In Colorado, a storied valley blooms again - San Luis Valley for High Country News by Jimena Peck

Most people in San Luis can trace their roots back to the mid-19th century, when the valley was part of Mexico. But as in much of the rural U.S., the valley’s economy — and consequently its landscape — has undergone radical changes over the past century. In the 1960s, the mountain where people had hunted and fished for more than a century was purchased by a private owner, who cut off all local access. Many residents shifted from polyculture vegetable farming to monocrop agriculture and cattle ranching. Soil health suffered, and as people ate less homegrown produce and more processed food, Type 2 diabetes, once a rare complaint here, became common.

The effects of privatization and industrialization are an old story in the rural West. Here, however, residents still remember how their grandparents — even their great-great-great-grandparents — used to farm this land and how they used to eat. By helping to revive and strengthen local traditions, Peña hopes to help conserve not just the land itself but the ways in which residents relate to the land and to each other. “I want to reawaken that cultural memory,” he said.

Story by the wonderful Marissa Ortega-Welch

Photo Editor Bear Guerra

Full story published in High Country News

As Police Arrest More Seniors, Those With Dementia Face Deadly Consequences: Debbie Aguilar for the Marshall Project

One night in October 2021, Armando Navejas wandered away from his home in El Paso, Texas. The 70-year-old had Parkinson’s disease and dementia, and his family said he could barely speak. Scared for his safety, his wife Josephine called 911 for help tracking him down.

By 2 a.m., Navejas was back in front of his house, shirtless and ambling around. According to video from a neighbor’s home security camera, an officer approached, shining a flashlight in Navejas’ face. Navejas appeared agitated, picking up a string of wooden blocks and walking toward the cop, who retreated behind a parked car. Navejas threw the wood limply toward the officer; it landed on the windshield.

When Navejas turned away, the officer walked around the vehicle and fired a stun gun at Navejas’ back. His body went rigid. He fell face-first onto the sidewalk.

For the Marshall Project. Full article HERE

Jobs Aplenty, but a Shortage of Care Keeps Many Women From Benefiting. Story for The New York Times

A dearth of child care and elder care choices is causing many women to reorganize their working lives and prompting some to forgo jobs altogether, hurting the economy at a moment when companies are desperate to hire, and forcing trade-offs that could impair careers.

Care workers have left the industry in large numbers amid the pandemic, shrinking the number of nursery and nursing home employees by hundreds of thousands. At the same time, coronavirus outbreaks have led to intermittent school shutdowns, which, in turn, have made care demands less predictable and increased the need for reliable backup options.

Although plenty of men have also taken on increased care duties since the pandemic began, women perform most caregiving in America, according to the Labor Department. They have made a surprising return to the labor market in spite of that challenge.

Federal data shows that the share of women participating in the labor market by working, or by looking for jobs, remains depressed relative to 2019, but it has recovered roughly as much as the share for men has. Mothers still work less than other women, but the gap between the two has narrowed to about the level that prevailed before the pandemic, an analysis by the Federal Reserve found.

Yet those signs of a comeback hide strains beneath the surface. A deeper dive into the Labor Department’s monthly survey of households shows that unmarried women without college degrees who have young children have returned to work more slowly than others, a sign that the shortage of care is making them particularly vulnerable.

Full Article HERE

New work for the Hechinger Report - If more students become pregnant post-Roe, are we prepared to support them?

Schools often discriminate against parenting students, and services for them have dwindled. New abortion restrictions could force more young people to drop out.

LaTavia BigBack was 17, a high school junior, when she and her friends were in a car crash. In the hospital, the doctor asked if she minded her friends being in the room — he had some news for her. BigBack said no; she thought maybe she had a concussion. But the doctor told her she was pregnant. Years later, she still cries when she remembers her friends’ expressions. “I felt embarrassed and terrified, because me and my friends were so young.”

She considered an abortion, but her 23-year-old boyfriend disappeared and she didn’t have any money. “It’s expensive to get the procedure, and he just kept flaking on the appointments,” she said. “So I had kind of no choice but to go along with the pregnancy.” 

As word of her pregnancy spread at her school in Colorado, so did the unkind comments and judgmental attitudes. Except for one friend, even those who had been in the accident with her pulled away. When her classes were assigned group projects, no one wanted her in their group. Her teachers never acknowledged her growing belly, and the school counselor had no suggestions for outside resources.

LaTavia BigBack lives at Hope House Colorado, which offers programs for pregnant and parenting teen mothers such as free legal support, financial counseling and individual tutoring. Credit: Jimena Peck for The Hechinger Report

Never a good student, she started falling even further behind. Finally, at four and a half months, she confided in her dad. BigBack’s mom guessed several weeks later when she developed a craving for strawberries. BigBack found herself growing more and more isolated at school and dropped out in her junior year.

“If there was anyone who encouraged me, who gave me support, I would have stayed,” she said. Instead, at seven and a half months, with swollen feet and an anxious heart, BigBack began working two part-time jobs — as a server in a restaurant and a cashier at Walmart. She bounced between her divorced parents’ houses and felt hopeless. “I honestly felt like my life was over.”

Story written by Kavitha Cardoza

Full article HERE

Korean-American Visual Artist: Sammy Seung-Min Lee for Luxe Magazine

Korean American artist Sammy Seung-min Lee’s first meal in the United States was a preview of the experience and dilemma of conforming to a new country and culture. Prepared by her aunt, who had immigrated 25 years earlier, the feast featured traditional Korean foods served as a buffet—a novelty for then-16-year-old Lee. “She gave me a large plate to fill with whatever I wanted,” recalls the artist, who was accustomed to eating from small vessels containing carefully portioned and presented dishes. “All the food and juices were mixing together, and I wasn’t sure if I liked it but I thought, ‘I guess this is a way of becoming American.’ ”

Years later, after studying fine art, media art and architecture then starting Studio SML | k—her art practice in Denver—Lee memorialized this symbolic meal by recreating the buffet table in her work space. She then draped it with sheets of hand-felted mulberry paper that hardened into an intricately detailed, three-dimensional cast of the scene.

“I call it a ‘paper skin,’ because I feel like I’m giving a shape to memories,” says Lee, who stumbled upon her paper-felting method—which previously involved soaking, kneading and pounding handmade hanji paper until it became a leathery, luminous substrate—while practicing bookbinding. “I was using wheat paste to fuse layers of paper into a thicker material,” the artist explains. “Until I discovered a similar, almost-forgotten Korean technique that only requires water, paper and busy hands to agitate the fibers.” The result is “an amazingly sculptural material that records so many fine details, from the flow of air to the weight of water to tension and relaxed draping existing together.”

Lee has applied these paper skins—stained using coffee and tea, then painted with varnishes—to a variety of objects embodying sociocultural issues related to immigration, home and belonging. Her ongoing series, “A Very Proper Table Setting,” encompasses more than 100 cast table settings from Denverites who have accepted the challenge of serving everything from traditional Thanksgiving feasts to lavish Southern breakfasts in Lee’s Korean tableware. “Setting up a meal for someone is very disarming,” she notes. “These questions and problems we have about the society we live in—this is a way to process, discuss and understand them through making art.” 

Written by Christine Deorio

Published in Luxe Magazine, March 2023

How This Denver Artist Honors Her Mexican Heritage Through Plaster: Monica Curiel for Luxe Magazine

Plaster exudes pure possibility for Monica Curiel. Both versatile and tactile, it allows the Denver-based artist to mold her memories and Mexican-American heritage into poignant abstract works. Minimalist linen whites, inky blacks and creamy taupes that Curiel tints with coffee grounds help draw the emotions her pieces capture into focus. First, the artist applies plaster onto wood panels. She then lets it dry just enough to form pliable layers that can be folded into dynamic shapes. “You have to understand how this material behaves and know how light and shadows will hit certain angles,”

In another homage to him, Curiel’s latest foray into functional design was inspired by his love of music: Her recent light fixtures, chairs and decor items evoke the ornamentation of mariachi garments. Wherever her practice may lead, she remains grounded in a sense of herencia, or heritage: The love and lessons handed down from her parents, but also the inheritance she’s building through her work. “I think about my pieces as objects I will leave behind on this Earth,” Curiel says. Plaster, after all, retains the touch of her fingers, preserving every movement, mark and memory. 

Words by Monique Mcintosh for Luxe Magazine

To see more of Monica Curiel click HERE

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Texas’ border operation is meant to stop cartels and smugglers. More often, it arrests migrants for misdemeanor trespassing

For the past year, thousands of Texas National Guard members and state troopers have been sweeping through brush along the Rio Grande and cruising border-town roadways. Their eyes scan the horizon for the cartel operatives and smugglers whom Gov. Greg Abbott vowed to hold at bay when he launched his multibillion-dollar campaign to secure the border.

But more often, the troopers arrest men like Bartolo, a Mexican farmworker who came to the United States looking for work, according to his lawyers. They’ve also slapped cuffs on asylum-seekers like Gastón, a human rights attorney who said he fled Venezuela after being targeted by the Maduro regime for defending political opponents.

Though they don’t fit the specter of the hardened criminals that Abbott conjured when launching his border security initiative, men like Bartolo and Gastón are typical of the thousands arrested under Operation Lone Star, which is intended to combat drug and human smuggling.

In July, four months after the operation started, Abbott announced that, with the permission of landowners, the state for the first time would punish people suspected of illegally crossing the border by arresting them on suspicion of trespassing on private property. The unprecedented “catch-and-jail” system allowed the Republican governor to skirt constitutional restrictions that bar states from enforcing federal immigration law.

The misdemeanor charges quickly became a major piece of the governor’s border security crackdown. While Abbott has publicly focused on arrests of people accused of violence and drug trafficking, an investigation by The Texas Tribune, ProPublica and The Marshall Project found for the first time that trespassing cases represented the largest share of the operation’s arrests.

Of the more than 7,200 arrests made by state police over seven months, about 40% involved only charges of trespassing on private property, according to an analysis of Texas Department of Public Safety data by the news organizations. In February, the majority of the border operation’s arrests were of people booked solely for trespassing.

Article by Jolie McCullough

This article is co-published with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power, and with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system.

Denver Artist Laura Guese for Luxe Magazine by Jimena Peck

A Denver Artist’s Spirit-Lifting Paintings Are A Reminder To Look Up

Text by Kate Abney

When Laura Guese paints her large-scale works depicting abstract cloud formations, she never starts with a photograph. Instead, she begins with a feeling. “I think the work is more authentic that way,” she explains. For the Denver artist, that work is a meditative process, a mode of expressing whatever emotion is currently gripping her.

Clouds have been a part of Guese’s life since she was growing up under the sweeping skies of the High Plains. Because her grandfather was a meteorologist, names for cloud formations—such as mammatus and cumulonimbus—were a part of her everyday vocabulary. But it was only while she was attending college in Northern California (where she was inspired by the rolling fog) that cloud imagery began to show up in her work.

Since returning to the Mile High City about 10 years ago, Guese has made a sanctuary in her River North Art District studio—an industrial space on the second floor of a building that was once a soda factory in the 1920s. The room’s north-facing windows and views of dynamic skies help her subject matter fully materialize.

From here, the artist has a front-row seat at an ever-changing nature show. “I can watch large thunderheads grow and change and shift throughout the day; I am intrigued by how strong and solid they look, but they’re just vapor. They’re otherworldly to me,” she says. For Guese, painting these atmospheric formations is a way to process anxiety or anger, excitement or elation. She adds: “I love to engulf the viewer in the clouds and give them that feeling of being lost for a minute.”

The artist’s complicated technique begins at the bottom right-hand corner of the canvas, with strategic strokes pushing outward and upward to lend the paintings their telltale loftiness. “I usually have four or five brushes in my hands at a time,” she says. Just as her brushwork lifts the downy silhouettes, Guese hopes her works elevate the spirits of their viewers, too—as avid collectors at George Billis Gallery in Los Angeles and Walker Fine Art in her native Denver can attest.

Oil paints give the artist’s larger paintings luminosity, but she occasionally creates smaller works on paper with gouache and pastels. “It’s fun to play around with the layers, and gouache is great for creating hazy atmospheric conditions,” says Guese.

Guese’s mid-career works, a series dubbed “Castles in the Sky,” have somewhat of a surrealist quality. A 2012 artist residency in France was what ultimately cemented her move to abstraction—and also triggered a new preferred palette. Gone are the bold reds and golds of the American West in favor of the soft blues and indigos she’d seen in northeastern France.

Still, a shift to cooler tones hasn’t made the works any less electric. Vividness, Guese says, comes from her use of contrast. “I love the edges, that kind of suggestion of illumination implied by shadow lines,” the artist notes. “It’s a hopeful kind of thing, a reminder of the positive.”

Full Story in Luxe Magazine’s webiste: HERE

Laura’s work: HERE