About our Award Sponsors

About our Awards Sponsors….
Chris Dahl-Bredine
Amazing aerial photography..Chris has been
To see this spectacular world from above - to soar like the birds - has been a dream of humans since the beginning of time. I have had this same dream since I was a child. My dream became a reality with my decision to learn to fly. I chose to fly something small and open so I could really see and experience my surroundings - an ultralight aircraft.

What I see while up in the sky inspires me to document these beautiful sights through photography. Through these images I intend to convey the feeling of peace, the sense of wonder and awe that one feels while flying above the earth. This is what I experience from above. Enjoy.
Shotfromabove.com

Lenny Foster
My life has been filled with many blessings. One of the blessings I am most cognizant of and thankful for is the gift of sight, both the physical and the imaginative. My mission
at this point in my life is to show my gratitude for this gift by honoring and documenting beauty and what I perceive to be the presence of spirit in all that I encounter.
The process of creating photographs for me is about communing with the Divine.
Through this dialogue, with camera in hand, I’ve had numerous opportunities
to transfer onto film my intimate revelations or sublime moments of
spiritual insight. Pure joy is also a major contributing factor in my desire to
capture and share wonderful images.
Lennyfoster.com

Iva Morris
New Mexico artist Iva Morris has been making art for over twenty years. After receiving her BA in Art Education at the University of New Mexico in 1981, Ms. Morris taught art and participated in the Artist in Residence program, painting murals with children around the state of New Mexico. She began working with pastels nine years ago and has continued to show both locally and nationally, winning awards for both her prints and pastels. She is a member of the Pastel Society of America and the Pastel Society of New Mexico. She lives with her two children and husband, painter Brian O'Connor, in the small farming community of Las Nutrias, New Mexico. Her work can be found at Lewellen Contemporary in Sante Fe, Weems Galleries in Albuquerque, and Indigo Gallery in Madrid, NM. A comment made by painter Andrew Wyeth pretty much sums up my approach to art: "Art is nothing more than the people that you love and the place where you live."
Ivamorris.com

Brian O’ Connor
During a year in Ecuador and Peru, searching for mushrooms and divinity, I began to make art, something I continued to do during the two years of working throughout the western United States that followed. Construction work financed my returned to UNM where I graduated in 1983 with a B.F.A., a degree which I have found immensely useful in securing the various lucrative positions that I've held during the last twenty years from gutting salmon in Kenai, Alaska, to milking cows in Las Nutrias, New Mexico, to hanging sheet rock, iron working and steel framing everywhere in the universe.
But throughout, I've painted and shown professionally in galleries and museums across the country, receiving a Western States NEA Fellowship in 1990 and having solo shows in Santa Fe, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, and New York. I've lectured at universities as a visiting guest artist, conducted painting workshops from San Diego to Santa Fe, and I teach a regular painting gig at the Harwood Art Center in Albuquerque.
brian-o-connor.com


Alisa Ritchie / Jewelry Designer, Fabricator and Owner
My inspirations are designs I see in nature and architecture, the
beauty of simplicity and the joy of giving jewelry a life of it's own.
I allow it, in part, to create itself. Textures that play with light and
shadow are also an integral part of my designing. Creating
beauty through art is where I'm happiest.

I work with silver and gold alloys, occasionally using copper metal
for a contrast in color. I am presently fascinated with surface textures,
incorporating such techniques as reticulation, Kumboo, and folding
metal in my work.

AWARDS:
2009 Best of Contemporary Jewelry- Taos Invites Taos Fall Arts Festival
aguiladesigns.etsy.com