Santa Fe’s Artistic Soul: A Journey Through the Studios of America’s Creative Capital

Nestled in the high desert of New Mexico, Santa Fe is more than just a city—it’s a living canvas where history, culture, and creativity converge that boasts the highest number of artists per capita in any U.S. city. Known as “The City Different,” Santa Fe has long been a muse for artists, drawing inspiration from its breathtaking landscapes, rich heritage, and distinctive Pueblo-Spanish architecture. With over 250 galleries and 20 museums, it stands as the third-largest art market in the United States, trailing only New York and San Francisco. UNESCO even crowned it the first Creative City in the U.S., a testament to its unparalleled artistic energy.

Santa Fe’s allure lies not only in its art markets and galleries but also in the studios of its diverse and innovative artists. While many visitors are familiar with iconic figures like Georgia O’Keeffe, the city is home to a vibrant community of contemporary creators. From Steina Vasulka, an Icelandic pioneer in video art, to French sculptor Pascal Pierme, these artists transform their studios into sanctuaries of imagination and craftsmanship. Their workspaces—whether nestled in adobe homes on Canyon Road or expansive live/work lofts like Second Street Studios—offer a glimpse into their creative process and personal worlds.

This project celebrates these sacred spaces and the artists who inhabit them. By employing cinematic lighting techniques to sculpt each environment, I aim to capture not just the physical space but also the mood, mystery, and drama that define these creative havens. The result is a visual narrative that honors Santa Fe’s artistic legacy while inviting viewers to connect with the soul of its creators.

Santa Fe is more than a destination for art lovers—it’s a community where art is not just made but lived. Whether exploring the world-renowned International Folk Art Market or wandering through the Railyard District’s contemporary galleries, visitors are immersed in a city that thrives on creativity. As Mayor Alan Webber aptly put it, “We make art, we promote art, we market art—but most importantly, we live art”

Peter Chapin

Earned a BA degree with honors in Art History from Yale, and an MFA in Painting from Columbia University. Visual art, specifically painting and printmaking, have always helped him make sense out of experience. His art is shown and shared at several galleries in New York and elsewhere.

Michael Chandler

New York art critic Eleanor Heartney wrote, “Michael Chandler’s work is suffused with a fascination with the natural world … Chandler speaks of his art as ‘memory keys’ which may ‘open a doorway allowing thoughts buried by time and circumstances to be re-experienced.’ Indeed memory, especially the memory of nature, serves Chandler as an entry point into a privileged realm free of chaos and uncertainty which besets us in the ordinary world … His paintings continue to quietly insist that art should skew our notion of reality, and thereby conjure the inexplicable from the ordinary.”

Kathleen McCloud

Her monoprint-based paper constructions, collages and paintings are open ended narratives where current events, history, mythology and place converge.McCloud’s paintings, mixed media collages and installations have been exhibited in museums and art spaces across the US and are included in private and public collections including: New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe Community College, Hyatt Collection, NM Central Community College NMAIPP and the Herradura Collection.

Michael Bergt

Michael Bergt has been in deep dialogue with art history over the course of his more than forty-year career. Early on he was mentored by the renowned painter Paul Cadmus. Working across drawing, sculpture, and primarily egg tempera painting, Bergt has engaged art’s long history of grappling with representational and abstract sensibilities. Inspired by early Renaissance classical mythology, and other diverse religious and spiritual imagery, his artwork represents his own play with expression and interpretation of the contemporary human condition. While grounded in these art historical and traditional painting techniques, Bergt also profoundly breaks from these as he creates his own cast of mythic characters with their own poetic inclinations and relationships informed by modern dialogues around pressing topics such as gender and sexuality.

Jamie Burnes

Jamie Burnes captures the beauty of nature by creating robust animal sculptures crafted from weathered wood, steel and stone. “My process involves finding natural materials that I am drawn to and discovering what each piece evokes for me. I use found objects such as boulders and tree trunks, particularly cedar and locust for their durability and the interesting way they age. I compose these materials with Cor-Ten steel plates that I shape around them. Solid stainless-steel bars form the armature for structural support and longevity."

Pascal Pierme

Pierme creates minimalist sculptures out of multiple mediums that help him work out puzzles related to balance, movement, inquiry, architecture and nature. "Wood has its own intelligence, it knows many things, and it teaches them to me. In this way, I understand what I want to do with it so that the final image reflects its innate qualities as well as my own thoughts and feelings." - Pascal Pierme. Pierme studied Art History and Technique in St. Raphael, France and the Airgraph Technique in San Diego, California. He has participated in hundreds of exhibitions throughout the United States, France and Switzerland.

Raphaëlle Goethals

She grew up under glazed skies and amidst the devotional works of Van Eyck and Van Der Weyden. Known for her signature layered encaustic and mineral pigment abstractions, Goethals established her own unique and sophisticated vocabulary in the form of distinctive groups of paintings, which evolve concurrently. The work may be seen as referring to minimalism and the fundamentality of Light and Space, yet reformulate the “question of Painting” in the classical sense.

Steina Vasulka

An early pioneer of video art since the early 60s. Her work expanded the boundaries of video technology, electronic imaging in unprecedented ways. Together with her late husband Woody she foundedn “The Kitchen” - a valuable space for a number of music, performance, and media artists in New York who at the time did not feel welcome in commercial galleries or the mainstream art-world.

Destiny Allison

“I often refer to my studio as my dungeon. I feel like the Greek god, Hephaestus, who was relegated to the bottom of a volcano after he was horribly deformed. From his smoking, dirty pit he was able to create the most beautiful metal art. Many believed his deformity enabled him to see beauty more fully. I take his deformity as a metaphor for the human condition, which is mine, and his stature as a god as a metaphor for divine intervention, for which I hope.”

Nancy Reyner

Nancy Reyner paints exotic versions of heaven, and is best known for her use of gold leaf and inventive painting techniques. Her art career kicked into gear running a puppet theater in New York City. Painting theatrical sets, building puppets and performing on stage put her smack on an art-path. An addiction to painting quickly followed, and she received her Bachelors in Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design, and Masters in Fine Arts from Columbia University. Nancy credits her mature work to her move to Santa Fe, New Mexico – a place that honors the late master painter Georgia O’Keeffe. New Mexico was O’Keeffe’s old hang out and gave birth to several famous artist colonies in the early 20th century. Painting from New Mexico’s exquisite and diverse scenery initiated Nancy’s passion for landscape, abstraction and magical nature.

Timothy Nero

Timothy Nero works in three different mediums—sculpture, painting, and drawing—reflecting a broad spectrum of moods and mental states. In paintings on canvas or panels, lines and ribbon-like tendrils can appear to be spiraling out of control, willfully taking off in different directions like graffiti realized under the influence. Sculptures are awkward shapes bristling with stubby spikes or vaguely anthropomorphic appendages. And drawings composed of thousands of tight circles convey a deeply meditative calm, or perhaps an obsessive need to exert control.

Somers Randolph

Randolph’s sculpture is deceptively simple. His forms resonate on a subconscious level, as his vibrant spirals, continuous knots, and woven curves awaken our innermost selves. After three decades of chipping, sawing, sanding, and polishing stone, his works are in major collections and museums worldwide.
“I am spoiled now. I still get to spend my time making shapes. I carve what I like and if someone wants it, they buy it. I’ve been fortunate all along that people want what I like to carve. If that is success then I’ve been extremely successful. What could be better?”

Doug Coffin

Doug Coffin (Prairie Band Potawatomi) grew up on the grounds of Haskell Institute, an Indian boarding school (now Haskell Indian Nations University) in Lawrence, Kansas, where his father was the coach. He earned a BFA from the University of Kansas in Sculpture & Jewelry, and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Metalsmithing. Coffin received a Ford Foundation Grant, National Teaching Fellowships and honorary status in Who’s Who in American Art. Over forty public collections contain Coffin’s artwork. His monumental sculpture has stood in the White House Sculpture Garden. The Grand Palais in Paris, the John F. Kennedy Center, the National Museum of the American Indian and the Heard Museum in Phoenix have featured his work. Coffin has sculptures in Africa, Italy, France, Japan, Ecuador and Mexico, as well as global placements through the Art in Embassies program.

Jennie Frederick

Jennie Frederick is a well-known Fiber Artist & Paper Maker who utilizes techniques observed in the Mexican papermaking village of San Pablito (Puebla State), and the Lacandon Maya villages of Lacanhá and Nahá in Chiapas. “I've been a papermaker 43 years. I primarily use Kozo in my work. I draw with it, using techniques I learned during research in San Pablito, Mexico & Naha, in Chiapas, Mexico. I also combine my Kozo works, reliefs & sculptural pieces with Encaustic Wax. I cook kozo (mulberry) fiber until pliable, then I create sub-structures which appear linear, delicate, light, and open. These sub-structures are lightly beaten with a lava stone and dried. Mulberry is tied onto this base along with other materials.”

Dale Friends

Dale Friends is a sculptor known for his bronze sculptures, particularly his "New Mexicool" series featuring roadrunners with margaritas. He has also exhibited his work at San Francisco Street Art Gallery. “In my sculptures I try to capture a moment from a film or book and change it around to suit an emotion I'm trying to convey. Occasionally I use friends faces and put them into a scene and once I've even sculpted a self portrait as well. I enjoy expressing and sharing my work. Most sculptures take me 10 months to a year to produce, and each one is a learning experience. As an artist I don't ever want to stop learning!

Jennifer & Kevin Box

Kevin Box is recognized for capturing the delicate nature of paper in museum quality sculpture. From the beginning, Box’s work received recognition from other artists and collectors alike. His unique style married paper with the age old tradition of bronze casting and refreshed audiences. In 2004, he was elected as the youngest member of the National Sculptors Guild and was recognized by Southwest Art Magazine as one of the top 21 artists under 31 in the southwest. Box exhibited throughout the country on a vigorous schedule of festival shows that provided him with valuable feedback and direct communication to thousands of connoisseurs and collectors. He discovered the art markets of the country and professional galleries that wanted exclusive representation of his work. He continued pursuing art in public places throughout the country and in 2006, moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico.The Pegasus Monument is permanently located at the Origami In The Garden, located just 12 miles south of Santa Fe, New Mexico on State Hwy 14. 

Alex Barrett

“My process begins by drawing a shape with pencil on paper. I use the positive and negative space from my sketches to make templates with paper cut outs that go directly to metal. The metal becomes a small maquette of the shape fabricated from sheet aluminum-a single edition artist proof. I cut, join, inflate, and weld with my hands, establishing techniques that I will use when building the piece at a larger, monumental scale.” He has exhibited in Switzerland, Chicago, New York, Santa Fe, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, California, Tennessee, Alabama, and Connecticut to date.

Alexandra Eldridge

Alexandra Eldridge is an American contemporary painter who has had dozens of solo exhibitions and participated in many group shows throughout the United States and abroad, including New York, Paris, Belgrade and London. Her work has been used on covers of eight books of poetry. Celebrity collectors include actors Steve Buscemi and William Hurt who said, “there are two tides, one of light and another of muffling, suffocating...absence. Alexandra is clearly in the light." She has also been featured on an “Art in Santa Fe” feature by television personality Rachel Ray.  In 2011, About 20 Victorian glass plates were discovered in an attic of a home in Houston, Texas. Eldridge acquired the plates from a friend, and once cleaned from 100 years of dust, they revealed images of fairy-like children from a Texas portrait studio from around 1900. Eldridge described the project as a way to bridge the world of the living with that of the dead.

Rick Stevens

Rick Stevens takes his inspiration from the natural world in all its sublime mystery, then surrenders to that mystery to let the unseen forces of nature guide his hand—and his life. This intuitive process creates room for those serendipitous moments that emerge only when the chattering of the conscious mind is stilled, allowing him to proceed with his life and work in an atmosphere of quiet joy and reverence. “My studio is forever filled with paintings in process. What may seem chaotic, I find to be an organic flow. To work the oils in layers, the drying time alone is a good reason for setting aside one painting to work on another. Meanwhile, the time away from the work proves valuable when I see it with fresh eyes after some time away from it. Detachment is a requirement to see things for what they are, as the artistic vision is always compromised by the ability to execute it. The process encompasses everyday lessons in how to respond to what is there, as well as what is in the imagination.”

Estella Loretto

Estella Loretto is currently the only Native American woman working in monumental bronze sculpting. She is considered to be one of the finest sculptors/artists living today. Loretto was the last student of Allan Houser as well as a student of other masters throughout the world. A renowned sculptor and painter, Estella is probably best known for her Blessed Kateri statue, which welcomes visitors to the entrance of Saint Francis Cathedral in downtown Santa Fe.

Maggie Hanley

The woman in Santa Fe who can't stop painting. New Mexico Arts wrote: "Maggie Hanley serves as a Program Coordinator for New Mexico Arts. Her responsibilities encompass the Community Arts Development and Major Cultural Organization grant programs, the smallest and the largest organizations funded by New Mexico Arts. .Maggie has spent most of her career as an arts administrator and comes to the New Mexico Arts after serving as Executive Director of the Santa Fe Gallery Association for many years. She is the former managing director of an arts center, a successful fundraiser, and has been an accomplished professional artist for over 30 years. wrote the following about her paintings: "Paintings that emerge during the process noticing light in common places wild gestures of mad color flashes into the energetic entanglements documenting historic injustices tumultuous weather and waters."This original watercolor by Hanley possesses the superb control of light described above. Combined with masterfully juxtaposed hot & cool colors, she created a great mood and atmosphere!

August Muth

For more than 30 years Muth has been an internationally exhibiting artist and a pioneer in the exploration of light through holography.  In Santa Fe the desire to produce larger holograms became a priority, and for the next several years he spent thousands of hours developing techniques in this quest.  Trial and failure became a large part of his practice since large-scale single-beam holograms had never been produced by anyone previously.  After a pivotal insight which resulted in the discarding and total metamorphosis of previously learned processes, he was able to create holograms in a greater scale. 

Bette Ridgeway

Celebrated for her large-scale, luminous poured canvases, Bette Ridgeway has devoted five decades to developing her unusual pouring technique, garnering international recognition in the process. Born in Tupper Lake, a small village in the Adirondack Mountains in New York, she has traveled the globe - studying, painting, teaching and exhibiting her work - while simultaneously immersing herself in the customs and colors of the diverse cultures of Africa, Australia, Europe, Asia, Mexico and South America. She studied and taught painting during lengthy stays in
Antananarivo, Madagascar; Canberra, Australia; and Santiago, Chile.

Her mentor Paul Jenkins (1923-2012), the acclaimed Abstract Expressionist, encouraged the artist in 1979 to work large, eliminate subject matter and focus on color, space and time. Ridgeway followed his advice and has developed and refined her signature technique. “Color is my subject and my muse,” says Ridgeway. Located in Santa Fe, New Mexico since the mid1990s, Ridgeway is represented by numerous galleries and has been shown in over 80 gallery and museum exhibitions internationally, including a concomitant juried exhibition at the 58th
Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy.

Robert Hoerlein

Robert Hoerlein is a mixed media artist living in Santa Fe NM. Raised in Colorado, Hoerlein holds a BA in Fine Art from the University of Colorado, Boulder. His paintings have been exhibited in commercial galleries, university galleries, and museums in New York, Santa Fe, San Francisco, and Des Moines, among others. Solo exhibitions have been at Zane Bennett Gallery in Santa Fe, Moberg Gallery in Des Moines, Lawson Gallery in San Francisco, Mills Gallery at Central College in Pella Iowa, and at ICON Gallery in Fairfield, Iowa. His work has been featured in The San Francisco Chronicle, the Des Moines Register, the Albuquerque Journal, the Cedar Rapids Gazette, among other publications. His artworks are included in many corporate and private collections. Robert Hoerlein’s persistent search through his work is to find the essential, and to create an exact and unexpected relationship between very different physical and pictorial elements.

Barbara Mehlman

Enter the mesmerizing world of distinguished mixed media artist Barbara Mehlman - founder of Santa Fe Blue Studio. Mehlman is known for her inventive techniques that combine digital software with traditional art materials. She has developed unique methods for image transfers, merging digital imagery with natural media to produce layered, textural works that challenge conventional distinctions between art forms. Her practice is characterized by experimentation and a willingness to explore new technologies while honoring the tactile qualities of traditional media.

Godfrey Reggio

Godfrey Reggio is a pioneer of a film style that creates poetic images of extraordinary emotional impact for audiences worldwide. Reggio is prominent in the film world for his QATSI trilogy, essays of visual images and sound that chronicle the destructive impact of the modern world on the environment. Reggio, who spent 14 years in silence and prayer while studying to be a monk, has a history of service not only to the environment but to youth street gangs, the poor, and the community as well.

Carol Coates

Carol Coates begins her compositions with photographs of live models. These images are then digitally augmented into contrived characters. These initial characters either become references for an oil or acrylic painting or the basis of a mixed media work that incorporates the photographs as well as the painting. Coates has mastered a wide variety of skills ranging from drawing and painting to metal smithing, sculpture, darkroom and digital photography.  Each of these tools play a part in the composition and execution of her series MindsEye. She was awarded the Bronze Medal in New Media from Fortezza de Basso in Florence, Italy in 2003.  Publicly, Coates constructed a mixed media mesh overlay installation at the World Headquarters for Dow Chemicals Co. as well as a 300 ft mural in the Midland County Circuit Courtroom in Michigan.  She has also shown in museums and galleries nationwide including the Denver Art Museum, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, and the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Michigan. 

Diane Rolnick

“I work with a painter’s mind and eye as a digital mixed-media artist who investigates the inner complexities and momentum of human actions, expressions, thoughts, and connections with self, nature, and place. The recent ruling of the Supreme Court to deny abortions to women has made me realize how I have also internally focused on women, our inner tinkering, and our fight through the years to be treated as an equal part of society. As I have been developing my work, I have been reviewing my history, stories, and struggles, which have influenced my ideas, outcomes, and affinity with nature.  During the last seven years, I have been hiking early mornings in the arroyos and trails near my home in Santa Fe with my dogs and recording the foliage, flowers, light, and shadows of the seasons. Manipulating the images and layers in Photoshop or Procreate, to place imagination, memory of moment, and visual abstractions into each piece allows me to see the intricacies and rhythms that connect with our own life cycles. Printing my works on a large format printer in my studio allows me to work with various papers, canvas, or materials such as silk and cotton. I then create a series of proofs until a confluence of elements, imagery, and poetry carries my thoughts and voice to a conclusion. I have always felt that our bodies are a moving, breathing specimen of the natural world that navigate through space with instinctual wanderings. Manipulating the images and overloading layers allows me to investigate possibilities that can appear chaotic but also lead me to surprising revealings.”

Debra Fritts

“Working intuitively from pounds of wet clay, forms appear and stories develop. I may be questioning an occurrence or celebrating a relationship or just be aware of daily life. The search continues until I reach teh core: the spiritual level of the sculpture. Then the work can speak. At the present, I am exploring new territory in the west while embracing my southern heritage. I am touching ground, getting to the basics, and listening. Each sculpture is hand built, mainly using thick coils, and fired three to five times depending on the color and surface I am trying to achieve. I approach the color on the clay as a painter. My palette is a combination of oxides, slips, underglazes and glazes. The form of the piece informs the way I should approach the surface.”

Kate Rivers

“I am a mixed media painter that heavily incorporates found materials. A recurrent theme in my work is the image of a nest. The nest is a powerful metaphor suggesting comfort, home, protection and family. My work is constructed of layers of text, ephemera and oil stick creating dense patterns while exploring social and political issues. The work also addresses the human compulsion to collect things that can often add meaning to our lives reflecting past memories and events. I gather stuff from garage or estate sales, second hand stores, posters from urban areas and simply trash. Some of the materials I use are a variety of maps, old typed or hand written letters, canceled postage stamps and clothing tags. Clothing tags are especially seductive because they are frequently well designed and suggest issues of class and the compulsion to collect. In addition, I incorporate items of whimsy and reflections of the everyday. I often feel like a voyeur looking into the lives of others long past and reflecting on their lives.”

Judy Tuwaletstiwa

Tuwaletstiwa’s work has been described as elemental. She uses a broad range of materials including kiln fired glass, fiber, clay, handmade paper, quills, and wood sticks. Each artwork is a conversation between carefully selected textures and evocative forms: an intuitive and profound act of storytelling. Judy Tuwaletstiwa's memories and personal experiences create a complex web of inspiration that invites materials to find an unexpected voice in her art. Materials (from Latin, mater, mother) become keepers of a collective truth passed down through generations or through encounters with strangers such as a homeless man. With deep empathy, Tuwaletstiwa reflects to us the joy and pain of our human condition. Object and subject are transformed within her work to emanate a palpable healing force. Her work resides in private and museum collections nationally and internationally. 

Sheryl Zacharia

Celebrated ceramicist and painter Sheryl Zacharia combines shape and surface with masterful musicality and movement, harmonizing old and new into extraordinary compositions. Zacharia majored in painting at Southhampton College, but spent the following decade as a published singer-songwriter and performer. She then began working in clay, which started her on a new artistic path. She has taught numerous courses and workshops on ceramics, and in 2011 she completed an eight month extended residency at the Museum Of Arts and Design in NYC. She has exhibited nationally, her work has been featured in various magazines and books, and many of her unique pieces can be found in corporate, museum and private collections. Though always a true, life-long New Yorker at heart, Zacharia now lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Michelle Tsosie Sisneros

Contemporary Indigenous Painter and Clothing Designer, who creates glam Pueblo couture and sleek, modern streetwear adapted from her paintings. Sisneros is considered a highly regarded contemporary artist of Santa Clara, Navajo and Laguna descent, Michelle Tsosie Sisneros paints traditional Native American themes with abstract elements and surrealist influences.