66 Mile Radius: Three New Mexico Artists at Tamarind

The 66 MILE RADIUS project, sponsored by The University of New Mexico Center for Regional Studies, includes a series of collaborations at Tamarind with three New Mexico artists, Nina Elder, Judy Tuwaletstiwa, and Tom Miller, who all live and work within a 66-mile radius, and each representing a unique response to New Mexico history, landscape, and culture.

Emmy® Award winning documentarian Melinda Frame will produce three videos highlighting the experience for each artist. Video screenings will occur in the summer of 2017; dates and locations to be announced. During the opening reception Tamarind will show a vignette of the documentary series.

During her Tamarind residency Judy Tuwaletstiwa, Galisteo, New Mexico drew upon her innovative handling of glass and textiles, exploring ideas of printing on alternative surfaces. Her large-scale work is informed by the history of the atomic bomb, the Trinity site, and the intersection of ancient and modern cultures. A celebrated artist with a long career of artist residencies, exhibitions, and collections to her name, her work is the subject of a major monograph recently published by Radius Books of Santa Fe.

A visual storyteller, photographer, painter, and adventurer, Nina Elder, Albuquerque, New Mexico represents a new generation of art making. She seeks out active and abandoned mines, Cold War military sites, and vast industrial landscapes to better understand land use and natural resources. Elder will create prints based on both historic photographs and organic materials from various mining sites, exploring the physical properties and impact of human productivity in the region.  

Tom Miller, Santa Fe, New Mexico works in sculpture, painting, and video. He comes to Tamarind with ideas of materiality and surface that stem from his sculptural work. An elegant minimalism pervades his work, constructed from ubiquitous building materials such as cement block, plywood, and beams. Amidst the richly worked surfaces there is a subtle sense of tension, as he incorporates elements of instability and ambiguity within his architectural forms. His recent work explores the inherent properties of fences and walls, calling up political associations of barriers, division, separation, and security. His formal architectural language is understated, as are the low-key grays and deep blacks he favors. At Tamarind he will explore his sculptural ideas in lithography, relying on the broad possibilities of paper and surface for his constructions.

Melinda Frame is a Regional Emmy® Award winning producer, director, cinematographer, writer, and editor. She established her career as a documentary filmmaker in New York City working on projects for HBO, A&E, the Sundance Channel, VIACOM, as well as DISCOVERY before returning to her native New Mexico. For the last three years, Melinda has traveled throughout the Land of Enchantment filming the travel documentary series New Mexico True Television for the New Mexico Tourism Department. She has served as producer for past clients such as L’Oréal, Washington Mutual (CHASE), the James Beard Foundation, and Manzano Day School. Assisting Frame is Cinematic Arts student Noor-un-Nisa Touchon who is completing an internship with Tamarind Institute through The University of New Mexico's Arts Management program.

This project is sponsored by The University of New Mexico Center for Regional Studies, which is a multidisciplinary outreach center designed to enhance the work of the university through student fellowships, research, program funding, visiting scholars, digital media and other projects with a particular emphasis on activities that increase the communities understanding of New Mexico, the U.S. Mexico Borderlands, the Americas and Spain. CRS facilitates the production, presentation, and distribution of books, films, lectures, recording and photo collections.