SITE Santa Fe is pleased to present a new program, Creative Residencies (CRs), celebrating creative people doing extraordinary work in our community.

SITE Santa Fe will collaborate with our CR participants to present unexpected creative experiences in the galleries. Learn more about upcoming CR participant exhibitions here.

Meet our CR participants below!

Many thanks to the Gale Family Foundation and the Anne Embree Charitable Foundation for their support of this program.

Megan Goldberg

Megan Goldberg
Megan Goldberg is a nationally certified sign language interpreter living and working in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Looking back, Megan remembers a second-grade lesson where her teacher taught the class the American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet. That lesson opened her eyes to a whole new world, a visual language. Interestingly, ASL continued to show up in her life in a variety of different ways. Megan earned a Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics with a concentration in Sign Language Studies from the University of New Mexico.

Megan has been interpreting in the community for almost 15 years. She is nationally certified under the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf. She cares deeply about language access, Deaf rights, and is always looking to spread awareness about systemic issues that still exist today. She works in a variety of settings including educational, entertainment, medical, and legal. She is also the interpreter coordinator for RGC Access, the only New Mexico based interpreting referral agency, and coordinates interpreters for a variety of contracts around the state.

Goldberg’s CR project will be on view in the galleries from August 12 – September 12. Learn more here.

Three frames of video of Megan Interpreting story in ASL

Johnny Ortiz

Johnny Ortiz
Johnny Ortiz is a genizaro, of native american and mother spain descent, born and raised in the small town of Taos, New Mexico, where he spent his youth primarily on the Taos Pueblo. It was here he first found his love for wild food, which is still an integral part of life of the culture. He remembers learning to eat the wild rose from his grandfather and how formative that single experience was.

In 2015, he started his own project, / Shed. The beginning of / Shed started with the thought of making an experience around food that was fully authentic, where every detail had meaning and where he could have interaction with every step of the process himself. More than a restaurant, / Shed is an ethos, an ongoing meditation on where he lives and is from in Northern New Mexico, a celebration of its nature and the fleeting of time. A dining series shaped by his familial Indigenous roots and the landscape around him. The exquisite land-inspired menu is paired with ceramic work by himself, that is dug of wild micaceous clay that has been used by his ancestors for generations.

In fall 2010, he dropped out after his first semester of business school and moved to Chicago to learn solely by trade. Having worked with food for five years already, he took a position at the restaurant Alinea, at the time being the youngest on the team. Sixteen months of intensive learning later, Johnny was eager to continue learning how to cook, going next to Lummi Island, Washington to work at the Willows Inn where he learned more about his love for wild and location specific food. After a season there Johnny moved to San Francisco, California to work with Josh Skenes at Saison. Johnny was on the opening team and started on the hearth/meat station, the heart of the restaurant. At the end of his first year, Johnny got promoted to Sous Chef, working second to Josh Skenes for the following three years during which he learned to cook with more intention, how to run a team, select the best produce, and overall how the inner workings of a restaurant worked. In Johnny’s mind there was never a question of returning home, but rather when that was going to happen.

Ortiz’s CR project will be on view in the galleries from October 1 – October 24. Learn more here.


Greens on a dark plate centered on a dark background
Small white flowers arranged on a dark plate centered on a dark background

Monique Carr

Monique Carr sitting in chair with plant and abstract painting in background
Photo: Alex Ignacio/Rebel Media, courtesy Southwest Contemporary
Monique Carr is an observer, forager, and maker of shrubs- fermented syrups and wine in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her process involves being asked to pick fruits from properties where the fruit will otherwise go to waste and in doing so celebrating the richness of our harvest seasonally. With these fruits she makes cold-processed botanical syrups for soft drinks and cocktails. Her intention with this process is of storytelling, of capturing how symbiosis between flora and human, via fermentation, is synchronous to facilitating closeness between loved ones and community, elicited through memory, taste, and smell.

Her achievements as a maker include teaching a workshop for the New Mexico Fermentation festival “Mini Series” via Edible Magazine Santa Fe. She is an honorary of The Wheelright Museum’s “Better Wednesday” salon series. Monique has contributed an essay to the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies publication: Small Acts of Resilience for Living Within the Earth’s Carrying Capacity.

Her observations and process have been featured in the following publications:

Spellbound Syrups Captivates the Senses – Edible New Mexico
Craftspeople to Know in New Mexico | Southwest Contemporary
“Sweet and Sour” by Maria Manuela for New Mexico Magazine

@spellbound_syrups

Carr’s CR project will be on view in the galleries from November 4 – December 5. Learn more here.

Hand holding three orange fruits in front of stucco background
Hand holding small glass full of amber liquid in front of leafy background