A Creative Excuse

Mirel Fraga and Alfonso Barrera are a creative couple based in Oaxaca whose practices intersect across drawing, printmaking, and independent publishing. Barrera, originally from Mexico City, works in graphite, charcoal, oil, and printmaking, weaving together human–nature relationships, art history, and fantastical imagery; his work has exhibited in Mexico, the U.S., and Japan. Fraga, from Puebla, moves fluidly between illustration, graphic arts, and mural painting, often centering nature, cosmos, and feminist themes. Together they co-founded Polvoh Press, an editorial project dedicated to small-edition artist books and printmaking, reflecting their shared commitment to experimentation, community, and the handmade.

Born and raised in the border city of El Paso, TX, George Rodriguez creates highly ornamented, figurative ceramic sculptures, often underlined by a connection to the sociopolitical issues the artist explores. Rodriguez holds a BFA from the University of Texas El Paso and an MFA in ceramics from the University of Washington, Seattle. His world curiosity grew as a recipient of a Bonderman Travel Fellowship where he traveled the world through most of 2010. George was featured on PBS Craft in America "Storytellers" episode and has created a large public sculpture for the new Kansas City Airport which opened March 2023. George currently resides in Philadelphia and teaches at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University.

This episode is with curator Martha Traer of our current exhibition Sound & Vision and two artists in the show, Kat Kinnick & Eliza Lutz. They talk about the process of turning a song into a piece of visual art and the influence of music in their creative lives. 
For this show, each artist was asked to choose a song and create an 11 x 14-inch piece of work inspired by the music. With artists working in a wide variety of media and styles, Sound and Vision is a kaleidoscope of memory embedded in music. 
Listen to the playlist of all the songs chosen here.

b.brown grew up in Los Angeles and New York City, and is currently settled in Santa Fe. Her work history includes dance, film, design and production ceramics. Dance formed her early years as an artist; she began studying at age 5 and continued a rigorous practice over the next 17 years. Although her serious aspirations to make dance her life's work led to enrollment and training in some of New York’s most prestigious institutions, she did not feel at home within the narrowly defined criteria for "fitting in” that was de rigueur at the time.When she turned her attention to clay, her love of honing technique and experiencing communion via somatic “dialoging” led to discovering an innate understanding of the material, and a propulsion to know more. Like dance before it, clay afforded brown a means to explore and experiment - to investigate seemingly-at-odds pairings such as discipline and rule-breaking, methodology and abandon, refinement and elaboration.Now, some 30+ years later - and having ridden the many and various rides that life has thrown her way - brown’s unwavering studio practice is both prolific in creative articulation and rich with offerings.

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and surrounded with the arts from an early age, Daniel McCoy (Muscogee Creek/Potawatomi) was welcomed into a household of Artisans, Farmers, Music and Subculture.
McCoy began entering Native Art Competitions at age fifteen under the direction of Cherokee Artist, Mary Adair while attending boarding school in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. He received his formal Art Training at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. At the Institute, Daniel McCoy jr. was able to study and work with some of the best Native Artists in the field.

Jerome T. Nakagawa is a Navajo and Japanese silversmith and photographer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in December 2022, majoring in Studio Arts with an emphasis on jewelry and metals. Nakagawa has completed jewelry-based apprenticeships with Keri Ataumbi of Ataumbi Metals and Cody Sanderson. Raised in Hayward, California, Nakagawa earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. He completed his graduate-level photojournalism coursework at the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University in 2007. Prior to enrolling at IAIA, Nakagawa worked as a photojournalist for over ten years and was the inaugural recipient of the Sandy Colton Memorial Award at the Eddie Adams Workshop. His photojournalism was published in the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald, Arizona Republic, Time Magazine, and Sports Illustrated.
UPDATE: As of 1/20/2026, Congress has approved fiscal year 2026 funding for IAIA after proposed elimination.

Terran Last Gun, Saakwaynaamah’kaa (Last Gun), (b. 1989, Browning, MT) is an enrolled citizen of the Piikani (Blackfeet) of Montana and a visual artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Piikani Nation is one of four nations that make up the Blackfoot Confederacy, collectively called the Niitsitapi (Real People). Born and raised on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, Last Gun works across media to explore color, form, and abstraction. Drawing inspiration from land, cosmos, cultural narratives, and experiences, Last Gun pushes the boundaries of Piikani modernism.
He has exhibited at venues including the Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass Village, CO); Glacier Art Museum (formerly the Hockaday Museum of Art) (Kalispell, MT); Missoula Art Museum (Missoula, MT); Bates Museum of Art (Lewiston, ME); Newberry Library (Chicago, IL); The 8th Floor (New York, NY); Museum of the Plains Indian (Browning, MT); Contemporary at Blue Star (San Antonio, TX); and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe, NM), among others.
Last Gun received his BFA in Museum Studies and AFA in Studio Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2016. He has received awards from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation 2024 Biennial Award, First Peoples Fund 2020 Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship, Santa Fe Art Institute 2018 Story Maps Fellowship, and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture 2016 Goodman Aspiring Artist Fellowship. Last Gun was named one of the 2022 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now in Southwest Contemporary.

Kat Kinnick’s work has always fostered a profound connection to nature, and the weight of humanity’s destructive impact can feel crushing. She notices how it can paralyze her and others in her community: “I want this work to help them feel less alone, and I hope that it can uplift others that are struggling, and be a breath of fresh air, awakening myths and stories inside themselves that they can then share with us all,” she says. 

Benjamin Muñoz (b. 1993) is a Dallas-based multi-disciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, installation, and monumental printmaking. Muñoz grew up in the vibrant Chicano culture of Corpus Christi, Texas, which boasts the country's largest Day of the Dead celebration, lowriders shows, and unique food culture. The middle child of three artist brothers, Muñoz found his voice by reflecting on his heritage, upbringing, and current surroundings. Muñoz attended Del Mar Community College in Corpus Christi for two years before the combination of “a young man’s arrogance” and starting his family gave him the confidence and circumstances to leave school and begin his journey as a professional artist. His first big break came when he was awarded the city’s biggest grant to create the exterior of the local arts center. In 2018, he relocated to Dallas.His work can be found in the public collections of The Mexic-Arte Museum, The National Museum of Mexican Art, The Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art, The Blanton Museum of Art, and extensive private collections, including the largest collection of Latino art in the world belonging to Gilberto Cardenas. Muñoz has been honored with 17 solo exhibitions throughout the United States and was included in Soy de Tejas, a traveling survey of Texas-born Latino artists.

Annalise creates her finely crafted prints by hand from start to finish, carving wood, etching metal, dyeing paper, and using manual printing presses to create multiple originals. Each piece is printed on the finest archival papers using oil based inks and hand dyed papers she produces in her studio. Annalise operates as a self publisher out of Austin, Texas and travels frequently across the country as a visiting artist and speaker and to publish prints with esteemed print shops.  
Annalise begins each of her pieces with a drawing and a love for technical and artistic experimentation. She meticulously carves wood blocks with hand tools or carefully scribes into wax on the surface of a copper plate that is then dipped into an acid bath. Once these matrices are complete, sometimes after months of carving or a dozen dips in the acid bath, she begins her color development. Starting from color swatches she dips and tests in her studio, she dyes in bulk sheets of thin yet strong mulberry paper in a wide variety of colors and patterns. These sheets of dyed paper are then carefully cut out and applied to the wet ink on each woodcut or etching during the printing process, at which time the ink, papers, and pressure all combine to create the prints you see here.  
For nearly a decade, Annalise worked in fine art print publishing, curation, collections, and gallery management at Flatbed Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Austin, Texas. She is currently the Matting and Framing, and Housings Preparator at the Blanton Museum of Art. Annalise is a founding board member of the annual PrintAustin festival, and is a guest lecturer and visiting artist at Universities across the country, including recent visits to Oklahoma University, OK, Edinboro University, PA, and CUNY Staten Island, NY. She’s been a recent guest lecturer at UT Austin, Ohio State University, IL, and Pratt, NYC.  
Recent exhibition venues include Paradigm Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, Morgan Paper Conservatory, Cleveland, OH, Mesh Gallery, Chicago IL, Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis, MN, Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT, Elisabet Ney Museum, Austin, TX, and Till Richter Museum, Buggenhagen, Germany.  Annalise was awarded the title of Creative Ambassador of Visual Arts in 2019 by the City of Austin. 
Annalise’s ongoing and largest series to date, Carrying Things From Home, is comprised of eight 3x5.5 foot hand-dyed chine collé woodcuts.