View some of the top attractions on offer at SOFA WEST: Santa Fe 2011
and the Intuit Show of Folk and Outsider Art

The Art Fair Company Presents 3rd Annual SOFA WEST: Santa Fe 2011
NEW DATES! August 4 - 7, Santa Fe Convention Center Museum of New Mexico Foundation to Partner Again for Opening Night Preview FIRST LOOK Wednesday, August 3

Also New at the Fair: Spotlight Presentation of The Intuit Show of Folk and Outsider Art Opening Night Public Preview

SANTA FE, NM. Long heralded as the nation’s premier fairs for outstanding contemporary art and design in New York and Chicago, SOFA’s 3rd annual western edition returns to the Santa Fe Convention Center with new high summer dates. The much-anticipated International Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Fair, SOFA WEST: Santa Fe 2011 will move from its former July dates to run August 4 - 7 at the Santa Fe Convention Center. With 35 exhibitors confirmed to date, the show is up in dealer participation from last year’s 28. Continues >

The Museum of New Mexico Foundation to Again Host FIRST LOOK Opening Night Preview at 3rd Annual Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Fair: SOFA WEST: Santa Fe Wednesday, August 3, 2011 | Santa Fe Convention Center NEW THIS YEAR! Opening Night Public Preview

SANTA FE, NM. Mark Lyman, President, The Art Fair Company, announced the Museum of New Mexico Foundation’s (MNMF) continued participation in the Opening Night Preview of the 3rd Annual Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Fair: SOFA WEST 2011. Lyman said, “We are delighted that for the third straight year the Foundation plans an Opening Night private preview for its highest level supporters, inviting members of its Circles and Business Council to an exclusive, early viewing ‘FIRST LOOK’ at the fair. These individuals and companies are the movers and shakers of Santa Fe and New Mexico’s vibrant arts and culture scene. We are pleased to offer the Foundation a first-class art event for its most stalwart supporters, and to give them first opportunity to view and purchase.” Continues >

SOFA WEST: Santa Fe 2011 and New! Spotlight Presentation of The Intuit Show of Folk and Outsider Art
A Partnership with Chicago's Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art

SANTA FE, NM. Mark Lyman, Founder/Director of SOFA and President, The Art Fair Company announced an exciting addition to SOFA WEST: Santa Fe 2011. Lyman says, “After a successful inaugural partnership of SOFA and Chicago’s respected Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art at SOFA CHICAGO 2010, we are delighted to work together to produce a ‘spotlight presentation’ of The Intuit Show of Folk and Outsider Art, which will run alongside SOFA WEST. The Intuit presentation will add leading dealers and galleries of self-taught art, outsider art, art brut, ethnographic art, non-traditional folk art and visionary art to the mix. The Art Fair Company has always been about bridging different segments of the market, and the Intuit presentation will complement and further broaden the range on offer. It promises to offer the Santa Fe community a body of artwork rich in personal history and vision as well as material and process.” Galleries participating to date include Russell Bowman Art Advisory (Chicago); Galerie Bonheur (St. Louis, MO); Garde Rail Gallery (Austin, TX); Packer Schopf Gallery, (Chicago); The Ames Gallery (Berkeley, CA); Judy A Saslow Gallery (Chicago); and Yard Dog Art Gallery (Austin, TX). Continues >

SANTA FE, NM. Plans are well underway for the SOFA WEST: Santa Fe 2011 Lecture Series featuring renowned curators, collectors, critics, artists and dealers. Lectures take place Thursday - Sunday, August 4 - 7 in the Santa Fe Convention Center and are complimentary with admission to the fair. Continues >

SANTA FE, NM. The New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe will present a small exhibition at SOFA WEST: Santa Fe 2011 previewing the Museum’s show Kimono: Karen LaMonte and Prints of the Floating World, which takes place at the Museum June 24-November 6, 2011. The Floating World exhibit juxtaposes Karen LaMonte’s life-sized cast-glass sculpture of a kimono with figurative Japanese woodblock prints. Continues >

SANTA FE, NM. "We have an excellent roster of dealers for SOFA WEST: Santa Fe 2011," says Mark Lyman, Founder/Director of SOFA and President of The Art Fair Company. "It's exciting to see the fair spread its wings in terms of its breadth of offerings." Continues >

SANTA FE, NM. Outsider/Intuitive Art: There is controversy surrounding the exact definition of outsider art (also often called intuitive art, visionary art, and Art Brut). Typically, those labeled as outsider artists fall under the umbrella of self-taught art (as does most folk art), with little or no contact with the mainstream art world or art institutions. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates extreme mental states, unconventional ideas, or elaborate fantasy worlds—art by persons on the fringes of society including the socially maladjusted, mental patients, prison inmates, and the disabled. Continues >

SANTA FE, NM. Principal among dealers participating in SOFA WEST’s new spotlight presentation of The Intuit Show of Folk and Outsider Art is Russell Bowman Art Advisory (Chicago), specialist in modern, contemporary and self-taught art. Bowman reports he will present outsider artist Carlo Zinelli (1916 –1974), a schizophrenic from Italy who was committed to psychiatric hospitals all his adult life. Zinelli drew for eight hours a day with tempera paints and colored pencils, creating about nineteen hundred paintings and a few sculptures. His narratives tell the story of his childhood in the country, frequently repeating figures to cover the entire background in ‘horror vacui’ style. His human figures are always solid shapes drawn in profile, often with holes to represent eyes or other features. By 1964, his work had been exhibited, and he had attracted the attention of art historians associated with Jean Dubuffet and the Compagnie de l’Art Brut. Continues >

The Art Fair Company Now Accepting Proposals for $5000 Annual Research Grant "New Voices: A Grant for Discourse on International Contemporary Art and Design"

CHICAGO — Mark Lyman, president of The Art Fair Company, producer of the Sculpture Objects & Functional Art (SOFA) Fairs in Chicago, New York and Santa Fe, NM, today announces that The Art Fair Company is now accepting proposals for the second recipient of SOFA’s US$5000 annual arts research grant “New Voices: A Grant for Discourse on International Contemporary Arts and Design.” Application is by invitation only, and eligible groups will be contacted directly by The Art Fair Company. Invitations will be sent by May 16, 2011. Continues >

SOFA, so good

Local gallerists on the Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Fair
Can Santa Fe shoulder yet another high-end art event? According to some, the answer is a resounding "yes" as SOFA — the international exposition of Sculpture Objects & Functional Art — makes its appearance at the Santa Fe Convention Center from Thursday, June 11, to Sunday, June 14 (with an opening-night preview on Wednesday, June 10). The annual art and design exposition originated in Chicago in 1994 and has been a yearly affair in New York City since 1998.
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Santa Fe, which celebrates its 400th anniversary next year, is one of the oldest cities in America. It also has one of the largest art markets in the country—either the third largest or the second largest, depending on whom you ask. Steeped in Native American, Spanish and Old West traditions, Santa Fe has long been known as the place for collectors to go for blue-chip art and objects in those fields. In recent years, though, the city’s art market has been transcending the regional, expanding to embrace the contemporary and the international. It’s now a world-class destination for collectors in a multitude of fields, and the best time to discover this richness is the summer season, with its cornucopia of cultural events, fairs and gallery shows.
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SOFA Sees City As Perfect Move West

When SOFA founder Mark Lyman began looking west to expand his prestigious show bridging fine art, decorative art and design, he found Santa Fe. 
    
Midwife to the Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Fair in both Chicago and New York, Lyman checked out Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. But none possessed the access and feeling of community he sought. Then an art gallery owner and collector steered him to New Mexico. 
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