Collaborating with virgil ortiz
I first met Cochiti artist Virgil Ortiz in 2003 at a celebratory event on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. My oldest brother Eddie Risley had been working as a model for Virgil; he invited me to the social affair to meet the artist. Too young to drink at that time, the party was still fun and it made an impression. Eighteen years later and upon returning home from Maine where I had attended graduate school, I reached out to Virgil. I was looking to reconnect with old friends and acquaintances in New Mexico as many of my childhood friends had moved away and it was important to me to reestablish a social network for myself at home. To my delight, Virgil responded to my message. He shared that he did remember me from all those years ago and that we should reunite over drinks at Del Charro. Three hot toddies later and after briefing him on the research and photographic work I had just returned from in Asia, Virgil invited me to work alongside him as his photographer.
One of our more memorable projects together included a road trip from Santa Fe to Gresham, Wisconsin. In preparation for Santa Fe’s 99th annual Indian Market, the city’s premier Indigenous art event, Virgil created several pieces to be wood fired at Simon Levin’s Mill Creek Pottery studio in Gresham. I had been invited by both Simon and Virgil to document the firing. After driving 22 hours, we arrived at the studio and were met by Simon and six other potters who had all converged at Mill Creek with their art in tow. The objective of each artist was to successfully fire their work in Simon’s Anagama kiln.
A day was spent loading over 700 pieces of work into the kiln. We started in the back, strategically placing every plate, cup, kraft, pot, and sculpture in layers upon shelves until the kiln was packed. The scene ended up resembling a giant house of cards, except the horizontal cards were slabs of plaster while the verticals were bricks, and every card balanced an assortment of very breakable ceramic art on its surface. Collectively, thousands of hours of deliberate, artistic labor was now sitting in the kiln waiting to be fired.
When it was finally time to light the kiln, everyone gathered around for a reverent blessing as a pile of kindling was pushed into the lower front stoke hole and ignited. Virgil, along with myself and the other artists took shifts stoking the kiln around the clock. Day and night for the next six days, we fueled the kiln with lath and logs of wood. With each stoke, the heat in the kiln propagated through each of the Anagama’s four tiers, front to back. It was the job of each artist on shift to monitor the temperature of the kiln, increasing it with additional fuel or maintaining as desired. As the temperature rose to over 1090° C, flames rose from the kiln’s chimney at it’s rear, casting a glow about the adjacent woods and atop the corrugated steel roofing of the kiln’s lodging. When necessary, to keep the kiln in a state of oxidative reduction, the stoke hole’s door would be momentarily opened just long enough for the artist on shift to delicately feed a log of wood to the flames. Peering through the kiln’s door from the inside was Virgil’s bust of Popé, glowing white and bathing in ash.
While not on shift, we would all take turns cooking meals for the group, gathering and processing wood for the kiln, cleaning around the kiln, and socializing. Several of us started the habit of making ice cream runs for the group. While Gresham is mainly corn fields and the forested areas between them, the town’s humble Main Street drag hosted a gem of a local ice cream parlor by the name of Pa’s Ice Cream Shoppe. We indulged more than a health conscious individual would, sometimes twice in a single day. Of course we had earned it.
Once the kiln had cooled enough, Simon and several others began removing the brickwork that comprised the kiln’s cramped door. Several shop lamps were brought in to illuminate the firings result. Remarkably, only a handful of the pieces had endured any damage or breakage. While unloading the kiln, Simon boasted that it had been an exceptionally successful firing.
Piece by piece the work was removed from the kiln. Once brought from the dark interior of the kiln and into daylight, each artist was as a kid on Christmas, oohing and aahing as the work was unboxed. After an arduous week of labor, burning through over six cords of wood, each ceramicist was reaping the rewards of their creativity and labor. Concerning Virgil’s sculptures, each had survived the firing, revealing dramatic glaze drips and crystalized coats of ash. Only one of his pieces had suffered a small mishap, having shifted to lean against an adjacent shelf of work. There it was fused together and could not be separated without damage being done. Artist Justin Reese was quick to locate a Dremel tool and decided the best move was to cut the corner from the shelf, leaving it attached to Virgil’s piece. This added a vestigial element that the artist decided was meant for its display.
The conclusion to our time at Mill Creek was bitter sweet. We had become family during this experience. Even being a photographer among potters, I recognized the firing as being an emotional and very personal experience for everyone. It was the same for myself. Artists exchanged pottery from the firing among the team as gifts and tokens of friendship. Simon generously gifted me one of his pots. My gift to everyone was emailed copies of the photos I’d taken during our time together. Saying goodbye sucked.
During another project, I set out with Virgil to document the fabrication of his first outdoor sculpture, “Foreseer”. The resulting work would be installed at Santa Fe’s famous Inn of the Loretto hotel just off of the historic downtown Plaza. In addition to photographing environmental shots of the artist’s process and lending some muscle for a bit of manual labor when moving the sculpture around, my primary assignment was to capture what would become the cover photo for the Santa Fe New Mexican’s Legacy Magazine.
To construct the sculpture’s steel form, Virgil collaborated with father and son metalsmiths Dan and Foster Romano. The trio had worked together before after meeting while Virgil was teaching at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center in 2018.
The metal work design composing the main structure of the sculpture was sketched by Ortiz. At their shop, Carbon Studio, Dan translated Virgil’s sketch into a digital rendering using a computer aided design program. Dan and Foster then scaled the design to begin cutting each steel facet of the sculpture’s form. Once assembled by welding, a patina was applied to the sculpture’s surface by sandblasting the steel and wetting it outdoors to facilitate oxidation.
Back in Cochiti, Virgil had been working on a larger-than-life bust of Popé, the medicine man from Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo who had lead the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 against Spanish colonizers. Coiling Popé back into existence with clay, Virgil sculpted futuristic details into his design, a signature element of much of his art. Adding to the intensity of the piece, the artist used a crimson red glaze to give Popé a strong and omniscient presence.
With Virgil’s bust of Popé completed, we then traveled north to meet with the Romano family. Virgil brought Popé along to test the bust’s fit into Romano’s finished sculpture. As a result of Dan’s precision work and attention to detail, the artwork was assembled perfectly without need of any modifications. The next assignment was to load the sculpture into Romano’s truck bed as securely as possible and drive south back to New Mexico.
Virgil had planned to drive the sculpture out to a scenic location where we would offload it and set it in place for a photoshoot. Given the weight and size of the work, Dan’s wife Autum joined us to help move the nearly 135 kg sculpture. With the steel sculpture still secured in the truck’s bed and Popé riding in the cab with Virgil and I, Dan backed the truck up to the edge of a dirt road and parked. Autum and Foster, following in a separate vehicle, pulled up next to us and parked.
We got down from our rides and the Romano family started releasing the rachet straps that bound Foreseer in place for transit. With Foreseer’s steel framework freed from its harnesses, we positioned ourselves around the sides of the truck bed and carefully slid the sculpture out and onto the ground. Fortunately for us, we didn’t have far to travel as we carried the sculpture on its side over to a shelf of sandstone that Virgil deemed suitable for the shoot. Several adjustments were made at Virgil’s direction to ensure the art was well angled against a background of red rocks.
Dan and Virgil then lifted the bust of Popé on to the sculpture’s octagonal pedestal. From his pedestal, Popé gazed to infinity, completing the mood Virgil had envisioned for the photoshoot. I unpacked my Nikon from my camera bag, removed its lens cover, attached the lens hood, and manipulated the camera’s settings for the proper exposure.
I shifted my position around Foreseer, up and down, left to right, angling my camera and taking exposure after exposure to ensure we had a variety of compositions to chose from for the cover photo. Not far behind me was a steep relief caused by erosion that lead to a nearby wash. Virgil had to caution me several times to watch my back while I moved about shooting. Without a spotter, its easy for photographers to get lost behind the lens and fail to notice potential hazards in their path. Only three minutes into photographing Foreseer and I was already confident we had the shot. I called Virgil over to my position and showed him my work on the Nikon’s LCD screen. “That’s badass!” he shouted. “Think we got it?” I asked. “Hell ya!”.
We were all more than a little excited about what we’d accomplished together. Confident in our success, we lifted Foreseer back into Dan’s truck. With everything secured again for travel, we all looked at each other as though reading one another’s minds and in unison asked, “Where are we going for drinks?!”.
Foreseer is currently on display at The Inn and Spa at Loretto in Santa Fe. To learn more about Foreseer, visit Virgil’s website here. To learn more about art by the Romano family visit their website here.
When it came time for Virgil to market his 2021 VOltage clothing line, we worked together to stage a fashion shoot, generating content for his website and for use in press publications.
For VOltage, Virgil had scouted a number of rental locations in Albuquerque. He was searching for a venue with dynamic and modern aesthetics where we could capture different looks against several backdrops in the same space.
We recruited the talent of several models to be the face of VOltage. Because we were shooting indoors during the peak of covid in New Mexico, each model was scheduled individually. Depending upon the look Virgil wanted for each shoot, models were also fit with Virgil’s personally designed masks. Over the span of three days, we worked continuously with the wardrobe and models both in our makeshift studio and on the streets of downtown Albuquerque. In total, I shot over 1,600 photos for VOltage. As with most shoots, the majority of the images are discarded and only a select few are used by the photographer. Like most of Virgil’s fashion, VOltage sold out almost overnight once the marketing images had been added to his website. To learn more about Virgil Ortiz, visit his website here.
