Spring 2026 promises to be a busy time!
First, some good news—we recently learned that our proposal to be featured in the inaugural edition of the Horizon Review has been accepted. Up to now, we’ve relied on social media, occasional newsletters and word of mouth to communicate about our multimedia collaborative art project, They Had No Time to Say Goodbye, about the ongoing crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Finally, our diverse collective, scattered throughout the area, was in one place to be interviewed for the article—out in April. Stay tuned!
L. Sandi Ludescher, Lorrisa Orosco (Diné Apache) our consultant, Linda Piper, Kimberly Wahpepah (Diné) and yours truly.
Currently, our collective consists of four diverse artists and activists: Sandi Ludescher is a New Mexican figurative artist who is painting portraits of actual missing or murdered Indigenous women for our project; Kimberly Wahpepah (Diné), is a survivor of sex trafficking, now an advocate for trafficking survivors; and Linda Piper, Black activist, writer, storyteller, and theater director. Lorrisa Orosco, also a survivor of sex trafficking, is our consultant. I am the lead artist.
As I mentioned in my last blog post, we have teamed up with Amanda Erickson, director and producer of She Cried That Day—a moving documentary about a murdered Indigenous woman, Dione Thomas. We are all united in our concern for these women who are historically devalued, objectified, and treated as disposable within mainstream culture.
Below is a portrait of Jamie Yazzie (Diné), aged 32, by Sandi Ludescher. Jamie went missing in 2019. Two years later her remains were found. Her boyfriend, Tre James, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2023.
We continue to invite artists throughout the USA to participate in They Had No Time to Say Goodbye by etching Indigenous women’s faces on 9” x 8” x-rays. While Sandi is painting images of actual MMIW for our project, these images represent the countless anonymous Indigenous women who go missing without a trace. We need many more etched x-rays to show the enormity of the crisis.
L.Etched x-ray of Indigenous woman’s face by a Santa Fe artist from a drawing created by an artist who participated in my workshop at Collage Arts in London. R. One of several etched x-rays with an Indigenous woman’s face by Susan T. Martin of the Tampa Bay Area.
Please get in touch with me if you would like to participate and help us get the word out. It’s a simple process, no special supplies needed. A screw driver is used to etch the x-ray on a light box in the image below, but a dull pair of scissors and a glass window pane with light shining through it works just as well.
Every participant will be acknowledged in our exhibitions. The x-rays will be stitched together to form long scrolls to hang from the ceiling above a bed of desert sand in which antique doll parts, together with scraps of red women’s clothing, are partially buried. Watch a three minute video made during a pop-up exhibition in Guadalajara two years ago. Our project has grown considerably since then.
We are indebted to The REDress Project by Jaimie Black (Métis) and Jordan Marie Daniel’s (Kul Wicasa Oyate) red hand symbol.
I’m excited to be heading to Florida soon! In mid March I travel to the Tampa Bay Area where I will be presenting at the Museum of Motherhood’s Academic and Arts Conference taking place at the University of South Florida’s St Petersburg campus on March 27 and 28. My presentation is tentatively scheduled for 10am on the 27th. It will be on They Had No Time to Say Goodbye, as will my presentation at a meeting of 1 Million Cups on Wednesday, March 25, 9am to 10am, at the Entrepreneur Collaborative Center, 2101 East Palm Avenue in Tampa. You are invited to attend either in person or online. It’s free.
I will also be conducting a Daylong Mixed Media Workshop, themed Peace, while I’m in Florida. These very popular workshops are something I did regularly when I lived in the area. It, plus a free They Had No Time to Say Goodbye workshop, to take place directly after the mixed media workshop, will be held at The Off-Central in St Petersburg on Saturday, March 21. The workshops will be available online for a cost of $100. The physical address is 2260 1st Avenue South St. Petersburg. The cost for the in-person mixed media workshop is $130, payable by Venmo or Zelle. Contact me to sign up. A materials list will be sent after sign up.
Photos from my last Daylong Mixed Media Workshop in my St Petersburg studio in Spring, 2022. L: Maria A. Chirico. R: Anne Bennett sharing her work during our final critique on my deck.
At the end of March, I leave the Tampa Bay Area for Virginia where I’ll be at an artists retreat, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, for a one week residency. I look forward to the bucolic serenity of the VCCA, situated, as it is, in the foothills of the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains on what was once a dairy farm. But, before that I relish the thought of spending time at some of my favorite Florida beaches with some of my favorite Florida friends!
After a week at the VCCA it will almost be time to return to New Mexico. There’ll be one last stop to explore Richmond and the surrounding area before I catch a flight home.
Meanwhile, I continue to teach painting —acrylics, oils, watercolors and mixed media— online and in my Nob Hill, Albuquerque, studio.
L. Acrylic on canvas by one of my newer students Andrea Rimoli. R. Portrait of author Louise Erdrich by my longest longtime student Colette Bancroft. Acrylic on canvas. Colette has been attending my painting classes for well over two decades!
Classes are on Wednesday evenings from 5 to 7:30pm MT, 7 to 9:30 ET. The cost is $100 for a six week session. Or $20 per class. Each class lasts two-and-a-half-hours. I also teach painting privately. Contact me for details. An exhibition of my students’ paintings at a gallery in St Petersburg is in the works. More information on that to follow soon!
Tags:artistretreat, MMIW, mmiwawareness, multimediaartinstallation, sextraffickingsurvivors, theyhadnotimetosaygoodbye, traveltoflorida, virginiacenterforthecreativearts, workshops