Natalie Hegert

Los Angeles

Arts Editor at Southwest Contemporary

Arts Writer/ Editor @MutualArt @ArtSlant

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Articles

An Artist Who Wrangles Cattle, Pours Iron, and Pulls Prints

1 week ago | southwestcontemporary.com | Natalie Hegert

Artist Jack Craft operates a cattle ranch in the Texas Panhandle while producing minimalist sculptures and experimental prints. The first time I met Jack Craft, we were in a meticulously raked “zen garden” art installation and he handed me a shot of tequila in a tiny iron pinch-pot. The second time I met Craft, he was holding a microphone outside of the gallery I co-founded, calling like a seasoned rodeo announcer.
In Tulsa, an Ambitious Exhibition Asks Us to Hold onto Our Roots, While Drifting Toward the Future

1 week ago | southwestcontemporary.com | Natalie Hegert

Drift///Hold is the ambitious inaugural exhibition of Central Standard in Tulsa with major new works by five compelling early-career artists. Drift///HoldFebruary 22–April 18, 2025Central Standard, TulsaThe words “drift” and “hold” evoke opposites: forward-looking movement and backward-facing pause. But as political rhetoric, nationally and in red states like Oklahoma, becomes increasingly polarized, can we stretch away from binaries toward the complicated?
Amid Long-term Closure, Flood-Stricken Roswell Museum Extends into the Community

2 weeks ago | southwestcontemporary.com | Natalie Hegert

While the Roswell Museum’s doors remain closed following the disastrous flood last year, support comes from the local community and statewide arts organizations. ROSWELL—At the Roswell Public Library on a recent Saturday morning, parents mingled while kids moved between three stations of tables, dutifully scrubbing tarnished pennies with salt and vinegar, “restoring” photocopies of paintings with colored pencil, and gluing broken toys back together.
Caroline Liu’s Chinese Garden is Not as Sweet as It Looks. And That’s Good.

3 weeks ago | southwestcontemporary.com | Natalie Hegert |Robyne Robinson

Caroline Liu’s exhibition at the Gallery One Art Vault in Albuquerque City Hall lures you in then hits you with a one-two punch about erased histories and Asian marginalization.
Time Zero: How the Atomic Age Never Ended, and the Artists Who Are Exposing It

1 month ago | southwestcontemporary.com | Natalie Hegert

Time Zero podcast producer Sean J Patrick Carney on art and the nuclearized world, from the hyperlocal of the Trinity site to the planetary effects of nuclearism. This article is part of our The Hyperlocal series, a continuation of the ideas explored in Southwest Contemporary Vol. 11. Two summers back in Las Cruces, New Mexico, I attended a group exhibition organized by the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium.
Field Report: Eclectic Metro Phoenix

1 month ago | southwestcontemporary.com | Natalie Hegert |Lynn Trimble

Some of the best off-the-beaten-path art offerings in metro Phoenix happen beyond First Friday art walks and annual Art Detour happenings. Here’s our eclectic Phoenix art guide. Field Report: Eclectic Metro PhoenixElevation: 1,086 feetPopulation: 4.8 million (including 1.6 million in Phoenix proper)Town Etymology: Phoenix might have been named for Confederate general Stonewall Jackson had one of its early settlers gotten his way.
Cowboy Cuts Close to Home, Deep in Cowboy Country

1 month ago | southwestcontemporary.com | Natalie Hegert |Emma S. Ahmad

At the Amon Carter in Fort Worth—known as “Cowtown”—the exhibition Cowboy made waves by reimagining the mythology surrounding the American cowboy. CowboySeptember 28, 2024–March 23, 2025Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort WorthThere is not a more quintessentially American archetype than that of the cowboy. The lore is both popular and beloved: the fated rivalry between “cowboys and Indians,” the wide-open plains, the rugged individualism.
Future Town Tour Uses Art to Create New, Shared Cultures in Rural Colorado

1 month ago | southwestcontemporary.com | Natalie Hegert |Parker Yamasaki

The Future Town Tour, an ongoing series hosted by Warm Cookies of the Revolution, brings residents together throughout small-town Colorado to reflect on shared cultures and create new rituals. On the second story of a community center in Silverthorne, Colorado, the kids have taken over. They rush at each other wielding swords made from the cardboard centers of cotton candy.
Cindee Klement: The Hyperlocal

1 month ago | southwestcontemporary.com | Natalie Hegert

Houston-based artist Cindee Klement depicts otherwise invisible systems and their interconnections to encourage local ecological recovery in the Energy Capital of the World. Houston, Texas | cindeeklement.com | @cindeeklementart“‘Start where you are,’” says artist Cindee Klement, quoting one of her favorite environmental writers, Judith Schwartz.
The Hyperlocal: Jess Lanham

1 month ago | southwestcontemporary.com | Natalie Hegert

Since the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fires, Jess Lanham has been creating work about the stark changes in her hometown of Las Vegas, New Mexico, using fragments and wildfire ash. Albuquerque, New Mexico | jesslanham.com | @jesslan4Even while pursuing her undergraduate degree in Chicago and living in San Francisco for a decade, Jess Lanham found herself making work about her hometown of Las Vegas, New Mexico.