This 12-week professional development program provides artists with educational workshops, a peer-network of artists, plus materials and support to create new, original artwork. The New Works program is a unique and welcoming opportunity for artists seeking professional development support.
New Works 2025
OffCenter Arts is excited to present the second round of our artist professional development & art creation program: New Works!
In partnership with the City of Albuquerque Public Art & UETF, New Works is designed to support underserved artists and connect the city with new artwork from local artists.
Currently on exhibition at FUSION, the artwork created for this program includes stained glass, painting, collage, mixed media, and photography. 70 pieces created by 22 participants and one program volunteer. This exhibition showcases what individuals can create when given the tools and support to cross boundaries and claim their own creative expression.
Working in a variety of media, this diverse group of artists are united in their boundary-crossing experiences. Whether those boundaries are geographic borders, common social barriers such as housing status, or any of the many restrictive cultural boundaries placed on creative expression, these artists create work that expands their own and viewers' expectations.
This exhibition can be viewed during public FUSION events or by appointment from May 14–June 22. To schedule a visit email FUSION.
At right: Divine Delight by shiloh burton; below: Enchanted Nook by Esperanza Dodge.
Featuring artwork by :
Anagamin
Ana Baranda
Amy Ford
Alexis Verdugo
Chris Horman
Drew Lauderdale
Esperanza Dodge
Genevieve Buskirk
Jason McInnes
Joyce Depow
Kelly Sophia Grace
Eve Tallula Gottwald
Lus Roca
Natalie Olson
Nikki Joseph
Orlando Herrera
Rhiannon Keams
Robin Golden
shiloh burton
Sabah Ul-Hasan
Tracey Baca
W.L. Lee
Yesenia Morales
2025 Artists
Alexis Verdugo (Alexis Joy)
My art begins with breath. It is a practice of presence, a way of softening into the unknown and allowing what wants to be seen to emerge. I create intuitively, letting color, texture, and form speak the language of what I may not yet have words for. Through this process, I listen both to myself and to the deeper rhythms of life moving through me.
In the journey to understand the feminine, belonging, the earth, and the self, my paintings become quiet altars. They reflect the parts that long to be witnessed, the truths that live beneath the surface, and the beauty of being in relationship with all that we are. My work invites others to meet themselves more fully and to feel their way back into connection with breath, with body, and with the world around them.
Artist Biography
Alexis Joy is a visual artist, mother, and inner work facilitator living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Working with acrylic, watercolor, and natural materials on canvas and paper, she creates art as a way of listening inward to honor the quiet wisdom that moves through the body and breath. Her creative process is deeply informed by her own journey of returning to herself through motherhood, breathwork, and somatic practices.
Her paintings explore the connection between the feminine, the earth, and the inner landscape that shapes our outer experience. Each piece is an invitation to pause, to feel, and to remember what is sacred, alive, and true.
See more of Alexis’ work in person at FUSION now through June 22, 2025. Details here.
Featured work: Dreamseed, acrylic, pumice, mica, and gold leaf on canvas, 24 x 36 inches; In her light, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 24 inches.
Anagamin
Anagamin is an outsider artist from upstate New York. She has a background working in mental health and natural therapeutics. Much of Anagamin’s work is informed by the subject of psychology and by the presence of shadow within her life. Anagamin embraces absurdism, Buddhist concepts, cognitive dissonance, and existential questions. With a sense of whimsy, compassion, movement, and playfulness, her work resides within a feral liminal space. Is this a dramedy? A big cosmic joke? Should the audience laugh or cry when viewing her work? Either. Both.
Amy Ford
Rooted in the natural beauty of Wisconsin’s woods and the shores of the Great Lakes, my printmaking practice is deeply influenced by the quiet rhythms of the natural world. I’ve always been drawn to collecting—river rocks, feathers, leaves—objects that carry the stories of place and time. My work isn’t about a final outcome, but about engaging in a process that reflects this lifelong connection: the meditative act of walking, gathering, observing. Whether it’s the smooth weight of a polished river stone or the memory of a mountain trail, each print is a gesture of presence—grounded, textural, and shaped by the landscapes that shape me.
Artist Biography
Amy Ford creates prints using elements of nature to explore the stories and histories that nature has to offer. She was born in the Midwest and currently resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she teaches 3rd graders at an arts integration school. She has exhibited her prints at the Albuquerque Zine Fest for the past three years. She has donated some of her prints to OffCenter Community Arts Project.
Ana Baranda
The Rosy Finch travels from the Alaskan tundra and settles in the Sandia Crest during the winter months from. Swarms of Red Winged Blackbirds in flight are literal power in numbers. The Great Egret, a common waterbird seen along the Rio Grande, reminds me of long-necked birds painted on artesanias from my parent’s home town, Villa Nicolas Bravo.
I thought a lot about birds as a child, enamored by their ability to fly when I usually wanted to fight. Out in the world, my mind moves from fight and flight like a soft bodied creature seeking survival. In nature I settle into curiosity of my surroundings followed by wonder then awe.
I think about awe in the midst of fight- in the form of community organizing and community care. I think of the joy and pleasure of seeing something so small and mighty in flight. I think about myself, so small and mighty, and I think about community and the power we hold together.
Artist Biography
Ana Baranda (b.1989) is a multidisciplinary artist living and making in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She grew up in a working class, immigrant community in Los Angeles before moving to Asheville, North Carolina. She graduated from Warren Wilson College in 2012 after studying Visual Art and Sociology. Her artwork draws from her experience in human services and her work in the public sector. She thinks about labor, gender, language, and memory in her work. Her pieces have been exhibited in the U.S. and Mexico through public and private institutions.
How Does It Feel to Be So Small And Mighty In Flight, acrylic, cardstock, tissue paper, colored pencil, chalk pastel on wood board, 18 x 24 inches.
Chris Homan
Artist Biography
Chris Homan is a queer, self-taught watercolor artist from Duluth, MN. She has been painting in earnest since 2017. She has always found solace in nature and used to hike in the woods regularly before she became disabled. When this was no longer an option, she created a series of tree paintings for comfort and grounding. She relocated to Albuquerque where she has continued to hone her watercolor techniques over the last six years. She intends to impart the peace and whimsey of the natural world while calling attention to the importance of our fragile ecosystems.
Her work has been exhibited and sold in Minnesota and New Mexico.
Drew Lauderdale
“In a sense, every human construction, whether mental or material, is a component in a landscape of fear because it exists in constant chaos. Thus children's fairy tales as well as adult's legends, cosmological myths, and indeed philosophical systems are shelters built by the mind in which human beings can rest, at least temporarily, from the siege of inchoate experience and of doubt.” ― Yi-Fu Tuan, Landscapes of Fear
If place wore a mask, imagine what words we could speak to it. If the spaces we travel through had faces, how differently would we remember them, personify them, care for them, hate them? If a place had a face, would it also have a ghost? What things would you say, and what games would you play, with the ghost of your childhood bedroom?
My art is the result of being haunted by a sidewalk, and from speaking at length with the shadows of stripmalls and old state-forest pavilions. My work uses wood as a base and gouache for color. I carve deep textured lines with heat and burn the paint for a unique color. For each piece, I craft a unique frame made of brass which I shape and paint. I use gold leaf to create pools of luminance out of which the spirits of places long-gone can be glimpsed.
My practice is heat, water, wood, metal, and light. I created these works sitting on the floor in a room which was filled with jealousy that she did not warrant a portrait herself. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have enjoyed capturing them for you.
Artist Bio
Drew Lauderdale creates things that are beautiful and odd. He uses wood, paint, wire, glue and whatever else he can find to explore how to play games with ghosts and oracles. Lauderdale was born in Springfield, Missouri in 1988 and currently resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He attended university at Missouri State where he majored in Human Geography. His experience working in the museum and educational fields inform his approach to art, and his use of unorthodox materials. As a Senior Educator at Explora Science Center, and Design Lab Coordinator at the New York Hall of Science, Lauderdale learned how to create hands-on, materials rich experiences that draw participants in, and leave them with the feeling of having entered a broader world. His art reflects this training by inviting the viewer to engage and become a part of the worlds he captures.
The Vernal Apotheosis, watercolor, gold leaf, brass, 18 x 24 inches; The Devil You Left at the Crossroads, watercolor, gold leaf, brass, 12 x 12 inches.
Esperanza Dodge
I am a dreamer who creates miniature worlds full of wonder—intimate scenes where objects, textures, and stories converge in ways that don’t quite belong together, yet somehow feel exactly right. My art is built from fragments: cutouts, sparkles, shadows, everyday things transformed. I layer the magical with the mundane to create spaces that feel like portals—half memory, half imagination.
I work in collage, video, and assemblage to craft pieces that are deeply personal but speak to the universal: the thrill of discovery, the joy of beauty, and the quiet power of seeing meaning in the small and quirky. My work invites viewers to wonder, to notice, and to connect with the beauty of the ordinary and the extraordinary alike.
At its heart, my practice is about curiosity, play, and the belief that everything—every scrap, every object, every moment—has the potential to become something more.
Enchanted Nook, collage, 12 x 12 inches.
Eve Tallula Gottwald
Eve Tallula Gottwald is an artist, a nurturer, a hot gluer, and a lifelong student. Their pastel drawings are often brightly colored and expressive, with rich texture and bold, graphic lines. Eve’s work is an exploration of pattern and surface; mess and connection. It zooms in and out of complexities as small as the cells and structures that make up your body, as mundane as the objects strewn across your kitchen counter, or as vast as the galaxies spiralling out across our universe. Eve creates for the kids, the punks, the queers, the curious, and for people who care. Eve cares about playfulness, sincerity, the land under our feet, and you.
Artist Biography
Eve Tallula Gottwald was raised in Albuquerque, NM, and is currently pursuing a BFA in Studio Art at the University of New Mexico. They have been drawing, painting, cutting, pinning, gluing, sewing, and otherwise making big, glitter-filled messes for as long as they can remember. Eve also works as a freelance graphic designer, and can curate the hell out of a space, outfit, or experience. Eve’s hobbies include curling up with their wife and cat to watch Star Trek, laying in the sun with a good book, and brewing the perfect cup of tea or coffee.
See all of this work and more pieces by each artist in the New Works exhibition at FUSION, now through June 22.
Genevieve Buskirk
La Llorona’s Scream
Inspired by the legend of La Llorona—a woman of mourning and regret. It didn’t stay there as it held me in place with the colors and tones changing and turning to something more personal.
Beginning as a scream - loud, sharp, raw - but as I worked, it shifted. The scream softened into its truer ache. The figure became a bird whose head is bowed in both defiance and surrender, what’s left unsaid. The water beneath her darkened. What started as soft blue grew heavier, deeper, like grief that settles in your bones.
It became the unpolished pain, shaped by a life where safety is sometimes found in chaos, and silence carries the harshest truths.
It’s about the kind of love that makes you strong and tired at the same time. The kind that teaches you to hold your head up even when it hurts. When you say you’re “fine,” so often the word starts to sound like a lie.
This piece is messy, I know. Because it was. Because it is.
Featured work: La Llorona’s Grief, oil paint, 24 x 36 inches.
Artist Biography
Genevieve is a self-taught artist whose work is shaped by rhythm, grit, and unexpected turns. Her father taught her to create without fear of failure. Through music, her mother showed her how to feel without needing words.
Her art is pulled from unpredictable places where life pushes you. She grew up bouncing from place to place, but Albuquerque was always—and still is—home. Claimed by a small child (who’s not so small anymore), her work lives in sarcasm and the remembrance of love. It breathes in confidence, knowing her man will catch her as she daintily stumbles with a complicated grace that makes your head and mind quirk to the side.
Her art is created hidden under desks, braving the brutal love of happy Pitty tails, near closet doors exiled by past demons, but always chasing warmth and therefore the perfect light. She works in oil and pastel, capturing what is honest, even when it’s not pretty.
She doesn’t pretend to be special, but will be the “for really, real” frustrating truth when you’re ready to listen.
Jason McInnes
Gather sustaining provisions.
Reinforce the foundation.
Begin the assembly.
I work towards a harmonious creation; the precarious notion that through practice and inquiry, I can more clearly comprehend my own existence.
I am a descendant of the production lines and bustling streets of the midwest; born and raised in suburban Detroit, then 24 years in my adoptive hometown of Chicago. Now I am inspired by the mighty cottonwood trees of the Bosque near my home of Albuquerque, NM.
I scaffold my visual art and music practices by developing systems of learning. These systems then allow me to live with, and examine from above, my creative process. The resulting sets of skills and work buttress my aspirational goal, which is to strengthen my equanimity.
I am drawn to readily available marking-making tools for my visual art, such as common black pens, charcoal and eraser, and simple cameras. I use these tools to build and frequently merge landscapes, still lifes, and abstract expressions.
These subjects provide room for me to contemplate mixtures of celestial and human-made light, the melodies and lines of a skatepark or the crisp edge of juniper trees along the ridge of the foothills, sitting bold against a blue sky.
Joyce Depow
My creations are my entertainment, they bring joy to me and make me laugh. I imagine when others see my work, they will smile and laugh, too. I’ve always thought that an artist makes a statement with their creations, eliciting emotion in the viewer with their art. If joy, laughter, and humor are emotions, then I too am an artist. My purpose in life is to bring joy and humor into any situation. It is for this reason I left my professional career to become a clown
After meeting at a professional conference and determining soon after that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, my partner Andy and I decided to hit the road and become stage clowns. We traveled the country with a group of musicians, magicians and roadies for many years, entertaining adults and children at various gigs and festivals. The painting of the two clowns depicts me and my partner as “Honey and Sweetie Pie” having our last dance, a magical time that is ever so sweet to me. Sweetie Pie passed away on Christmas Day in 2023. I created this painting in remembrance of our life together, to capture a moment when it was just us two: waltzing in time to the music on a street corner with no one else around.
Searching for a theme for my next piece, I asked the universe for a sign. The mail brought me a catalogue which I would normally ignore and toss in the recycling bin. It was titled, “Favorite Things.” Was this a sign from the great unconscious? I began to reminisce about my favorite things. Food, of course, was at the top of my list. Years ago, a fall and subsequent removal of my kidney resulted in my being bound to a wheelchair and no longer being able to eat many of my favorite foods. In my painting, you will see a few of these behind bars, just out of my reach. When thinking about my favorite foods, I realized that healthier foods were not only sustenance, but also celebration, nurturing, medicine, and comfort. This made me happy.
While traveling and living in a small trailer, my partner Andy and I often stayed in state and national parks and volunteered with AmeriCorps. There I learned how to identify wild plants. My love for plants and discovering how indigenous peoples used them for food, medicine, spiritual practices, led me to writing and illustrating numerous books on ethnobotany. Some call them weeds, but I know and love them quite differently. (One of my books is even called “Those Dam Weeds.”) The plants depicted in my painting are all edible plants found around Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Featured work: Eating Albuquerque, acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12 inches; Verboten Victuals, mixed media, 24 x 18 inches.
See more of Joyce’s work in person at FUSION now through June 22, 2025. Details here.
Kelly Sophia Grace
I am a multi-disciplinary creative, passionately expressing beauty, contrast, and soul connection. I paint and build without a set intention. I let the work become itself, which reflects my spiritual and visual autobiography.
My current series focuses on abstract painting with vivid color and dramatic movement. I’m inspired by classic artwork created in New Mexico by Richard Diebenkorn, Elaine DeKooning, Fritz Scholder, Agnes Martin, and, of course, Georgia O’Keeffe. The landscape and culture of the state are my deepest influences.
I was born in Albuquerque, where I grew up in a family that loved and encouraged artistic endeavors. My life has been a wild ride, including decades as an attorney focused on protecting children, pastoring a church, and writing several books and plays. As a transgender woman, I’ve had the privilege of seeing the world through the perspective of presenting myself as both masculine and feminine. Being trans is my superpower.
I am captivated by everything, all at once. I flit like a hummingbird, from mixed media to assemblage to jewelry and magical things, such as wands reflecting the southwest, made of cholla and aspen and embedded with turquoise and volcanic beads. I infuse magic into everything I do. Making pretty things is my safe place.
Suddenly, I Knew I Could Be Me, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 18 inches.
See more of Kelly’s work in person at FUSION now through June 22, 2025. Details here.
Where do I start again? acrylic, mixed media on canvas, 36 x 24 inches. See this and more of Natalies’s work in person at FUSION now through June 22, 2025. Details here.
Natalie Olsen
A 4th Generation Femme Creator, Natalie Olsen continues to delve into new practices of expression. She leaves no artistic medium unexplored. Multimedia collage using found objects, paint, drawing, writing, and photography dominate her artistic focus. Her canvases of choice are often 3D objects like glass bottles and square tins. No blank space is off-limits.
A Burqueña since childhood, Natalie’s artistic themes include nature images, bold culture through patterns, symbols, and images juxtaposed with depictions of individual strength + community togetherness. She interacts playfully with contrast, light, shade, and texture through her pieces.
Having lived multiple lives by her early forties - and collected many items along the way - her home studio is a prime place for her work to develop. Although sometimes being in a comfortable social setting with like-minded humans boosts her imagination.
Natalie is at the forefront of her next adventure, and thrives on moving forward with positive intention, fervor and steady velocity, especially aligned with her works of art.
Nikki Joseph
I have no formal education, Life has been my biggest educator. I was born in Cortez, Colorado in 1954, and currently live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Several years ago I awoke and realized that I wanted to be an artist. It was a realization of a journey that I have been traveling on for many years, unbeknownst to me.
Having no instruction in art and no real hangups about what was "right," I took off with reckless abandon. I just started - using a lot of paint and painting quickly. This approach led me to study impressionistic styles, which were in line with what I wanted to teach myself and felt perfect in my being.
After painting almost every day and trying many techniques and mediums, I felt that art had been lying dormant in me for quite some time. I have been painting and experimenting for close to three years now and could not be happier. If I see something that I like or a new technique I want to explore, I just go for it. If something doesn't work out, I just try something else. I also combine visual art with my poetry to create individualized greeting cards combining watercolor painting with my original verse.
I have lived most of my adult life in the southwest, where I have become infused with the bright, beautiful hues and colors from nature. I would love viewers to be drawn into my paintings through color and flow. I try not to put any conditions or restrictions upon my creativity. I vow to the universe that I will create forever, regardless of the outcome.
I enjoy talking about art and creativity to all who are interested. I share my process of creation with others, hopefully encouraging them to seek their own creative expression and inspiration. After all, we all have the potential for art and the gift of creativity, maybe even hidden within our being, yearning for expression.
March 2025 Women’s History Month, collage and acrylic, 18 x 24 inches; Pink Flow of Life, acrylic, 12 x 12 inches.
See these and more of Nikki’s work in person at FUSION now through June 22, 2025. Details here.
Orlando Herrera
Orlando Herrera was born 1979 in Albuquerque, New Mexico but grew up in Tijeras, New Mexico. He graduated from Moriarty High School in 1996. He is a self taught artist and his inspiration comes from his family of musicians and artists. He started off practicing the saxophone and the piano but fell in love with visual art when he got to middle school.
In 1995 he had an art piece that was showcased in “Lowrider Art Magazine” and also had an art piece at the New Mexico State Fair. In 2004 he started learning to airbrush and hasn’t stopped since. He has done small murals but mostly creates canvas airbrush paintings. He also still enjoys drawing with pencil, colored pencils, and pen.
Family Tree, airbrush, 36 x 24 inches.
See this and more of Orlando’s work in person at FUSION now through June 22, 2025. Details here.
Transcendence, acrylic, 24 x 18 inches. On view at FUSION through June 22.
Rhiannon Keams
My work explores the release of emotion, thought, and energy through abstract and surreal compositions. Each painting begins in a state of flow, guided by an intuitive response to color, movement, and contrast. I allow the process to unfold organically, layering acrylics to shape dynamic relationships between bold oppositions and unexpected harmonies.
Through this approach, I create visual spaces that invite curiosity and open interpretation — encouraging viewers to engage with the piece and discover their own meaning within it.
For me, painting is both a quiet act of expression and a form of meditation, free from the need for explanation — a conversation expressed through color and form. Each piece speaks through vibrant palettes, refined details, and the strength of visual storytelling.
Artist Biography
Rhiannon Keams is an abstract and surreal artist, born in Santa Fe, NM, and raised in Albuquerque. Her work is driven by emotion and creative instinct, using layers of bold color with black, white, gold, and silver to create depth and striking highlights. Keams embraces risk in her creative process, allowing her paintings to evolve in unexpected ways.
See all of this work and more pieces by the participating artists in the New Works exhibition at FUSION, now through June 22.
Robin Golden
My artwork takes inspiration from the creatures of the natural world. With a background in Conservation Biology, my experiments in visual art reflect my fascination with the fantastic reality of the world.
My current work explores organic animal forms through Tiffany-style Stained Glass. I love presenting unusual colors and unique curved shapes in glass to emphasize movement and flow within my pieces. I hope that my pieces reflect to others the beauty that I see in all of the living things around us.
Blue Water Dragon, Tiffany-style stained glass, 28 x 20 inches; Cranberry Peacock, Tiffany-style stained glass, 18 x 24 inches.
Sabah Ul-Hasan
What is our relationship to ourselves, each other, and the universe that both engulfs and lives inside of us? Life is simultaneously simple and complex. This work intends to remind the audience of the connections we have. We are as much ocean water as we are star stuff. These pieces are inspired by being at odds with our own existence. They urge the audience: Take pause. Be. You are here, and that’s all that matters.
I was born in Salt Lake City, raised by a Pakistani father and Indian mother as a first-generation Muslim American. I found myself wanting to communicate my interactions with the world through visual over verbal expression. That felt easier and more natural. But visual expression doesn’t “pay the bills,” or at least not in a way I could figure out as a teen, and so I pursued a career as a scientist. This provided me opportunities I otherwise wouldn’t have, such as seeing Australia during a research conference and scuba diving as part of my graduate work. These were childhood dreams I thought were beyond reach and financial means. Although I’m still trying to figure out how to pay the bills, I find myself returning to who I am: My heritage, how I was raised, and their flow into where I’m going.
Cnidaria (jellies), the first form of animal life, still thrive today with over 10,000 species. All of which seem strikingly alien, but are we so different from them? Burgessomedusa phasmiformis, the oldest known swimming jelly now long extinct, swam over ocean-covered New Mexico 500 million years ago in the Cambrian period. I was inspired to adopt this concept of ancient life through the present day and into the future with the depiction of Aurelia aurita, a common moon jelly species.
Here are three depictions of A. aurita. The first piece is a reminder of our past and where we come from, with Himalayan and natural sea salts. The middle is our present and the hidden complexities of who we are, with both metallic and glowing acrylic paints. And the last piece is our projected future, neglecting to connect with ourselves and our world, continuing to pollute it and ourselves with plastic with one-time-use materials. Plastic bags are also commonly mistaken for jellies by sea turtles, and thus this is also a choice of mistaken identity. Including “India” in the middle is intentional, contrasted with the ancient salt/Earth of the Himalayas,describing our own journeys of aligning who we are in juxtaposition with who the world wants us to be.
Good science is its own form of artwork, and there’s a certain “finesse” that operates as a flow state or meditative practice. But there’s this “sterileness” of being a scientist that to me feels quite individualized and Western. As scientists, we observe the world from this third-party view and unintentionally remove ourselves from engagement or acknowledgement that we are also directly part of the world we are observing. I’ve become so accustomed to thinking with my head that I’ve almost completely neglected how to listen to other parts of myself, figuratively and literally. This re-alignment with myself and love for visual expression is critical to the impact and contributions I seek to make in the world around me: Lifting each other up in the effort to eradicate ‘othering’.
shiloh burton
Body as Portal: Between the Becoming
Now Here or Nowhere- it depends on the space in between. -Tom Spanbauer, In the City of Shy Hunters
My collage work dances with the layered and nonlinear experience of identity, time, and place. The work is an excavation—of image, rhythm, and relationships —where nothing is singular and everything touches something else. Through torn edges, cutouts, repetition, and interwoven textures, I depict how identity is formed not in isolation but through constant interaction with environment, lineage, imagination, and reflection.
At the heart of this work is the liminal as a threshold and significant space. What happens in these in-between moments—how identities coalesce, split, and reconfigure. In these collages, silhouettes are both figures and vessels. Architecture and landscape merge. Performance becomes a portal. What’s inside the body is also outside of it. Fragments become form. Collage allows me to create a space where contradictions coexist: present and past, control and surrender, reality and dream, rupture and repair.
I use rhythm and repetition as a visual language to reflect the circularity of time and transformation. There are patterns that recall ritual, movement, and memory loops. Colors bleed into one another—violets, dusk-tones, and the pulse of fuchsia— creating a dreamlike sensibility that resists binaries and honors fluidity. As invitations to witness multiplicity— not as chaos, but as the truth of the tension of becoming. I am asking: Who are we when we are in between, when we are alone, when we are in community? What becomes possible when we stop trying to resist the fluidity of self and identity, and instead listen to the unexpected rhythm of our own metamorphosis?
Featured work: (re)Membering Time, collage, 36 x 24 inches. See more of shiloh’s work in person at FUSION now through June 22, 2025. Details here.
Artist Biography
shiloh burton (they/them) is a story artist, facilitator, and co-creator of transformative spaces. For over three decades, shiloh has danced with the layered truths of identity, time, and memory, inviting folx into rituals of reclamation, rupture, and healing. Their collage work embodies this invitation—fragmented and fluid, rhythmic and relational—exploring the liminal spaces where contradictions coexist and the body becomes a portal for storytelling.
From issuing Gender Passports at the Tijuana border in 2005 as the Self-Appointed Acting Director of the Identity Intelligence Institute, to founding P.E.N.T. LLC (Pleasure, Equity, Narrative & Transformation) in 2024, shiloh’s work is grounded in a deep commitment to equity, embodiment, and collective liberation. Their ongoing series Mapping Multiplicity: Body as Projected Site explores the self as a layered, projected, and performed site of becoming.
They are currently co-producing Sanctuary Cinema, a 2025 initiative cultivating belonging and justice through film, and are a member of the Pleasure Alchemy Collective. shiloh’s practice weaves collage, performance, meditation, and social practice into co-created experiences to center narrative sovereignty, transformative justice, place-making, authenticity, and delight are not only welcome, but necessary. With an MFA in Photography (SJSU) and decades of community facilitation, shiloh lives and creates on Tiwa Pueblo land (Albuquerque, NM), where they continue to nurture spaces of vulnerability, resistance, and unapologetic truth-telling. Through abolitionist education, immersive installations, performance, and freedom meditation workshops, their work engages communities in collaborative creative practices that foster healing, resilience, and cultural shifts.
the arrival, mixed media, 24 x 18 inches.
See more of Tracey’s work in person at FUSION now through June 22, 2025. Details here.
Tracey Baca
My creative practice is a ritual of excavation and reclamation—an intuitive, alchemical process of healing personal mythology. Both painting and assemblage serve as acts of addition and subtraction, where histories are built, erased, and rewritten. Each stratum mirrors the way experience accumulates: shifting, layered, never entirely lost.
Inspired by myth, magic, and ancient cultures, I unearth personal and collective remnants to construct new narratives. My work integrates my background as a Doctor of Oriental Medicine, drawing from Traditional Chinese Medicine and spirituality to explore themes of transformation, memory, and the sacred within the discarded. I layer acrylic, pencil, crayon, tempera, and collage on canvas, and incorporate found objects, recycled materials, and natural debris into sculptural assemblages.
Materials carry silent histories shaped by wear and time. Through processes of dismantling and reconfiguration, I invite them into dialogue—allowing forgotten relics to speak anew. I explore how value is assigned, how perception alters meaning, and when something becomes sacred or disposable. The resulting works—altars, layered paintings, and sculptural environments—straddle thresholds of past and present, visible and hidden, individual and collective. Each piece becomes a living archive, where what’s buried is not forgotten but transformed—layered like sediment of the soul.
Though deeply personal, my art invites reflection. I hope viewers encounter echoes of their own stories. For me, creativity is survival—a sacred act of stitching together the fractured and forgotten into something coherent, vital, and alive.
Artist Biography
Tracey Baca is a mixed-media artist and Doctor of Oriental Medicine based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she was born and raised. A 14th-generation New Mexican descended from a long line of artists, Baca leans on her lineage as well as her background in Traditional Chinese Medicine and the healing arts to guide her artistic practice. Her evocative paintings and sculptural assemblages explore dreamscapes, ritual, transformation, memory, mythology, and the relationship between the sacred and the discarded.
Baca earned her Master’s degree from Southwest Acupuncture College and balances her creative work with a career in integrative medicine. Though largely self-taught, she has enhanced her expertise through coursework in woodworking, metalsmithing, and printmaking. Her work has been exhibited in juried and group shows throughout New Mexico and California, including Tortuga Gallery, Harwood Art Center, OffCenter Arts, Rio Bravo Fine Art Gallery, and in the San Francisco Bay Area at San Jose City Hall, the Mexican Consulate, Studio Bongiorno, and The Mezzanine. Her work has received multiple honors, including Best of Show at Harwood Art Center “ArtStreet” in 2004, Expo NM, ABQ Pride, 2018, as well as an Honorable Mention from Mission College Recycled art show.
Yesenia Morales
I’ve had a lifelong passion for creating art, sparked in my early childhood. I’m drawn to the bold, vibrant energy that art brings to individuals and communities alike. Through my work, I celebrate the joy, resilience, and emotional power that color can express. My goal is to cultivate a sacred space of inspiration, unity, and creative energy through art.
I primarily create acrylic portraits of inspirational figures who have shaped my life, translating their spirit onto canvas. Each piece is both a tribute to their influence and a reflection of my own love for rhythm, color, and connection.
Sight of Rhythm, acrylic, 36 x 24 inches.
W.L. Lee
Home celebrates much that we hold dear, and nestled within our fortress is a rich tapestry of stories. It is the metaphysical depository of our values and principles, where our alignments are defined, and as such, is both our anchor and our compass. Home is about our Stories, our Values, our Hopes, and a channel for me to ask questions, to examine, and to evolve. Through the theme of “Home,” we can open countless doors to infinite worlds.
Symbolic of the safety and security we all crave, home is also a reminder of society’s responsibilities towards its homeless population. My interest in the theme of Home was sparked from leading art and science projects with my daughter at Saranam, a nonprofit offering a two-year housing and education program for homeless families.
My “99 Homes” series plays with variations on a theme, where boundaries are inevitably pushed through the sheer number of work produced. Against this backdrop, within a female-centric framework, I reflect in tandem, social and philosophical issues. Through the artwork I invite viewers to help rewrite the scripts. This set, part of the “99 Homes” series, offers universal stories. Optimistic and forward-looking, they are tethered to human resilience and hope for progress.
Six Degrees of Separation emerged from my enchantment with the tranquility in Chinese brush paintings. This modern rendering stages the setting for a celebration of the ingenuity of women (after all they’ve managed to pluck the moon!) and challenges the viewers to make a connection with this culturally-specific work in six steps or less. It’s an exercise to honor all that we have in common and to come together just a tad bit closer.
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever reflects on the state of rife misinformation in our lives and questions how a society can thrive when mired in misinformation. We want the truth, yet we believe in lies. Societal conditions, moments of ignorance, and insidious motives are an interwoven web of obstruction to our access to the truth. This piece considers whether or what or how well we want to see as an intentional choice.
Good Night Moon is the storied life of a mother and child, sheltered in a home evocative of a child’s pile of wooden blocks, a conglomerate of experiences, choices, and possibilities. The buttoned roof, sewn on piece by piece calls attention to how life has to be lived, day by day, or how progress can only be made, step by step. Night, for all its characteristic uncertainties and dangers, can also be our page turner to a new day, with new opportunities and fresh optimism.
Bringing up Baby speaks to the universal child and each generation’s responsibilities to the next. The surreal ceiling reflects the complexities of life and consequent challenges. The skylight offers a glimpse of possibilities beyond our strained state of social inequities.
Six Degrees of Separation, mixed media, 12 x 12 inches; On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, mixed media, 12 x 12 inches; Good Night Moon, mixed media, 12 x 12 inches; Bringing Up Baby, mixed media, 12 x 12 inches.