Encounter Culture New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs

Poetry is everywhere. Poetry is in the way we speak or sing or the ways we imagine. Poetry offers space and possibility. And poetry is the best kept open secret we have. Because as it turns out, poetry can sometimes have the unfortunate reputation of not being for everyone. 
Thankfully, state poets laureate are working to change this perception and helping people find the magic and meaning in poetry. New Mexico State Poet Laureate, Lauren Camp, is no exception. Now midway through her three-year term, she’s made it her mission to traverse the vast reaches of the state to build community and poems. 
Camp’s passion for poetry is infectious. Whether making poems as collages or writing about goatheads or night skies, her poetry invites readers and other poets and would-be poets in.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Lauren Camp’s website
In Old Sky: Poems Inspired by the Grand Canyon
New Mexico Epic Poem Project/New Mexico Arts
Article: New Mexico’s Queen of Poetry, El Palacio, spring 2023
We’d love to hear from you! Send feedback to elpalacio@dca.nm.gov. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.
Visit http://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.
Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico CulturePass. Find out how to get yours here.
Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine
***
Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.
Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine
Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann
Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz
Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe
Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler
Editor: Monica Braine (Assiniboine/Lakota)
Theme Music: D’Santi Nava
Instagram: @newmexicanculture and @elpalaciomagazine
For a transcript and full show notes, please visit podcast.nmculture.org

Creating art in the face of grief can be complicated and hard to navigate, especially when the grief feels both private and personal—and a part of a much larger epidemic, like the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) crisis. 
Both Bobby Brower (Iñupiaq) and Tara Trudell (Santee Sioux/Rarámuri/Mexican/Spanish) found their way into speaking about the MMIP crisis through clothing and adornment that are linked to a long history of protection, prayer, and collaboration. 
On this episode of Encounter Culture, Brower and Trudell talk with host Emily Withnall about creating Native Alaskan atikluks and creating beads out of paper, respectively, and the reason it is so important to do this work in community. 
Brower is a fashion designer whose work has been featured on the TV series Alaska Daily and in New York Fashion Week, among others. Trudell is a multi-media artist working in fabric, paper, photography, and film, among other mediums. 
For both women, the art cannot exist without community, and it is in community that important stories and information can be shared and held. 
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Museum of International Folk Art
Bunnell Street Center Arts Center
Alaska Daily (TV series)
Tower Gallery
Ashlynne Mike AMBER Alert in Indian Country Act
We’d love to hear from you! Send feedback to elpalacio@dca.nm.gov. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.
Visit https://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.
Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico Culture Pass. Find out how to get yours here.
Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine
***
Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.
Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine
Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann
Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz
Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe
Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler
Theme Music: D’Santi Nava
Special music in this episode: “Kinship Honor – K’é Biyiin,” written by Herman Cody & Radmilla Cody, performed by Radmilla Cody. Courtesy Canyon Records. Also, “Mother’s Words – Amá Bizaad,” written by Herman Cody & Radmilla Cody, performed by Radmilla Cody, courtesy Canyon Records. 
Instagram: @newmexicanculture and @elpalaciomagazine
 

Jemez Historic Site, like all of New Mexico’s Historic Sites and museums, offers unique historical and cultural perspectives on the deep and wide-ranging communities, languages, and traditions across the state. And while New Mexico contains a complicated and layered history, these Sites not only honor history but vibrant and ongoing cultures that continue to this day. 
Marlon Magdalena, the Instructional Coordinator Supervisor at Jemez Historic Site and member of the Jemez Pueblo, says that all aspects of his community, currently and in the past, are important.
“My primary goal is just to tell people who the Jemez people are--that we're people that are still around. We're Indigenous people, Native American people, that we still exist. We’re still here. And we still have our languages, we still have our language, we have our culture traditions.” 
In this episode of Encounter Culture, Marlon Magdalena shares his knowledge of the night skies, his perspective on the Pueblo Revolt, and his flute making and flute playing. Notably, Marlon played with Clark Tenakhongva and Matthew Nelson of Öngtupqa in the United Arab Emirates. Clark and Matthew's music (featuring Gary Stroutsos on flute) is featured throughout season 4 of Encounter Culture, which tells the story of Miguel Trujillo. 
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Visit https://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.
Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico Culture Pass. Find out how to get yours here.
Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine
***
Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.
Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine
Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann
Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz
Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe
Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler
Theme Music: D’Santi Nava
Instagram: @newmexicanculture

Traveling to some remote parts of Northern New Mexico can feel a little like traveling back in time. There’s the slower, rural lifestyle and lack of cell reception, for starters, but in some small pockets of rural communities, people still speak a 17th-century dialect of Spanish. 
Encounter Culture host Emily Withnall speaks with National Hispanic Cultural Center’s executive director, Zack Quintero, archivist Robin Moses, and Librarian Amy Padilla about their work to collect and preserve this ancient Spanish dialect before it disappears—which they say could happen in just fifteen years. Though the mountainous region of Northern New Mexico once helped to preserve this unique dialect, greater connectivity and the forces of assimilation have resulted in fewer native speakers. 
As Zack, Robin, and Amy reveal, they hope to preserve New Mexican Spanish as a part of their work with NHCC, but their investment in the project is personal, too.
To learn more about the Legacy Project, go to www.nhccnm.org. New information will be added to the website as the project progresses. Or visit the National Hispanic Cultural Center in person. The museum is open every day of the week, except Mondays. And if you’re interested in contributing to the project, please contact Zack Quintero at Zack.quintero@dca.nm.gov or Robin Moses at robin.moses@dca.nm.gov.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
New York Times article by Simon Romero
Esther Cordova May
Instituto Cervantes Albuquerque
New Mexico Highlands University
Northern New Mexico College
We’d love to hear from you! Send feedback to elpalacio@dca.nm.gov. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.
Visit https://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.
Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico Culture Pass. Find out how to get yours here.
Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine
Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.
Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine
Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann
Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz
Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe
Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler
Theme Music: D’Santi Nava
Instagram: @newmexicanculture

If you’ve ever been to a Sinclair gas station and see the green dinosaur out front, paleontologist Tony Fiorillo says it’s a fair approximation of New Mexico’s Alamosaurus—which was first discovered in New Mexico more than one hundred years ago. Not only is the Alamosaurus a “New Mexican icon,” as Fiorillo says, but it’s also the only dinosaur discovered in North America so far that appears to have migrated from South America.
In addition to his work as a researcher and paleontologist, Dr. Tony Fiorillo is the executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science. His career has covered several continents largely to study dinosaurs and the environments in which they lived. For more than two decades, Fiorillo focused on the Cretaceous of Alaska. There, his teams made significant advances in the understanding of ancient Arctic biodiversity and paleoecosystems as a way of understanding future climates.
In this episode, Fiorillo joins Encounter Culture host Emily Withnall in a conversation about arctic dinosaurs, what 19th-century scientists understood about the first dinosaurs they found, and how dinosaurs can provide insight for what’s in store for humans. 
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science
https://www.nmnaturalhistory.org/ 
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins dinosaur sculptures at Crystal Palace
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/crystal-palace-dinosaurs.html 
Dinosaurs at Denali National Park
https://www.nps.gov/dena/learn/nature/fossils.htm
 
We’d love to hear from you! Send feedback to elpalacio@dca.nm.gov. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.
Visit https://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.
Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico Culture Pass. Find out how to get yours here.
Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine
***
Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.
Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine
Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann
Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz
Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe
Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler
Theme Music: D’Santi Nava
Instagram: @newmexicanculture

What would it be like to see a symphony? How can you capture the rhythm of waves or a murmuration in constellations of light? If anyone can offer a visual representation of multi-sensory experiences, multimedia artist Leo Villareal can. As Villareal shares in his conversation with Encounter Culture host, Emily Withnall, “I think of my tools more like instruments in a way. And I'm making kind of visual music.”
Leo Villareal is a world-renowned artist with roots in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in El Paso and Marfa, Texas. He currently lives in Brooklyn where he owns a gallery and oversees a team of artists, engineers, and programmers. His light sculptures can be seen in galleries in Geneva, London, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Madrid, Washington, D.C., Beijing, Amsterdam, New York, and San Antonio—to name a few.
Among Villareal’s newest light sculptures is Astral Array, an installation on view permanently in the outdoor breezeway to New Mexico Museum of Art’s new Vladem Contemporary location in the Santa Fe Railyard.
Villareal draws inspiration from the natural world, from Indigenous weaving, and from computer coding and programming. Despite the sometimes-impermanent nature of his installations, many of which are site- and time-specific, he appreciates the cycle of creation and dismantling inherent to his work and to the ways in which his continued experiments with light are visible to all. 
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary
Illuminated River: A Public Art Commission
Visit https://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.
Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico Culture Pass. Find out how to get yours here.
Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine
***
Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.
Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine
Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann
Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz
Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe
Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler
Theme Music: D’Santi Nava
Instagram: @newmexicanculture