Kamden Storm
It would be impossible to pigeonhole multimedia Cochiti Pueblo artist Virgil Ortiz into one neat category, but it’s still kind of fun to try and explain what he does to people. Ortiz is a ceramacist and sculptor, a digital painter and designer. Brass tacks? If he wants to figure out how to do something, how to work in some new milieu, he’s going to do just that, and the dedication to expansion and experimentalism have more than earned him a spot in the pantheon of notable New Mexico artists for decades. Take, for example, Ortiz’s “Recon Watchmen,” characters that play a role in his ongoing Sirens: Secret Passkeys & Portals project examining the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 across the concept of multiple dimensions. In short, Ortiz has crafted a world wherein the revolt is happening simultaneously in 1680 and 2180. It’s very multiversal. Now, on the eve of the 100th iteration of Santa Fe Indian Market this weekend, Ortiz is not only preparing to sell his traditional wares from his booth on Lincoln Avenue, he’ll unveil a new component of his Sirens project this October as a permanent room at Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return. Luckily, I happened to be sitting next to Ortiz at the movies last week, so we set up an interview. This interview has been edited for clarity and space.
Let’s start with Meow Wolf. What can you tell us about your room and your concept?
The whole concept is bringing the ‘Recon Watchmen’ to life. [Visitors] go into the room, into the laboratory, which is a place where the ‘Watchmen’ are communicating with people here on Earth. There’s these other characters called ‘The Sirens,’ and they’re building an automaton army to help the ‘Watchmen.’ You’ll see pillars where they’re constructing armor and getting ready to send it down to Earth. It’s taking what I know from traditional work—the methods and materials; we dig our own clay, make our own paint—and adding foam sculpting, incorporating the resources to go larger. We’ve got costuming done for a video component. It’s pretty cool to see how it looks now, and the end result will be a feature film...about the Pueblo Revolt. The script is a living thing that keeps changing. It’s been re-written and re-drafted maybe four or five times now. It’s the Pueblo Revolt in two dimensions. Time jumpers going back and forth between those dimensions; how we preserve our way of life, traditions, our ceremonies, our artwork.
It’s obviously that Indian Market time of year, and a big one, too, given that it’s the 100th. Does this time of year bring anything up for you?
It’s really cool because you can go to the New Mexico History Museum and see [Honoring Tradition and Innovation: 100-Years of Santa Fe’s Indian Market 1922-2022], and I helped with that as a co-curator and a consultant. The concept is showing what the first Indian Market looked like—which was mostly potters, a little bit of jewelry, mostly Pueblo artists— and historical pictures. They set up the exhibition to look like what Indian Market looked like a long time ago, and there’s me as a futuristic part of it.
I remember lying underneath the tables when my parents and grandparents would show at Indian Market. But it was being there that allowed me to be in the city and see Star Wars for the first time in the theater at the DeVargas [Center] when I was 6 years old. Indian Market has changed, because it used to be that it was only based on traditional methods and materials, that it was very highly curated. There’s a lot more now, but I do show my traditional stuff in my booth. I show more sci-fi kind of stuff at places like Meow Wolf.
You work in so many mediums. Are you erring toward anything right now, and was it the organic direction the art took, or did you deliberately set out to work in any specific style?
It’s all of the above. And to pull it off, you need a team. Hanging out with [Albuquerque artist] Chris Casey, I have the best teacher to make molds and use resin. It definitely takes a whole team to pull it off, and the projects just keep getting bigger and bigger. If I don’t know how to do something, I know someone who does. And it’s all manifesting, too. Everybody thinks I’m crazy when I talk about manifesting all the time, but it’s real. All of a sudden, it just appears like, ‘We need to make a 9-foot bus,’ and I tell someone, ‘I don’t know how yet, but you’re a part of it now.’ The thing with art is that it’s doable. If someone has already done it, it’s doable. The thing is to not be afraid of failure. Failure is one of our best teachers. You fail, you learn, you do it right.
