Join us for a panel discussion on the radical expansion of civic dialogue in contemporary art and community-based education, featuring Desierto Mountain Time partners and regional artists and educators Viola Arduini, Jamie Blosser, Bianca Castillero, Jessie Ryker-Crawford (White Earth Chippewa), PhD, and Daisy Quezada Ureña, moderated by Matthew Contos, SITE Santa Fe Director of Creativity and Learning. More information at DesiertoMountainTime.org.

About the Presenters

Viola Arduini is an Italian artist and educator currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She works as an art educator and administrator at 516 ARTS as well as participating in national and international networks to expand dialogues between art & science. Viola received a Bachelor of Arts from NABA New Academy of Fine Arts, Milano, Italy, a Master of Arts in Documentary Photography from the University of South Wales, Newport in the United Kingdom, and a Master of Fine Arts in Art & Ecology from the University of New Mexico in 2019. Her work investigates the relationships formed by humans, nature, and technology, and has been included in exhibitions in the US and Europe.

Jamie Blosser, is the Executive Director of Santa Fe Art Institute, working to creatively address equity in the arts and built environment through cohort building and participatory processes. A licensed architect, Blosser believes in housing as a right. She was an AIA United Nations delegate for the 2016 Habitat III convening and serves on the Ohkay Owingeh Housing Authority and National Development Council boards. Blosser was awarded a Harvard Loeb Fellowship, was Executive Producer of a PBS Natural Heroes documentary, and her community design work and writings have been published in several magazines and books. Blosser received her Masters in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania.

Bianca Castillero is an art educator originally from Mexico City. She has a Master’s degree in Art History from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). She has over 10 years of teaching experience in K- 12 and college.

Her work addresses the relationship between textile art and education, so she has developed several workshops and courses as well as various lesson plans that integrate these two practices.

She taught at the graphic design program for deaf students at the Technological University of Mexico where she supported the development of educational materials for deaf and hard-of-hearing students in the Universal Art History and History of Art in Mexico classes. She has also been an external consultant at the master’s degree in Pedagogical Development with a specialty in Visual Arts from the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional.

Her research was published by the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut of Berlin. She has presented at the Annual Textile festival of Mexico City, in the International Meeting of Mesoamerican Textiles, which took place in the Museo de Textiles de Oaxaca and she has also been invited to participate in panels on the relationship between art and education at the University of New Mexico Museum of Art, at CAPE Chicago, and at the Museo de Arte de Ciudad Juárez.

She obtained the certification in Interdisciplinary Program for Arts Teaching from the National Center of Arts in Mexico. She currently coordinates EMMA in Ciudad Juárez, an educational outreach program that works with underserved teens.

Jessie Ryker-Crawford (White Earth Anishinaabe) is the Director of the MFA Cultural Administration Department at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and teaches as a full professor in the Museum Studies Program.

She received her MA in Cultural Anthropology – with a minor in American Indian Studies –and Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Washington (UW), focusing on the Indigenization of the museum field.

Dr. Ryker-Crawford acts as a tribal advisor and has presented material on her studies at various conferences including the Association for Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums, the National Congress of the American Indian, and the International World Archaeological Congress; she has published articles and book chapters on Native American art and Indigenous models of exhibition and collections care.

Daisy Quezada Ureña is visual artist and educator based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Within her practice she creates ceramic works and installations that speak to identity and place in relation to social structures that cross between imposed borders. Quezada Ureña has worked alongside nonprofit organizations like El Otro Lado/The Other Side and Downtown Aurora Visual Arts which impact local communities by bringing art to youth. In 2016 Quezada cofounded Present Cartographers, a collective invested in artists working within the theme of immigration, recently launching Terreno: Borderland Linguistics and bosque brotante. Quezada Ureña’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at The Denver Art Museum, Summerhall (Edinburg, Scotland), New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum (New Taipei Taiwan), Gyeonggi Ceramic Art Museum (Icheon South Korea), the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts (Hubei Province, Wuhan, China), and Wheelright Museum of American Indian. At the Institute of American Indian Arts she is a faculty member and Department Chair of the Studio Arts program.

Moderator

Matthew Contos serves as an educator, artist, and curator of public engagement, working with various artists, groups, spaces, and organizations to establish collaborative platforms and initiatives that supplement cultural exchange, lifelong learning, and ecological stewardship. Contos combines his background in curatorial and artistic practices with his experience in community organizing and social services to implement social centers, international collaborations, exhibitions, publications, and diverse public programming.

Contos explores the transformational powers of artistic and curatorial strategies to resist static relationships and generate projects that produce more equitable, dynamic sites for cultural exchange where individuals interact, and new collective cultures emerge. His practice is guided by context, drawing from the sites, histories, communities, and diverse vantage points of those who have a stake in the project’s production and impact. Contos brings unlikely partners together to expand the constraints of the status quo and reduce the consequences of widening global inequalities and climate change. His projects take on many forms and vary in scale, from intimate encounters in art centers to city-wide events and multidisciplinary exhibitions.

Contos is currently the Director of Creativity and Learning at SITE Santa Fe and holds an MFA in Social Practice from California College of the Arts and a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Denver. He has worked within the art community for organizations nationwide, such as Creative Capital, The Center of Contemporary Arts Santa Fe, and the San Francisco Public Arts Commission.

About Desierto Mountain Time

Desierto Mountain Time is a constellation of contemporary arts organizations in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico making meaningful connections between local and international arts communities. Spurring conversations across the Chihuahuan, Sonoran, and High Deserts, Desierto Mountain Time shines a light on the vital, interconnected arts of our region, as well as the rich political, social, economic, and environmental dialogues they contain.