Arts of enchantment: Rio Grande Arts & Crafts Festival showcases 200 artists over two weekends

As the big white tent unfurls across the Sandia Resort & Casino, 200 artists’ booths beckon visitors to the Rio Grande Arts & Crafts Festival.

Now in its 34th year, the show runs on two weekends, from Friday, Oct. 4, to Sunday, Oct. 6, and from Oct. 11 to Oct. 13.

Shoppers and browsers will find everything from pottery and paintings to jewelry and textiles. Expect live music, cocktails, a culinary market, food vendors and entertainment for kids.

Arts of enchantment: Rio Grande Arts & Crafts Festival showcases 200 artists over two weekends

Festival organizers chose Santa Fe’s Tony Thielen as this year’s poster artist.

A 14th generation New Mexican, Thielen’s career wound a convoluted route before he became a professional artist. Born and raised in Albuquerque, the child of military parents, he spent active duty with the Army for four years before studying for an international business degree in New York.

“I always wanted to be creative; I always wanted to be an artist,” Thielen said. “My family didn’t exactly support the idea of me being a starving artist.”

He later attended the Art Institute of Seattle and worked as a graphic designer for 20 years.

Around 2014, he started attending online art classes and workshops, including the California-based Watts’ Atelier of the Arts.

“I spent 2½ years learning to draw or what they call learning to see,” he said.

Thielen finally landed on contemporary figural work and quit his job in 2018.

“I was tired of everybody telling me what creative was,” he said. “As a designer, I was doing commercial work.”

His Rio Grande Arts & Crafts Festival poster “High Desert” is part of a series of portraits of contemporary cowgirls.

“My muses always seem to be female,” Thielen said. “They pretty much all are cowgirls.”

Viewers have interpreted the poster figure as male, Native American and female. It doesn’t bother Thielen.

“It’s just great for me because I want it to be what you see,” he said. “I’m not teaching them how to think about it.”

New Mexicans may recognize the chamisa in the foreground, with juniper and mesas looming behind the figure.

“All of my work is a mixture of where I try to find a balanced representation of subject, abstraction and expression,” Thielen said.

He paints in acrylic and mixed-media. The feather in the original poster painting was real. In another painting, he used part of a Bosque Brewing Company beer can as a hat band.

New Mexico heavily influenced his work, despite his attempts to leave it.

“When I grew up looking at the art, it was all cliche to me,” Thielen said. “Then when I left, I missed it. You realize we have a very unique culture here.”

Thielen hopes to bring about 10 paintings to the show.

“I’m painting like a madman right now,” he said.

When Rio Grande organizers informed him his painting had been chosen for the festival poster, he was shocked.

“I had no idea,” Thielen said. “I was honored. I told them I didn’t know I had entered. I was speechless. I’ve never had anybody want to spotlight my artwork like that.”

Today he also shows his work in Madrid and Tucson, as well as in open-air shows.