Valles Caldera Announces 2025 Artists in Residence

Valles Caldera National Preserve has selected five artists to take part in its Artist in Residence (AiR) program during the 2025 summer season. Through the AiR program, selected artists will immerse themselves in the park’s natural and cultural landscapes to create original artistic works inspired by the setting. During their residencies, they will also share their work with the public through presentations and interactive workshops. The selected artists for the 2025 season are as follows.

Cruz Davis-Martinez is a current student at the University of New Mexico. Pursuing degrees in both Studio Art and Psychology, Cruz’s artistic practice explores the intersection of mental health and creative expression, drawing inspiration from the Northern New Mexican landscape to develop a deeper reflection on their relationship between place and personal narrative. Their work emphasizes mindfulness, personal identity, and the therapeutic potential of art in natural settings. With roots in Española and a background in addiction research, Cruz aims to use this residency to create site-specific works that foster reflection, generic-to-specific ties to land, and notions of connection between ourselves and nature through creation.

J. Mark Dyke is a New Mexico-based sculptor whose work explores the deep connections between mythology, animals, humans, and the land we share. For Dyke, sculpture and drawing are acts of reaching out—ways of making contact with the animal world and rekindling reverence for creatures too often overlooked.

He studied art at the University of New Mexico and taught at Eastern New Mexico University. Based in Albuquerque with his wife, Jennifer, Dyke is a foster parent for local rescue animals and a supporter of New Mexico sanctuaries, including Roots, a pig sanctuary in Tijeras. He is also the father of two daughters, Amy and Stephanie, who inspire his connection to the natural
world.

Their home includes a lively mix of dogs, cats, chickens, and goldfish—an affectionate crew that often serve as muses.

Working primarily in clay and bronze, Dyke sculpts from life, emphasizing the attitude and presence of his subjects before casting them using traditional foundry methods. His sculptures have appeared in public and private exhibitions and are held in collections from New Zealand to the East Coast.

In gratitude to the animals who inspire his work, Dyke donates a portion of each sale to support animal rescue efforts.

Alina Lindquist is a Las Vegas-based artist whose work focuses on the Mojave Desert. Last year she held artist residencies at Great Basin National Park and The Mystery Ranch located within Avi Kwa Ame National Monument.

Direct experience with the landscape is the cornerstone of her artistic practice. Her process starts with en plein air studies to capture her initial experience on location. Sometimes, she will use watercolor or gouache, depending on how much she wants to carry that day. No matter what materials she uses, the marks and colors captured outside inform her more extensive work back in the studio.

Her current work focuses on the Mojave Desert, with a recent emphasis on Avi Kwa Ame National Monument. Observational study through painting, or sometimes just simply watching the environment around her, generates questions and a further desire to understand the environment she paints. The more time she spends outside, the more she researches the landscape, the plants, and the area's history. Her studio work incorporates the location's essence and an additional layer of process informed through further readings. It's an ongoing exercise of observing, learning, and painting. Ultimately, her work seeks to transmit her love and wonder for the land she paints.

Jim Weaver is a contemporary tooled leather printmaker based in Edmond, Oklahoma. Jim’s interest in nature and the outdoors led him to a 35-year-career in environmental restoration. This followed degrees in forestry and water resources engineering, and time spent in private industry. Throughout, he’s always had an interest in art, fed mostly through visits to museums. Along the way, he began tooling leather as a project with his son and found that the focus on traditional motifs and fine craft could be expanded to a broader perspective. Over 20 years, he’s expanded the themes to the distortion and wilding of traditional western themes, historical events, and social and environmental commentary. As a further step he’s developed techniques to use leather as a printmaking matrix to transfer the unique marks of tooled leather to paper. His current work combines his career emphasis in environmental science by directly incorporating ecology and scientific data in his imagery. His work has been seen in 12 U.S. states; and in Europe, the U.K., Mexico, and China.

Patsy Welch was born, raised and attended college in Tennessee. After receiving her BFA in painting, and by way of a very odd and winding route, she attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. It would be impossible to overstate the enormity of that transition - a young and naive Tennessee painting student, having never lived in a big city nor ever been out of the U.S., she suddenly found herself in Paris. What helped most in her adjustment to Paris was the magic of a student card that allowed her entrance into any museum in France free of charge. And Paris was an endless parade of art museums with paintings from everywhere in the world. She lived a few blocks from the Louvre, visiting it most days, roaming galleries, doing her best to soak in as much as humanly possible.

She lived in Paris for three years, and became "an emerging artist," exhibiting in France as well as other parts of Europe. Returning to the States, she settled in Chicago teaching watercolor for over 35 years, most recently at the Chicago Botanic Garden for the last 12 years. At the age of 56, she received her masters degree in architecture, and ran a small residential design firm for 12 years.

Patsy and her husband retired and moved to Santa Fe right before the pandemic, and she has been happily painting full time again. Her hope, in her older years, is to become a "re-emerging artist."