I had been visiting Taos and the surrounding area in Northern New Mexico for several years prior to moving here from Colorado in 2020. I had started to think seriously about moving to the area about a year prior and had begun to put a plan in motion. Then the pandemic hit and I lost the job that made up the majority of my income, which expedited the timeline and made it that much more clear that it was time to move on. 

I was drawn to the area because of the rich diversity of culture, the ability to live in close communion with the land and the seasons, and the fact that supporting arts and creative practices is a core value of the people here. There is a long legacy of artists who have called Northern New Mexico home–from the Pueblo peoples who have lived and worked here for centuries to more recent visitors from the coasts who came in search of solitude and high desert light. 

I’m really grateful that my life in Taos feels full and active, but also allows for a rhythm that is determined by my relationship with the land, something that I really craved while living in a larger city. My group of close friends here is primarily comprised of creative folks: musicians, songwriters, filmmakers, actors, artists and other kinds of makers. Some of them grew up here, but many are transplants from elsewhere who came to Taos in search of something similar–a reset of priorities or an orientation toward living in a smaller and more intentional community. A lot of my friends here have seasonal work to support their creative practices, or they still have a foot in a bigger city, or have travel built into the work that they do. With the gallery, I’m doing six exhibitions per year here in Taos and four art fairs, so I’m on the road a lot as well. When I’m here, I’m able to ground into and enjoy what the different seasons offer, spend time with friends and host visitors (most of our artists come to Taos for their openings), and work with horses, another big dream of mine that became a reality since relocating to New Mexico.

As in a lot of industries, access to high speed internet has made it possible for certain types of work to take place outside of major metropolitan areas. As the art world globalized, I think the role of galleries outside of these areas was to steward regional art scenes and build regional collector bases. Galleries in larger cities might occasionally pull someone up from the network of regional galleries, but would primarily rely on artists located nearby for their programming as well, so that’s where artists headed if they wanted to be considered for these opportunities. I think this is changing, especially as many artists can no longer afford to live in bigger cities with rising costs of living and stagnating wages. So artists, always the vanguard, are finding other ways of working, and therefore galleries are having to look elsewhere for their talent. 

I see The Valley as part of this change because I'm interested in finding a balance between regionally-focused programming and remaining connected to the global contemporary art market. I think this serves the artists I work with dually–for those who are in the Southwest, there’s more visibility on a national platform that might have looked past them previously; and for those elsewhere, they are part of something that has a strong base outside of a major metropolitan area, which sets us apart and opens up other channels. The reality is that the largest cities will always dominate the art world/art market, but there’s a lot of freedom that comes with being able to create our own path forward and not feeling like we have to compare ourselves to galleries in larger metropolitan areas. 

When thinking about the history and legacy of the arts in Northern New Mexico, some things that probably come to mind are Indigenous cultural or ancestral arts practices like pottery or weaving, Spanish colonial influenced folk art like santos and retablos, traditional landscape painting brought later on by White settlers, or more recent movements like the Transcendental Painting Group and the Light and Space Movement. Back to this idea of regionalism, I’m very interested in the idea of showing work that feels connected to the spirit of Taos (or my perception of it), regardless of the location where the artists I show live and work. To me that manifests in those three tenets that I use a lot in describing the connecting thread between the work we show: magic and mysticism, craft practices, and connection to place. 

On a personal level, those three tenets also encapsulate most of the work that I find compelling. I was raised in a religious environment and have always been very engaged with spiritual and esoteric practices. I love folk art, outsider art, artists who push the boundaries between craft/design and “fine art,” and artists who work outside the margins of the established art world in big cities. I value having a deep connection with the land and with animals, and enjoy artwork that speaks to those relationships too. 

The immense support we’ve received from collectors, artists and other galleries has been a huge surprise to me! The gallery has been open a little under two years, and I’m so honored that in addition to a supportive community here in Northern NM we’ve also been able to reach so many people elsewhere. 

The most pressing goal I have for the next few years is to find a bigger gallery space in Taos where we can host more than one show at once and have room for an apartment/studio to be used by a resident artist. I would also like to add on a small space in New York that we can use for mini exhibitions, events and gatherings, and residency opportunities for our artists who live in New Mexico and elsewhere in the Southwest–like a clubhouse of sorts, so we can have a footprint in a bigger city while developing our program and our space in Taos even further. I think this would be huge for our artists to have access to workspaces in both places as a resource and would help us to continue to build relationships with collectors, institutions and other galleries.