Exhibition Design, 3-D Modeling, and Clown Chess Sets at New Mexico Highlands University with Lauren Addario and Becca Sharp
[00:00:00] Becca Sharp: Through the Emerging Professionals Program, through the PICT program, eighty-four percent of our students are more likely to actually be employed or attend a graduate program.
[00:00:11] Lauren Addario: We do this in service of Highlands and of the students because we believe in them. And you know, we believe that their voices are valuable.
[00:00:20] Becca: And so, we really tell them, like, ‘While you’re here, be here, be present. Give it your all because it’s going to be worth it.’ And I have a great list of students to prove that when you give it your all, it really leads to a really nice future and a good opportunity for just, like, a nice employment because everyone deserves that.
[00:00:38] Emily Withnall: ¡Bienvenidos! This is Encounter Culture from the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. I’m your host, and editor of El Palacio magazine, Emily Withnall.
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Like many people who grow up in a small town, I had big plans to leave both Las Vegas and New Mexico behind when I was in high school. I had spent much of high school performing in plays in Ilfeld Auditorium at New Mexico Highlands University and never could have imagined that life would conspire to keep me there.
After attempting college elsewhere, I landed back at Highlands, where I completed my undergraduate degree much later. And immediately prior to becoming the editor of El Palacio and host of this podcast, I worked for Highlands. It was my return to the university and my hometown that opened my eyes to the true gifts a small school can offer its community.
Without Highlands, so many people in Northern New Mexico would not have the opportunity to seek post-secondary education. Like many schools in remote areas, Highlands is open enrollment and isn’t sought after in the ways big name colleges and universities are. It serves the community to which it belongs.
[00:02:04] Picture this: the faculty are dedicated to their students’ unique interests and needs. Classes are small. Undergraduates have opportunities to engage in research alongside their professors, and there are programs that offer true pathways to coveted careers. One such offering through Highlands Media Arts and Technology Department is the Program for Interactive Cultural Technology, or ‘PICT,’ for short.
The program began twenty years ago and has provided students with hands-on opportunities to imagine, plan, design, and construct exhibitions around the state, including at many of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs historic sites.
[00:02:57] Spearheaded by Lauren Addario, a professor in the Media Arts and Technology department at Highlands, and the director of PICT, the program opens the door to students interested in a range of arts, culture, and technology professions.
New Mexico, like many other low population states, experiences what is often termed ‘brain drain,’ or the exodus of educated residents who seek employment elsewhere. When I planned to leave the state as a teen, I didn’t know there was a term for it, but I also didn’t know that Highlands was, and still is, deeply invested in helping students remain in their communities.
Lauren and her former student-turned-colleague, Becca Sharp, join me to illustrate how their programs are a testament to the power of community-focused education and provide insight into how to best connect students with real-life career opportunities in the arts.
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[00:04:02] Welcome to Encounter Culture. I’m so excited to have you both here. To get us started, please share your names and what you do.
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[00:04:10] Lauren: My name is Lauren Addario, and I work at New Mexico Highlands University. I’m faculty in Media Arts and Technology, and I have been directing the Cultural Technology Internship Program for the last eighteen years.
[00:04:26] Emily: Oh, wow. I didn’t know that! (laughs) That’s amazing.
[00:04:28] Becca: And I’m Becca Sharp. I’m also at New Mexico Highlands University. I’m a new instructor. I actually went up through the program under my undergrad and my MFA, and now I’m teaching primarily 3D modeling and the video game design course.
[00:04:42] Emily: Oh, wow. Okay, cool! So, outside of your role as educators, I’d love to hear about both of your artistic practices. And Lauren, I want to start with you because I know that you’re in a band, so I want you to talk about that and anything else you do. (laughter)
[00:05:01] Lauren: Okay. So outside of my role as an educator, I am a musician. I am also a painter, but I’m in a band called Mineral Hill, which is named after a community outside of Las Vegas.
It’s a three-person band. I am the drummer. I also sing. The main songwriter—it’s all original music—his name is Jonathan Mack. And John Funkhouser is our keyboard player. And we play all around New Mexico—all around the Southwest. We’ve played over a hundred shows in the last year and a half and we’re releasing a new album.
Emily: Oh, yay! Congratulations.
[00:05:45] Lauren: So, this will be our third. (laughter) It’s called The Sun Comes Around.
[00:05:49] Becca: Lauren’s band is great. Just going to say, outside of the Highlands zone, doing an instructor position in media arts, I work a lot with more of, like, conservation and technology.
I’m actually finishing up a project right now where I’m creating rugs using a rug tufting gun, and then I’m embedding electronics into these rugs to give people an insight on invisible illness and how those of us in the world who are experiencing an invisible illness go about our lives; and giving some empathy and understanding to that.
And so, a lot of times I like to kind of look at what some issues are, maybe to create conversations—because I think growing up and being in a family who kept their feelings inside—I think it’s okay to express them and it’s okay to say, like, “I need some help,” and I want to just create those conversations for people.
I love going to thrift stores, and I’ve got a bunch of yarn from a bunch of sweet old ladies off of Facebook that I’m using for recycled—so I try to get everything recycled and like refurbished, or e-waste from Meow Wolf as well.
[00:06:53] Oftentimes, I still work with them, occasionally doing some 3D modeling, made some rats for a, a jazz rat club that’s in their grapevine exhibit—and so just whatever kind of comes my way. I am always up for a project. I’m always up for learning. I call myself a ‘forever learner’ and so I feel like someone throws something at me, I want to try it. I’ve done wallpaper with Miriam Langer before, and that was something new.
I’ve also though, I’ve had the experience of working with a lot of the DCA sites and doing a title wall for breathtaking at the New Mexico Museum of Art and doing different things for the historic sites, of course.
So yeah, so a lot of what I do though—just really I want to see what the issues are and I want to create conversations if we can. And I think it’s important, and especially in the world we’re living in, it’s important to talk about what we need. And also to have an understanding and empathy for each other.
[00:07:44] Emily: So, as Lauren knows, I am from Las Vegas and went to NMHU as an undergrad. I did English and History though, but I was always aware that the media arts department was like, where the ‘cool’ kids were. (laughter)
I didn’t really know what you did, but I knew it was the cool department. (laughs)
Lauren: We like that reputation!
Emily: Yeah. So, I would love to hear more about what you do in that department.
[00:08:14] Lauren: We do film and video; multimedia, which includes web and multimedia project design, and physical computing; and we do graphic design and photography. And so, our students pick one area of emphasis, and they go through the program and then hopefully they enter our internship program, which allows them to segue into careers as multimedia professionals in New Mexico or beyond.
[00:08:44] Emily: And what do you do in the department?
[00:08:47] Becca: I mainly do the physical computing and the multimedia aspect, and so I’m really interested in open-source hardware, getting that to students, ways for them to continue this work outside of the university without it being overly expensive for them as well.
But I really love installation design, and so a lot of my work goes with working with students to install in different institutions and rural communities in New Mexico that need new technology that they wouldn’t normally be able to get, at a price that we would do with giving our students that experience as well. And so that’s mainly my thing. And a lot of 3D modeling.
I love doing video game design as well, doing open source for the students, and trying to just bring some fun interactive elements to different museums and institutions in New Mexico. And so, we want to keep the network going, keep the community going, and just keep giving students these opportunities.
Because for me—as a student, it was life changing to be in the media arts program. And so I want to give that same kind of thing to our students.
[00:09:47] Emily: Nice. Well, that’s the perfect segue ’cause I would love to hear how the media arts department at Highlands got connected with doing exhibition design for some of the historic sites.
[00:09:59] Lauren: So that story starts twenty years ago. We have a partnership with the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. That started under Bill Richardson. He was interested, of course, in bringing the film industry to New Mexico. So, there were funds appropriated by the legislature and handed out to community colleges to develop below-the-line skills for students in community colleges: transportation, electrician, camera operator, those kinds of things.
At the time, Mimi Roberts and Miriam Langer came together and said, ‘You know what our students need at Highlands is kind of a career pathway into the cultural organizations in the state, because our students—not only do they want to stay in New Mexico primarily, but they have a unique voice and perspective about their own culture.’
And our program emphasizes cultural technology. We were also developing technologies that not a lot of museums had at the time. And so, it was kind of the perfect fit for our students to work with the Department of Cultural Affairs to bring our skill sets and our students’ skill sets into museums and cultural institutions, and that partnership grew.
So we got connected with historic sites through DCA twenty years ago.
[00:11:22] Emily: What is cultural technology?
[00:11:23] Becca: So cultural technology is things that we make using technology for the actual institution based around their culture. And it really puts culture at the forefront of the tech. And so, while sometimes we’d be like, “We want to do this,” that might not really work with that institution and the culture that they have that they’re trying to also share with the community.
And so cultural technology is just really diving in to all that these institutes have all of their history and really diving into the culture and putting that in the forefront.
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But bringing new technology to share that information with others.
[00:11:58] Emily: Oh wow. I did not know that. I did not know any of this actually. (laughs) This is so good to know about.
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[00:12:09] Emily: So what do you do at the historic sites?
[00:12:12] Lauren: At the historic sites and at all the museums, we have done things like, if I’m going back in time, we had a student who did the orientation video at Fort Sumner, the Bosque Redondo orientation video, and he himself was Diné. His name was Andrew Shepard. We also had a student, Johnny Alvarez, work on wayfinding at Fort Selden.
And then we started doing PICT, which is our Program for Interactive Cultural Technology, which is a capstone experience for undergrads and a required experience for our Master of Fine Arts students. And that’s when we got into some big exhibition design, redesigning visitor centers at historic sites.
And I’m going to let Becca take it from here, ’cause Becca has done a lot of work for PICT, both as an undergraduate, a graduate, and as an instructor.
[00:13:05] Becca: Thank you Lauren. Yeah, so a lot of what we do for these historic sites too is really like—it’s about connecting the culture and technology, but we’re not just being like, “Oh look, we brought some culture in here.”
Like, no, we want to connect with what that institution, what that pueblo, what that museum, wants to share to their visitors. One being the Jemez Historic Site. We did a complete redesign of their visitor center in 2019. We used, from floor-to-ceiling, we did projections. That were close projections so they wouldn’t be interrupted if kids went up to the walls to go and see the large pictures.
We also did two interactive games, one being a video game that was for The Light Among the Ruins, which is a special event that happens once a year. However, they were having too many people come and they had to turn people away after like a thousand tickets, and so they wanted something that they could let people experience if they weren’t able to make the event. So, we made that event virtual, and people were able to place farolitos around and then see the trails lit up.
[00:14:02] We also did a complete install of a fourteen-by-eight-foot wood floor. That was CNC engraved from Jemez pine. And so, we wanted to use trees that were from Jemez and from the area, and so we installed the floor.
Lauren was part of that. It was myself, Lauren, Miriam Langer, and Ali Romero, and Jonathan Lee. So a group of five, and we went in to piece together this floor, laid it down. Also, we were like, let’s resin cast it too ’cause it’s—let’s just make it a little harder. But it ended up being really beautiful and it’s something that the visitor center enjoys.
And the big thing was, really, that what the students were able to learn and really get from that was, in these cultural sites, especially for Jemez Historic Site, they wanted to make sure it was known that, “We are still here,” like, “Through all the hardships, we are still here, our language is still here.” You know: “Our people are still here.”
And so that was something we really wanted to showcase for Jemez. And so, a lot of times for our PICT program, we are able to go in and do a complete redesign, but it really goes down to the culture, and it’s really letting students also share their voice.
And so, if students have a connection, that just makes it even more wonderful.
[00:15:13] Emily: So, can you walk me through the process like, like slow down and zoom in? So, from beginning to end, how does it start?
[00:15:21] Becca: For the PICT program, we usually have about ten students. It’s graduate students and undergrad. What makes it really special is that these are their ideas. These are their concepts, their ideas.
So we usually go to the—at the site, we look around and we get to know the staff. We get to talk to them about what their wants are, what are things that’s been on their mind forever that they weren’t able to get, like, how can we help them?
And with New Mexico State Land Office, they’re like, “We want people to know what we do.” Like, “We’re doing so much more than what people know.” And so, we’re really trying to put these sites like on the map and for people to come and engage and really learn about what’s happening at these sites. And so, the students go in. They meet and they talk for a little while. We come back and we just get to work right away at school.
We do some brainstorming; we do some mind mapping. We put down words that we got from our experience, you know, like, “What are some phrases that came to mind?” And then we really sit down with the students and we spend a lot of time thinking about like, how these ideas and these concepts can better the institution.
For instance, this Friday, they’ll be doing their first presentation to the New Mexico State Land Office of their ideas and concepts. We get the feedback from our client and then we spend a lot more time coming back with a second version. We present that to them again. Usually they’re like, ‘Yes, we’re all on the same page.’
[00:16:40] And from then it’s full production mode. And we go and we do a lot of vendor searching, we will outsource. A lot of times we actually do it ourselves because we found that—like, we’ve outsourced something; they weren’t able to do it, but then we were like, “Okay, then we’ll do it in-house.” And so in, in that way, it’s good where it challenges the students too.
They have to look up vendors, they have to look up how they can afford this, what’s the budget. And it really gives them that full experience. And then after that we actually do an install, and that’s what also, I think, makes the program really different, is a lot of times we’ve talked to other universities and other programs and they do the concepts and the ideas all digitally, but they’re like, ‘We don’t go and install.’
But these students will spend two days on site installing everything they’ve created for the past five months. And putting it into place where it’s going to be permanent for those institutions—not to be taken down. We go back and we check. 2017 Bradbury Science Museum: still doing great; Jemez, still super happy; and Santa Fe Children’s Museum.
So we’re super thankful for the opportunity, but even more so that we can give it to the students.
[00:17:45] Emily: That’s amazing. So you do all of that whole process that you just described in a semester, or is it a year long—?
Lauren: It’s a semester. (laughs)
Emily: Oh, a semester!
[00:17:53] Lauren: It is from concept to completion in one semester. It’s eight credit hours, so it’s, almost a full load for the students. And usually, they’ll take one other class besides PICT, but this is two classes: an exhibition, design class, and a multimedia project management class. So not only are they learning about exhibition design, but they’re also learning how to manage a project of this scale.
[00:18:21] Emily: Wow.
[00:18:21] Lauren: So it’s, yeah, it’s huge. It’s huge. And the students who have done these projects go on to be, usually, the most successful members of their teams in their professions.
[00:18:33] Emily: Wow. So, I actually—the first time I realized that Highlands was connected to some of the historic sites was when I was at Jemez and I saw the projections on the visitor center there and then I saw the Little Highlands logo and I was like, ‘Wait!’ (laughs)
Lauren: Oh great. So, you visited Jemez?
Emily: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:18:53] Lauren: That’s wonderful!
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[00:19:05] Emily: So, it sounds like what you’re doing is enormous. Especially given the size of Highlands University.
[00:19:14] Lauren: It’s, I mean, it’s quite an undertaking and we we’re just—we have a really, we have a great department, you know, all the faculty works together. We support each other.
We have taken advantage of conferences, of museum conferences internationally, even, where we connect with professionals and we bring them in. We work hard to raise money, we write lots of grants, and we do this in service of Highlands and of the students because we believe in them. We believe that the only reason that a lot of them don’t go on to more successful careers is they don’t have access.
They don’t have the same access as people who, you know, get to go to a prestigious school on the East Coast or get to go to a private university. And we believe that their voices are valuable, and they have a lot of really good things to say—and they come up with great ideas.
[00:20:05] Becca: And I think that’s one of the really great things about our program and the media arts in general.
It’s like, a lot of these students, myself included, like—it wasn’t something that you expect to happen. You know, it’s something that we can give to them that they, for some reason, don’t feel like they’ve deserved that because of where they’re from or because of how they’ve grown up.
And it’s such a beautiful thing to be like, ‘No, you totally deserve that. You deserve to be paid well. You deserve to be recognized for your work.’ And to give them that confidence as they leave, I think is one of the most rewarding things. To see a student go from thinking that, like, “Oh, I can’t do that. I can’t do any of this.” And then to their senior year where they’re like, “I’m going to apply for this. I’m going to do this job. I think I can be a super service to you guys if you need it.” And just seeing their confidence grow.
And I think that’s what’s really beautiful, is we’re in a really rural community and we see that in areas where we do struggle a lot. It’s hard during the semesters because of the town we’re in, but the students, they get the same opportunities and that’s what’s really important.
[00:21:05] Lauren: Yeah, and it kind of brings me back to the initial funding from DCA. So, we use that funding for paid internships, and our students are getting $21, $22, $23 an hour, depending on their level. At an entry level this year will be $21 an hour because life is expensive and the funding from DCA supports DCA institutions; it supports the students.
It’s just a win-win situation for everybody. We leverage that money by writing additional grants to bring in additional money, and we do everything we can to support our students. So, you know, kudos to DCA for helping us and working with us for twenty years and being committed to our mission.
[00:21:54] Emily: Yeah. I also love, because I know that Highlands is by and large, mostly New Mexican students. Not all, but mostly. Even in my role as the editor of El Palacio, there’s so much that I learn every day on the job, that I didn’t necessarily learn growing up.
And so I’m curious about what it’s like for students in this program to visit Jemez or to visit Fort Sumner, for example, and learn, at a deeper level, some of the histories of these places.
[00:22:25] Becca: Yeah, going into these spaces, I think it’s always eye-opening for the students, and myself as well. I’m going to talk about the Jemez Historic Site because I thought that was a really great experience and that was one of the projects where I was a project manager on as a student. And so, it was a good challenge, but it also taught me a lot about just culture in New Mexico.
So, a lot of times when we go in, I think it really surprises the student, one. A lot of times they don’t know that something like that exists. One being New Mexico State Land Office, they’re like, “How many of you knew this existed?” They’re like, “Not really any of us.”
So, it’s taking them around and letting them see their own state. And that’s what I think is so great, because we have such a beautiful state here in New Mexico and that these students are able to see it in a different light from how they maybe grew up. If you grew up in New Mexico, you’re like, “Oh yeah, I grew up here,” you know?
[00:23:13] But then taking them out and showing them these historic sites and showing them these DCA places and being like, ‘You can make a difference and you can make something that’s going to be permanent in here that you’ll be able to visit, you’ll be able to see.’ But I think it just gives them that confidence and—but really, an understanding of their state and the need for this cultural technology.
And so it shows them the skills that they bring are so, so important. And that’s why, too, our internship program is paid—because these students are bringing real life skills and they’re bringing things that are going to be permanent, that can be used for a really long time for these institutions.
And so I think as a student it can be overwhelming at times. Definitely when it first starts and it feels like, ‘Oh my gosh, how can I do this? How am I going to make an installation in five months from like concept to install for this place?’ But after they do it, they have this confidence.
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They take their families to see it, and it’s just, it’s magical.
It’s really fun to see.
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[00:24:12] Emily: There’s something truly special about visiting places where significant parts of our history have happened. The eight state-run historic sites not only interpret history, but welcome visitors to engage in programs and events.
In the northern part of the state, walk along the ancient Kuaua Pueblo at Coronado. Enjoy the breathtaking views of the mountains at Jemez or sit by the Rio Grande after visiting the Hacienda and Navajo-Churro sheep at Los Luceros.
In Southern New Mexico, learn about the “Long Walk” at Bosque Redondo Memorial. See where Buffalo Soldiers were stationed at Fort Stanton. Walk Billy the Kid’s footsteps in Lincoln. Learn adobe brick making at Fort Selden and experience community art and history at Taylor-Mesilla.
Learn more and plan your visitnmhistoricsites.org. Did you know the New Mexico CulturePass is now available to purchase online? CulturePass gives you access to each of the fifteen state museums and historic sites we feature on Encounter Culture. Reserve your CulturePass today at nmculture.org/visit/culturepass.
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[00:25:40] Well, and I’d love to hear, just because you’ve been involved with it for so long, if you have any memorable experiences of students kind of just, having some kind of insight or epiphany or, you know—whatever the case might be.
[00:25:52] Lauren: I have so many memories because it’s been twenty years. You know, Patty Chavez, who is originally from Villanueva, came to Highlands and had a dream as a young child in Villanueva, that she always wanted to be a film director, and that dream seemed pretty unattainable to her.
She came through our program at Highlands. She did PICT twice, and ended up being not only a stellar student, but a stellar role model, was incredibly driven, and very thoughtful. So when she finished, she said, ‘You know, I want to apply to USC Peter Stark School for directing.’
So three percent of the people who apply to that school get accepted. They receive thousands of applications. They only accept twenty-five people.
So Patty got accepted—
[00:26:48] Emily: Incredible.
[00:26:49] Lauren: —and is now well on her way. She is a, remind me of her job titles.
Becca: Development coordinator for CBS Studios.
Lauren: Right. And has a successful career in Los Angeles. She has produced and developed several of her own films.
[00:27:05] Emily: Oh wow.
[00:27:06] Lauren: She’s basically doing exactly what she wanted to do. And what she imagined, you know, may not have been possible from like, you know, the one room schoolhouse in Villanueva, New Mexico.
[00:27:17] Emily: Wow, that’s so impressive. I guess I would also ask, I know you’ve been doing this a long time, but. What have you learned as a teacher?
[00:27:25] Lauren: I learn something every single day. I mean, it’s every single day I feel like I’m learning. I’ve learned to appreciate and value student perspectives and ideas. Now I feel pretty old. (laughs) I used to feel like I was closer in age to the students, so we had some of the same cultural references.
I don’t have those same cultural references anymore with the students, but yet I learned so much from their perspectives and the world that they’re growing up in—very different from the world I grew up in—the things that they value.
Learning to be very humble and listen to what they have to say, and listen to the way they want to express their ideas, the priorities that they have. Surfacing things like, you know, climate change, Indigenous voices, diversity, equity, and inclusion. All the things that I feel are incredibly important and that the students value, and it means a lot to me to be a part of that and to be able to help amplify those voices.
[00:28:34] Emily: Yeah.
[00:28:34] Becca: I guess for me too, I teach the 3D modeling and the video game design course, and it’s a bit challenging because the students are using an Adobe software throughout, like a lot of their other classes—and then they come to my class and like, “Hey, two new softwares that you have to learn in a semester.”
And so, times I’ve been told, like, that my class is the “broccoli” and they have to eat their broccoli to get to their dessert. And I’m like, “That’s okay. Still gotta eat it.” But then the great thing is like, and I tell students, I’m like, ‘I’ll be that broccoli. I don’t care. You still gotta, but this is going to test you and this is going to be good for you.’
And so, a lot of times, even in my own class, I think some rewarding things have been, like, students who—I ask them, “What do you think of this software?” And they’re like, at the beginning, they’re like, “I give it a negative two.”
They don’t like it, it’s hard. And then at the end of the class they’re like, “Okay, I’d give that an eight now.” And things like that have been super rewarding. And just to see this joy come out, and something too—I had a student just this last year, and his name’s Daniel, and he told me he was doing the 3D modeling.
He’s like, “I’m having a hard time in this class because I think I just really love Photoshop. I think that’s where I wanna be.” And I was like, “Okay, but remember you gotta eat your broccoli to have your dessert,” you know? And that’s kind of a joke we say—but this year he came up to me and he’s like, “I was thinking over break and I was just working on things,” and he’s like, “I think I wanna do 3D modeling now.”
[00:29:54] He’s like, “I really like it. And I know I said I was into Photoshop, but I changed my mind after the 3D modeling class. And this is what I wanna do and I’ve done this research, can I send it to you and can you help me figure out how to do it?” And I’m like, “Yes!”
So the broccoli became the dessert. But that’s just rewarding—to see something that’s really challenging, like these softwares in these classes are challenging in this like, you know, it’s two hours of learning this new software that’s a million different options and a million ways of doing one thing. And to see them have the confidence.
And another is a student who took, again, the 3D modeling and she was like, ‘Oh, this is hard. I don’t know if I’ll use it again, but I enjoyed it.’ Well, she ended up using it to create a one-of-a-kind clown chess set that she made for—she’s one of our MFA students and she came up to me and she’s like, she calls me “Professor Sharp.” She’s like, “Professor Sharp, thank you so much for teaching me Blender. I never knew all that I can do with it and look at what I made,” and she would show me every clown piece that she was making.
And to me that’s super rewarding. So, there’s the big moments of them finishing and getting to do the job they want to do or seeing our students are now—some of our film students are working with different news outlets and doing things they really enjoy.
But to see the small joys in the middle of it all too is really, really great for me and I just enjoy that.
[00:31:12] Emily: Just out of curiosity, what is a clown chess set?
[00:31:16] Becca: Oh, well, (laughter) it’s a—it’s a completely original chess set that is made completely with clowns. And she 3D modeled her own clown pieces into these chess sets, but she did amazing research.
So whereas things you would assume the king would be, you know, I don’t, I don’t know enough about clowns, but she chose the jester and the reason she chose the jester for the king is because the jester was the only clown that was allowed to make fun of the king and not be like, you know, killed for it.
So, she was like, “The jester really is the most powerful piece for this chess board.” So she made the jester one of the like more powerful pieces and I thought that was so cool. And I had to tell her, I was like, “Emily, AI can never do what you just did. They cannot come up with that concept. They can’t come up with the idea of why the jester should be a powerful piece because he could make fun of them.”
And so that was one of her pieces she’s made. She’s really into clowns and we love it. So, if students have something they’re interested in, we want to know it because we tell them like, you know—we say “Vampire rule: We can only come in if you invite us, but if you invite us, we’ll meet you there and we will work to really make what you’re passionate about, become something that you can continue to do.”
So, Emily’s going to go to a clown conference this year and I’m really excited for her. That’s awesome. (laughter)
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[00:32:45] Emily: So, this semester you’re in the Land Office. Is that right?
Lauren: Yeah. We’re working with the New Mexico State Land Office.
Emily: Okay, okay. Well, as you know Lauren, in the fall issue of El Palacio, a writer, DezBaa´, wrote about the State Land Office and the land exchange program that they have in place. And so, I heard a little bit about this exhibition, but I don’t know the full details, so I’d love to know kind of where you are in that process.
[00:33:09] Lauren: Sure. That was my media arts seminar class, which studies current trends in media and technology. And for the seminar class, we do a community-based exhibit—at the end, it culminates in a community-based exhibit. The collaboration with the Land Office was initiated through Ethan Ortega, who worked at Coronado, worked at Jemez, worked at Los Luceros and now works at the State Land Office.
So, he has had a long history of collaborating with us. He asked us to bring some public-facing materials to the Land Office so that they could get the word out of what they did. Some of the progressive initiatives, one of them being the Land Back movement and the land exchange. We had a project manager, an Indigenous woman by the name of Marlene Bad Warrior, and she worked very closely with the Land Office to talk about what the Land Back movement meant to Indigenous people in New Mexico.
So she went out and found high school students, interviewed them, and we have a video that’s running in the Land Office now talking about what the Land Back movement means to Indigenous youth. Another part of that was a couple of graphic panels that talk about Stephanie Garcia Richard and her progressive initiatives throughout the state, bringing solar and wind power to diversify the energy sources and the funding for New Mexico Public Schools.
[00:34:39] Of course, we get a lot of our funding through oil and gas, but she has also introduced wind and solar into that mix so that we now have funding from more diverse sources. In addition, we worked with the GIS team at the New Mexico State Land Office to talk about how climate change is disproportionately affecting Indigenous communities.
We talked about some of the climate and weather predictions using some GIS data. So there’s a touchscreen in the Land Office where you can research data about the state’s current climate, and some projections for the future. Those are three exhibits we did in a class that was not focused on exhibition design but focused on current trends in media and technology.
And then we decided to kind of take that and turn it into a PICT project where we could really focus on getting the message and the word out of what the Land Office does, ’cause a lot of people don’t know what the New Mexico State Land Office does. They generate revenue for New Mexico Public Schools, for hospitals around the state.
And a lot of people don’t understand that. So yeah, they want that information out there and they want people to understand how that affects, you know, the quality of our public education, et cetera.
[00:35:56] Emily: Yeah, I was very interested when I assigned that article to DezBaa´. I was looking up resources to share with her as she got started, and I couldn’t find anything.
And I just thought, you know, El Palacio is not breaking news, but we might be the first ones to actually do a full article on it. So, I’m glad that you’re doing that so that more people know what’s going on.
How far ahead do you plan? Do you know what’s coming in the fall or after that?
Lauren: Oh yeah. And, I’m retiring in June.
Emily: Oh, congratulations!
Lauren: Thank you.
Emily: Also, such a loss for Highlands and the Media Arts department.
[00:36:32] Lauren: I will miss it dearly. I’ll miss it dearly, but I’m leaving it in good hands. Becca is actually taking over my position in the fall—
Emily: Oh wow! Congratulations.
[00:36:41] Becca: Thank you.
[00:36:41] Lauren: —As the director of the Emerging Professionals Program, which we’re now—we’re changing the name, and we’ll also be teaching the Media Arts Seminar class and some of the multimedia classes.
[00:36:52] Becca: Yeah, so in the fall we’ll actually be working with Roswell and their museum. So, they unfortunately experienced some flooding and it’s kind of a cultural technology emergency, and we like to be of service if we can. We have these connections and they reached out to us, and we’re going to work on making some virtual exhibits for them to let people still see what they have in that museum while they can’t access it through the damage that’s been caused.
[00:37:17] Emily: What do you see as the value of including virtual design in your work?
[00:37:21] Lauren: Well, from the very outset, it’s accessibility. There are people who can’t leave their homes for one reason or another, and this provides them with an opportunity to experience arts and culture, to experience educational exhibits, to experience science exhibits, from their homes.
That’s first and foremost. Also, for rural communities where you can’t always get to a city, you can’t always get to a community where you can experience these things, it’s about inclusion.
[00:37:55] Becca: That’s right. Like the virtual experiences—really what people were after in COVID because everything was shut down.
I think that gave a good turn as well for the importance of being able to virtually visit somewhere. But again, yeah, inclusion, accessibility, getting people to see things they wouldn’t be able to see if they can’t leave their home, if they’re not able to walk the trails, they can still experience it.
So the virtual is so important because it just includes a whole demographic of people that would be left out usually. And so I think—COVID too, though—
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all of these institutions were like, we need to put stuff online. We need our website updated. We need to tell people what’s happening when we’re opening.
And so, these virtual experiences were so important for people to know what’s happening in their museum and also get to experience it.
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[00:38:52] Emily: When you’re doing these projects over the course of a semester—first of all, that sounds so ambitious. So, I’m curious about, what are some of the challenges you encounter?
[00:39:04] Becca: I’ll give an example. This last pig we did in 2023 with Los Luceros Historic Site. Beautiful site. Has one hundred-fifty acres. They had opened right before COVID. Then they had to shut down. And so, gorgeous site—we wanted to bring visitors.
Myself and another student, Lydia, proposed that we would make them an interactive 3D table. It was a wayfinding map. So, they would press a button and it would correlate with a certain building and they’d see where that is on the map.
So for instance, birdwatching; we put like a flicker bird where like you see a lot of birds and when they click that button, they’d see where on the map to go if they wanted to experience that. But one of the challenges is often, not even internally, but external, we made these 3D models of the buildings.
We would take photographs and then we’d recreate them using the 3D software. We did a test print and we’re like, “Okay, let’s outsource this. Take a little bit off our plate so we can focus on the next part of the project.” Well, you know, this company was like, “Oh, we got it. It’s good. It’s good.” They’re like, the whole week up, they’re like, “They’re looking great.”
[00:40:07] And then they call us the day it’s supposed to be sent out and they’re like, “So, none of them worked.” And we’re like, “Oh, okay.” That was a little shocking. So, so we’re like, “Okay, then we’re going to print them in house.” So, I was like, I bought a $200 printer and I printed all of our pieces in house. It was over six hundred hours of 3D prints, but we printed everything in my little studio.
And another issue was our table that was made was not delivered until months and months later. And so by the time it was delivered, all the students were gone. They were done. The project was over. And so, I was like, “Okay, now I’ve got to build this project in the summer for the opening.” It turned out well.
I cried a couple times, (laughter) but just to be real, called Lauren and I was like, “I can’t do this.” And she’s like, “You can do it,” like, “You’re so close,” and I got through it. But a lot of times the problem is not necessarily an internal thing, but it’s like an outsource thing. And so, we’re very particular, we don’t want to give anything less than what we’ve assured that we’re going to give for the quality that we believe that these historic sites should have.
And so, if it’s not working, we’re going to figure out how to do it, and do it ourselves. But if anyone wants to go see the interactive table, it’s at Los Luceros Historic Site and it was made by an all-female team, so it’s really cool.
[00:41:21] Lauren: Yeah, it’s beautiful.
[00:41:23] Becca: And we’ve realized too, through the Emerging Professionals Program, through the PICT program, eighty-four percent of our students are more likely to actually be employed or attend a graduate program, and be accepted if they’ve done PICT or they’ve done an internship, which is really great; and we think that’s a great statistic to give to the students too and encourage them to push it while you’re in college.
You’ve got four years. Once you’re gone, you have to pay for everything yourself. And you know, these opportunities aren’t provided to you. You gotta search for them. And so, we really tell them, like, ‘While you’re here, be here, be present. Give it your all, because it’s going to be worth it.’ And I have a great list of students to prove that when you give it your all, it really leads to a really nice future and a good opportunity for just, like, a nice employment because everyone deserves that.
[00:42:15] Emily: Do some of them end up in exhibition design later?
[00:42:19] Lauren: Yeah, yeah. We have, for example, Johnny Alvarez is at the Museum of Nature and Science in Las Cruces. He’s doing exhibition design there and graphic design. Let’s see, Anais worked in the New Mexico Museum of Art, helping with their graphic design and marketing materials.
Gabby is working at LANL, creating animations for communications and marketing at LANL.
Becca: Dre’ Gallegos.
Lauren: Dre’ Gallegos, right.
[00:42:49] Becca: Yeah. Dre’ Gallegos works for Meow Wolf, and she’s a senior tech manager. She’s been a part of at least four of their installations and has at least over a hundred different exhibits she’s been a part of.
[00:43:01] Emily: I mean, this department at Highlands is such a gem, and I just have to say, to be honest, completely honest, because I grew up in Las Vegas—I was not expecting to go to Highlands. I had a little chip on my shoulder about it. (laughs) But then working there later, I had much more perspective. I was older, you know, and I really, really value what Highlands does. And what it offers for such a rural community. And your program in particular is just outstanding. So, I really appreciate the work you’re both doing there.
[00:43:37] Becca: We really love it.
[00:43:38] Lauren: We do. We love it. And you know, Highlands is a gem in, in Northern New Mexico.
Becca: And the students are so special.
Lauren: They’re amazing. They’re really amazing students.
[00:43:47] Emily: Even the ones with the chips on their shoulders? (laughs)
[00:43:49] Lauren: Even the ones with the chips on their shoulders, you know? Eventually, eventually we smooth away those chips.
Becca: We patch them up a little bit.
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[00:44:07] Emily: So, Becca, how was the Media Arts program at Highlands life-changing for you?
[00:44:12] Becca: It was life-changing for me because I never thought that I was worthy enough to be able to do this work. I didn’t think I had the skills. I didn’t think I had the abilities, or I just didn’t think that, you know, my voice was important to be shared and to put out there.
And so, when I came to the media arts program, it was actually Lauren, was the first one who saw me and was like, ‘You need to do PICT.’ And I was like, ‘I can’t do it. I’m not good enough,’ like, ‘I can’t do it.’ And she’s like, ‘No, you need to do it.’
And I did that and I was with the Bradbury Science Museum and I did an installation called Behind the Fence. It’s still up there and they love it. But it was life-changing for me, and the opportunities that came that I never thought would be possible for myself and even for my husband, who went a little bit through the media arts program and now works at Meow Wolf for one of our graduates, Dre Gallegos.
[00:45:00] And so in going to Highlands, like I was a cake decorator before. I had never owned my own computer before, and so I learned about media arts and it blew my mind. I was like, “This is what I love to do.” I used to take apart our VCR as a kid all the time, so I was like, ‘I want to get involved in tech.’
And so going into the program and having the support from both Lauren and Miriam, Mariah, all of these faculty, was something that was life-changing for me. To know that like, “Okay, I have this support here and I have these skills and I really can do something and I really can contribute.” And to me that just, that’s where it changed me, where it was like, “Yeah, I have worth.”
And that’s what—it’s really cool, and I hope that we’re giving that to the students too, to be like, “You have worth, you can bring stuff, and you can really like make a difference if you want to.”
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[00:45:56] Emily:
A couple months after recording this episode we learned that the partnership between New Mexico Highlands University and the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs will be coming to an end after the summer of 2025 internships. On behalf of the Highlands Media Arts and Technology Department, Lauren Addario issued the following statement:
We’re incredibly proud of our 20-year partnership with the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. We have placed hundreds of students in paid internships since 2005, giving them opportunities and a voice in their own culture, while simultaneously helping to bring New Mexico Museums and cultural organizations into the 21st century. We will continue to find ways to fund our students.
Our mission remains constant:
To cultivate a homegrown pool of multimedia specialists who work with cultural content and are committed to serving their communities.
We’re thrilled to announce that we have placed 6 interns with DCA organizations this summer, including:
• DCA Marketing & Outreach, including El Palacio Magazine
• Los Luceros Historic Site
• New Mexico Historic Sites
• New Mexico Arts
• New Mexico Museum of Art
• and New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science.
To see the work of students involved in PICT, please plan a visit to the Bosque Redondo Memorial at Fort Sumner, Los Luceros, Jemez, and Coronado Historic Sites; or the New Mexico State Land Office. For more information about historic sites, locations and hours, visit nmhistoricsites.org. And for more information about New Mexico Highlands University’s Media Arts and Technology program, go to nmhu.edu.
We’ll provide links in the show notes.
[music fades into theme music and closing credits]
Emily: Encounter Culture is a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs.
Our producer is Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.
This season is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder and Alex Riegler with additional editing by Monica Braine.
Our recording engineers are Collin Ungerleider and Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe.
Technical direction and post-production audio by Edwin R. Ruiz.
Our executive producer is Daniel Zillmann.
Thank you to New Mexico artist “El Brujo” D’Santi Nava for our theme music.
For a full transcript and show notes, visit podcast.nmculture.org or click the link in the episode description in your listening app.
I’m your host, Emily Withnall.
The New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs is your guide to the state’s entire family of museums, historic sites, and cultural institutions. From Native treasures to space exploration, world-class folk art to ancient dinosaurs, our favorite way to fully explore is with the New Mexico CulturePass. To see everywhere CulturePass is accepted and reserve yours today, visit nmculture.org/visit/culturepass.
And if you love New Mexico, you’ll love El Palacio magazine. Subscribe at elpalacio.org.
Thank you for listening, and if you learned something new, send this episode to a friend or share it on social media. We love celebrating the cultures of New Mexico together.
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