Cochiti Pueblo artist Virgil Ortiz and collaborator Eric Garcia transform the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 into a visionary story of cultural survival, reconciliation, and Indigenous futurism.

In 1680, Po’pay of Ohkay Owingeh, sent messengers to the Pueblos across northern New Mexico to plan an organized attack on the Spanish colonizers. The plan worked, and together, people more than forty Pueblos, drove the Spanish out for twelve years.

For Virgil Ortiz, of the Pueblo of Cochiti, this true story of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 has been at the center of his work as an artist across the decades. In sculpture, film, textiles, and more, Virgil has made it his mission to use his art to educate others about the history of the Pueblo Revolt, its significance, and its ongoing influence. As a part of this telling and retelling, Virgil blends the history with Star Wars-inspired Indigenous futurism storytelling, both as a way to draw many different audiences in, and to imagine an Indigenous future that pulls from the strength of its history.

In the latest chapter, Continuum: Blindfall, First Strike, on view at the Vladem Contemporary in Santa Fe until October 18, 2026, Virgil joins forces with friend and fellow artist Eric F. Garcia, to place Spanish conquistador history and symbolism in conversation with Po’pay and other Pueblo warriors, both past and present.

Featured Guests:

Virgil Ortiz

Eric F. Garcia

Continuum: Blindfall, First Strike exhibition at Vladem Contemporary

Recommended Encounter Culture Episodes:

Truth and Tragedy: The Timeless Mythology of La Llorona

Recommended El Palacio Articles:

The Fuel of Activism

Mentioned in this episode:

The Pueblo Revolt of 1680

Po’pay

Herman Agoyo, sculptor from Ohkay Owingeh

La Malinche (as discussed in Season 7 of Encounter Culture)

Pueblo of Cochiti

Art collector Robert Gallegos

New Mexico School for the Arts

We’d love to hear from you! Let us know what you loved about the episode, share a personal story it made you think of, or ask us a question at [email protected]. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.

Visit newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico CulturePass. Reserve yours online!

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Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine

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Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

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Associate Producer & Editor: Monica Braine (Assiniboine/Lakota)

Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

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Pueblos are a matrilineal society.

So like within the pueblo, if you're raised there like you see how much work the women do and to hold them in higher regards, I'm trying to create superheroes that who they are and all of my nieces and nephews, all my nieces, all my sisters, our grandmothers, our aunts and all that they deserve all that.

And I just really wanted to give Po Pei a real person, a sidekick, a woman behind the men that is like brilliant and the major star of my storytelling and her name's Ta U Leader of the Blind Archers Bienvenidos this.

Is encounterculture from the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs.

I'm your host and editor of El Palacio magazine, Emily Withnall.

As I enter the corridor at the.

Bladum Contemporary in Santa Fe, I I see a giant shiny white head in profile and immediately recognize it as the work of Cochiti artist Virgil Ortiz.

The head is at least 10 times larger than a human head, if not larger.

Knots of black glazed hair run from his forehead to the nape of his neck, and the lower half of his face is streaked in blue black rain.

Po' Pay faces Tahu, whose head is mounted at the end of the corridor.

Tahu is the leader of the Blind Archers, and her equally giant shiny white head is adorned by what looks like a helmet helmet covering her eyes, the wall text tells me she leads warriors who strike by instinct, memory, and ancestral sensing, not sight, between Po' Pay and Tahu.

Metallic heads of Po' Pay and Castilian Christ mounted on the wall and made jointly by Virgil and Eric Garcia look down upon me and the other museum visitors.

It is the latest chapter in Virgil's lifelong artistic endeavor to share the history of the Pueblo Revolt with residents across the state, country, and world.

In this chapter, bringing his friend and fellow artist Eric Garcia into the show adds layers and texture to the storytelling, asking the viewers to consider how history is told, who gets to tell it.

And as you will hear in my conversation with Virgil and Eric, many New Mexicans, myself included, did not grow up learning about the history of the Pueblo Revolt.

But I never knew this story of how the Pueblos worked together to drive the Spanish out for 12 years.

As Virgil has said in other forums, the Pueblo Revolt was truly the first American Revolution.

I attribute my knowledge of the Pueblo Revolt entirely to Virgil.

And now, like many other New Mexicans, when I think of Virgil, I think of the Pueblo Revolt and vice versa.

Virgil's work is seemingly everywhere in Santa Fe, from a large, shiny red head looking out from the courtyard at the Inn and Spa at Loretto near Santa Fe's plaza, to a film of futuristic Pueblo warriors traversing the dunes at White Sands amid the kaleidoscopic art at Meow Wolf, to past exhibitions at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, among many other venues in Santa Fe.

It would be hard for Santa Fe residents to not know Virgil's work.

Still, there are plenty of people who have yet to learn about the significance of the Pueblo Revolt.

In my conversation with Virgil and Eric, we talk about this, the joys of collaboration, education, inspiration, and so much more.

My name is Eric Garcia.

I am from New Mexico originally.

It's born in Santa Fe just like Virgil, and I started my career early as a fine artist, primarily oil painting and pencil, and sort of migrated into sculpture and design.

I started an ad agency in Albuquerque that I owned for about 20 years and then moved to Arizona about 10 years ago and became a partner inside a larger ad agency.

Also within that time period, I started a structural design company where I create a lot of large public art pieces around the United States.

Cool.

My name is Virgil Ortiz.

I'm from Cocha di Pueblo, New Mexico.

It's located between Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

Grew up in a family of potters on my mom's Sefarino Ortiz side of the family.

Our dad, Guadalupe, was a drum maker, but I've been doing traditional cotta di Pueblo ceramics my entire life.

Expanded into all different types of mediums that I do work in, from anything from fashion to jewelry to film to music, glassworks, all that.

But that's what I do.

And I just want to give a shout out because encounterculture is the companion podcast to El Palacio in the winter issue that's coming out December.

There's going to be an essay by Joseph Sweena from Cottage about the historic apple orchard.

They're not connected to art, but still there's a connection for listeners and readers who might be interested.

So, yeah, I would love to both hear from each of you about what drew you both to history.

Who were the people, people, the texts, the artists that you encountered that complicated or challenged or expanded your understanding of history?

This episode that we're recording right now is going to be the first in a six part series of different points in New Mexican history.

Kind of loosely affiliated with the idea of this US250, but like what was happening in New Mexico far before that, when it wasn't even a part of the United States.

And so I'm curious about, you know, what your experiences were growing up in New Mexico and then how you kind of learned different things later and how you came to that interest.

You know, I feel like when you live in New Mexico, you can't really help but to be engrossed by, you know, the history.

I've always said that New Mexico is just filled with so much culture and really living in different places around the us you start to realize how much culture is embedded in the DNA of Albuquerque, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Cochiti.

But I personally became very interested in the history of New Mexico and working with Virgil even more so than ever.

And again, working on this exhibition really had me do a deep dive into not only learning about the Pueblo Revolt as well as Virgil and his experience and also the narrative that he created, but also really just in the core of New Mexico history was definitely inspired by Virgil.

That was never taught in like schools and our textbooks, our history books.

So it was just really kind of being swept under the carpet because of the reality of the genocide that happened to our Pueblo people, the atrocities and all that.

So going back to where I grew up in Cochete, all of the clay carried all the stories.

So that was always instilled in me.

And our language is not a written language, it's passed down verbally.

So same way with our ceremonies, our dances or songs.

All that is told through clay and through just oral teachings.

So that's how I learned all about it.

And like, the more I dove into it and knowing that it was not taught in schools, it's kind of Striking, but it is the truth.

So that's what I really got obsessed with, to educate globally about the revolt.

It sounds like, Virgil, that you grew up with maybe a little more history than I did.

Certainly.

Actually, when I think of the Pueblo Revolt, I automatically think of you.

Like, your work is everywhere.

I see your work in, you know, hotel courtyards at Meow Wolf.

Everywhere I go, I encounter your work.

So you become known as the person who tells this story, at least in New Mexico.

So I'm wondering if you can kind of give us summary to people who have not somehow heard of the Pueblo Revolt.

Okay.

Yeah.

It was a coordinated uprising by Pueblo peoples against the Spanish colonial rule, what is now New Mexico after decades of Spanish occupation.

When they first came in, like, many of the Pueblo communities were resisting forced labor, Catholic conversion, and the suppression of our traditional religious ceremonies and practices that we did.

And, you know, like, through that, all the drought, like, Eric and I talked about that in our show, the famine, the disease, the growing colonial pressures added to all that tension.

How that happened, it was like, the person that devised the plan, his name was Po Pay, and he was a religious leader from, okay, Weingue Pueblo, and that's just north of Santa Fe.

But he brought together all of the pueblos, and he designed this uprising by sending runners from the northern pueblos to their southern pueblos.

And he gave them knotted cords, and he instructed them to drop them off at each pueblo with their leaders and told them to untie one knot every morning.

And when the last knot was untied, every single person in the pueblos all rose up, and they pushed out the invading forces.

And, you know, right now, it's America's first revolution, but nobody calls it that again because of the atrocities that happened.

So that's why I dedicated my life, like, working on this topic for now 25 years.

And to have somebody like Eric, you know, it's a prayer that we know what happened.

We have to acknowledge the world has acknowledged what happened to us before it gets swept under the carpet.

But to show proof that, you know, we can live together.

And we have lived together.

And Eric has been a friend for over 30 years, and he's one of the first people that I wanted to really bring into one of these exhibitions that we pulled off in Santa Fe at the Vladimir Contemporary Museum.

And him being from Spanish blood was a perfect opportunity for that.

So now, us being friends for that long, we're proof that we can live together in love and unity and educate through art.

So that was, like, the most important thing to me, and that's, like, the first reason I feel that I'm here is to educate globally about the Pueblo Revolt, but also to make sure that the creation of Cochidi Pueblo clay works does not die out.

And unfortunately, it is a dying art form right now just because of how hard it is to use the old school traditional methods and materials, meaning that we have to go dig our own clay, dig the all the materials that we mix with the clay, create our own clay slips for the paint, and use the wild spinach plant to create our black paint that we use in our pottery.

So using all this like this is, like, the perfect opportunity that Eric and I collaborated on this show, so he was able to bring in the real Spanish side storytelling of it.

And we combine the stories, and, you know, that's a prayer for peace in the end, and make sure that we don't repeat the atrocities in our history and make sure that we learn from them.

Eric, how did you approach bringing a Spanish perspective to this story?

Right out of the gate, Virgil said, I want to show the history of what happened during the Pueblo Revolt from a Spanish perspective.

And that in itself is extremely challenging.

But I'll back up a little bit about what Virgil was saying about educating people on the history of the Pueblo Revolt and his people.

It really, from the very beginning, and I really respect it.

And this also inspired me when Virgil said, you know, Eric, this is an educational moment.

I need to tell the story.

I need for people for generations to see what I've created that will attract all ages.

And that in itself was very inspirational to me.

But even more so, Virgil said, you know, I'm just a conduit.

Not just, but I'm a conduit.

You know, I'm that communicator.

I'm the person.

This is much bigger than I am.

And so that really, really inspired me to say, you know, beyond Eric, what you might think this is, you know, how does it translate into Virgil's beautiful narrative?

And again, it was the resilience of the Pueblo people.

It was the brilliance of what was done and the tenacity that they had to, you know, overcome and push back on the Spanish.

So that in itself was enough to kind of give me a little bit of a head start.

As to creating some of these images, icons that would support Virgil's narrative.

I'd love to know when you began working on this and what inspired you to include the future.

You know, like, the person.

I mean, I always have to mention this in all the lectures that I do.

He's my manager, Tish Agoyo's father.

He's the late Herman Ogoyo from OPN Wenge Pueblo.

And that's where Pope was from.

Right.

So he was the first person that I knew that spearheaded educating globally about the revolt and watching what he did and just respecting him so much and, like, you know, getting close with him and just listening to all his teachings and everything.

He was working on a project to get the statue of Po Pay into the National Statuary hall in dc, and at that time, we were working on a handbag collection.

So we had donated some of the proceeds to help get this Pope statue into Statuary Hall.

And that was, like, massive for us, like, to be a part of.

And we're so thankful we're a part of that.

But before Herman moved on to the next dimension, he asked Tisha and I, you know, saying, I see what you guys are doing, and you're, like, really reaching into the past and also the future to help educate about the revolt.

And he said, I really love what you're doing because you're gonna.

You're gonna reach a lot more people, younger people, kind of using that narrative that you're doing.

And with him saying that, you know, kind of passing the baton to us and asking us to make sure that the world knows about what happened to Pueblo people and make sure that the world knows of our history and that we're still here living, thriving, and creating.

He asked us to keep on doing it.

So we gave him our promise that we do our best to do this.

And, you know, we started working on this, like, 25 years ago now.

Oh, wow.

So I was, like, wondering, like, okay, how am I going to educate globally about, you know, about how do I do this?

How do I, like, reach the most people that I can while I'm still here?

And I said, I love, you know, sci fi storytelling.

I love sci fi movies and books and all that.

And, you know, I was, like, 7 years old when I first seen the first Star wars movie when it came out.

Yeah.

So I was like, okay.

So I was like, how am I going to do that?

Because, like, I'm not an academic person myself, but I love, like, anything in the art world.

And so I started creating and devising a plan to create a film script about the public revolt.

And it's all about time jumping portals and everybody going back and forth between these two time dimensions.

But what they're doing is, again, is us in the future, but they're coming back to the present time and the historic times, and they're collecting all of our designs, our artwork, our ways of life, our traditions, our ceremonies, our songs, our languages, and taking it back to.

So this is how the feature film is based on.

So I'm taking as much as I learned from Herman Ogoyo and really combining it and adding my own storylines to it and creating a movie script about it.

Everything I've done up to this point has all been based on that, creating a film script.

So any exhibitions that you see that I do, they're all storyboards for a feature film.

And you living in New Mexico when I'm home, like, you know, it was a big place where movies to come and be made.

Then you get slowly introduced into different people that work in that industry, and then you slowly start to learn more and more, because I've never went to school for any of those.

And now that you have access to more and more people, you learn how all of this is working together.

So again, just going back and then breaking down, I created 19 groups of characters that represent the 19 Pobos that are left today.

So, you know, this is, like, awesome to work with Eric because he's teaching me a lot of the Spanish side of the history, and we're trying to find connections of how these characters could all come to meet together and, you know, join the story of what is the fact of our history, finding ways to present it to the next generation, not only on social media, but because on social media is everybody's doom scrolling.

So, like, you have like three seconds that people look at your artwork or your images that you post, and you have that amount of just a short time, you know, to capture somebody's attention.

And if they start reading the storyline, they get into our work.

And Eric understands this because he owns an Advertising agency.

And we just started brainstorming, like, how are we going to do this more?

How are we going to do this?

We're going to bring in 3D mapping, projection, real film, you know, all different types of animation or anything that we could get our hands on.

Costuming, painting, sculpture, clay, and tell the story.

So this is like how it's just building.

It has created a life of its own.

And it's just fun to collaborate with the people that I have because they teach me so much.

We learn so much from each other and we always have fun doing it.

So you mentioned that as a seven year old, you were inspired by Star Wars.

I'm curious about how you retain that excitement for science fiction.

I think it's part of adhd just because you get so excited with every new thing that you see.

I mean, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, you know, Prometheus series, Aliens, even the Black Panther.

Now people of color are coming back into the.

The whole spotlight of like, futuristic films.

One of my best friends, Nona Hendrick, she's part of the Afro futurism.

And like, having her as a friend to do her stage clothing and like, it just, it grows wings and it just like completely expands everywhere roots or whatever you call it.

I mean, if you have the capability to listen to other people instead of talking all the time, which I'm talking right now, but it's so cool to hear everybody's story and like, you find similarities and you make it work and then all of a sudden there's artwork to work on and then you collaborate and then you share it with the world and hopefully they understand.

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But I do want to briefly mention, you know, for anyone who has not seen your work, the scale is very impressive.

And so I'm curious.

I'm curious both about why you chose to work with such huge objects, but also if you could each kind of describe your work in this show at Blenheim Contemporary for listeners who might not have a chance to see it.

Yeah, we worked with several different mediums.

Some of the mediums that I worked with was definitely a mixed media approach.

You know, Virgil has had the opportunity to create large pieces in clay and some with his traditional work as well.

It allowed me to kind of get a little crafty, I'll say, you know, between what types of materials to sort of complement the scale that Virgil was working on.

But, you know, what I presented personally was a relief sculpture that was done.

It was approximately 12ft by 5ft.

We had a projection, kind of like an image mapping where the tree came to life.

Very symbolic of growth.

And it's part of my Memory Keeper series that really kind of holds the story.

So with the videos that Virgil had created, just amazing, stunning.

We were able to kind of take my work and sort of bring it to life.

And again, some of the work that I had created as well was a lot of symbolism, you know, Christian symbolism, Catholicism.

You know, one of my pieces was called the Dragonfly Cross.

And, you know, getting back to when Virgil and I started talking and concepting these stories, he said, did you know the Dragonfly Cross came from the Pueblo people?

I had no idea.

You know, so again, it was a lot of discovery.

So what I had done with the Dragonfly Cross is.

I went ahead and split it.

It's almost sort of like the division between two worlds.

But, you know, Christianity is.

It's sort of what brought it together for some, you know, and some of the other materials.

Again, part of the challenge was complementing the scale of Virgil's work.

So I was able to work with plaster and wood, metal, all sorts of different materials.

For sure.

I didn't want to mirror what Virgil was doing, but I certainly look back at some of the pieces that I've created and say I can see Virgil's DNA in these pieces over a period of time, inspiring me.

One of the things that Virgil has really done a great job within his narrative and storytelling is that he brings the perspective of women and women power.

And he's always saying that, you know, a lot of his pieces are reflective, that of women that are.

Are badass, you know.

Yeah, and that sort of pushed me to do a little bit of research from the Spanish side and sort of deep diving into that brought me back to where really, where it sort of originated from.

And that was Mexico.

You know, La Malinche was one of those individuals that was extremely prominent in sort of the reshaping of the Spanish settlers that came in.

But how it really impacted New Mexico is.

Is quite astonishing.

And so that's kind of my Spanish perspective of, again, just sort of summarizing the imagery side of it.

You know, icons, things that represented both culture and religion.

Yeah, definitely.

I mean, it's like what Erica's speaking about is, like, a true collaboration because we're learning so much from each other.

Deep diving into all these different characters.

And like you said, I designed, like, all of my whole storytelling around women empowerment.

Pueblos are a matrilineal society.

So, like, within the pueblo, if you're raised there, like, you see how much work the women do, and to hold them in higher regards, I'm trying to create superheroes that who they are.

And all of my nieces and nephews, all my nieces, all my sisters, our grandmothers, our aunts and all that, they deserve all that.

And I just really wanted to give Pope a real person, a sidekick, a woman behind the man that is, like, brilliant, and the major star of my storytelling, and her name's leader of the blind archers.

But it's so cool because, like, all of the historic works from Cocheti were all based on social commentary.

And I didn't even know that, like, I mean, since I was a kid.

Like, 17 was when the first year that I found out it was all based on social commentary.

And that was brought to us, to our family, from our family friend Robert Gallegos out of Albuquerque, that owned a gallery in a showroom.

And he had known me since I was six years old, coming to the pueblos to buy pottery from the potters.

And at one point, he realized that my pieces were not representative of what Cottio was known for at the time, was storytellers and the pots with the geometrical designs.

But he asked my parents, like, who's teaching this kid?

How did, like, making all these whacked out figures, and, you know, he's painting them completely different than what you guys are painting them.

And he said, you know, well, my parents and I just both said that we're.

I was experimenting at that time.

So he asked them to bring me to his showroom in Albuquerque, which we've never been to a showroom before, because he would always come to house visits to the Pueblos.

And we went there and we looked at his showroom for the first time.

And all of us just about passed out because we walked into his showroom and he, it turned out he had the largest collection of historic coge d figurative pottery.

And they all looked identical to what I was experimenting and creating.

Wow.

So my parents pulled me out of that showroom.

I thought I was in trouble.

So I was like, oh, no, what did I do?

But pulled me out and just said, like, we're experiencing this together.

Like, we never taught you this.

Like Grandma and grandpa's never taught you this.

And it's the clay mother talking to you and through you.

So remember this day.

And that's why they pulled me out of that showroom.

And they just said, like, you know, know that she's talking to you and through you.

So I was like, okay.

And I.

At that point, I knew I was going to dedicate my life to clay and to revive what the whole social commentary aspect of the historic works were about.

So now, like, if you were to look at historic Cogito figurative pottery, you could kind of more or less find out what timeline they were at.

Kind of like a newspaper, because they started making caricatures or people in clay that represented the new people that were being brought into the area via the newly laid railroads.

So you'll see the railroads brought more people, which brought entertainment and restaurants.

Of opera singers and traveling circus sideshows.

And now that I had access and resources of Robert Gallego's collection, I was able to go study them up close, look at how they painted them.

The size of them was incredible.

Up to like 3 foot tall size pieces, which Cochetti at that time had lost all that size.

And that whole social commentary aspect was not there.

So having him as a family friend, everybody had access to these pieces.

So now at all the different exhibitions, going back to your question is that I tried to, no matter where I'm at, like a venue, a museum venue, I always asked him if I could see their collection of have any historic cottage figurative works that I could go into and start off the whole exhibitions using these historic works, not only to honor them, but to show a whole timeline of what's happening and like the whole social commentary about it.

You'll see some from our aunts, Estefanita Herrera Then you'll see works from my mom and then some of my traditional works all put in like a couple of glass cases.

And then as you walk along, then you start to see high fire clouds, clay works, all different types of clay works, whether it be raku or gas fired, kiln fired, whatever.

And then that's where you could see more colors coming into the clay works.

Because, like, our traditional colors are black, white and red at Kojiti.

But now moving into the high fire clay works, you have access to metallics and jet blacks and grays and blues and pinks, whatever you want to create with.

And now, like, going bigger in sizes.

Now you're able to go more monumental size, which is always just like a whole thing that's like, in my head.

It's like it's installed in my head, whether it be a conduit, because I feel this is not my talent.

Right.

It's like from a higher.

I don't know how to say there's a higher level of, say, spirits or anything that.

That is, like, I'm doing a conduit from them.

So now I'm going as big as I can.

And they're like, working with Eric, we want to go even bigger.

So he's had experiences in public art installations, like on the side of the road, huge signs.

And I've got, you know, my work that's we're working on right now at the Albuquerque International airport, which is 19 foot tall, a metal sculpture.

So we're always thinking about that, always thinking of how we can make the shows even more incredible, you know, geared to school or school ages.

And it's like, really awesome.

Now, the Vladim, the New Mexico School for the Arts, they're coming over, bringing their kids.

They're getting into the characters.

They see what's being displayed.

They're asking more questions about the revolt.

So everybody's learning together, and it's like, that's the most incredible thing that you could see, especially not only the public, but, like, the kids learning a lesson in history through our work.

My main association when I think of you and your work is your very, very large heads.

So could you describe one of those?

I mean, it just depends what you're looking at, you know, within each exhibition.

Yeah, we do.

I mean, I dabble in all different types of mediums.

And, you know, that's where ADHD comes into play.

I never bored.

And, like, that's how Eric and I get along.

So we're like, okay, let's go get into painting.

All right, let's get into sculpture.

Ooh, let's get into clay.

Let's get, you know, just utilizing everything.

I mean, when you actually realize, like, the brilliance behind that.

I'm not saying we're brilliant, but, like, how it all fits together is just so cool.

But then also you go through the next room, you get to see the garments that I hand sewed.

A lot of people think they're like AI.

A lot of people think they're not real.

But now you can come and see, like the hand sewn garments.

I do use all, every medium.

Like I said, like.

So once I get the garments created hand sewn, I use resin.

I have foam fabrication to create all of these costumes because you can't go to the big box Halloween stores to buy these costumes because they're all original.

So it's very fun to print on fabric, sew them together, dress up all my friends or families, and then go film them in White Sands or Bisty Badlands or the paint mines in Colorado and just like create these worlds.

So we do have original film, we have original video, we take it into cgi, into animation, some AI all of it comes together.

So in the last room, you'll see how it all complements each other utilizing all these different types of mediums.

And it's so fun to watch people to go in there because now they're understanding how it all fits together.

So Continuum Blindfold First Strike is the latest chapter since the most recent chapter.

How many chapters have there been?

25 Years in the making?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't even know.

It's funny to reminisce about that too, because some of like, like one of our friends, Charles from King Galleries, started in Scottsdale and he was one of the first people that took a chance on me telling the stories through art.

And at first it was never.

It wasn't heard of telling it that way.

So he kind of got scared, of course, being a gallery owner, like, oh, my God, is this going to work?

I don't know what's going to happen.

But once he understood, like all these characters, us creating how they all fit together, and then he was one of our biggest supporters, so we continued working with him and then slowly branched out by ourselves.

And it just keeps growing and growing.

Every.

Every exhibition that we do, and Eric and I are already brainstorming on the next, you know, bigger shows or whatever pieces of art we're going to collaborate on in the future.

Virgil doesn't sleep I and I.

And I really mean that.

When I was working my work he'd say, eric, I'm going to fly in.

And at midnight or 2 o' clock in the morning, we're still working on artwork.

And I'm like, this guy does not sleep.

So.

Wow.

Okay.

Well, I guess, I mean, that makes sense considering how prolific you seem to be.

You have more hours in the day than the rest of us, apparently.

So this is the latest chapter, this exhibition that's up at Vladimir.

So I'm curious about how you decided to work together and what putting your work in conversation within this exhibition kind of reveals, what nuances it invites viewers to consider that maybe people wouldn't necessarily get if they were viewing your work separately.

Yeah.

So how do we both decide to work together?

You know, it's one of those things that you gotta be careful what you ask for.

Especially with Virgil.

Virgil and I reconnected about three years ago.

Right, Virgil?

I think so after many years of not, you know, just kind of communicating back and forth.

But my wife and I were in Santa Fe at the time.

It was a hot summer, I think, in June, and we just happened to catch him at one of his exhibitions.

And I thought, oh, my gosh, I haven't seen this guy in a long time.

So we went to go visit him, and right out of the gate, it was like we never stopped talking.

It's like automatically we just like, wow, this is crazy.

We ended up buying a few of his pieces.

And naturally, you know, Sarah and I got into the bug of.

Of collecting Virgil's work, which is a just a huge honor.

So without hesitation, when I asked Virgil, I said, hey, you know, let's.

Let's do something together, right?

We're both artists.

We both have some awesome but humble beginnings.

And he's like, let's do it.

I'm.

I'm ready to go.

And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I gotta work on inventory.

Then he mentioned the opportunity at the Vladim, and I'm like, oh, Virgil, at least give me a little bit more time.

He goes, eric, we've got three to four months.

Let's put something together.

And that's really kind of where the journey started.

And he threw a bunch of other challenges at me.

Now it's gotta complement the narrative, or now it's gotta be the story through your eyes again.

It was just to tell that story and having that opportunity was just.

It was paramount.

It was awesome.

Yeah, I totally think this whole show just shows, like, the power of unity.

Like, how do you unite nations without a single written word?

How Pope did was Through a knot at chord.

Right.

And then like, Eric and I are kind of doing the same thing.

Like, he was never in the art world.

He was in the advertising world.

But I knew he was a badass artist, so my point was like, dude, you got to get back out there.

And I knew he was a badass artist, so I'm like, you got to pull this painting out and finish it after 30 years.

And like, really, really on him and like, you know, talking more about the narrative and, you know, seeing how this could fit into this whole storytelling continuum and then just brainstorming and pushing each other's that way and like, you know, getting out of our comfort zone and removing all the hurdles that humans put in our own heads.

And that's one of the.

The mottos that I live by is no more imaginary hurdles.

Yeah, more.

All of the students that I work with, like, at a workshop or in universities and the clay studios is like, this is what we're going to work by is no more imaginary hurdles.

What does that mean?

It means like, humans own self doubt all the time.

Like, like, how do you do this?

Oh, my God, it's so big.

I can't do this.

Like, am I.

You're already setting up your own imaginary hurdles.

They're never there to begin with.

So I try to teach the students, forget that way of thinking because just know that failures are our best teachers, our best instructors.

So don't be afraid to fail.

And that's what I try to teach everybody.

Just go for it and fail.

The more you fail, the quicker you're going to learn and know what.

What not to do again.

So this is how we pushed each other.

And like, Eric went through it too.

We are.

Some nights he was like, I don't know if I can do this.

Like, dude, come on.

You got it.

It's already there.

Let's just go.

I'm gonna fly out.

Yeah, we're gonna do this.

And we just supported each other and, you know, that just shows.

Exactly.

It doesn't matter what color you are.

Your skin is.

We're.

We're brothers and we're, you know, we've been friends for that long, and it's pretty cool that we're able to express it through art and also through educate about our real history.

And that's what we're praying for, is acknowledgment of.

Of like, what happened to both our histories.

You know, your.

Your words have power.

And I do remember Virgil always saying, picture it.

It's already done.

You know, it's already done.

We're just.

We're just putting the pieces together.

And I started to understand that.

But also, this is really interesting.

Virgil would always say it's part of that vortex.

Like, everything started to make sense, you know?

He's also talked about ancestral memory, of how, getting back to when he was younger, how all of these characters and things that were so symbolic within his culture started to sort of resurface, and he didn't even know.

And I think that is.

People don't realize how real that is and how powerful that is, because I think in working with Virgil, I was definitely able to experience that.

And also that sort of ancestral memory from the Spanish perspective started to resurface for me.

I was realizing a lot of the work that I had been doing for years has that much of a.

Of a very heavy Spanish influence as well.

And so everything just sort of fell right into place.

It was.

It was crazy.

I just loved it, having him especially.

Like, I didn't think about Spanish blood originally, but I just thought of him as a friend because I.

You know, it's.

It's.

That's just how close we are and who, like, I'm friends with.

Right.

Like, I don't think about where you come from or.

Yeah, and you have.

And then all of a sudden, it just clicks in the vortex, and you're like, oh, whoa, what do we create art about doing this?

Oh, no way.

You're Spanish blood.

Okay, Tommy is too.

Let's go do this.

But it just shows the world and proof, like, you know, we can create together, we can live together where we stand united and in a good way and support each other and just live a good life like that, and to attract positive thoughts and anything within your world.

Like, we have one shot at this in this Earth's realm.

So we have to do the best we can.

And the older that we get, like, it gets a little bit easier.

You just have to realize, like, how many people you could affect with your words.

So please, treat people with kindness, respect, with love, so that they can, in turn, do the same thing.

So especially now, in these times, like in the political world's insane, we have to support each other and get through it.

And I mean, of course we will get through it, but you just have to get in the right frame of mind of thinking of how to navigate through what's going on, and not only within your own family, your own world, but for everybody that's operating in it.

Like, we are attracting all of this to ourselves.

So we just have to be Considerate of how we treat people.

And again, just going back to kindness and love and helping them without any judgment.

You know,.

Do your characters ever land anywhere in between?

Like, did they land in contemporary times?

They totally do.

And that's like another way of manifesting, like, within.

I know what you're saying.

But then, like, what if the blind archers meet up with, say, some of the stormtroopers, some, like Darth Vader?

They could stop there as well.

But how the worlds could collide.

But they do.

And just to focus on it, right, that is the main storytelling is to make sure our history is told.

So then that's where I design it to stop within, you know, the future, the present and the past, making sure that it's all acknowledged.

Because, like, a lot of.

I mean, there's like a quick little story of, like, when I do shows in Europe, I've done several around the world, but, like, in Paris, even though they speak a completely different language, when I'm doing my lectures of an opening of an exhibition, they understand our history.

They know more about American history than Americans do, which is quite embarrassing.

They know exactly what happened.

And when I do shows in metro cities, here in New York and la, they're like, what part of Mexico are you from?

I'm like, this New Mexico.

Hello.

And like, when we do shows, like in the Vladim people from Santa Fe, like, where most of the revolt took place, you know, they still don't know what happened.

So this is like, I feel that we're just getting started, even though it's been 25 years.

But the more people I can bring into the group that understand what, you know, we have a chance to make a difference and tell the truth through art is really awesome and it's powerful to me.

Well, the reason I asked you that, Virgil, was because I was wondering if you have thought about, you know, if Po' Pay arrived now, what do you think he would.

He would think he would flip out, but he would already know.

And like, you know, for him to bring together more than 40 some pueblos at the time, just without communicating only through the knot.

It chords like it can be done again.

We just have to find the.

How we attract each other and like, the similarities between all of us and now, like, how it translates to the, you know, all of America, how what is now called America, but how we have to find our similarities and like, help saving one another, help I mean, it's insane right now.

It really is.

And, you know, I could only imagine our ancestors, what they felt when they seen people that were never here before coming in here and saying, you know, crushing all of the old artwork, tearing apart everything and saying, like, you have to now worship this.

You are now this.

And, like, what.

Who are you?

Where are you from?

Like, what are you doing here?

But it's like the same thing.

Like, we.

We don't want to repeat the past.

We want to learn from it, and we want to help people.

And, like, you know, Eric and I is a perfect example of what we're trying to do and help people understand and learn to love one another.

And, you know, this is the time that we need to come together and support one another.

Yeah.

So that we all move forward in the best way possible.

So you mentioned, you know, you're just getting started, and you talked about the students from New Mexico School, from the arts and other people in Santa Fe coming and learning about this history for the first time.

I'd love to hear from both of you.

You know, experiences that you've had that have been hopefully uplifting.

You know, people learning this and feeling inspired by it or, you know, getting a spark for history or whatever the case may be.

I think what's out there definitely is this narrative.

And getting back to.

With what Virgil's created is sort of what happened in history, but also resurfacing it to more of a modern platform.

It's limitless.

So I think that's sort of what it brings, is no barriers, no boundaries, you know, unlimited ideas that can just continue to evolve along with the story that it's.

It'll never die.

And I mean, like, working with students, especially, like, I mean, I want to point out the student that I worked with.

When the Vladim first opened in 23, I was working with a student that went to the med school, School for the Arts, who has now moved to the next dimension.

His name is Meyer Shapiro, and he.

We connected through music.

So he is a part of my team to create the music track for that show Shadow and Light and, you know, to revisit Back Full Circle where we're there.

Like, I was, like, could still feel his presence there, and it's just, like, an awesome way to acknowledge him as well.

And like, everybody that is just a part of the team.

My work is way bigger than I am.

It's not about me.

I. I've learned that when I was 16 years old, it's, you know, it's way bigger than I am.

And this is, like, what I have to make sure I do something right with this talent that is lent to me.

It's not mine.

So to have that and explain it to younger generation of, like, you know, you have to use what is given to you or what's lent to you the best way possible.

Yeah, Virgil's an awesome guy.

I mean, truly, I. I will say he's just an amazing person.

You know, there's.

There's so many people that have said, you know, who's your favorite artist?

You know, Virgil Ortiz is my favorite artist.

And.

And I really do mean that.

My wife and I have fallen in love with Virgil's work and just the story and the meaning behind it.

So having this opportunity to work with him was just, I mean, really a dream come true.

Of course, it had to happen in my late 50s, but better late than never, right?

So what an honor it was to work with burjoint.

And again, I just feel like this is just the beginning of something that will, you know, live with us for the rest of our lives.

Thank you, Eric, for saying that.

And I feel the same way about you.

We learned so much for each other, especially with collaborations.

Right.

Even with students that I do teach, you learn so much from the students because of their questions, and then all of a sudden, you figure out that you learned something.

So I'm learning, and I'll never stop learning on a daily basis.

And I love that.

You know, I want people to acknowledge that our Pueblo people are still here living, thriving, creating, and, you know, know the real history of what happened, but also to, you know, grow from it and do not repeat it and, you know, treat everybody with respect.

And, you know, I mean, there's lessons everywhere.

You just have to keep your ears and eyes open.

So I just hope you.

Everybody that comes sees the continuum blindfold first strike, that they also look into their own personal history, their bloodline, and know where you come from.

And, you know, it's just brilliant to learn something that you never knew about yourself and your family.

You know, it's a beautiful thing to actually take a breather, smell the roses, and look into your own world, your own self, and love yourself and love the next person next to you.

If you are local, be sure to go see it.

If you miss it, however, rest assured that many more chapters of Virgil's Pueblo rebolt project are in progress, including some potential joint shows with Eric again in the future too.

Check out their websites in the show notes as well as other resources if you want to learn more about the Pueblo Revolt.

Thanks for listening.

Encounter Culture is a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs.

Our producer is Andrea Klunder at the Creative Imposter Studios.

This season is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder and Alex Riegler, technical direction and post production audio by Edwin R. Ruiz.

Our Executive producer is Daniel Zillman.

Thank you to New Mexico artist El Brujo de Santinava for our theme music.

For a full transcript and show notes, click the link in the episode description in your listening app.

I'm your host, Emily Withnall.

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