By Brian C. Nixon | Apr 11, 2025
Recently I was asked by a young film student in Albuquerque about my favorite Western novels and movies. Though picking the ‘best’ is subjective, here’s my personal take on 11 timeless novels (why stick with 10?).
By Brian C. Nixon | Apr 8, 2025
It’s tough to determine when Irish immigrants first began to populate New Mexico. Irish soldiers fought for Mexico during the Mexican-American War between the years 1846-1848, with some staying in the region.
By Brian C. Nixon | Mar 31, 2025
The Latin word sublimis is taken from the prefix sub, ‘up to,’ and the suffix, limus, ‘oblique.’ The word means high up, great. In English the word is sublime.
By Brian C. Nixon | Mar 22, 2025
Since a kid in Jr. High, J.S. Bach has loomed large in my world. It may be hearing his music in church had something to do with it.
By Brian C. Nixon | Mar 15, 2025
Walking into Exhibit 208 a few months back, I was struck by marvelously rendered black and white portraits, paintings that conjured historical photographs but executed in a contemporary style.
By Brian C. Nixon | Mar 5, 2025
Walking into the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall in Tucson, Arizona, my mind goes back to when I was a child growing up in “Old Pueblo,” Tucson’s nickname.
By Brian C. Nixon | Feb 25, 2025
Contrary to what some websites declare, artist and printmaker Dan Socha is residing on planet earth. Or, as artist and curator Kim Arthun tells me, “Dan is very much still alive.” At 82, his work is as strong as ever.
By Brian C. Nixon | Feb 21, 2025
For any human to lose his or her hearing is overwhelming. For a composer, it’s catastrophic.
By Brian C. Nixon | Feb 13, 2025
I went to the Albuquerque Museum of Art to see the newly acquired Richard Diebenkorn painting, Untitled (Albuquerque), 1952. But my eye caught another newly obtained work, Yoshiko Shimano’s Wisdom of Water (2016).
By Brian C. Nixon | Feb 7, 2025
Looking at the artwork for Score on Rain Panchos by Raven Chacon and Guillermo Galindo, one sees three raincoats hanging on the wall. The left and right raincoats are white; the middle raincoat is yellow.
By Brian C. Nixon | Feb 1, 2025
In a day and age where A.I. computer manipulation and Photoshop rule the world of photography, it’s refreshing to find a naturalist, in the technological and thematic sense of the word.
By Brian C. Nixon | Jan 28, 2025
Bingo. The art-collective, not the game. It’s where twenty-five to thirty people gathered—in an industrial section of Albuquerque, New Mexico, just south of the railyards—to watch and listen to two experimental film projects.
By Brian C. Nixon | Jan 21, 2025
My association with Stephen Christian goes back many years. As lead singer for the rock band Anberlin, a chart-topping ensemble with hit song Feel Good Drag, Christian performed throughout New Mexico, often joining me for interviews.
By Brian C. Nixon | Jan 12, 2025
When I moved from Southern California to New Mexico, I picked up a flyer that read “Experiments in Film.” I was intrigued. The host was Basement Films.
By Brian C. Nixon | Jan 3, 2025
In one hand I have the article A Movable Peace—from the newspaper Pasatiempo—extoling the joy of riding Sky Railway, a train venture partially funded by George R.R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones.
By Brian C. Nixon | Dec 19, 2024
Walking into the Norbertine Abbey in Albuquerque’s South Valley for an art exhibit a few years back, I was smitten by a small icon.
By Brian C. Nixon | Dec 3, 2024
When it comes to popular music, Albuquerque is well represented. From Weird Al Yankovic to Albuquerque’ own, The Shins, Albuquerque is sung about with humor, hubris, and honor. A cursory Google check shows over twenty songs with Albuquerque in the name or within the lyrics.
By Brian C. Nixon | Nov 22, 2024
Purgatory may not be something all people believe in, but to Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, Mexican actress Lupe Vélez, indigenous interpreter La Malinche, and La Llorna, a fictitious, forlorn woman, the intermediate state between life and death comes to life in Living Purgatory, a play penned by Patricia Crespin and directed by Alicia Lueras Maldonado.
By Brian C. Nixon | Nov 19, 2024
History barely remembers Asa Whitney, Theodore Judah, and Lewis Clement, or the thousands of other Americans—Native, Chinese, Irish, Italian, German, Japanese and African—who helped build the first transcontinental railroad.
