The 40th annual Creative Bravos Awards honor Albuquerque's arts community

The city of Albuquerque’s 40th annual Creative Bravos Awards are happening Saturday, March 22, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at the Albuquerque Museum.

Former longtime Albuquerque Journal photographer Adolphe Pierre-Louis is being honored with an award, along with eight other recipients. The awards, which are presented by the Department of Arts and Culture, recognize “work that makes a significant impact on the lives of residents, neighborhoods, and/or communities.”

Sherri Brueggemann

Sherri Brueggemann has been instrumental in shaping Albuquerque’s artistic landscape with over 30 years of public art management and advocacy work, from coordinating Albuquerque’s first Route 66 Street Festival in 1994 to overseeing the recently completed Public Art Census.

“I’m completely honored and very excited, because I actually coordinated the Creative Bravos awards almost 30 years ago,” Brueggeman said.

She said she is especially honored to be receiving this award now, since she is planning to retire this year — a fitting capstone to a lifetime of service to public art in Albuquerque.

Julia Munroe Mandeville

Julia Munroe Mandeville is the cofounder and artistic director of the music and arts festival SOMOS ABQ and the restorative arts and healing platform Mirror Bridge. In addition, she is the chief programs officer at Harwood Art Center.

She said she was honored to be selected as a Creative Bravos winner in the company of so many other incredible people.

“This creative community is a constellation, and it feels like everyone is connected by a couple degrees of proximity and mutual admiration,” Mandeville said.

Mandeville founded the SOMOS ABQ festival in 2016 as what she called “a love letter to Albuquerque, to shine light on the beauty and brilliance of our creative community.”

This year’s headliners include Shannon and the Clams and Chromeo, along with many local bands. She is also commissioning 9 large-scale art installations for the festival.

Mandeville has been with the Harwood Art Center for the past 12 years, where she’s played an instrumental role in shaping their programs for creative expression, lifelong learning and civic engagement.

“My team of collaborators and organizers is so extraordinary, and I love working with them so deeply,” she said. “And with the artists we serve and support, it’s like an actual dream.”

Casey Mraz

Casey Mraz is a musician, playwright and teaching artist who serves as the music director for Circo ABQ and has been the musical director for The Show, Albuquerque’s improv comedy troupe, since 2010.

“I love working in the community,” Mraz said. “I think that’s the biggest thing they’re giving me this award for, just having my hands in lots of different community projects.”

A passionate aficionado of the piano accordion, which he grew up hearing his Italian uncles play, Mraz often collaborates with other local accordion players, most of whom play Spanish-style button accordions.

“There’s a vibrant accordion scene here, and it’s cross-cultural, so it’s pretty awesome to be part of it,” Mraz said.

In addition to the accordion, Mraz is a master of many obscure musical instruments, and he practices circus arts, including basketball juggling – all of which endear him to his students at Circo ABQ.

Although he is honored to receive the Creative Bravo award, Mraz said his proudest moment came earlier in the week, when the parent of a former music student told him his son recently performed at Carnegie Hall.

Naomi Natale

Naomi Natale is an artist and activist known for large-scale social engagement projects. Her “One Million Bones” project brought together 150,000 participants across 50 states and 30 countries to create over a million handmade bones as a statement against genocide, culminating in a 2013 installation on the National Mall.

“When I look at that picture of the bones on the Mall, I see relationships,” Natale said. “That was five years of people coming together with their hands creating something. We’re giving reverence to life.”

Natale is currently developing a project, titled “Of Grief and Dreams,” a site of communal healing centered around a wooden boat and pair of wings that she will construct in the desert from donated materials. Natale began this project as a way of processing her own grief as the mother of a son diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, and she hopes to use her family’s personal grief as a way of connecting with “grievers and dreamers” everywhere. To learn more, or to contribute to this project, visit ofgriefanddreams.org.

“Grief is born of love,” Natale said, “but I think it’s important to take the time to honor grief. It can disfigure our lives but it can also transform our lives if we focus on our love and gratitude for what we’re mourning.”

Adolphe Pierre-Louis

Pierre-Louis has been documenting life in New Mexico as a journalist and photographer for over three decades. He joined the Albuquerque Journal in 1990, capturing everything from crime scenes to cultural festivals.

“I feel that by covering those positive things that are happening, then when they have a triple homicide, when I show up there, people are aren’t screaming at me,” he said. “Because they know that I belong to the community. I’ve reported their moments of joy. So, when it’s time for me to photograph them in their worst moments, I’m always welcome.”

Although photojournalism can take an emotional toll, he said it’s important for journalists to remain empathetic.

“I always try to capture humanity through every single image that I photograph,” he said

He points to one photograph he took, in particular, in the aftermath of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, of a woman leading a blind person through the rubble.

“I went down there twice, three weeks after the earthquake, and then six months after, and to me that image shows the common humanity that we all have, despite all the destruction that is surrounding her.”

More recently, Pierre-Louis has been following Haitian emigres across multiple countries, including Brazil and Mexico as they make their way to Boston and other parts of the United States — a project he hopes to turn into a book.

Pierre-Louis said he will dedicate his award to the memory of Gasner Raymond, a Haitian journalist who lived a block away from him when he was growing up and who was killed in 1976 for writing a story exposing corruption under the regime of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.

“I was barely 14 years old, and that had an impact on my life,” he said. “That was the spark that I needed to choose this amazing and rewarding profession.”

Keith Sánchez

Like many of this year’s nominees, Keith Sánchez is an educator and community leader as well as a musician. As the lead singer and songwriter of Stoic Frame, he achieved national recognition with a #1 Rock en Español single, but he remains deeply committed to local community engagement.

“The Bravos mean so much to me, because they come from the community of my ancestors, the community of my querencia and my heart,” Sánchez said.

A native of Belen, Sánchez spent time in El Salvador, where he developed his singular style of musical storytelling. Today, as a doctoral student of Chicana/Chicano Studies at the University of New Mexico, he explores the deep-rooted connections between New Mexico’s music, history, and identity.

“This award also belongs to my wife and partner in life and community service, Ana Romero,” Sánchez said. “She’s the chief creator of NMARB (New Mexico Academy of Rock and Blues) and NMYAA (New Mexico Youth Arts Ambassadors). These are the art forums I participate in that pass the torch of creativity and critical thinking to the next generation. Nothing is more important than that.”

Madison Van Der Lingen

Madison Van Der Lingen combines fashion design with community organizing, creating innovative fashion events that support eco-friendly sustainable practices in an industry notorious for its wastefulness.

“I just use recycled textiles for all my clothing. I don’t buy anything new,” she said. “And another aspect of the sustainability is that I make everything by hand, unless I hire someone, and we make it ethically here in Albuquerque.”

Sustainable fashion events she has spearheaded include Meow Wolf’s “Absolute Rubbish” Trash Fashion Show and “Unknown Garden” at the Ballut Abyad Temple.

“We haven’t had a huge fashion scene in Albuquerque, so I’ve been working to establish one,” Van Der Lingen said. “Growing community has been very fun for me.”

She hosts workshops and events at Sew Whateva! makerspace, and sherecently launched a collaborative sustainable fashion boutique called PuffBugg’s Closet.

New Mexico Art League (Legacy Bravos Award)

The Creative Bravos’ special Legacy Award this year goes to the New Mexico Art League.

The Art League, founded in 1929, is one of the oldest art organizations in the country.

Its current director, Buffy Nelson, said, “It has been a haven to so many New Mexico artists over the years, providing a gathering place, gallery and studio for artists like Raymond Jonson, Ernest L. Blumenschein, Bert Phillips, Peter Hurd, Henriette Wyeth and Wilson Hurley, who all believed in and worked toward creating a place where artists could pursue their passion to create, discuss, exhibit and teach art.”

“We continue to honor that legacy today,” Nelson continued. “As a nonprofit organization, the Art League offers an ambitious schedule of events that includes workshops and classes taught by accomplished artists from New Mexico and around the country.”

“Our exhibitions feature artists living and working in New Mexico and regularly draw favorable attention from local collectors and art critics,” she said.

The league offers opportunities for emerging artists through its scholarship programs for young artists who wish to pursue an advanced degree or career in the arts.

Eamon Quigley (Emerging Bravos Award)

Eamon Quigley, a local muralist and ceramic artist, is the recipient of the Emerging Bravos Award for his vibrant, surrealist-inspired murals, which have enlivened Albuquerque’s built environment.

Inspired to get into murals after learning about the street artist Keith Haring in middle school, Quigley went from painting secret artworks in tunnels to scoring high-profile commissions.

One of his most impressive pieces depicts a full-size train traveling through a 130-foot barn.

Green plants are a recurring motif in many of Quigley’s murals. “Some green can boost anyone’s mood,” he said. “That’s what I’ve come to learn in a psychological sense. Any psychologist can tell you it’s better than being surrounded by gray walls or even tan walls.”

The 40th annual Creative Bravos Awards honor Albuquerque's arts community