ice

A Very LALiAS Christmas

Teatro Paraguas, 3205 Calle Marie, 505-424-1601 Avant-ambient folk duo’s annual secular exploration of the ghosts of winter holidays; Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, and writings by Jeff Resta and Melody Sumner Carnahan; 7:30 p.m.; $15 in advance, $20 at the door; eventbrite.com.

Nightlife

Alex Murzyn Trio

Club Legato, 125 E. Palace Avenue, 505-988-9232 Jazz saxophonist; 6-9 p.m.; no cover.

David Geist

Osteria d’Assisi Cabaret, 58 Federal Place, 505-986-5858 Geist Cabaret, Broadway and pop tunes; 7-10 p.m.; $5 cover.

Drag Bingo

Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery, 2791 Agua Fria Street, 505-393-5135 Presented by HRA Santa Fe; 7-9 p.m.; $20 cover.

Pat Malone

TerraCotta Wine Bistro, 304 Johnson Street, 505-989-1166 Jazz guitarist; 6-8 p.m.; no cover.

Terry Lynn Browning

La Fiesta Lounge at La Fonda 100 E. San Francisco Street Jazz, blues, and Broadway tunes; 6:30 p.m.; no cover.

OUT OF TOWN Albuquerque Dover Quartet

Simms Center for the Performing Arts, 6400 Wyoming Boulevard NE Violinists Joel Link and Bryan Lee, violist Julianne Lee, and cellist Camden Shaw; music of Haydn and Shostakovich; 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 10; $35 and $50, students $10; 505-268-1990, chambermusicabq. com.

New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science

1801 Mountain Road NW, 505-841-2800 Mesmerica 360, immersive 3-D installation by James Hood; reception 5-7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 8; through Dec. 24; tickets start at $12; tickets.mesmerica.com/albuquerque.

Española

Electric Light Parade & Christmas on the Plaza Plaza de Española and Paseo de Oñate Arts & crafts, and food vendors all day Saturday, Dec. 9; Santa at 4 p.m., parade at 6 p.m.

Jemez Springs Lights of Gisewa

Jemez Springs Historic Site, 18078 NM 4, 505-829-3530 Annual trek along farolito-lined trails through ancient ruins; 5-9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Dec. 8 and 9; $10 and $20; my.nmculture.org /20953/27723.

Madrid

Madrid Christmas Open House

Townwide Holiday lights and extended shopping hours; weekends through December shopping days.

Taos

Taos Chamber Music Group

Harwood Museum of Art, 238 Ledoux Street, 575-758-9826 The Classical Piano, with pianist Gleb Ivanov, 5:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 8; Holiday Jeux, Ivanov, flutist Nancy Laupheimer, violinist Margot Schwartz, and cellist Sally Guenther; music of Ravel and Dvořák, 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 9, 3 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 10; $24-$30; taoschambermusicgroup.org. ◀

Genoveva Chavez Center ice rink, 3221 Rodeo Road Skating games, traditional refreshments, and music; 4-6 p.m.; $3 skate rental; santafejcc.com.

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A guide to performances & events for the weeks ahead

J2B2

San Miguel Chapel, 401 Old Santa Fe Trail John Jorgenson Bluegrass Band; 7:30 p.m. Jan. 12; $35 and $50; ampconcerts.org.

Diderot Quartet

St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W. Palace Avenue Caroline Shaw’s Punctum, Bach, selections from Art of the Fugue, and Mendelssohn’s Quartet in A Minor, Op. 13; 3 p.m. Jan. 14; $24-$94; 505-988-4640, ext. 1000, tickets.sfpromusica.org.

Philippe Quint in Charlie Chaplin’s Smile

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 The violinist joins the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra in a multimedia program accompanying clips from classic Chaplin films; 4 p.m. Jan. 14; $25-$92; boxoffice.santafesymphony.org/8733.

The Lone Bellow

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 Indie-folk trio’s 10th anniversary tour; 7:30 p.m. Jan. 16; $35-$120; tickets.lensic.org/9303/9304.

Yungchen Lhamo

Taos Center for the Arts and San Miguel Chapel Tibetan singer-songwriter; 7:30 p.m. Jan. 17 and 18; $25 and $35; ampconcerts.org.

Alash Ensemble

St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W. Palace Avenue Republic of Tuva throat singers; 7:30 p.m. Jan. 19; $25-$75; performancesantafe.org.

Winter Reverie

AMP Concerts presents Ryanhood Dec. 17 at Tumbleroot Brewery and Distillery.

Music

Celebration of Dance Party with Korvin Orkestar

Paradiso, 903 Early Street, 505-231-0087 Bellydancers accompanied by the local contemporary Balkan-music brass band; 7 p.m. Dec. 15; $20; holdmyticket.com /tickets/424390.

Santa Fe Pro Musica Bach Ensemble

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 Bach and Beyond, music of Philip Glass, Bach, Mendelssohn, and Arvo Pärt, lead by violinist Colin Jacobsen; 7:30 p.m. Dec. 28; $33-$98; 505-988-4640, ext. 1000, tickets.sfpromusica.org.

Slaughter Beach Dog

Southall World Tour

Meow Wolf, 1352 Rufina Circle, 505-395-6369 Rock band; Sun June opens; 7 p.m. Jan. 9; $27.50; tickets.meowwolf.com.

David Berkeley

Taos Center for the Arts, Lensic Performing Arts Center, KiMo Theatre, Albuquerque On the road again; 7:30 p.m. Jan. 10, 12, and 13; tickets start at $42; (Taos) tickets.lensic360.org/tickets/421575, (Santa Fe) tickets.lensic .org/9245/9246, (Albuquerque) holdmyticket.com/tickets/421859.

Meow Wolf, 1352 Rufina Circle, 505-395-6369 Oklahoma-based country-rock mashup; 8 p.m. Dec. 15; $20; tickets.meowwolf.com.

Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery, 2791 Agua Fria Street, 505-393-5135 Santa Fe singer-songwriter 7:30 p.m. Dec. 16; $10 and $17; holdmyticket.com/event/421350.

A Winter’s Evening with Ryanhood

Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery, 2791 Agua Fria Street, 505-393-5135 Folk-rock duo; 7:30 p.m. Dec. 17 (seated show); $18 in advance, $23 day of; ampconcerts.org.

Leo Kottke

Delirium Musicum

Duane Smith Auditorium, Los Alamos High School campus, 1300 Diamond Drive L.A.-based chamber orchestra on tour; 7 p.m. Jan. 12; $35, ages 6-18 no charge; losalamosconcert.org.

Harwood Museum of Art, 238 Ledoux Street, 575-758-9826 Violinist Elizabeth Baker, violist Laura Chang, cellist Sally Guenther, and pianist Debra Ayers; music of Brahms and Dohnányi; 5:30 p.m.

Jan. 20, 3 p.m. Jan. 21; $24 and $30; taoschambermusicgroup.org.

Albert Catiglia

Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery, 2791 Agua Fria Street, 505-393-5135 Blues guitarist; 7:30 p.m. Jan. 24; $25; ampconcerts.org.

Dust City Opera

Fusion 708, 708 First Street NW, Albuquerque The folk-rock orchestra presents Sadness, Madness, & Mayhem, including performances by Conservation Carnivale Science Circus members, Giovanni String Quartet, and tarot readings; 6:30 p.m.

Jan. 27; $25 and $150; ampconcerts.com.

Santa Fe Pro Musica

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 Music of Mozart, Carl Nielsen, and Jessie Montgomery, led by Marcello Cormio, with flutist Anthony Trionfo; 3 p.m. Jan. 28; $28-$98; 505-988-4640, ext. 1000, tickets.sfpromusica.org.

Amy Ray Band

Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery, 2791 Agua Fria S treet, 505-393-5135 Touring in support of her album If It All Goes South; 7:30 p.m. Jan. 29; $25; tickets.lensic360.org/tickets/421574.

LIQUID LIGHT GLASS

HOLIDAY OPEN HOUSE & SALE! Glassblowing Demonstrations and Classes Friday, December 8, 4 pm - 8 pm Saturday, December 9, 10 am - 7 pm Glass Gallery & Studio • 926 Baca Street #3 • Santa Fe, NM 87505 505-820-2222 • Regular Hours 10 am–5 pm Monday–Saturday www.liquidlightglass.com 52 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

A Mardi Gras Celebration with Delfeayo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 Part of the 2024 Art + Sol Winter Arts Festival; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 10; $35-$115; performancesantafe.org

On Stage

Runi Tafeaga’s Hot Lava Polynesian Show

Tesuque Casino, 7 Tesuque Road, 800-462-2635 Performers from Samoa, Tahiti, New Zealand, Hawaii, and Fiji; 4 and 7 p.m. Dec. 15-17; win show tickets or $20 at the door; tesuquecasino.com.

Wise Fool New Mexico Winter Cabaret

Wise Fool New Mexico Studio, 1131-B Siler Road, 505-992-2588 The contemporary circus-arts company presents In the Clouds; 2 and 7 p.m. Dec. 28, 4 p.m. Dec. 29; wisefoolnewmexico.org /intercabaret.

Seth Meyers

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 Stand-up performance; 7:30 p.m. Dec. 29; $65-$99; tickets.lensic.org/9287/9288. Call for ticket availability.

MOMIX

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 The modern-dance troupe in Alice, Moses Pendleton’s choreography inspired by Alice in Wonderland; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 6; $36-$114; lensic.org/events.

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 Comic drag troupe celebrating its 50th anniversary; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 12; $36-$114; lensic.org/events.

Happenings

Volunteer Palooza

Rainbow Rainbow Community Arts Center, Meow Wolf, 1352 Rufina Circle, 505-395-6369 Arts and culture volunteer fair, presented by the Santa Fe Opera, Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, Performance Santa Fe, Santa Fe International Film Festival, and other local nonprofits; 2-5 p.m. Dec. 16.

Encountering the Unseen

New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary, 404 Montezuma Avenue, 505-476-5062 SciArt Santa Fe presents a talk with artists Morgan Barnard and Mira Burack; 5-7 p.m. Dec. 21; $5 suggested donation; 505-476-5063, sciartsantafe@gmail.com.

Ways of Seeing: Four Photographic Collections

New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W. Palace Avenue Photographs from the mid-20th century, including works

by Ruth Bernhard, Edward Burtynsky, Harry Callahan, Adam Fuss, David Michael Kennedy, and Minor White; Jan. 20 through July 7, 2024.

Creative Connections — A Celebration of Aunties

Institute of American Indian Arts, 83 Avan Nu Po Road Native American arts, food, music, and a presentation from Indigenous Performance Productions, with director Kendra Potter (Lummi), executive creative producer Andre Bouchard (Kootenai/Ojibwe/Pend d’Orielle/Salish); performers include Nora Naranjo Morse (Santa Clara Pueblo), Laura Tohe (Diné), and IAIA students; 5:30 p.m. Jan. 23; $40; performancesantafe.org.

The Aunties: Women of the White Shell Water Place

Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 Multimedia storytelling, with Nora Naranjo Morse (Kha’p’o Owenge /San/ta Clara Pueblo), Deborah Taffa (Quechan/Laguna Pueblo), and Laura Tohe (Diné, Tsénahabiłnii, Sleepy Rock People clan); 7:30 p.m. Jan. 24; $25-$85; performancesantafe.org.

Winterbrew

Santa Fe Farmers’Market Pavilion, 1607 Paseo de Peralta Annual New Mexico Brewers Guild’s craft beer tasting event; 6-9 p.m. Jan. 26, $10-$45; eventbrite.com.

2024 Souper Bowl

Santa Fe Community Convention Center, 201 W. Marcy Street, 800-777-2489 The Food Depot’s fundraiser with local chefs competing in this best-soup challenge, 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Jan. 27, adult VIP $100 in advance, $150 day of, child VIP (13 and up) $30, general admission $30 in advance (by 12/27), $50 in advance, $75 day of, children $15, ages 12 and under no charge; 505-471-1633, thefooddepot.org.

Holiday Events Santa Fe Desert Chorale

Santa Fe Pro Musica Holiday Bach Festivall

Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, 131 Cathedral Place Candlelight Carols; free, pop-up concerts and ticketed performances: Dec. 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, and 22; $10-$100; 505-988-2282, desertchorale.tix.com.

St. Francis Auditorium, 107 W. Palace Avenue Complete solo Cello Suites, Part I, Dec. 20; Part II, Dec. 21; A Baroque Christmas, Dec. 22; Bach and Beyond, Dec. 28; Bach and Beyond for Fam milies, Dec. 29 (free); tickets start at $35; 505-988-4640, extt. 1000, tickets.sfpromusica.org.

Winter Glow Holiday Stroll on Museum Hill Museum of International Folk Art and Museum of Indian Arts and Culture Free admission 4-7 p.m. Dec. 15; holiday cardmaking, performance of the holiday drama Los Pastores o Pastorelas and the comedy La Pastorela Cómica.

Collected Works Bookstore Annual Holiday Players 202 Galisteo Street, 505-988-4226 Readings by Ali MacGraw, Carol McGiffin, Jim McGiffin, Natachee Momaday Gray, Felix Cordova, and others; 6 p.m. Dec. 15; no charge; collectedworksbookstore.com.

La Luz de las Noches Santa Fe Botanical Garden, 715 Camino Lejo, Museum Hill, 505-471-9103 The Light of the Nights includes farolito-lined paths, holiday lights, and cash bar; also, performances by Rachel Kelli, ShanDien LaRance, Vicente Griego, and Revozo Flamencco;; 4:30-7:30 p.m. Dec. 21-Jan. 1; $22.50, discounts available; santafebotanicalgarden.org.

Santa Fe Symphony

GiG Performance Space, 1808 Second Street Pianist and guitarist duo; 7:30 p.m. Dec. 15; $25; gigsantafe.tickit.ca.

Lensic Performing Arts Center, and Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi Nochebuena Clasica!, Vivaldi’s Guitar Concertto and Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, with guitarrist Jason Vieaux; also, Corelli’s Christmas Concerto and Mozart’s Symphony No. 36; 4 p.m. Dec. 24; $25-$92; lensic.org/events.

Winter Wassail

Max Gomez & Friends Holiday Concertt

Holly Mead & Bruce Dunlap Advent (Twelve Days of Christmas Show)

Scottish Rite Center, 463 Paseo de Peralta Period-performance of alehouse sing-alongs by the Scandinavian baroque ensemble Barokksolistene; 7:30 p.m. Dec. 15; $95-$125; 505-984-8759, secure.performancesantafe.org.

Holiday Open House New Mexico Museum of Art and New Mexico History Museum Puppetry shows, music, the Baumann Marionette Christmas Show, and holiday crafts; open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Dec. 16, events 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; free admission.

Lights of Los Luceros Los Luceros Historic Site, 253 County Road 41, Alcalde, 505-476-1165 Walking paths lined with farolitos, Christmas lights, and arts & crafts vendors; 5-9 p.m. Dec. 16; $10, ages 16 and under $5; my.nmculture.org/21041/26822.

Petra Babankova and Nelson Denman Teatro Paraguas, 3205 Calle Marie, 505-424-1601 Guitar and cello recital of holiday music; 5 p.m. Dec. 16; $10 suggested donation.

The Nutcracker Lensic Performing Arts Center Aspen Santa Fe Ballet; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Dec. 17, 1 and 5 p.m. Dec. 18; $34-$94; tickets.lensic.org/events.

Holiday Flamenco Teatro Paraguas, 3205 Calle Marie, 505-424-1601 Performance by Compañia Chuscales y Mina Fajardo, based in part on Fajardo’s holiday album Holiday Flamenco; 7 p.m. Dec. 19; $20 and $25; teatroparaguasnm.org.

Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery, 2791 Agua Fria Street, 505-393-5135 Americana singer-songwriter; 7:30 p.m. Dec. 288; $25-$40; holdmyticket.com/tickets/423900.

Canyon Road Christmas Eve farolito walk Neighborhoodwide Annual pedestrian-only holiday tradition, with farolito-lined streets and adobe walls; begins at dusk Dec. 24.

Opera Southwest National Hispanic Cultural Center Journal Theatre, 1701 Fourth Street, Albuquerque New Year’s Eve concert, music of Mozart and Verdi; 2:30 and 5:30 p.m. Dec. 31; $50-$70; 505-724-4771, operasouthwest.org.

Joe Illick & the NYE Orchestra Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco Street, 505-988-1234 A holiday tradition, with soloist Augustin Hadelich; featuring the Burch Violin Concerto, Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy, and Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2; 5 p.m. Dec. 31; $30-$80; open rehearsal 1 p.m.; $5 and $20; tickets.lensic.org/8818/8820.

Carousel: NYE at the House of Eternal Return Meow Wolf, 352 Rufina Circle, 505-395-6369 Dance to Ana M, Bacon, Callie Jones, Red Flag, Saint’s Ball, and Spoolius; doors 9 p.m. Dec. 31; $45 and $55; tickets.meowwolf.com.

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Museum of Spanish Colonial Art

750 Camino Lejo, museum@spanishcolonial.org Grow and Flourish: Spanish Colonial Arts Society New Acquisitions, historic and contemporary bultos and hide paintings; through December • Generations and Imagination: What Lies Behind the Vision of Chimayó Weavers, highlighting the shifting traditions through four generations of the Trujillo family’s work; through April; spanishcolonial.org.

Open Wednesdays-Fridays.

New Mexico History Museum

113 Lincoln Avenue, 505-476-5200 Solidarity Now! 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibit exploring the grassroots movements of the civil rights era; through Jan. 15. Core exhibitions: Palace Seen and Unseen: A Convergence of History and Archaeology, photographs and artifacts • The Massacre of Don Pedro Villasur, graphic art

by Turner Avery Mark-Jacobs • The First World War, ephemera relating to New Mexicans’ contributions • Setting the Standard: The Fred Harvey Company and Its Legacy, objects from the collection and photographs from Palace of the Governors archives • Telling New Mexico: Stories From Then and Now, artifacts, photographs, films, and oral histories; nmhistorymuseum.org.

Closed Mondays.

New Mexico Museum of Art

107 W. Palace Avenue, 505-476-5072 Selections from the 20th-Century Collection, through December • The Nature of Glass, group show, through December • Manuel Carrillo: Mexican Modernist, photographic exhibition; through Feb. 4 • Rick Dillingham: To Make, Unmake and Make Again; through June 16 (See story, Page 24); nmartmuseum.org. Closed Mondays.

Zane Bennett Contemporary Art (zanebennettgallery.com) includes prints by Peter Doig in the group show Paper Trails through Dec. 23.

AT THE GALLERIES Santa Fe

CONTAINER

1226 Flagman Way, 505-995-0012 Jess T. Dugan: I want you to know my story; photographs; through Jan. 5.

Edition One Gallery

729 Canyon Road, 505-982-9668 A Walk in the Park, photographs by Andy Katz; through December.

Gaia Contemporary

Nüart Gallery

670 Canyon Road, 505-988-3888 Converging Dialogues: The Defining Edges of Contemporary Art, group show; through Dec. 17.

Strata Gallery

125 Lincoln Avenue, Suite 105, 505-780-5403 Pandemic Paintings and Political Protests, work by Margi Weir; through Dec. 15.

Zane Bennett Contemporary Art

435 S. Guadalupe Street, 505-982-8111 Paper Trails, mixed-media group show; through Dec. 23.

225 Canyon Road, Suite 6, 505-577-8339 Holiday Small Works Show; through December.

Los Alamos

Keep Contemporary

Mesa Public Library, 2400 Central Avenue, stepupgallery.org 2023 Gift of Small Paintings; through Jan. 3.

142 Lincoln Avenue, Suite 102, 505-557-9574 Ship of Fools, mixed media by Bryan Cunningham; through Dec. 18.

Manitou Galleries

123 W. Palace Avenue, 505-986-0440 Annual Small Works Show; through December.

Meyer Gallery

225 Canyon Road, 505-983-1434 Efflorescence, drawings by Megan J. Seiter; through Thursday, Dec. 14.

New Concept Gallery

610 Canyon Road, 505-795-7570 Feinberg & Galloway, paintings by Elen Feinberg, photographs by Woody Galloway; through Dec. 16.

No Name Cinema

2013 Piñon Street, nonamecinema.org Calendar, video installation by Andrew Weathers and Gretchen Korsmo; through December.

54 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023

Step Up Gallery

MUSEUMS & ART SPACES Santa Fe

Coe Center for the Arts

1590-B Pacheco Street, 505-983-6372 African, Asian, European, Native American, and Oceanic objects; email info@coeartscenter.org for tours; coeartscenter.org. Open by appointment.

Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

217 Johnson Street, 505-946-1000 Rooted in Place, O’Keeffe’s studies of trees; through April 15 • Georgia O’Keeffe: Making a Life, art and objects from the collection; through Nov. 15, 2024; okeeffemuseum.org.

Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts

108 Cathedral Place, 505-983-8900 The Stories We Carry, jewelry from the museum collection; through September 29; iaia.edu/mocna. Closed Tuesdays.

Meow Wolf

1352 Rufina Circle, 505-395-6369 The House of Eternal Return, immersive, evolving exhibits; meowwolf.com.

Days and hours vary.

Museum of Indian Arts and Culture

710 Camino Lejo, Museum Hill, 505-476-1269 Horizons: Weaving Between the Lines with Diné Textiles, historic and contemporary weavings, prints, photographs, and other related items; through June 2 • Here, Now and Always, artifacts from the collection; long term; indianartsandculture.org. Closed Mondays.

Museum of International Folk Art

706 Camino Lejo, Museum Hill, 505-476-1204 Protection: Adaptation and Resistance, works by Alaskan Indigenous artists ranging from regalia to images of traditional tattooing and graphic design; through April 7; Ghhúunayúkata/To Keep Them Warm: The Alaska Native Parka, examples from the mid-19th century to contemporary reinterpretations; through April 7 • La Cartonería Mexicana: The Mexican Art of Paper and Paste, historic sculptures from the collection, exhibited with the work of three visiting cartoneros; through Nov. 3, 2024. Core exhibits: Multiple Visions: A Common Bond, works in the Alexander Girard Wing • Lloyd’s Treasure Chest: Folk Art in Focus, thematic displays from the permanent collection; moifa.org. Open daily.

New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary

404 Montezuma Avenue, 505-476-5062 Shadow and Light, including works by Larry Bell, Judy Chicago, Agnes Martin, and Leo Villareal; through May 28; nmartmuseum.org/vladem -contemporary. Closed Mondays.

Poeh Cultural Center and Museum

78 Cities of Gold Road, 505-455-5041 Di Wae Powa: They Came Back, historical Tewa Pueblo pottery • Nah Poeh Meng, 1,600-squarefoot core installation highlighting works by Pueblo artists; poehcenter.org. Open Mondays-Fridays.

SITE Santa Fe

1606 Paseo de Peralta, 505-989-1199 Interference Patterns, multidisciplinary work

by Nicholas Galanin; and Water, paintings by N. Dash; through Feb. 5 • Field of Dreams, textiles

by Billie Zangewa, through Feb. 12; sitesantafe.org.

Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian

704 Camino Lejo, Museum Hill, 505-982-4636 California Stars: Huivaniūs Pütsiv, Californian artists whose works reflected personal experiences, mythology, and social justice; through Jan. 14.

Long term: Center for the Study of Southwestern Jewelry, devoted to Diné and Pueblo traditions • Rooted: Samples of Southwest Basketry; from the collection; wheelwright.org. Closed Sundays and Mondays.

Taos

Taos Art Museum at Fechin House

227 Paseo del Pueblo Norte, 575-758-2690 Britt Brown: Natural Forms, sculpture; opening Monday, Dec. 12; through Jan. 21; taosartmuseum.org. Closed Mondays.

FINAL FRAME

COURTESY HAT RANCH GALLERY

Churros, a 30-by-40-inch natural mineral pigments oil painting with cold wax on wood panel by Jennifer Rugge, is one of many works by various artists featured in a three-day group art show at Hat Ranch Gallery. A reception with the artists is set for 4 to 6 p.m. Friday, December 8. The show runs from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, December 8, through Sunday, December 10. 27 San Marcos Road West, 505-424-3391, hatranchgallery.org — Brian Sandford

“Wake up to a great day!”

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510 West Cordova Road Santa Fe, NM 87505 505.988.9195 | mysleepanddream.com 56 PASATIEMPO I December 8-14, 2023