From mountains to a mouse: 34th Annual Rio Grande Arts & Crafts Spring Fest to feature 150 juried artists from New Mexico and beyond

Spring does not officially begin until March 20, but the 34th Annual Rio Grande Arts & Crafts Spring Fest is getting the jump on the season.

The event, which runs from Friday, March 13, to Sunday, March 15, features 150 juried artists, along with live music each day. 

Utah artist Chrystal Dawn will be participating for the second time. For the last four years, she has been a part of the fall Rio Grande Arts & Crafts Festival, which coincides with the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. 

She said she was drawn back to the festival because she loves the community and, of course, the food in New Mexico. 

An oil and acrylic artist, she mainly paints forest and desert scenes. 

“As people, we’re all connected to the earth,” Dawn said, “and that’s our connection to each other, so I like to paint that in my work.”

While she paints nature pieces, she deviates from traditional motifs, using animals to showcase stories and folklore. 

These pieces include medieval scenes such as a mouse dressed as a knight riding atop a toad or a frog dressed as a knight. 

“I want people to connect with them differently, to see them as more equals with us,” Dawn said. “Rather than something that’s lesser than.”

She said her favorite animals to paint are owls, foxes and deer. The owls remind Dawn of her grandmother’s wise energy. It was her grandmother who helped Dawn get into art. 

When Dawn was little, her grandmother would take her to Barnes & Noble and let her pore over art books, she said. 

“That helped develop my style,” Dawn said.

She loves medieval manuscripts and historical documentaries, and while perusing them, ideas will pop into her head and she has to paint them. 

She said a great part of art festivals is finding others who relate to her love of art and history.

“I didn’t realize how many other people had this weird fascination with old manuscripts until I started painting that kind of thing,” Dawn said.

Another artist showing at Spring Fest is oil painter Catalina Salinas, who grew up in La Paz, Bolivia. 

She grew up surrounded by Bolivia’s Indigenous culture and vibrant colors and pulls inspiration for many of the patterns and colors in her pieces from her home country.

Salinas said once she moved to the United States, she found colors similar to Bolivian textiles. Now, Salinas incorporates New Mexican and Southwestern hues into her palette.

“The sunsets here are fantastic,” said Salinas, who currently lives in New Mexico. “When we see that transformation of subtleness of bright blues, but then turn it into pink, and then there’s tones of those browns (and) yellows.”

She said sometimes buyers will request a piece in a more muted palette, and she tells them it is out of her realm, preferring color and brightness. Salinas said she brings a happy spirit to her art.

“You can never be tired by looking at a lot of color,” Salinas said. 

Salinas said her main focus is working with abstract geometrical patterns. 

Nature plays a big part in her compositions, and she sees the “pattern of the mathematical work” in things like flowers and shells, she said. 

While this is Salina’s first time showing at the event, Scott Swezy has worked with Rio Grande Arts & Crafts at various festivals for decades. 

Swezy is primarily a landscape and abstract acrylic painter. 

He has traveled around the United States, participating in arts festivals. While customers in other states, like Texas, prefer his abstract work, he said Southwestern landscapes sell best in New Mexico. 

This preference has led him to paint many areas around the state, including Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and the Sandia Mountains. 

“What I do with my Sandia pieces is I take the evening vision of the mountain with the bright orange and pink color,” Swezy said, “and then I take the morning vision of the sky with the dramatic cloud colors, and I combine them.”

“I call that series ‘Sunrise, Sunset,’” he said. 

He focuses on adding texture to pieces to lift the art off the canvas. 

“Every single paint stroke you make has a little shadow on it,” he said, “and just increases the depth of the whole piece.”

Swezy was chosen as the Rio Grande Arts & Crafts Spring Fest featured artist this year, and his piece “Summer Creek” has been used for marketing on postcards and billboards. “Summer Creek,” he said, does not depict a real place, but even so, customers will often proclaim they recognize it.

He said being chosen as the featured artist felt like an acknowledgement of the years he has been working with the festival. 

“It’s an honor,” he said.

Elizabeth Secor is an arts fellow from the New Mexico Local News Fellowship program. You can reach her at esecor@abqjournal.com.