Betting the ranch

Albuquerque-based artist Jacob Gutierrez recently completed a seven-month artist residency with the community printmaking studio Risolana. The result is a 17-panel, hand-bound artist book, “Sacred Herd,” and an exhibition of the same name, which is on view at Risolana through the end of December.

Gutierrez said he used the residency as an opportunity to reconnect with his ranching heritage.

“I have a history of ranching in my family, but I grew up in Albuquerque, so a lot of those traditions got lost with the generations before me,” Gutierrez said. “So part of my journey with this book was reconnecting with those traditional lifestyles and roots that I have.”

Gutierrez’s great-grandparents were sheep herders in Santa Rosa. For “Sacred Herd,” the artist traveled to family-owned ranches throughout the state, collecting ranchers’ stories and creating portraits of their animals.

“The thing that was most striking to me was just how fleeting these lifestyles are,” Gutierrez said.

There are fewer and fewer ranchers in New Mexico every year, and many of those who continue ranching, Gutierrez said, do it out of love.

“It’s almost a privilege to live with these animals in this way,” Gutierrez said. “A lot of the people I met with aren’t doing it for the money, and they’re not doing it (simply) to survive. They’re really doing it to stay connected to a lifestyle that, throughout time, has slowly been taken away from them.”

One of the artist’s most memorable moments over the course of the project involved spending the night on the Navajo Nation. He arrived in the evening and drove to the top of a mountain, where he helped his host feed the animals.

“It was 9 p.m. and super dark, but you can’t really take a day off in this way of life, so we got right to work,” Gutierrez said. “After that, we went into the cabin and built a fire and just talked all night. Then, in the morning, he made me breakfast. We were overlooking the Four Corners area, and we could see into Utah. And we were so high up in elevation that there were clouds right next to us.”

Feeling connected to nature and spending time with a community whose rhythms of life were similar to those of their ancestors, Gutierrez said, helped him realize “what this lifestyle was all about.”

“The basis of my book was trying to highlight the sacred bond that we have with these animals, and seeing them less as a resource and more as beings that should be treated with respect — seeing them as family or as ancestors,” Gutierrez said.

Gutierrez’s book juxtaposes paragraphs from his journal with portrait-like images of the animals he encountered.

“Every animal has a personality. Every being has their own way of thinking; they’re individuals in their own right,” Gutierrez said.

Gutierrez said he was raised in a very religious Catholic family, and he still sometimes uses religious iconography in his work. But he said his idea of sacredness has changed and expanded over time.

“As I got older, what felt most sacred and holy to me was my family,” he said. “And what I consider family is growing, too. Now, it includes animals, and our ancestors.”

Michael López, who cofounded Risolana in 2021, first became fascinated with risograph printing as a child.

“I went to a Catholic church in Albuquerque growing up — Our Lady of Guadalupe — and I remember being tremendously bored ... and looking at (the hymnal) really closely and seeing all these little dots on the page and just thinking it was really neat, all these little halftones,” López said.

The risograph machine was first released in Japan in 1980, and while its commercial use waned with the rise of inkjet printing, artists in recent decades have embraced the technology for its ability to produce vibrant digital prints with a handcrafted feel.

“Some people say it’s like if a Xerox and a screen print had a baby,” López said.

His organization’s name, Risolana, is a play on “resolana” — Spanish for “sunny spot” — which refers to a community gathering spot, usually a south-facing wall, which was part of the fabric of López’s life growing up. He said it was important for Risolana to have the same laid-back, community-oriented feel of a resolana, as opposed to the intimidating atmosphere of some art institutions.

López began his career, not as a printmaker but as a documentary filmmaker, so he also wanted Risolana to be a place where people of all disciplines could work together in community.

“The fact that we weren’t just coming from one specific discipline really allowed us to become a platform for people from all disciplines to see themselves in Risolana,” López said. “And that’s the heart of a resolana ... a place that allows people to gather and to share and to be part of that myriad of backgrounds that makes a community unique.”

Gutierrez, who studied printmaking at the University of New Mexico and often makes wood block prints, had never worked with a risograph or used vector graphics software like Adobe Illustrator. During his residency, he worked closely with Risolana’s designers, who helped him translate his detailed wood block prints of ranch animals into digital images.

“He was able to find a way to take this block print that’s very immediate and has a nice edge to it, and then scan it into a computer and work with it in a way that still held up some of that integrity of the block print,” López said. “I think that’s part of the beauty of riso, too. It’s a trickster in that way. You sometimes look at something and you’re like, ‘Is this riso or is this a block print?’”

When “Sacred Herd” opened at Risolana on Nov. 21, most of the ranchers Gutierrez had met in the previous months attended the opening, some traveling several hours to do so.

“It felt so familial. It felt like seeing my family on the holidays,” Gutierrez said. “And I could see the smiles on their faces when they were flipping through the animals that were on their ranches, or on their properties. It was such a heartwarming moment to see that, and then have them come up and give me such big hugs.”

“No one left saying goodbye,” he added. “Everyone said, ‘I’ll see you soon.’”

Gutierrez said all the ranchers invited him to come back and spend more time with them, which he plans to do.

“I knew this work was important, but being in it, I got a whole new sense of appreciation for it,” Gutierrez said. “I already have plans to go back to a lot of these ranches and hand-deliver their books, as well as spend the night and day with everyone. And it doesn’t always have to be about, ‘Hey, let me come and take pictures of your animals, so I can make a project.’ It's more organic, where I just want to go back and experience (more of) these communities.”

As Gutierrez deepens his connections with New Mexico’s ranchers, he hopes to continue telling their stories through his art.

“‘Sacred Herd’ is very much the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “I feel like I can’t not make this work now.”