Funding for Colores was provided in part by: New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation McCune Charitable Foundation New Mexico Arts a Division of the Department of Cultural Affairs National Endowment for the Arts and viewers like you Working at an intersection of contemporary sculpture and ancestral adobe traditions.

Joanna Keane Lopez connects to her families and New Mexico's layered histories.

After nearly 30 years of supporting unrecognized artists from Caribbean, Black and Latin communities, Rosie Gordon Wallace is preparing the Diaspora Vibe cultural arts incubator for the future.

It's all ahead on Colores.

Unearthing Memory >> Lopez: I have been really focusing for many years on the craft of adobe architecture as a vernacular earthen building tradition that is a craft practice, like a lifelong craft practice.

What I've been so fascinated with is thinking about land and the history of land, and how that holds so much memory, including indigenous histories, of course, and colonial histories of Spanish and US American, and also thinking about a third wave of coloniality in New Mexico, which is nuclear colonialism and military colonialism in this in this landscape.

>> Faith: Tell me about the Unearthing Futures exhibition at Harwood Museum and the histories you're uncovering with it.

>> Lopez: So my work is in the exhibition is called “Energetic Materials” and it's thinking.

It's more about a play of thinking about other way as an energetic material, like a spiritual material in so many ways, but also thinking.

Energetic materials also refers to ballistic investigations with like bombs and such.

And so my installation, it focuses on White Sands Missile Range area as a multi-use, contested landscape that is at once military but also ranching land.

And so my family, my Apodaca-Montoya family are multi-generational ranchers in that area and have ranches within and adjacent to White Sands Missile Range.

And it's this really fascinating landscape out there.

I tied it to Adobe Architecture because so many of the ranches at White Sands Missile Range, which is the largest premier military testing site in the United States and is about 2 million acres.

It all was ranching land at one point, and the primary material for the ranches was rock and adobe.

The installation that I have at Harwood is -- it includes a film where I took a lot of film of my family, and also neighbors and community members within that area, and -- their relationship with White Sands Missile Range.

A lot of people don't really realize how active it actually is.

So the installation really is thinking about this landscape that holds two different parties.

One that is a very much like an asymmetrical power dynamic with the military and then pedestrians who are ranchers.

And this relationship that the ranchers have with the land that is intimate and it's engaged with, you know, the animals, with the fences, with the weather -- whereas the military has a relationship with the landscape, thinking about it with data and aerial views and surveillance and bombing and that same land that is used for building they'll be ranch houses is also being used for detonations and weapons development.

>> Faith: I want to move on to Land Craft Theater.

Can you tell me about that installation and also about the communal aspect about it?

>> Lopez: Yeah.

Land Craft Theater was a solo exhibition that I had over at Site Santa Fe.

The exhibition was twofold, one of them was these large earthen adobe installation, and then the other one was made of paper and natural dies.

You know, I was really trying to play with thinking about earthen vernacular architecture and installation and painting and how it feels for the body to move through these spaces of Earth, but also color.

I became really interested in ways that you paint adobe walls based on my great grandparents homes.

They used calcimine paint which is a very old school type of paint for adobe walls and they also did wallpaper directly onto the adobe walls and using fabric for the monta underneath the viegas to catch the dirt from the original earthen roof.

So I became really interested in materials such as calcimine or aliz, which is a clay slip, paint or paper and fabric, and how those materials come in as elements of adobe architecture as well.

>> Faith: Tell me about the piece that you brought with you today.

>> Lopez: Yeah, so, this piece is called Cocinita de la Cienega and it is a work that was a part of the show I had at The Valley in Taos last summer.

It is a work that is based on an archive that I'm very passionate about.

It is called, the New Mexico Tech Adobe Archives, That was this incredible survey of adobe architecture in New Mexico from the 1970s to the 1990s.

And so I've been studying this archive that's held with the Earth Builders Guild.

And one of the folders is all about hornos in indigenous and indo-hispano communities, as well as adobe fireplaces, Fogones, and so I became really fascinated with that particular folder in the archive, thinking about food ways, as well as like the hearth or like even the spiritual center of the home for the fireplace and those being made out of earth.

And in that as its own type of specific practice and craft practice within the other way home.

And so this work is a colored pencil drawing of one of the images from La Cienega, a little community near Santa Fe, and the colored pencil drawing is then printed onto the adobe surface using a UV acrylic pigment print.

>> Faith: What happens to the image and the memory it holds when you return it to the Earth in this way?

>> Lopez: Yeah, this archive has been sitting for about 15 years without anyone working with it or seeing it, and I really felt like it was almost kind of a way of bringing out that archive, studying it through drawing and then reproducing it again into Earth to kind of bring it back to life.

And also, you know, there's a really big resurgence right now in New Mexico with learning about Adobe architecture and building ordinals and, you know, these incredible workshops that are happening right now.

And I feel like I feel like the work -- this particular work I did at The Valley was really trying to encourage that resurgence, but also to think about archives and how can we be new life into them.

>> Faith: What can adobe teach us about how to live differently in the future?

>> Lopez: Adobe architecture is all around the world and it's the oldest building material.

I think that -- now because of capitalism, we're forced to go to Home Depot to build homes now and there's just so much that is put in through regulations that make it so much more difficult to -- to build a home like our great grandparents did, or even potentially our grandparents.

And that should be, you know -- available to people to be able to still build with Earth in a way that feels accessible and doable.

And I think that it is a material that -- is very important, thinking about it for its ability to keep cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and it's very economical in that way.

And it's also very important in a heritage way.

Keeping the Vibe Alive >> Gordon-Wallace: I want to explain that there is a bubbling -- sense of urgency in my body to get this work done, and it has been there for a long time.

It didn't just happen as I get older, because there are so many on earth, artists with talent, and I know talent is not the only thing, but there are ones that have real talent that have not been identified.

They have accidentally been ignored -- In a purposeful, programmatic way that's provide cultural arts incubator is determined to continue to seek funding and the for artists to go away, leave their environment, leave their loved ones and go away and pay attention to themselves.

I'm Rosie Gordon-Wallace, President and Curator of Diaspora Cultural Arts Incubator and Incubator Space in Miami that primarily works with Caribbean artists.

I came to America fully baked as an adult, and I studied medical microbiology and the incubator incubation process in microbiology is everything.

You know, we take one day old shakes, we do our virus cells.

It is a part of the practice.

So the incubation and everybody is an incubator.

Now you see it and in all of the news and news spaces.

But for me it is really -- and not only an informed practice, it is a daily practice of taking care, the nurture and the rest has been a part of my life from the very beginning.

We started at the Bakehouse in 1996, and the start was predicated because many of my peers whose children had gone off to the major art schools Parsons raised, you know them, had no return to Miami with the notion that they could walk to a gallery with a portfolio and hand it in, and then they would get called for a show.

No, that's not how it works.

And so -- this group of young artists were getting really discouraged that they weren't being seen by the major galleries.

And I basically said, let's stop complaining and do something about it.

There was no business plan.

We just started meeting and decided that we're going to do an exhibition.

In 2024, everybody is talking about community, right?

How are we getting in, how we are supporting each other in the Caribbean community, in the black and brown community, in the cultural community, community is everything.

It is akin to safety.

It is akin to where -- when things are not going right, you can go for support.

So we created it without even having a name for it.

Folks would come to the Bakehouse and hang out with us there and hang out with with the artists there just because they knew we were there.

You know, you don't have to call to make an appointment.

Making an appointment formalizes a process, but going to a community space opens a door.

So there's a little nuance in there between feeling safe and wanted.

I go into a room and I know that I'm not accepted.

No one has to say, you can't come.

The room has a feel, the room has a vibe.

In community spaces, you go in, you step into Puerto Rican spaces, step into a Nicaraguan space, and you feel a sense of community, regardless of whether you speak the language or you're from that culture.

So it matters in how the work gets produced, and it matters in how people mature over time.

You also have to have bright people around you intelligent people, folks with vision and talent.

But in truth, and in fact, you also have to be curious and seek wisdom.

This nonprofit system has been around for a long time, and we are newcomers to the system.

And I've had many folks in the system who have been kind in pointing the way.

You know, there's a there's a way -- there's a way, you say it, you repeat it because there is a way.

You have to read the instructions, you have to follow the instruction.

No one cares what you think, you have to follow the instruction.

And so that has been my task in adding maturity to Diaspora Cultural Life Incubator.

I took it on, and as a scientist, it was a challenge that I embraced, primarily because no one talked about the archive piece, no one talked about the documentation piece, no one talked about making sure that when you meet an artist first you the visit that that is documented, that each practice, each activity is important.

We have been doing that for 28 years asking the questions about grandparents.

We have oral histories.

We have digital histories of the time.

And so a little bit of that I accredit to my formal training.

But it's hard.

It's hard.

And the system is not flexible.

You are a part of the system, and you drive on that highway and take on all of the facets of the system as well the institutions, the museums have a particular role to play.

They are assigned or unassigned.

The validating piece of an artist's career.

You have a solo in a museum.

It is a validating action.

However, the community activists, the people doing work in the community that are aligned and assigned to the artist are the ones that bring the memory, right.

So the museums wait for us to nurture and work and promote, and then they come in and snatch.

I will use the word snatch, snatch in a good way.

Snatch is not always bad, and we want that to happen when we talk about -- when I look at the CV of an artist and I say, let's see what -- let's diagnosis this, what's missing?

You haven't done any residencies.

Have you gone here?

Have you had a studio visit?

Has a curator come?

Do you have a scholar writing on your work?

All of these things are things that the museums want.

Because when we do the work, when I send an artist to a museum for solo show, and that work has been done, that archive has been full.

All they have to do now is put on lipstick.

The artists that I work with will tell you I'm very careful about mental health and health.

If you are a leader of an organization, you have to think about what care looks like and care means for me time that is unassigned.

It's like you get an unrestricted grant.

When I ask for a grant to send artists to Suriname for a month, I'm not asking them to go to work.

I'm saying, how can a new country with multiple cultures inform and allow you to think differently in your practice?

How can you wake up with not an assignment?

You know, a sign for the day?

What does that look like?

And that is a practice of care.

That is a practice where most of the artist at first don't know what to do.

They are completely uncomfortable with having unassigned time where they're not getting up to do work.

I see the change, I can make a case about impact.

And I know that when we teach that practice by doing, the artist is a better person for it, having gone through it.

I am genuinely -- deeply concerned about my peers, which were few in the beginning when we had the recession -- the recession that was named 2008, many of our arts organizations closed and never reopened.

There's a thing about closing that other artists will tell you, I resist closing.

When Covid came, we said, “we're too small to stop.” We'll put on our mask, but we're going to keep doing the work.

Our neighbors, our community needs this work.

So I am anxious, I am concerned.

What I think we have to do is pivot.

>> Allen: This powerful exhibition curated by none other than Rosie Gordon-Wallace.

[audience applause] >> Gordon-Wallace: Collaboration is not a noun.

It is a verb.

And we have to -- collaborate from not a place of scarcity but a place of abundance.

Collaboration has actions and it has consequences.

And it has -- It builds trust, and it means that your benefit may not happen at the same time.

That's true collaboration.

[interviewer asks a question] >> Gordon-Wallace: I would say be bolder.

I would say be reckless.

I would say be less respectful.

You know, we have been brought up to be -- to cross your legs, sit up, be respectful.

And it doesn't necessarily get you to where you want to get to.

There is respect without being -- nervous and afraid.

I would also say that -- the work that you're embarking on is important work.

I didn't think it was important work.

I just think it was work that was passion-driven.

I look back now and if I had defined it as important work, not only would I have continued to document it, I would have documented it in a different way.

I was catching the stories, putting them down.

I was archiving because that's my practice.

But looking back, I could have done it in a different way.

And that's not a regret, it█s something that I would do.

But what I would much rather do is look into the future.

[laughs] The next chapter is embedded in succession.

The next chapter is walking away from fear of 30 years of work, meaning fear and passing it on, being able to leave the kitchen with the stove turned down and the pots on top of the stove.

That's where I am, I am preparing.

We have -- thanks to the Mellon Foundation, we have been given support and forth, and I have to say, Momaday, Department of Cultural Affairs, they have been our parents throughout this journey.

We could not have gotten this far, but in terms of succession, having an Executive Director, Tanya Dedunes, having to -- Diaspora provide Catalyst Fellows, being able to say to them, you take care of the archive, make sure it's digitized, make sure it gets to the right place.

I can't teach you everything, but there are fundamental administrative roles.

Having Gordon step forward and say, “I would like to lead.” I'm not good at doing the admin, so we're going to have to surround them with admin and embedding what legacy is.

This is legacy work.

It's my life, you know.

And -- but I'm not afraid.

I'm not going to die at my desk.

I'll go and die, but I'm not going to die at my desk.

Even if I have to get up and then die.

I want to have a plan in place that has an endowment so in the next 20-30 years, when my dopey comes back, Diaspora vibe is running and thriving, and that artists have a place to come and do their work, we cannot all close.

We have to invest in the next generation.

And I'm hoping that the next generation can catch some of this passion that continues to curdle and churn inside of me, because the work is so worthy and the artists are so undervalued for what they bring to the stories and the joy that they bring to our lives.

>> Wallace: We started the organization around our dining room table, it's really been about family, and it's really been about that there█s enough room, and even with limited resources, like we always find the time, the effort to kind of make it happen.

>> Gordon-Wallace: I am so happy to see you all just turn around and look at each other.

Just look.

Look at who is beside you.

Look at the feeling.

Can you feel the vibe in the room?

>> All: Yes!

>> Gordon-Wallace: Can I get a round of applause for the vibe?

[crowd cheering and clapping] I'm at the very beginning of institution building and opportunity at Barry University with embedded in the library.

So the physical spaces in the library, the institutional -- economic conversations have just started.

But my dream is to embed Diaspora Cultural Arts Incubator as an institute with probably immigration studies at the university so that we can co-program with the art department, with students that come from areas that we know.

I want a big party in 2026 as I plan to step aside.

It is a fact.

And if I am alive because, you know, many of us didn't make it this year, if I'm alive in 2026, I will have a different song to say.

But it will be a gleeful song embedded in 30 years of joy.

The award winning Arts and Culture series Colores is now available on the PBS app, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and at NMPBS.org From classic episodes to brand new shows Colores is everywhere!

Watch now on your favorite NMPBS platforms.

Funding for Colores was provided in part by: New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation McCune Charitable Foundation New Mexico Arts a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs and by the National Endowment for the Arts and Viewers Like You