July 2023 Events in Taos
La Estrella del Pastor: Hispano Sheepherders: Culture, Tradition, and Sheepscapes
Talk by Andrew Gulliford, 2023 Jim & Linda Burke Visiting Scholar
Monday, July 10 4:30 PM at SOMOS, 108 Civic Plaza Dr., Taos
From his bookThe Woolly West: Colorado’s Hidden History of Sheepscapes, Dr. Andrew Gulliford will speak about poor Hispanic sheepherders, pastores, and wealthy Hispanic sheep owning families or ricos who transformed the West by the grazing of thousands of sheep across New Mexico and Colorado. He will discuss the history of sheep grazing as well as describe a powerful love story between Aldo Leopold and Estella Luna Otero Bergere. Gulliford will discuss the brutal sheep and cattle wars and explain historical archaeology and the wide variety of sites related to sheep movements, sheep camps, cairns, aspen tree carvings, and lonely sheepherder lifeways in Colorado’s high country for summer grazing. He will show photographs and discuss cultural traditions and stories of Hispano and other ethnic herders who have grazed and still graze U.S. National Forest and Bureau of Land Management lands. Questions and stories from the audience will be welcomed.
Dr. Gulliford is a professor of History and Environmental Studies at Fort Lewis College in Durango. He received the National Individual Volunteer Award from the U.S. Forest Service for wilderness education, and a certificate of recognition from the Secretary of Agriculture for “outstanding contributions to America’s natural and cultural resources.” In 2016 he was awarded an Aldo and Estella Leopold Writers-in-Residency at Tres Piedras, New Mexico to research and write in the bungalow Aldo built for his wife in 1912 on the Carson National Forest. The Woolly West: Colorado’s Hidden History of Sheepscapes won the Colorado Book Award for History, and the Wrangler Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Non-Fiction from the National Cowboy Museum & Heritage Center in Oklahoma City. Gulliford’s latest book is Bears Ears: Landscape of Refuge and Resistance (University of Utah Press).
Dreaming in Color
Artist's Talk by 2023 Smelser Vaillion Visiting Artist Sophie Isaak
Tuesday, July 11 at 3:30 PM, Taos Art Museum Studio, 227 Paseo Del Pueblo Norte, Taos
Sophie Isaak was born in Boston, Massachusetts. After graduating from the University of Vermont with a degree in English and Studio Art, Isaak went on to receive an MA and MFA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa. Bound to intense colors, awkward and surprising forms and idiosyncratic compositions, Isaak utilizes printmaking, drawing and painting techniques to create complex compositions. Her work has been displayed nationally in several solo and juried exhibitions. Recently Isaak has exhibited at Ortega y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn, NY, Collar Works in Troy, NY, the Four Rivers Print Biennial in Carbondale, IL and Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis, MN. Isaak has completed artist residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Zea Mays Printmaking and Keene State College. Isaak serves as the President of the Mid America Print Council, an educational and community-based organization that focuses on all print related arts. She has taught printmaking at Skidmore College, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lesley University and Oberlin College. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Printmaking at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in Lincoln, NE.