Friday-Saturday
Originals and Others
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Whenever there is a large juried (and partly invitational) museum exhibition, someone is bound to feel left out. When the Museum of New Mexico, in association with the National Museum for Women in the Arts,
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finalized their selection of 71 women working in New Mexico from a field of 641 entrants, the more activist and energized of those who didn't make the cut for Originals 2005 quickly arranged for Other Women: Les Refusées.
Things got spicy when the NMWA representatives didn't want the upstarts referencing the official exhibition (don't they know that kind of behavior equals publicity?), but don't let controversy keep you from either of these comprehensive collections of powerful "women's work." (Zane Fischer)
Sunday
Knot Keeper
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Arthur Sze may appear to be a mild-
mannered IAIA instructor, but to the world outside Santa Fe he's a heavyweight in contemporary poetry.
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Sze has more than enough local acclaim, however, that Collected Works, even with all its indie cred, would burst at the seams trying to contain him. Sze's new book, Quipu (Copper Canyon Press, $15.00)
is a reference to the Incan record system in which a variety of colored knots were attached to a central cord, then kept by their makers who were responsible for decoding them. Sze decodes through his poetry the knots of science, philosophy, anthropology and the particular concerns of those marooned between cultures. Each poem-elegy to ode-is lovingly unraveled by Sze; big poet, big ideas, big event. (Farren Stanley)
Sunday-Monday
Reel Magic
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Carlos Castaneda, step aside. Judith Fein and Paul Ross have spent the last decade documenting the work of indigenous healers from South Africa to Ecuador-and now, thanks to their efforts, viewers can experience practically first-hand what it's like to apprentice with a native Mexican curandera .
Ana Maria de Villar (pictured)
gave the couple permission to end the secrecy surrounding
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curanderisma and to share her ancient sorcery
with the outside world. While Ross filmed it all, Fein studied ancient herbal and candle
techniques, assisted with healings in de Villar's private chapel and walked along hidden "witch trails."
"We've been lucky to have been exposed to so many cultures," says Fein, as she and Ross prepare for a week's filming in Guatemala. "Our paramount desire now is to include the audience in the travel experience." Former actress Fein provides an hour of "infotainment" before the screening, taking viewers along for the whole witchy ride. (Jennifer Lowe)
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Metheny Addict
Sometimes fusion gets a bad rap. You know, like in the '80s, when "fusion" referred to two things: Yuppified food combinations when coked-out chefs decided combining raw yellowtail with rare Eskimo delicacies was a good idea, and when misguided jazz and rock artists figured a musically equivalent synthesis was the next
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big thing.
The result? Kenny G.
But Pat Metheny
is
one of those
rare musicians who makes things work. Maybe it's that he's so freakishly adept
at pretty much any instrument under the sun; maybe it's that he chooses such prodigious talent to work with (this tour, it's Christian McBride, Antonio Sanchez and David Sanchez); or maybe it's that, as Metheny's guitars and trumpets noodle along,
intertwining with the same delicate balance as twin strands of DNA, he pushes and pulls the listener along with him with in an improvisational sensibility as intricate as strawberry-infused sesame vegetable paté, but also as straight-
forward and reliable as a plain ol' steak. (Jonanna Widner)
