In the story “How A Broken Wagon Wheel Changed the Course of Art History,” from Classic Chicago Magazine Lenore MacDonald describes how a broken wagon wheel in the fall of 1898 “on a deserted, spectacular stretch of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, just north of Taos” gave East Coast artists Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips their “Eureka” moment. 

In a world where artificial intelligence looms like a large, plagiaristic threat, one thing is certain: Live theater is 100 percent real. It does not benefit from green screens, CGI effects or take …

Images of Millicent Rogers — lean and graceful, resplendent in velvet blouses, broomstick skirts, moccasins, concha belt, and squash blossom necklace — are familiar, even iconic, but designer …

Photographer Elijah Rael was riding high a few years back as he watched name recognition grow — due, in no small part, to a concerted effort on Facebook, Instagram and other guerilla marketing …

In the halls of the Harwood Museum of Art among the largest collection of the enchanting works of Patrociño Barela, there are tales of resilience, unity and the power of art to ignite the human spirit.

Shock and awe grabbed Jane Ellen Burke by the short hairs three years ago as she watched the American death toll of COVID-19 mount month after month — so she resolved to make note of it all.

Windows down, volume up, and the infectiously danceable Latin rhythms come on over the stereo, making it seem unfair to be bound to the seat by a seatbelt.

Taos has always been a home to artists, and amazing art —traditional crafts, decorative works and experimental excursions — has always been central to this community.

Cordova, New Mexico, is a quaint village between Peñasco and Española on NM 76 off the High Road to Taos. There are a little more than 550 residents conforming to the most recent census, living in a land area of less than 2 square miles. The village is home to San Antonio de Padua, a prominent adobe brick church built in 1832 — important to the architectural landscape and historic churches of New Mexico. 

“Light is the magic word,” says internationally-renowned glass artist Mary Shaffer, now of Taos. “Working with glass is like holding light in your hands.” 

When Polly Raye moved to the Taos area in the mid-1970s, she had already amassed enough adventures and compelling stories to fill a book. But, a few years earlier, when she left the East Coast with her three young children, there was no inkling as to the road her life would follow or where she would wind up decades later.

For Gus Foster and his camera, there are no limits. At least that’s the idea. Since 1976, Foster has been taking awe-inspiring, panoramic photographs of Northern New Mexico (along with areas in Utah, Arizona, California, and throughout the Southwestern United States.) These sweeping images break free of the boundaries of the camera frame, with prints often stretching across entire walls. Numerous images are seamlessly juxtaposed to create Foster’s art and combined with the high-definition quality of the images, the end result puts viewers as close to the wide-open expanses of Northern New Mexico as possible without actually being there.

Christina Sporrong feels the weight, heavy as steel. Three gigs cancelled in the past week.No more Paseo Festival, where she was going to show her huge metal heron sculpture with its moving head and rigs to support aerial performers. No more Berlin with “Flybrary.”

When Tempo introduced Mark Maggiori to our readers recently, we exposed but a fraction of this French ex-pat’s proverbial iceberg. We heard about his first road trip across America at age 15 (with the same uncle who later encouraged him to study at the Academie Julien in Paris) and his arrival here in Taos, but there is so much more to discover beneath the surface of things where Maggiori is concerned.

The soft strains of classical music in his studio may seem a discordant backdrop for the artist garbed in jeans and a well-worn AC/DC T-shirt, but santero Leonardo Salazar assures you that is not the case.

“I was brought up to believe that great music and art are the things that make humanity what it is,” Salazar said. “Every Sunday morning my father would put on PBS and we’d listen to the Boston Pops [Orchestra], Arthur Fiedler and all the classical greats – whatever was on that day.

Horse Thief Shorty is a well-known character described by Taos historian, activist, storyteller and river-running guru Cisco Guevara. Among other things, Guevara said the rapid named Horse Thief Shorty on the Middle Box of the Río Grande in La Junta area was the approximate location of a secret cable crossing and nearby cabin of Shorty’s, allowing him to sell horses on one side of the river and then steal them back overnight, changing their “spots” and selling them again on the opposite side of the river. Everybody also knew Shorty because he supplied most restaurants with game and fish.

Sitting down in front of a lump of clay is like a painter with a full palette in front of a blank canvas or a composer sitting before a piano anticipating the exact moment when a key is struck. It’s picturing the shape that lies as imminent potential, a tactile birth of something that hasn’t yet existed.

One morning in June 1968, Taos photographer Dick Spas was drinking coffee in his Ledoux Street apartment when a friend dropped in and said, “They’re shooting a movie on the pueblo!” Spas grabbed his 35mm Exakta camera “with a Schneider lens and left-hand film crank” (he is right-handed) and jumped into his Karmann Ghia convertible to “go make some pictures.”

Art is a major ingredient in the making and sustaining of Taos. You see it every day in gallery windows, in painters setting up their easels alongside a road, in murals and museums, in song, on stage, on-screen and in books.