Exhibitors including Inferno Farms (from left), Swamp Dragon and Down to Ferment shared their spicy wares at last year’s National Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show. Photos Kimberly Masker
Santa Fe Plaza as it appeared to Reuben Gentry on his 1883 visit. The Seligman Building at right was on the site of Gentry’s store. Ana Pacheco, the city historian from 2015 to 2017, will deliver a presentation titled Eye on Santa Fe: Santa Fe’s Early Photographers. Courtesy Museum of New Mexico
Voice and strings students from Florida International University perform ¡Voces Unidas! in 2023 at the New Mexico Museum of Art. (Courtesy Kristin Hullihan for Santa Fe Opera)
Millian Giang Pham’s 36-by-18 inch acrylic on fabric piece Punch Down Fail Up is part of People Like You, an exhibition of her work at Strata Gallery. (Courtesy Strata Gallery)
Exhibitors including Inferno Farms (from left), Swamp Dragon and Down to Ferment shared their spicy wares at last year’s National Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show. Photos Kimberly Masker
Voice and strings students from Florida International University perform ¡Voces Unidas! in 2023 at the New Mexico Museum of Art. (Courtesy Kristin Hullihan for Santa Fe Opera)
Millian Giang Pham’s 36-by-18 inch acrylic on fabric piece Punch Down Fail Up is part of People Like You, an exhibition of her work at Strata Gallery. (Courtesy Strata Gallery)
Sneha Chakradhar is among the choreographers and performers featured in the New Mexico Dance Coalition’s Choreographers’ Showcase.
It’s not every weekend that you can singe your taste buds with Dave DeWitt.
DeWitt, a founding board member of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University, will hold his signature event — the 35th annual National Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show — Friday through Sunday, March 1-3, at the Sandia Resort and Casino in Albuquerque.
More than 100 exhibitors will be at the show and more than 1,000 spicy products will be available for tasting and for purchase.
The three-day spice-o-rama is expected to draw more than 20,000 people, and it will feature cooking demos and Scovie Award-winning products from around the world.
This year, two products — Bayou Gotham’s Flambeau Fiya Caribbean Creole and Dirty Bird’s Swett Sauce Original — tied for the Grand Prize Tasting.
And if you’re thirsty, attendees will find four bars with beverages to temper the taste of hot sauce.
DeWitt started the National Fiery Foods Festival in 1988, and it opened with just 47 exhibitors and 500 attendees. But it’s grown over the years, moving first to the Albuquerque Convention Center and then to the Sandia Resort and Casino in 2006. — Spencer Fordin
POD PATROL
Cautionary Tales
I recently heard on a podcast ... that Andy Warhol hardly touched the canvases that bore his signature. In fact, he had a rubber stamp made of his signature that was used on the canvases that featured acetates made by another printer of iconic celebrity photographs he didn’t take and were stenciled by his longtime assistant, Gerald Malanga. Warhol decided to stop working as a commercial artist, where he’d gained initial recognition, to move into the serious artistic world, says Alice Sherwood, author of Authenticity (Mudlark, 2023), in a compelling conversation with Cautionary Tales host Tim Harford. The discussion delves deep into the art history world and its varying levels of authenticity, a concept that many art collectors grapple with, whether it pertains to the works of contemporary artists or the old masters.
Harford’s soothing British accent makes his deep knowledge on a variety of topics even more authoritative and palatable as he explores a variety of human foibles and disasters on this podcast. His subject matter and in-depth interviews are designed to make us wiser and learn from our (occasionally romanticized) mistakes. Harford earned his chops as a columnist for the London Financial Times, which became the book The Undercover Economist (Abacus, 2007). The podcast is produced by Pushkin, which creates a plethora of audiobooks as well as other podcasts on topics ranging from autism to medical technology and ethics. — Carolyn Graham
Listen up: “Andy Warhol’s Factory of Truth” (Season 3; release date: August 15, 2023). Cautionary Tales episodes are released every two weeks. Available on Apple Podcasts, RSS Feed, and Spotify, as well as at pushkin.fm.
OPERA NEWS
International reach
Visiting performers from the Miami-based Florida International University School of Music might be having some difficulty adjusting to Northern New Mexico winter, but they’ll probably feel at home on stage.
The musicians will team with members of the Santa Fe Opera’s Young Voices program for a free concert. Young Voices participants receive voice and musical coaching, as well as training in diction, music theory, and basic acting.
More than 100 students have taken part in Young Voices since it was created in 2008, according to Santa Fe Opera. The free program follows the school year from September to May. The application period for the upcoming season runs through March 30. Visit santafeopera.org/community and click “High School Programs.” — Brian Sandford
EXHIBITIONISM
Reflections on a long journey
On her website, Millian Giang Pham states that her art is rooted in her traumatic experiences living in postwar Vietnam, then in poverty in the United States. Her creations incorporate still and moving images, crafted and found objects, writings, and performance.
People Like You, a solo exhibition of her work, runs through March 15. Pham, an assistant professor in art and art history at Auburn University in Alabama, is one of nearly 20 members of Strata Gallery’s Established Artists program. She formerly lived in Santa Fe. — B.S.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Turning a lens on Santa Fe
Santa Fe Plaza as it appeared to Reuben Gentry on his 1883 visit. The Seligman Building at right was on the site of Gentry’s store. Ana Pacheco, the city historian from 2015 to 2017, will deliver a presentation titled Eye on Santa Fe: Santa Fe’s Early Photographers. Courtesy Museum of New Mexico
History scholar Ana Pacheco leads the 135-minute Santa Fe Revisited walking tour, covering 400 years of history of New Mexico’s capital city.
Her upcoming talk Eye on Santa Fe: Santa Fe’s Early Photographers promises to be easier on listeners’ feet.
Unlike newer cities such as Las Vegas, Nevada, Santa Fe was around for centuries before the advent of photography in Europe around 1839. The earliest known image of the Plaza was taken in 1851. Pacheco, the city historian from 2015 to 2017, will share such facts during an hourlong presentation. She has written eight books about New Mexico history and was the founding publisher and editor of La Herencia, a quarterly magazine about the state’s history that was published from 1994 through 2009. — B.S.
4 p.m. Thursday, March 7 (waitlist as of press time) followed by an “encore” presentation at 5:30 p.m. Santa Fe Public Library, 145 Washington Avenue. Register at santafe.librarycalendar.com
LISTEN UP
Putting U in San Miguel Chapel
Uranium, a silvery-white metallic element that has the atomic number 92, can be used in nuclear power plants, reactors, and weapons.
It also can be used figuratively in music, as the next installment of the Elemental Concert series proves. The 27th installment of the monthly series presented by multi-instrumentalist Laurianne Fiorentino and cellist Michael Kott focuses on the element with the chemical symbol U. — B.S.
ON YOUR TOES
Dance designers in spotlight
A choreographer is defined as a person who creates the sequence of steps and moves for a dance performance.
So when performers hit the stage this weekend during the 34th Choreographers’ Showcase, the focus will be on the dances’ designs, not the dancers’ spontaneous moves. The showcase is presented by the New Mexico Dance Coalition, a Santa Fe-based nonprofit group.
Featured choreographers and performers include Anastazia Louise Aranaga, Sneha Chakradhar, Adeline Cleveland with Brian John, Flamenco Youth de Santa Fe, Abigail Flora, Areena Estul, Myra Krien, Cynthia Koenig, Katelyn Kolinzas, Anna Peralta, Amina Re, and Talya Steinberg. — Brian Sandford
