New Mexico Mercury

Navidad

Visions of ritual and tradition in the lead up to Christmas in Oaxaca, Mexico.

When fiction meets life: “Last Night of Ballyhoo”

On Saturday night, I sat in an Albuquerque theater as actors discussed the hospital in which I was born, the street on which I lived, the store that my father managed—and it was all transpiring in my native city within eight months of my birth. As assimilated, non-practicing, non-believing Jews living in a city notorious for earlier incidents of antisemitism, my family could have been the subject of this play—except for the fact that unlike the play’s characters, my family never discussed Judaism. For two hours, the parallel tracks of fiction and life did indeed seem to meet, even if in the far distance.

Such was the moving but rather unnerving experience I had watching Last Night of Ballyhoo, an effective and affecting comedy being staged by Mother Road at the Tricklock Performance Laboratory...

Six Liberties of Compassion

A much needed poem for the season by V.B. Price.

¡COLORES! December 19, 2014

In a special holiday segment, ¡COLORES! features one of New Mexico's favorite sculptors, Michael Naranjo.

El Machete: US Helping Drug War

US Helping Drug War

Artists in the Desert

The idea of art as therapy was established in the late 18^th century when it was used as “moral treatment” for psychiatric patients. The term “art therapy” came from a British war artist named Adrian Hill who used to go out on patrols with his sketching kit in World War I and who later recognized the therapeutic value of art while he was recovering from tuberculosis. This concept grew with the establishment of the British Association of Art Therapists in 1964 and the American Art Therapy Association in 1969, as well as similar associations in about a dozen other countries and it is now a well-recognized form of therapy. For example, the Southwestern College here in Santa Fe offers an MA in Art Therapy, focusing on “the healing process of making art.”

But what if you have one hundred mental patients and no therapist or even an instructor and can only infrequently afford the necessary paint and art supplies?..

El Machete: Ham Sandwich

Ham Sandwich

Insight New Mexico - Levi Romero on Juan Estevan Arellano

Professor and poet Levi Romero remembers author, researcher, and land and water advocate Juan Estevan Arellano.

Juquila

New Mexican photographer Nell Farrell documents the pilgrimage of La Virgen de Juquila during the time she lived in Oaxaca, Mexico. 

El Machete: Birds of a feather

Birds of a feather