LAS CRUCES - The visual arts in Las Cruces are
alive, well, thriving and popping up in some new and exciting places these
days.
You’ll have a chance to explore at the source during February
For the Love of Art Month, when a record number of artists will participate in
the group’s FLAM studio tours.
I was recently asked to speak about the state of the visual arts
in the Mesilla Valley, which inspired some pondering.
Galleries are where most people think of finding art, and we
have a burgeoning amount of them, including some pockets of art throughout town
and groupings that could be considered art districts.
The biggest art district is now downtown Las Cruces, mostly
clustered on and around Main Street and Mesquite Street. There are now enough
galleries in the Main Street area to make it a challenge to try to visit them
all during the downtown Ramble from 5 to 7 p.m. the first Friday of each month.
Though Mesilla has waned in terms of official galleries, the
picturesque adobe town still has several shops, boutiques and restaurants that
feature original art, along with what I believe is the area’s oldest and still
one of the best cooperative galleries, the Mesilla Valley Fine Art Gallery.
With the Border Artists, Las Cruces Art Associations and ArtForms Artists
Association, and the Las Cruces Farmers & Crafts Market, such cooperative
groups have done a lot to bring attention to the talent based here.
Adobe Patio Gallery, now located in the Mesilla Mercado, still
ranks in the oldest and finest category, along with The Cutter Gallery, which
gives University Avenue its anchor art site. The campus art resources include
the University Art Gallery in NMSU’s Williams Hall, and some impressive
exhibits of arts, crafts and artifacts at the nearby University Museum in Kent
Hall. Both have innovative exhibits focusing on everything from cutting edge
modern to ancient indigenous arts and some world class permanent collections.
The campus itself is a kind of movable feast of visual arts,
with murals and sculptures, and buildings, from graceful Trost treasures to the
new ASNMSU Center for the Arts, and the extensive campus art collections
inside.
Other museums are also bountiful sources of art collections and
exhibits, including the New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum, and the
city’s Museum of Art, Museum of Nature & Science, Railroad Museum and the
Branigan Cultural Center. Whatever their primary focus, Las Cruces museums and
the Branigan Library all offer changing and permanent attractions for visual
arts aficionados.
Other areas with groupings of galleries or burgeoning colonies
of artists include Picacho Avenue and Picacho Hills, North Las Cruces (artists
in the region, led by Roy Van der A, David Jacquez and Flo Hosa Dougherty, have
joined to present the periodic North Valley Art Loop Tour).
As it is in other New Mexico art meccas like Santa Fe and Silver
City, art is an everyday staple just about everywhere here: at doctors’
offices, health food markets, churches, and boutiques. You’ll find regular
rotating art exhibits at tattoo parlors, interior design studios, offices,
coffee shops, hotels and schools.
Pop up galleries are a new and growing trend, sometimes showing
up in vacant store fronts, old bunkers at the Southern New Mexico State
Fairgrounds, or recently, at a trailer outside the NMSU Art Gallery.
You’ll find treasures (some sophisticated and cutting edge and
sometimes funky, vintage and just plain fun) in out-of-the-way neighborhoods,
like Art Obscura, 3206 Harrelson St., by the railroad tracks in Mesilla Park,
or the new Desert Roots, 1001 S. Solano, a kind of combo arts coop, tea, coffee
and snack shop and salon with period art classes and live entertainment. Newer
galleries that have been offering some cutting edge contributions to arts here
include Nopalito's Galeria, and Unsettled Gallery, both on Mesquite Street, and
Rokoko in Mesilla. We’re already missing West End Art Depot and hope its spirit
and creators reemerge soon.
Don’t forget the large, ever-evolving category of special event
art opportunities, including the increasingly prestigious annual Las Cruces
Fine Arts Festival in March at the Las Cruces Convention Center, the Doña Ana
Arts Council’s Renaissance Arts Festival, the Franciscan Festival of Fine Arts,
Native American Arts Festivals at NMSU and Mesilla Valley Bosque State Park,
Las Cruces Spanish Colonial Arts Festival, and arts and crafts at nearly all of
our regional and seasonal fiestas, even if they are more known for celebrating
things like beer, wine, salsa, balloons ,blues, jazz, rock,
rocks, pumpkins, cowboys, comics and, well…you get the idea.
The Mesilla Valley is a very artistic place and the visual arts
are a big part of everything that puts the creativity in Cruces. If you have
any doubts, it should be even more obvious than usual, very soon, during
February For the Love of Art Month.
S. Derrickson Moore may be reached at dmoore@lcsun-news.com,
@derricksonmoore on Twitter and Tout, or call 575-541-5450.
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