Born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1950, sculptor Luis Tapia is a pioneering Chicano artist who for forty-five years has pushed the art of polychrome wood sculpture to new levels of craftsmanship and social and political commentary. Tapia's works speak to the complexity of Latino/Hispano/Chicano identity, history, and contemporary culture, offering compelling insights and challenging perspectives on life in the barrio, on the border, and beyond.
Rooted in a folk art tradition established in seventeenth-century New Mexico, Tapia's work at once honors its origins, reinterprets traditional subject matter, and revitalizes age-old techniques. As an artist and activist whose works have been internationally exhibited and collected, Tapia informs and educates non-Hispanic viewers about the Chicano and Nuevomexicano experience. At the same time, he transcends cultural and ethnic borders through the elegance of his craft and commentary.
In this first publication devoted to Tapia's artistic legacy, leading art historians, curators, and literary figures consider Tapia's art both inside and outside the local and regional contexts in which it is made. With more than 100 photographic reproductions,
Borderless illuminates Tapia's relevance and vitality within the broader national and international artistic conversation.
Black, Charlene Villaseñor: - Charlene Villaseñor Black is a professor of art history and Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She recently edited Tradition and Transformation: Chicana/o Art from the 1970s to the 1990s and a dossier on teaching Latina/Latino art in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies. Her 2006 book Creating the Cult of St. Joseph: Art and Gender in the Spanish Empire was awarded a College Art Association Millard Meiss Subvention. She is associate director of UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center and the editor of Aztlán. In 2016 she was awarded UCLA's Gold Shield Faculty Prize for Academic Excellence.
Chávez, Denise: - Denise Chávez is a performance writer, novelist, and teacher whose work celebrates the border corridor of southern New Mexico, West Texas, and northern México. Her novel Face of an Angel (1994) won the American Book Award and her The King and Queen of Comezón (2014) won the 2015 International Latino Book Award and the New Mexico-Arizona Award for fiction. Her other books include Loving Pedro Infante (2001) and A Taco Testimony: Meditations on Family, Food and Culture (2006). Chávez is director of Casa Camino Real, a cultural center, bookstore, and art gallery on the historic Camino Real in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Gioia, Dana: - Dana Gioia is the Poet Laureate of California. He is the author of five collections of poetry, including Interrogations at Noon (2001), which won the American Book Award, and 99 Poems: New & Selected (2016). His three critical collections include Can Poetry Matter? (1992), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. Gioia has written three opera libretti and edited twenty literary anthologies. He served as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 to 2009. He holds the Judge Widney Chair of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California.
Hayes, Edward: - Edward Hayes is curator of exhibitions at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), a position he began in 2013 after working at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio. Hayes curated MOLAA's Luis Tapia: Cada mente es un mundo (2017) and has coordinated numerous other MOLAA exhibitions, including Dreamland: A Frank Romero Retrospective (2017), Korda: Revolutionary Photographer (2015), Frida Kahlo, Her Photos (2014), and Neomexicanism (2014). Hayes is author of Dreamland: A Frank Romero Retrospective and has supported several McNay publications, including Andy Warhol: Fame and Misfortune (2012) and Estampas de la Raza: Contemporary Prints from the Romo Collection (2012).
Lippard, Lucy R.: - Lucy R. Lippard is a writer, activist, sometime curator, and author of twenty-four books on contemporary art and cultural criticism, including Undermining: A Wild Ride through Land Use, Politics and Art in the Changing West (2014), Down Country: The Tano of the Galisteo Basin, 1250-1782 (2010), Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America (1990), and The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society (1997). Recipient of nine honorary degrees, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a Lannan grant, among other awards, she lives off the grid in rural New Mexico, where she edits the monthly community newsletter El Puente de Galisteo.
Nunn, Tey Marianna: - Tey Marianna Nunn is director and chief curator of the art museum and the visual arts program at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. She previously spent a decade as curator of the contemporary Hispano and Latino collections at the Museum of International Folk Art. Nunn is active in issues concerning Latinos, the arts, and museums and has published numerous articles and books on these topics. She has served on the board of directors of the American Alliance of Museums and the Western States Arts Federation and has received several awards and research fellowships. In 2016 President Barack Obama appointed her to the National Museum and Library Services Board.
Padilla, Carmella: - Carmella Padilla is a Santa Fe journalist, author, and editor who explores art, history, and culture in New Mexico and beyond. Padilla co-edited and contributed to A Red Like No Other: How Cochineal Colored the World (Skira Rizzoli, 2015), winner of the 2017 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for distinguished scholarship in art history. Her books include The Work of Art: Folk Artists in the 21st Century (2013) and El Rancho de las Golondrinas: Living History in New Mexico's La Ciénega Valley (2009), and her articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Dallas Morning News, American Craft, and elsewhere. In 2009 Padilla received the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts.
