Some of us still think back fondly to Curate Santa Fe founder Moss’s short-lived yet so excellent Show Pony art space from a few years back. And though Moss might have phased to a more contractor-like model with their Curate Santa Fe outfit, you can still see their shows in numerous spaces around town. Perhaps most prominently, Moss is the mind behind the rotating shows at all three Iconik Coffee Roasters locations in downtown and Midtown. With this week’s show featuring charcoal portraits by artist Jared Weiss opening at Iconik’s Lupe spot on Guadalupe Street (4-6 pm Saturday, April 19. Free. 314 S Guadalupe St., (505) 428-0996), the Brandon Behning sculptural show Remember Everything at microgallery Station 5 (1600 Lena St., #C20, station5.elisakeir.com) still running through the weekend, an encore of Clover Duncan’s collage show Soup up at Iconik Lena (1600 Lena St., #A2, iconikcoffee.com) and next month’s Nonlinear from painter Sienna Luna slated for the Iconik Red location on Cerrillos Road (1366 Cerrillos Road), we spoke with Moss to get a little more insight. This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
Can you tell us about your current and upcoming shows, and why you think these artists are notable?
OK, so I have several shows. There’s Jared Weiss’ Portraits opening this Saturday, and Jared’s a living legend as far as I’m concerned, and head of painting at Santa Fe Community College. The thing that Jared does and that I went and asked him for was...in this time, nothing makes me happier than to celebrate our beautiful community. And because for so long he didn’t paint faces—but then COVID hit and he did paint faces—I felt he had the antidote for isolation, which is to celebrate the humanity of the people we see every day in town.
Brandon Behning is up at Station 5, and that show is through this weekend. Brandon is the kind of artist who other artists want to be. I’ve said about him in the past that he has an ability to consider and assume the intellect of the viewer. It’s high art to me, and I’ve been a fan since 2009, so getting to show his 3D work felt really exciting to me. He’s an artist’s artist.
Then Sienna Luna is opening May 3. I mean, Sienna is just such a special artist. She’s doing so much and her images invoke such deep reverence for all things living, and also for that matter, all things that have lived and will live. I went to Sienna and said, ‘I know you have some work, some new work and some older work, and I’m over this whole Instagram you-see-a-thing-once thing.’ She inspired me to do what we’re calling a retrospective show, and it’s so cool. I want to see the good work more than once; see my favorite movie more than once; hear my favorite album more than once. It felt like exactly where I wanted to be, where a good thing is good. You should experience your favorite dish more than once.
Oh, and Clover Duncan is getting an encore performance at Iconik Lena of their show called Soup.
When you’re putting a show together, is it as simple as you know what you like when you see it, or do you have a different process?
I always kind of know what I like when I see it, and there are kind of two categories for working with me.
I do open calls where I’ll send out a call in magazines or my website (curatesantafe.com) that says ‘if you want to apply, this is how.’ I’ve also been working with some of these artists for over a decade, so I’m repping them over time and getting to see their new bodies of work as they happen. And I’m lucky enough that they want to come back and work with me from time to time. It’s relationship building, because we’re all going to be in this community for the next 50 years, hopefully.
The other thing is that people write to me through my website appropriately and say they’d like to go through the process. Oh, also I happen upon work and am like, ‘Who is making this work? Can I show their work?’
My core value for this venture is to come from contribution, and that means I have the opportunity to share my eye and then gift what I’m seeing out to the community. It’s a joy to show the work, so I’m already getting that joy and that energy by getting to do that. Yes, I want to sell work for the artist, selling for the artist is wonderful. What I realized is that this is a gift and to not share my ability to organize and beautify would be miserly. My job is to look over there and say ‘Have you seen that?’ I mean, when I was competitive surfing, I had trouble sometimes because I was rooting so hard for the other person in the water. Besides fanboy and cheerleader…if that’s where I’m coming from, good things happen for all. And I’ll figure it out. Cool work is cool work.
You’ve run physical spaces, you’ve been a curatorial gunslinger and many points between—obviously there are lots of ways to be successful, but have you noticed any particular style of curation feels more impactful for you?
I feel like I follow what is being called for—so, the city needs street bike hitches? That was a need, and now there’s bike parking. Low-rent spaces? That’s what was called for, so that’s where I went. I think it’s more about heeding the call. It’s like a thread. I’m looking at it like a tapestry, and I’m just following the thread. It might look like I’m all over the place—yeah, I kind of am, and that’s the joy I get to have by being so mutable. My background is in interior design, so it’s just beautifying space.
Success is a really broad word. For me, I’m coming from...to be successful means to be contributing, so what’s most successful is about attention to caring and attention to celebrating. Wherever the beauty wants to be invoked, I’ll be there. I think I just have this surfer mentality, where you don’t stand on the beach waiting and crying if there’s no surf, you go three miles down to the swell. I’m just gonna keep looking for the swell.
