Crowd made artist's first, last reception a celebration

May 24—By showing up in droves to view — and buy — painter Al Kittel's colorful art during a reception on May 9, Santa Feans showed their own true colors.

I wrote in the May 3 edition of Pasatiempo about Cocoon, an exhibition of Kittel's work running through June 5 at the Santa Fe Community College Visual Arts Gallery. It amounts to a career retrospective for Al, who suffers from the debilitating condition Friedreich's ataxia and intends to end her life with medical assistance this year.

I attended the reception primarily to meet Al and view her art in person, but I had a secondary reason that's central to my being as a reporter: I wanted to see and hear how others responded to Al and her work.

People seemed aware that Al's time remaining in this world is limited, but the mood was celebratory, not somber. They chatted about the quality of Al's work, not the unfairness of her circumstances. The line of people who waited to greet Al grew longer and longer. Al's father, Joe, walked about with a camera held aloft, recording video of both Al and the growing crowd. The video he captured can be viewed at sfnm.co/AlKittelExhib.

As for Al, she mostly wore a mask but pulled it aside a couple of times during conversations, revealing a face that looks even younger than her 32 years. That really drove home the point that she's leaving this world early. I know I'm not the only person who felt intermittent pangs of sadness at the reception, but we all seemed to take behavioral cues from Al, who projected strength and calm.

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I was buried in some other stories last year when Diane Stoffel, the manager of Step Up Gallery in Los Alamos, contacted me about an exhibition there of Jeff Corwin's work called Guns in America. I'm grateful she was persistent in getting my attention; the resulting story ended up being my favorite that I wrote in 2023.

So I trust Diane when she's particularly enthusiastic about a show, and that's the case with Off Grid — Women of the Mesa, running through June 25 at the gallery before it moves to Taos. The show features figurative oil paintings of empowered women created by Taos-area artist Beverly Branch. The art is described as illustrating how each featured woman honors the land's integrity, unplugged from the national energy grid.

If you haven't visited Step Up Gallery, which is part of Mesa Public Library, I recommend changing that. The exhibitions are compelling — others this year include the just-concluded Los Alamos Photographers Show and a spotlight on Santa Fe multimedia artist Michael Sharber.

To see what else the gallery has scheduled, visit stepupgallery.org/exhibit-schedule.

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I've lived here for two years and eight months — enough time for me to make up my mind on some important New Mexico-specific dilemmas, such as red chile vs. green (gotta go with red) or favorite national park (Carlsbad Caverns edges the also-awesome White Sands for me).

When I catch my third Madrid Miners softball game on Memorial Day, I'll be rooting for the "visiting" East Mountain Riff Raff. The annual exhibition game invites people to root on the Miners, ignoring the heroism of the Riff Raff players who voluntarily serve as the enemy — much like the Washington Generals, longtime foils of the Harlem Globetrotters.

The Miners pay homage to a real minor league baseball team that represented Madrid during its mining heyday. The Riff Raff? Their nickname is defined as, "people, or a group of people, regarded as disreputable or worthless."

You're not worthless to me, Riff Raff players. I look forward to rooting for you on Memorial Day.