The Mano y Mente Museum Hours and Information

ABOUT: The Mano y Mente Museum Features artwork that was donated by artists who were selected to participate in the Mano y Mente Artist-in-Residence program (est. 2006). During the program sessions, the professional artists reside in Tularosa & create art pieces that are often inspired by the Tularosa Basin’s landscapes & cultures.

HOURS: The Mano y Mente Museum hours are 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.

LOCATION: The Mano y Mente Museum is located at 311 Granado Street in Tularosa, New Mexico and is half a block east of the intersection of Granado Street and US Highway 54/70. 

WEBSITE: See www.ManoyMente.com for more information about the Mano y Mente Artist in Residence Program! 

The Mano y Mente Museum is back! 311 Granado Street, Tularosa, NM, 88352

The Mano y Mente Museum is back! It features artworks donated from over 20 artists who participated in the Mano y Mente Artist in Residence Program. Most of the featured art pieces were inspired by the Tularosa Basin.

Stay Tuned for Updates about the Reopening of the Mano y Mente Museum!

Plans are in the works to reopen the Mano y Mente Museum in the downstairs of the historic Tularosa hotel building this March! The museum would adjoin a jewelry gallery. These plans are 90% certain. Stay tuned for further information!

Museum temporarily closed for relocation

We are relocating the Mano y Mente Museum to another building on Granado Street. The Mano y Mente Museum exhibits unique art pieces made in the Tularosa Basin by professional national and international artists. We will keep you posted about updates and changes. Please continue to visit this site for details!

Mano y Mente Museum, NOW OPEN!

MANO Y MENTE MUSEUM
220 Granado Street
TULAROSA, NM 88352

The Mano y Mente Museum, located in historic downtown Tularosa, NM, is now open! Admission is free and the museum is open to the public. The current museum hours are 12-6pm, Wednesday through Saturday.

The Mano y Mente Museum displays artworks donated by most past Mano y Mente artists. Many pieces in the collection were influenced by the stunning local scenery and the artists’ experiences in the region, and all were created in southern New Mexico. The Mano y Mente program has hosted artists of diverse artistic styles and techniques. Therefore, this museum exhibits realist, impressionist, expressionist, surrealist, and abstract pieces created with many different art mediums. The museum currently exhibits artworks from 6 Mano y Mente sessions, and will continue to grow in size as the program continues.

Each museum piece is accompanied by information about each artist as well as information about the region or Tularosa feature that influenced the work of art. The museum therefore fosters education both about the arts and the Tularosa Basin. Feel free to forward this email and encourage other art enthusiasts to visit the Mano y Mente Museum!

Spring 2010 Show, April 24, 7 PM!

Mano y Mente's Spring 2010 show opens on April 24th at 7pm with colorful art, appetizers, and merriment. The show is open for viewing from April 25th to April 28th from 12am to 4pm.

220 Granado Street, Tularosa, NM, across from the Western Auto.

Otherworldly landscapes ... Spring 2010

The spring 2010 session has arrived and thus far artistic inspiration has come from White Sands National Monument, Carlsbad Caverns, and Dog Canyon ... all three of which make for "otherworldly" landscape experiences. Upcoming landscape painting regions will included Three Rivers, Petroglyphs, and the Volcano badlands. (The stunning photos of White Sands and Carlsbad above are courtesy of spring 2010 artist Alison Price)

November 14th show!

Tularosa Basin Gallery Passport

Mano y Mente will be participating in the inaugural Tularosa Basin Gallery Passport Tour. The fall 2009 Mano y Mente exhibition will be one of 15 galleries/exhibitions listed in the passport and distributed throughout 5 local towns. Participants who fill up their passports receive gift certificates to a local high-end restaurant and/or signed prints by renowned local artist, Robin Makowski. Mano y Mente's director is one of two founders of the event, which draws additional attention to the Tularosa Basin's growing art scene. More information to follow!

Fall 2009 Session Arrives

The three artists that compose the Fall 2009 session have arrived to tackle a new range of obstacles in the Tularosa Basin. One treks up a White Sands dune with his "plein air" easel in tote. Double click on the photo to view the keen detail on the still-wet canvas.

Agave Greets the Fall Session

The Mano y Mente mammoth agave prepares to greet the fall 2009 session. It has resided on the property since 2000 and currently stands about 5 feet tall by 5 feet across. Many an artist has created work inspired by this beautiful beast of a plant.

Tularosa Hollyhocks in Full Bloom

One would never suspect that the hollyhock is native to southwest and central Asia given how vigorously it has taken to this region of New Mexico. While roaming the streets of Tularosa one can find them in abandoned lots, alongside colorful buildings, in unfrequented alleyways, and as colorful giants in manicured perennial gardens. Above you see a rose-colored hollyhock family alongside the Mano y Mente wall.

Painting Spotlight: Trusty Tractor

Artists seek inspiration in objects of current use as well as those dusted over by time and past utility. A fall 2008 Mano y Mente resident, Jafang Lu, painted the 40 year-old tractor above, which still sits outside the Mano y Mente studio awaiting its next go at an expansive field or a bountiful harvest. Lu, who studies and teaches at Studio Incamminati in Philadelphia, paints the radiance of light in patient, thin layers. She returns to each of her subjects at the same time of day and in the same quality of light to create consistent hues and shadows. Her works illustrate this patience and the depth of her colors give her subjects brilliant life.

Spring 09 Muses: Old Trucks

some trucks hide in the brush like hidden stones....

some hide among the wreckage of a forgotten building...

and others become exterior accessories, still shiny and good friends with an elderly prickly pear cactus.


"Lovingly worn" trucks have become muses for the spring 2009 artists. See some of these mechanical relics in all their painted glory at the May 2nd show, 220 Granado Street, Tularosa, NM.

May 2nd, 7pm Show!

Information about Mano y Mente

Mano y Mente is a small, private artist-in-residence program located in the historic, beautiful town of Tularosa. “Mano y Mente” means “Hand and Mind” in Spanish. The name reflects the program’s creative and pensive nature and is in Spanish to pay tribute to the region’s cultural influences.

Mano y Mente is not a school, the director is not a professor, the "artists in residence" are not students. Mano y Mente is an artist program designed for professional artists to focus, create, and exchange ideas. Mano y Mente participants are selected from a national and international pool of applicants and are invited to spend 10 weeks living in Tularosa while painting throughout southwestern NM. Artists are chosen based credentials including talent, diversity of art experience, productivity, individuality, and compatibility.

During each session, Mano y Mente participants spend every other week at a different landscape painting region (White Sands, Three Rivers, Lincoln National Forest, etc.). The alternating weeks are spent in-studio working on individually inspired works of art.The work exhibited at each final show is inevitably influenced by the stunning local landscapes alongside the artists’ own experiences, techniques, and interests. Styles of present and past Mano y Mente artists have ranged from pin-point realism, expressionism, to surrealism and abstraction.

The use of the studio and housing space, and the transportation to local landscape-painting regions is free to the Mano y Mente artists. Both the patron and the director/founder are art and local history enthusiasts and hope that each session’s participants leave New Mexico with the same zeal and curiosity!

Spring 2009: Dog Canyon

This week we have ventured to Dog Canyon. Its mountains display twisted and overlapping rock formations, diverse desert plants, and shadows that shift from deep indigos to red by the hour. All in all, Dog Canyon presents an overwhelming amount of artistic inspiration and painterly challenges.

Sprouting Spring

Artists from the 2009 spring session arrived to find the Mano y Mente property on the verge of spring. There still is a slight chill in the air but it's slowly disappearing to give way to leafy foliage and t-shirts. Above, Mano y Mente artist Ember Soberman focuses on cactus pears against a deep red rock wall.

Below, you see Soberman's stunning "Hey there Prickly Pear" in all its cheerful glory. It was the result of devout investigation over the course of several weeks spent alongside the prickly pear cactus shown above. Soberman employs multiple layers of see through washes to create a weathered, atmospheric aura throughout her pieces. "Hey there Prickly Pear" is one of four cactus paintings she has created during her stay at Mano y Mente. Soberman, armed with bravery and watercolor pencils, also cozied up to the mammoth, spiky Mano y Mente agave.

Overview talk: Ice Cream!

Two times per session (about once every three weeks) each artist gives fellow participants a 10-30 min. in-studio talk about something related to art or creativity that they’re interested in and think the other artists in residence would benefit from. Artists have complete freedom and creative license in designing their overview talks....

This week an overview talk was given on the culinary art of old fashioned ice cream. In the photo you see a 60 - 100 year old ice cream hand cranker. A metal container filled with cream, sugar, and flavoring is surrounded by ice. The container and its internal wheel slowly mix the ice cream at the same time the mixture is slowly frozen from the ice.

Photos of the finished, tasty ice cream are to follow!

New Spring 2009 session!

The spring 2009 artists arrive this week. Tularosa's winter is about to cease. Soon the bees will buzz, the wind will blow, and green will once again conquer this currently grey oasis. We look forward to another productive, innovative session!
(photo courtesy of "flickr".... great Tulie art exists in the most unexpected locations. In this case we're looking at a water tower at the edge of town. )

Large Turnout for November 15th Show!

One by one art appreciators from Tularosa, Bent, Cloudcroft, El Paso, Taos, and Boston filled the gallery and celebrated the accomplishments of Mano y Mente's fall 2008 artists. At one point there were so many visitors we could hardly stretch out our arms in the historic gallery space, which was once a Billy The Kid era bank. One artist (Craig Paul Nowak) actually displayed some of his work in the bank's antique vault, which is shown in the second photo. The night was eventful and the art was stunning! (More photos of the Fall 2008 Art Exhibit to come...)