1 Seize your inheritance.
Casa San Ysidro, in Corrales, celebrates Heritage Day on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with traditional music, art, dance, and food. A collaboration with the Corrales Historical Society, the annual event at the Albuquerque Museum’s Gutiérrez/Minge House honors and demonstrates the vibrant cultures of New Mexico.
“Heritage art from living artists offers museum guests the chance to witness local traditions, which are preserved in their own communities, and a lot of the activities are interactive,” says Aaron Gardner, site supervisor at Casa San Ysidro. Visitors can watch a local blacksmith working the forge, taste bread baked in an horno, learn about Spanish crafts like tinwork and straw inlay, and see the Acoma Enchanted Dancers perform. Recycleman, an act by musician Kevin Kinane, makes music from recycled and repurposed parts and invites kids to join in the fun from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
2 Walk a poetic path.
The Randall Davey Audubon Center & Sanctuary debuts a new Haiku Trail with an opening reception on Friday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Created by poet Miriam Sagan, a former poetry teacher at Santa Fe Community College, and Stella Reed, the center’s office and outreach manager, the trail includes 24 haiku engraved on ceramic placards made by artist Christy Hengst. The poems hang in trees and from shepherd’s hooks along a quarter-mile path that winds through the lower part of the sanctuary. The site-specific poems, written by budding writers and established voices like New Mexico’s inaugural poet laureate Levi Romero, are inspired by the places they now occupy. “It’s a joy to see the beauty and wonder of this special place capsulized in haiku to be shared with visitors from around the world,” Reed says.
3 Blast off in Alamogordo.
Superheroes, villains, anime characters, and more will hit the launchpad at Atomicon, Alamogordo MainStreet’s version of Comic-Con, on Saturday from 4 to 10 p.m. Created in collaboration with the Flickinger Center for Performing Arts, the event includes live entertainment, a costume contest, vendors, live music, a beer garden, and food trucks. “It’s a time for fans of all stories to dress up as their favorite characters,” says Claudia Loya, vice president of Alamogordo MainStreet.
Achieve critical mass with a circus camp for kiddos, a glow parade, a fire show from OddLab, a Children’s Music Theater presentation of The Hobbit at the Flickinger Center, and performances from Kaias Fitness Studio and the Anala Nahala Belly Dancers.
4 Confront climate change.
Gallup’s Art123 Gallery opens Transitions, a new exhibit by Zuni Pueblo artist Dennis Dewa, on Saturday from 7 to 9 p.m. during the monthly ArtCrawl. Dewa’s narrative works tackle climate change, juxtaposing the current dire state of the environment with what could be, in six large-scale canvases that occupy three gallery walls. “I think climate change is at the top of a lot of people’s minds right now with the fire season having come super early to the West,” says Rose Eason, executive director of gallupARTS. “Dennis’s work really conveys the miracle that is our planet—its power and its strength, its delicacy and fragility, and its majesty and mystery. His paintings create an energy that reminds us and makes us feel that we are part of the earth’s ecosystem.” The exhibit runs through June 4.
5 Take it to the wall.
As part of the annual PictoGraff event, New Mexico artists Saba, Reyes DeVore, Heck Ironcloud, Pecos, Ming, WOAR2, Yuku, and Diego Medina will install a collaborative mural on the west wall of the Branigan Art Center, in Las Cruces, on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. DJ Aight will perform, and guests can bring a T-shirt for the live screen printing.