...Artists need and want the acceptance, money and praise that collectors, curators and gallery directors offer. The biographies of many painters and sculptors reveal that the most meaningful support comes from other artists - but in a field in which competition and jealously are rife that is too often withheld. A group of local artists have banded together to promote and encourage one anothers work. Appropriately enough, they call themselves Strange Weeds.

The group's first project is an exhibit at Tesuque Village Market and in the future members say they plan to participate in contemporary art fairs. Many Strange Weeds members such as Steven Deo, Richard Kurtz, Franky Kong, Bunny Tobias and Holly Roberts are familiar to anyone interested in Santa Fe's contemporary art scene.

Elizabeth Cook Romero, The Santa Fe New Mexican . December 2006

...Santa Fe's Strange Weeds also understand that location, location, location is key to success. So the artists have signed up for opening nights in Chicago and Miami Beach - at venues where the cognoscenti of contemporary art gather at art fairs.

"We had a fabulous time and got a really good response when we did Bridge (Art Fair)" says multimedia artist Mary Bennett about the satellite fair to Art Chicago, where the coop showed in May. "Almost all of us are repped by commercial galleries, but our real goal is to see our work elsewhere too." (Mainstream goes indie? Or indie goes mainstream?)

At presstime, the Weeds had applied for a bed at Red Dot on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach (along with Pulse and Aqua, Red Dot is a satellite fair of megashow Art Basel Miami Beach, in early December).

Ellen Berkovitch . Real Estate and the Show . Santa Fe Trend . Summer 2007