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Look Up! Leo Villareal's Astral Array at New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary

Release Date: 11/29/2023

Investigating Who We Are Across Media and Millennia: Season Preview with Emily Withnall and Andrea Klunder

Encounter Culture

Dispelling misconceptions about street art, discovering ancient footprints that reconfigure our origin stories, and delving into remedios for a broken heart… A new season of Encounter Culture is coming your way October 2024! and follow El Palacio Magazine on Instagram for updates. EPISODES TO CATCH UP ON ALSO MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Convergence x Crossroads: Street Art from the Southwest at *** We’d love to hear from you! Let us know what you loved about the episode, share a personal story it made you think of, or ask us a question at . You can write a regular email or...

From Exoplanets to Earthly Technology: Exploring Our Fears and Dreams Through Science Fiction with Ness Brown and Chris Orwoll

Encounter Culture

What does the space history have to do with science fiction? More than you’d think! Among the many exhibitions the New Mexico Museum of Space History offers is one called Sci Fi & Sci Fact: Two Worlds Collide. As Chris Orwoll, executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Space History shares, TV shows and movies like Star Trek and Star Wars were greatly influential to NASA employees. And that’s just one example! On the flip side, contemporary technologies can influence artists, writers, and filmmakers. For Los Alamos native, science fiction novelist, and astrophysicist student, Ness...

Prison Art as an Assertion of Humanity with Museum of International Folk Art Curators Patricia Sigala and Chloe Accardi

Encounter Culture

Museum of International Folk Art curators Patricia Sigala and Chloe Accardi are dedicated to co-collaborating exhibitions alongside community members. For the upcoming exhibition, Between the Lines: Prison Art & Advocacy, this commitment to community feedback and engagement is particularly strong. What began as a small exhibition in the museum’s Gallery of Conscience last year, will be opening as a much larger show on August 9, 2024. Between the Lines: Prison Art & Advocacy will feature a wide range of prison art from across the country and the world. Local collaborations with...

Rolling Into Rural Communities: Bookmobiles and Books by Mail Across New Mexico

Encounter Culture

For many people who live in New Mexico the nearest library might be three hundred miles away. Luckily, the New Mexico State Library runs two excellent rural library services: Books by Mail and three bookmobiles that serve different regions of the state. If you live 20 minutes outside of the city limits of any city in New Mexico, or if you live within city limits but are homebound, or if you can only read large-print books, you can sign up for Books by Mail. The Books by Mail collection contains more than 30,000 titles, including books in Spanish, audiobooks, eBooks, and more. For schools and...

A History of Genízaro Identity in the Heart of New Mexico with Dr. Gregorio Gonzales

Encounter Culture

What do we lose when we don’t know ALL of our histories? Understanding our great, great, great, great grandparents' lives and how they survived, where they settled or traveled, and what languages they spoke – all of these details reveal so much about who we are and how we landed here in this place, at this moment in time. How our ancestors interacted with other people and with the land has had ripple effects on why things are the way they are today. Dr. Gregorio Gonzales (Comanche, Genízaro), the tribal liaison for the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, works to develop...

Adventure Begins at Your Library: Explore New Mexico Tribal Libraries and Youth Programming

Encounter Culture

In a large, low-population state like New Mexico, with lots of rural communities, libraries play a vital role in literacy, education, and job skills training—along with the simple joy that comes from learning and being immersed in the numerous worlds that can be found within a book’s pages. Each of the 130 libraries across New Mexico, including 21 tribal libraries, serves the specific needs of its own community. Many tribal libraries, such as the Santa Clara Pueblo’s library, maintain a community archive of historic photos, interviews, and oral histories that preserve the past and...

From Goatheads to Grand Canyons: A Love Letter to the Landscape with New Mexico State Poet Laureate, Lauren Camp

Encounter Culture

Poetry is everywhere. Poetry is in the way we speak or sing or the ways we imagine. Poetry offers space and possibility. And poetry is the best kept open secret we have. Because as it turns out, poetry can sometimes have the unfortunate reputation of not being for everyone. Thankfully, state poets laureate are working to change this perception and helping people find the magic and meaning in poetry. New Mexico State Poet Laureate, Lauren Camp, is no exception. Now midway through her three-year term, she’s made it her mission to traverse the vast reaches of the state to build community...

Protective Threads: Exploring Indigenous Fashion and Advocacy with Bobby Brower and Tara Trudell

Encounter Culture

Creating art in the face of grief can be complicated and hard to navigate, especially when the grief feels both private and personal—and a part of a much larger epidemic, like the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) crisis. Both Bobby Brower (Iñupiaq) and Tara Trudell (Santee Sioux/Rarámuri/Mexican/Spanish) found their way into speaking about the MMIP crisis through clothing and adornment that are linked to a long history of protection, prayer, and collaboration. On this episode of Encounter Culture, Brower and Trudell talk with host Emily Withnall about creating...

Star Parties, Rim-Blown Flutes, and Pueblo History at Jemez Historic Site with Marlon Magdalena

Encounter Culture

Jemez Historic Site, like all of New Mexico’s Historic Sites and museums, offers unique historical and cultural perspectives on the deep and wide-ranging communities, languages, and traditions across the state. And while New Mexico contains a complicated and layered history, these Sites not only honor history but vibrant and ongoing cultures that continue to this day. Marlon Magdalena, the Instructional Coordinator Supervisor at Jemez Historic Site and member of the Jemez Pueblo, says that all aspects of his community, currently and in the past, are important. “My primary goal is...

Keeping New Mexico's Spanish Alive: The National Hispanic Cultural Center's Legacy Project

Encounter Culture

Traveling to some remote parts of Northern New Mexico can feel a little like traveling back in time. There’s the slower, rural lifestyle and lack of cell reception, for starters, but in some small pockets of rural communities, people still speak a 17th-century dialect of Spanish. Encounter Culture host Emily Withnall speaks with National Hispanic Cultural Center’s executive director, Zack Quintero, archivist Robin Moses, and Librarian Amy Padilla about their work to collect and preserve this ancient Spanish dialect before it disappears—which they say could happen in just fifteen...

More Episodes

What would it be like to see a symphony? How can you capture the rhythm of waves or a murmuration in constellations of light? If anyone can offer a visual representation of multi-sensory experiences, multimedia artist Leo Villareal can. As Villareal shares in his conversation with Encounter Culture host, Emily Withnall, “I think of my tools more like instruments in a way. And I'm making kind of visual music.”

Leo Villareal is a world-renowned artist with roots in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in El Paso and Marfa, Texas. He currently lives in Brooklyn where he owns a gallery and oversees a team of artists, engineers, and programmers. His light sculptures can be seen in galleries in Geneva, London, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Madrid, Washington, D.C., Beijing, Amsterdam, New York, and San Antonio—to name a few.

Among Villareal’s newest light sculptures is Astral Array, an installation on view permanently in the outdoor breezeway to New Mexico Museum of Art’s new Vladem Contemporary location in the Santa Fe Railyard.

Villareal draws inspiration from the natural world, from Indigenous weaving, and from computer coding and programming. Despite the sometimes-impermanent nature of his installations, many of which are site- and time-specific, he appreciates the cycle of creation and dismantling inherent to his work and to the ways in which his continued experiments with light are visible to all.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary

Illuminated River: A Public Art Commission

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Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine

Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann

Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe