New Mexico Mercury

Un Trip Down to the South Valley - A film by Ben McCallum

Ben McCallum's digital cuento, Un Trip Down to the South Valley, takes us on a visual viaje celebrating Albuquerque's south valley pride and heritage.

ABQ theater scene is hopping

Albuquerque had more than 20 plays opening in April, appealing to almost every conceivable taste, from children's stories and musical comedies to cutting-edge contemporary drama.

Among the latter was “Humble Boy,” a strange and generally confounding British family drama staged by the Fusion—at the Cell, the KimMo and the Lensic in Santa Fe through May 11.
Expertly directed and skillfully acted by a highly professional ensemble cast, the play describes the homecoming of a Cambridge University professor after the death of his father.

Solar Decathlon ingredients: College students + construction + competition

The Solar Decathlon is an international collegiate competition in ten contests for a fully solar powered house sponsored by the US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. University of New Mexico students have had the opportunity to compete alongside many of the best and brightest students in the nation to design, construct and operate  a solar house under competition standards. A highly competitive evaluation will be held October 2013 in Irvine, CA...

FBI Surveillance Technology

El Machete

Herb Goldman Among Us

When I think of Albuquerque’s preeminent art scene at the mid twentieth century, I think of Raymond Jonson, Jack and Alice Garver, Connie Fox, Dick Kurman, Don Ivers, Bainbridge Bunting, John Tatchel, and Herb Goldman. I think of visiting UNM professor and artist Elaine de Kooning, who did as much as anyone to bring this group together, and help nudge several of them to national prominence. Many of these artists are long gone. Others have moved elsewhere. 

Herb Goldman, who died in September 2012, was one of New Mexico’s most unique and powerful artists...

Insight New Mexico - Bennett Hammer

V.B. Price speaks with longtime civil rights activist, former National ACLU Board Director and founder of the Bennett A. Hammer LGBT Archives Project.

Weekly Poem: Wash

Sometimes—like right now—when you
need to see yourself from
outside, so you can say, objectively, how it
really feels in there,

your mind is a translucent sheet of plastic
taped on to the hotel room window in a
ragged part of town
that looks over a parking lot, a late night

Weekly Poetry: Drought

Fire season and we walk out of the Lensic
into haze, each street light ringed
like van Gogh or when I first wore
contact lenses. All the glare of air
kept me from vision.

Fire season waiting for monsoon
my husband drives into the mountains
with a friend and her daughter, daughter of
the woman I saw in the ground, can’t talk about it
but after these weeks of smoke
rest in peace has a different ring to it.

Art for the people - Mexico and New Mexico, then and now

There are few countries where public art is more vibrant than in Mexico. In any part of that country it often seems that every ancient ruin, plaza or green space, building, wall, or simple dish of food was made to delight the senses.

A spoonful of cinnamon: Poetry is better in doses

When V.B. Price asked me to curate the poetry section of his online venture called the New Mexico Mercury, I told him I thought the way poetry was being delivered actually worked against people enjoying it.  I thought that having too many poems at one time only catered to the audience that loved poetry.   What about the audience that might be interested in poetry or the audience that didn’t “understand” poetry?  So I argued that we too often give people who might be a little wary of poetry too big of a dose...