Libsyn Directory

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

Release Date: 11/29/2023

Connecting People Through Time - Makowa: The Worlds Above Us with Misha Pipe and Kaela Waldstein

Encounter Culture

For as long as humans have been on this earth, we have looked to the cosmos for information and direction. The Indigenous people of North America used the skies to make sense of their environments and to guide them in planting crops, building villages, and conducting ceremonies. The new exhibition at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, Makowa: The Worlds Above Us, showcases a wide range of art, photographs, videos, and more to center the wisdom and longevity of Native astronomy and to remind us that we are all interconnected. On this episode of Encounter Culture, guest consultants for...

Uplifting Cultural Knowledge with Navajo Picture Book Author Daniel Vandever

Encounter Culture

On the surface, Diné author Daniel Vandever’s picture books might appear to be straightforward stories, but the messages about the power of imagination and adventure in his books are imbued with layers of meaning. In his book Fall in Line, Holden!, a little boy breaks free from the constraints of rules and discipline by using his imagination. On a deeper level, the book speaks to the history of Indian Boarding Schools in pushing cultural assimilation. Likewise, in his wordless picture book Herizon, a girl goes on a magic scarf ride to find her lost sheep. This book is imbued with...

Time Travel: From Giant Millipedes to Modern Landscapes with New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science

Encounter Culture

A long, long time ago, the region that is now New Mexico was part of a giant land mass, and it was located on the equator. The climate was warm and tropical and much of the present-day state was covered in shallow seas. This was long before humans or even dinosaurs existed—252 to 541 million years ago. The New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science has recently opened a new permanent exhibition, The Bradbury Stamm Construction Hall of Ancient Life, that covers the vast geologic history of ancient life in the state. Piecing together the story of ancient life in New Mexico can...

BONUS: Ancient Life (There's No Shame In Extinction)

Encounter Culture

What did New Mexico look like before the time of the dinosaurs? The 3,000-square-foot Bradbury Stamm Construction Hall of Ancient Life at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science tells the story of 300 million years of evolution featuring never-before-seen fossils from ancient fish, amphibians, invertebrates, reptiles, and more uncovered across the state. Take a behind-the-scenes tour of the exhibit being contructed in the weeks before its grand opening with Spencer Lucas, Curator of Paleontology, and Matt Celeskey, Curator of Exhibits. (Then go see the exhibit fully...

Exhibition Design, 3-D Modeling, and Clown Chess Sets at New Mexico Highlands University with Lauren Addario and Becca Sharp

Encounter Culture

The Media Arts & Technology department at New Mexico Highlands University is a one-of-a-kind program. Students not only learn about technology and design, but they get to implement their ideas, working from brainstorming and mind mapping to exhibition design and installation, interactive displays, and so much more. NMHU professors Lauren Addario and Becca Sharp join Emily Withnall to talk about their program and their 20-year partnership with the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, including their exhibition design at many of DCA’s Historic Sites. This partnership and internship...

The American Mystique of the Cowboy Boot with Deana McGuffin and Jes Márquez

Encounter Culture

New Mexico Arts runs a Folk Arts Apprenticeship Program that pairs masters in a particular art form with apprentices so that a wide variety of arts unique to New Mexico can be passed on. In this episode of Encounter Culture, host Emily Withnall chats with bootmakers Jes Márquez and Deana McGuffin about their experience with the Apprenticeship Program and the wonderful challenge of making beautiful cowboy boots. Mentioned in this Episode: 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...

La Virgen de Guadalupe: Photographing a Cultural Icon with Delilah Montoya and Katie Doyle

Encounter Culture

The Virgin of Guadalupe is a cultural icon with deep roots in Mexican and Chicano communities across the United States and Mexico, among other places. Artists in New Mexico often reference Guadalupe in their work—including Chicana artist Delilah Montoya. A mixed-media piece, “La Guadalupana,” by Montoya features a large photograph of the Virgin of Guadalupe as tattooed on the back of an incarcerated man. It is one of the many works of art on display at New Mexico Museum of Art’s Vladem Contemporary as a part of their “identity” theme in Off-Center. Katie Doyle, assistant...

Boots, Books, and the Vast Unknown: Season 8 Preview with Emily Withnall and Andrea Klunder

Encounter Culture

Join host Emily Withnall and producer Andrea Klunder for a preview of the upcoming 8th season of Encounter Culture. This season features diverse topics, including an interview with artist Delilah Montoya, a tour of the brand-new Ancient Life exhibition at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, a conversation about children's books with author Daniel Vandever, and a deep look inside the art of bootmaking. “It's cool to think about art in that way, you know, to create beauty from nothing. It starts as an idea and then all of a sudden you have this beautiful object that you've...

The Oryx and the Bomb: Colonial Legacies at White Sands Missile Range with Marcus Xavier Chormicle

Encounter Culture

Roughly six thousand large antelopes native to Africa live on the White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico. Once small in number, these oryx have proliferated and make for an unexpected sight with their giant bodies, striking black and white faces, and long, spear-like horns. What are the oryx doing in New Mexico? Las Cruces-based photographer, Marcus Xavier Chormicle’s research of the animals has informed his oryx photography series. The oryx series was the focus of Chormicle’s work during his New Mexico Arts residency at Lincoln Historic Site in the spring of 2024. He joined...

The Beaded Nun, Haunted Exhibitions, and Other Museum Stories with Nick Waddell and Michelle Rodriguez, Museum of International Folk Art

Encounter Culture

How many times have you visited the same museum? Whether your answer is “one” or “hundreds” this episode of Encounter Culture invites listeners behind the scenes to hear about the rewards of visiting and revisiting the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe. Longtime security guard Nick Wadell and docent and customer service rep, Michelle Rodriguez, share stories about works of art, mysteries, and memorable visitors that will give listeners a deeper experience of the museum—and hopefully, entice them back again. Mentioned in this Episode: The Art of Survival: The...

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

Visit https://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

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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