WHEN ARTIST ERIKA WANENMACHER came through New Mexico in 1975, she hadn’t planned on making Santa Fe home. A stopover in the City Different changed her path forever. “I think it was my first night in Santa Fe, and I was walking around the Plaza at 9:30,” she says. “I was looking in the storefronts that aren’t there anymore—Woolworth’s, Bell’s Department Store—then, down San Francisco Street, there was this glowing cube.” Wanenmacher followed the light to the long-since-closed Hills Gallery. “There were these odd things in the window, like semicircles of plaster and plywood,” she says, “and these big, weird-colored and kind of blobby glass sculptures, plus these freaky drawings.” The people behind the works turned out to be notable New Mexican artists Luis Jiménez, Carl Johansson, and Bruce Nauman. “I did go to LA for nine months, and my work featured New Mexico landscapes the whole time,” Wanenmacher says. “When I came back, I stayed.” 

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