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2 months ago | 
briandambrosio.substack.com | Brian D’Ambrosio |Brian D'Ambrosio
By Brian D’AmbrosioOne of Josef Skye Tornick’s photographs is of an old woman who sold candles and religious objects out of a makeshift shrine in her Santa Fe home many years ago. She holds a photo of herself as a young girl, any hint of similarity almost imperceptible. Tornick doesn’t remember the woman’s name. Both the subject and the setting are long gone. Then there’s the photo of an old train station in Ancho, NM, where a couple once sold antiques from dusty display cases.
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Jan 6, 2025 | 
briandambrosio.substack.com | Brian D’Ambrosio |Brian D'Ambrosio
(One more article from the archives: an interview with Martin Sexton that first appeared in several Montana Newspaper Association publications in October 2019.)By Brian D’AmbrosioThanks for reading Brian D'Ambrosio’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Independence is Martin Sexton’s strength. Since his college years crooning on the streets of Harvard Square to his debut of self-produced demo recordings and beyond, he has prevailed largely on his own.
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Sep 30, 2024 | 
briandambrosio.substack.com | Brian D’Ambrosio |Brian D'Ambrosio
By Brian D’AmbrosioCerrillos Studio: A Surreal Space of Searched MaterialsThanks for reading Brian’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. There is much to behold if you are able to peer through the smudged windows, into Bill Skrips’ studio space in Cerrillos. The front door sign is turned to “Closed” most of the time, even if he can be seen or heard working inside.
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Sep 2, 2024 | 
primetimenm.com | Brian D’Ambrosio
By Brian D’AmbrosioCliff Fragua considers himself lucky as far as sculptors go. After 50 years carving stone, the Jemez Pueblo artist still has strong hands that are in one piece. “When I studied in Italy, a lot of the stone artisans had missing tips on their fingers,” Fragua said.
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Aug 8, 2024 | 
briandambrosio.substack.com | Brian D’Ambrosio |Brian D'Ambrosio
By Brian D’AmbrosioThanks for reading Brian’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Kitsch is a German word meaning trashy or junky work of art, a synonym for tasteless item. Barry Ferst, owner of Curiouser and Curiouser, revels in all stuff kitsch. His kitsch art menageries are a good-humored, irreverent expression, poking fun at the world of poor, chintzy taste, mass-produced tackiness, and rampant consumerism.
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Aug 6, 2024 | 
briandambrosio.substack.com | Brian D’Ambrosio |Brian D'Ambrosio
By Brian D’AmbrosioPeter Ortega’s woodcarvings are objects of beauty and birthright, equal parts artistry and inheritance. Thanks for reading Brian’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. His father, Benjamin “Ben” Ortega (1923-1998), took a slow, roundabout path to whittling wood, earning high regard in his lifetime for religious-themed statues.
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Aug 4, 2024 | 
briandambrosio.substack.com | Brian D’Ambrosio |Brian D'Ambrosio
By Brian D’AmbrosioThanks for reading Brian’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. As a young child, Santa Fe artist Robert “Bob” Ebendorf hauled a red wagon through the alleys of Topeka, scrounging stuff with satisfaction.
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Jul 17, 2024 | 
briandambrosio.substack.com | Brian D’Ambrosio |Brian D'Ambrosio
Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly Rode Flagpole to FameBy Brian D’AmbrosioThanks for reading Brian’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Fads, by nature, are short-lived and exhausted quickly. Now and again they fully enmesh the nation in some incredible, though usually innocuous, temporary craze. Looking back, a lot of them leave us shaking our heads.
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Sep 28, 2023 | 
missoulian.com | Brian D’Ambrosio
Ro Myra lost her father to illness in January 2021. Their attachment was especially well-knotted and much time had elapsed before the Missoula singer-songwriter could convert sorrow into reflection and contemplation into composition. These past several months, she’s leaned heavily on her creativity as a channel and learned that it can soften the grieving process. “My dad was a myth and a legend and a force to be reckoned with,” said Myra.
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May 3, 2023 | 
primetimenm.com | Brian D’Ambrosio
By Brian D’AmbrosioSteve Prickett, owner and founder of Eldora Chocolate in Albuquerque, is among a small group of culinary artists escalating the prestige of craft chocolate and the integrity with which it is made. A chocolate maker, as opposed to a chocolatier, Prickett purchases unrefinedcacao beans and then processes, roasts, treats, and mills them into chocolate. Most people who work with chocolate do not start directly from the cacao bean in the way that he does.
