By Jacey Blue Renner
One of the most poetic parts of the Southwest, and especially New Mexico, is its profound impacts on the senses. Its musicality, its artistry, its deeply humbling landscapes that last long after first looks, and first breaths. For decades, artists like Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams were captivated by the breadth and depth of Southwestern beauty, particularly of New Mexico. Contemporary artists, too, have found a muse in its light and geography, as well as the state’s cultural climate. Patricio Tlacaelel Trujillo y Fuentes, who goes by his artist’s moniker, Tlacaelel, in homage to his rich Chicano heritage, has in recent years carved out his own artistic pathway, inspired by and within New Mexico.
A visual and performative artist who is deeply involved in the community, Tlacaelel credits his childhood in the American Southwest for his interest in the arts.
“Music and art have always been a part of my life,” he said of his formative years in Pueblo, Colorado. “I grew up with a mother who loved to dance. She was always dancing, and she had me dancing around the house.”
This seeded his introduction to theater and his evolution into performance. From his elementary school days, Tclacaelel had an innate bond with visual and tactile arts. His art teacher’s “stacks and stacks of colored paper” appealed to his art origins, as did the comfort of scissors in his hands, cutting and creating what would become his first papel picado creations.
Papel picado, a traditional Mexican artform that uses intricate handcutting and paper layering to create, is an extension of Tclacaelel’s heart and culture. From his piece Ventana Rosa, which took over eight hours due to his detailed razor-cut methods, to other works like Yellow Sun Dance and Something Out of Nothing, Tclacaelel fills his work with symbols unique to the Southwest and colors reminiscent of the New Mexico sunset.
“There’s a lot to be found in my pieces. One only needs to kind of take time to sit with the works and delve into them,” Tlacaelel says. With his work most recently having been featured in the Millicent Rogers Museum and the Michael Gorman Gallery, he is leaving a visually rooted imprint on the Taos and New Mexico community at large.
“My work is a kind of jazz process where I improvise. I let things flow freely and allow one shape to influence another. It’s a very spontaneous process. Often, I am surprised at what emerges. … I don’t title my works because people, when they see the work, tell me what they see, how they interpret the work, or how it makes them feel,” he said.
Performing from California to New York, his travels and experiences have shaped his art in every medium. Yet, he is always called back to where he lives and now teaches: the Southwest. Creating from his studio in Albuquerque’s North Valley, Tclacaelel has worked on an array of projects at locations from the Millicent Rogers Museum to the Taos Center for the Arts, among others, sharing his impacts and cultural priorities statewide, from gallery to stage.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Tclacaelel embarked on a five-year project titled “The Chair,” which was a means of collaborating with both art and community in a time of isolation. In a repurposed priest’s chair, he photographed friends and family, professors, health care workers, Indigenous friends, and well-known New Mexico political figures.
“The Chair project was a very important time in my artistic pursuits in that it was born out of a sense of isolation and need for community,” he said.
By the project’s end, he had photographed over 150 people.
Often listening to Chicano music during his childhood, Tclacaelel has observed how that has influenced his art and how he teaches music students at St. Therese Catholic School in Albuquerque. As an educator, he tries to incorporate lessons that showcase the importance of not only his own Chicano cultural history, including sharing Aztec and Native American influences, but also tie-ins to each student’s personal cultural stories.
“I wanted to take my experience and adventures and encourage other young folks to see the world, to pursue dreams, and to learn about all the things life has to offer. Art is a very powerful tool for finding peace, unity, serenity and love; it can be a means of healing. … When people start to love it and have a passion for it, then it takes on a whole other meaning.”
Ultimately, he says he hopes that by putting his visual art out into the world, it will take root far and wide, imprinting cultural connection.
