The Governor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts has been recognizing New Mexico’s diverse array of artists and contributors of art for 50 years. Created in 1974, the award has highlighted more than 300 artists and art supporters that have had a notable impact on New Mexico’s art world and continue to shape its enchantment.
This award — presented by the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, New Mexico Arts, and the New Mexico Arts Commission — recognizes the state’s esteemed painters, weavers, sculptors, dancers, musicians, storytellers, poets, actors, playwrights, potters, philanthropists, and more, reflecting diverse forms of artistic expression with each year’s selection.
In addition to Diana Ingalls Leyba and Jock Soto, other recipients include John Garrett of Las Cruces, Ross Kagan Marks of Las Cruces, Arlo Namingha (Tewa/Hopi) of Santa Fe, Pamela Shirinne Smith of Abiquiú, and Robert and Ellen Vladem of Santa Fe.
• Visual artist John Garrett is being honored for his career in textile technologies and imagery, implemented in his work with nontraditional materials, including natural fiber, scrap metal, wood, and found objects. Garrett has been creating intricate wall hangings, baskets, and sculptures for more than 50 years. Some of his pieces include a quilt series Garrett started in the 1990s, one of which was made from aluminum flashing, bedsprings, needlepoint, grass seed, recycled CDs, and beer coasters.
Garrett earned fellowships with the National Endowment for the Arts in 1983 and 1995 and was a fellow of the American Craft Council’s College of Fellows in 2010. Garrett’s work is on display at galleries in Denver and St. Louis and at the Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art Gallery in Santa Fe. chiaroscurosantafe.com
• Film director and professor Ross Kagan Marks is honored for major contributions to the arts, particularly in Southern New Mexico. Marks founded the Las Cruces International Film Festival in 2015 and has grown the film industry in Southern New Mexico by making movies there, teaching others how to make movies and convincing them to stay or come back to New Mexico, and bringing high-profile actors and special guests to the region.
Marks (Walking With Herb) has made 10 movies in Las Cruces since 2014 and 16 total, working with actors Al Pacino, Brendan Fraser, Faye Dunaway, Edward James Olmos, and George Lopez. Many of Marks’ films have won awards at international film festivals as well as at the Sundance Film Festival.
Marks teaches directing and screenwriting at New Mexico State University, where he attended in 1989 and 1990 after his future father-in-law, Children of a Lesser God playwright Mark Medoff, suggested he transfer from UCLA to NMSU to work with Medoff, who ran the theater program and ultimately encouraged Marks to become a director.
“New Mexico has been a place of rebirth for me, and I owe everything I have to New Mexico and the people of New Mexico,” Marks says. “So to be recognized by the State of New Mexico really is more valuable and more meaningful than any other award I have ever gotten or will ever get.”
Medoff, whom Marks worked with on five movies before Medoff died in 2019, also won the award in 1980.
“It’s a big honor for me to not just win the award, but also honor Mark by receiving this, the award that he had received all those years ago,” Marks says.
• Visual artist Arlo Namingha is an internationally known sculptor and multimedia artist. Namingha started with wood sculpting, particularly with Kachina dolls, but expanded his work, now more minimalist and interactive, to working with clay, stone, and fabricated and cast bronze. Namingha’s work has been shown in galleries in New York, San Antonio, and Santa Fe, including his family-owned, downtown Santa Fe gallery, Niman Fine Art.
Sculptor and multimedia artist Arlo Namingha in his studio.
Kate Russell
Namingha is a member of the Hopi Tribe and Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo and comes from a long line of artisans on both sides of the family. On his dad’s side, Namingha is a sixth-generation artist; his great-great-great grandmother, Nampeyo, was known as a major contributor to the resurgence of ancient Hopi pottery making.
Namingha carries on his family legacy and passion for art through teaching alongside his father, Dan Namingha, for the Namingha Institute. The award is a part of the Namingha legacy as well: Dan Namingha won it in 1995.
Namingha says passion for doing what he loves every day, self-discipline to keep evolving, and a support system and community that believes in his ideas is what has brought him this far.
“I like doing things that address issues, tell stories — everything that I do actually tells a story and creates some kind of conversation,” Namingha says. namingha.com
• Pamela Shirinne Smith began to teach herself the craft of paper marbling in the early 1970s and became the founding director of the Press of the Palace of the Governors 50 years ago.
Smith’s early career involved the use of natural techniques and resources, including rainwater, seaweed, and hand-mixed pigments of beeswax and alcohol. Smith’s work these days incorporates modern and more easily accessible materials, but she aims to keep the medieval spirit and artisanship of paper marbling she helped facilitate alive in books, collections, and book art festivals.
Philanthropists and art supporters Robert and Ellen Vladem are being honored for their major contributions to the arts in Santa Fe
Smith, 80, an award-winning book designer and letterpress printer, continues to make MarbleSmith Papers out of Abiquiú and teaches others the craft through small workshops.
• Philanthropists and art supporters Robert and Ellen Vladem are being honored for their major contributions to the arts in Santa Fe. The Vladems’ donation to the capital campaign supported the creation of New Mexico Museum of Art’s Vladem Contemporary Museum.
This contribution, as well as a fund they created to support Santa Fe Opera productions and their time served on many arts-related boards and volunteer committees, also earned them the City of Santa Fe Mayor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts for philanthropy in 2022.
The Vladems, originally from Chicago, with backgrounds in accounting and nursing, came to Santa Fe in 2013, but their love for the arts runs deep.
“I wanted to be an artist, but I couldn’t afford art school, so I became an accountant,” Robert says. “But we always have gravitated to the arts, especially opera. Ellen introduced me to opera, and I fell harder than she did.”
Robert served on the board of Chicago’s Ryan Opera Center and serves as first vice president on the Santa Fe Opera board.
“We felt we could really make a difference when we moved here to Santa Fe,” Ellen says of their investment in New Mexico art, with Robert adding that art is often the first to be cut in many budgets and plans. “The arts have to continue and they certainly require funding,” Robert says, “or they won’t be able to touch half as many people as they do.” nmartmuseum.org/vladem-contemporary
