Axle Projects supports the presentation of art from New Mexico via innovative outreach. We value the  intersection of disciplines, engagement of our diverse community, and encourage and promote experimental and creative approaches to art-making and presentation. We are based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Our flagship project, Axle Contemporary, is a mobile gallery based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Visit the website here.

Contact

Axle Projects

P.O. Box 22095

Santa Fe, NM 87502

505-670-5854 or 505-670-7612

art@axleprojects.org

Who We Are

Jerry Wellman, president

Matthew Chase-Daniel, vice-president & secretary

Carol Cooper, treasurer

Lucy R. Lippard

Andrea Hanley

Alicia Inez Guzmán

Our programs are supported through individual donations and grants from the City of Santa Fe's Arts and Culture Department and the Sulica Foundation. This project is made possible in part by New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Axle's exhibitions in the Santa Fe Railyard are made possible through the support of The Railyard Art Project. Individual projects have been funded in part by grants from The Native American Advised Fund at the Santa Fe Community Foundation, The FUNd at the Albuquerque Community Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, The New Mexico Humanities Council, Northern Rio Grande Heritage Area, ISE Cultural Foundation NY, Nova Corporation, New Mexico Literary Arts, Santa Fe Jin, the PY Foundation, and SITE Santa Fe SPREAD funding.

 Our Board of Directors

Matthew Chase-Daniel was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1965 and lived in New York City in the 1960s. In the mid and late 1980s, Chase-Daniel studied at the Ojai Foundation in Ojai, California, at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York (B.A.), and in Paris, France, where he studied cultural anthropology, photography, and ethnographic film production (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes & Sorbonne). Since 1989, he has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, making family, and roaming the landscape to make his art. His photography and sculpture have been exhibited across the U.S. and in Europe. He is the co-founder of Axle Contemporary, a mobile gallery of art, founded in 2010. Chase-Daniel serves on Santa Fe’s Railyard Art Committee and is a past member of Santa Fe’s Art In Public Places Committee. He hosts a radio interview show and podcast about the arts in Santa Fe, Coffee and Culture.

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Carol Cooper has over thirty years of experience in arts and culture programming, management and capacity building, working with artists; communities; nonprofits; state, federal and international agencies; and as an independent consultant. At New Mexico Arts, she facilitated statewide and grassroots partnerships as a grants manager for emerging nonprofits and rural arts enterprises, and founded/managed the New Mexico Fiber Arts Trails, a cultural tourism partnership with 70 sites statewide. Her previous experience includes ten years as director of education at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, consultancies on rural women’s development with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Indonesia and Save the Children in Nepal, and regional management and training for the Smithsonian Institution's Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) program. Her MSEd in Adult Nonformal Education and Multicultural Community Development is from VPI&SU.

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Raised in the northern New Mexican village of Truchas, Alicia Inez Guzmán has written about histories of place, identity, and land use in New Mexico. Alicia is a former faculty of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design and is currently an investigative journalist at Searchlight New Mexico. Alicia holds a Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester in New York and is a recipient of the Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant.

Andrea R. Hanley is the chief curator at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is dedicated to the work of contemporary Native American artists and the Native American fine art field. Over thirty years of experience in the field including National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., as both special assistant to the director and exhibition developer/project manager, the fine arts coordinator/curator for the city of Tempe, executive director of ATLATL, Inc., a national service organization for Native American arts, the founding manager of the Berlin Gallery at the Heard Museum, and the membership and program manager for the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. She serves on the board of directors for the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, Santa Fe Indian Market, the Santa Fe Art Institute, the Roswell Artist in Residence Foundation, Voices in Contemporary Art (VoCA) and Axle Contemporary. She also sits on the 516 ARTS ambassador council, the Native American advised fund for the Santa Fe Community Foundation, Ucross Foundation national advisory council, and the Native American advisory board for Nest. She was on the Santa Fe Arts Commission from 2019 – 2021. She is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation.

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Celebrated for her deeply influential and interwoven work—as author, activist, and curator—Lucy R. Lippard is recognized as one of contemporary art’s most significant critics and as a was an early participant in conceptual, feminist and activist art. Born in New York in 1937, Lippard began her career as a writer in 1962 and subsequently produced numerous groundbreaking exhibitions and 25 books .She was a cofounder of the Ad Hoc Women Artists Committee, Printed Matter, Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PADD), the Heresies Collective and journal, and Artists Call Against US Intervention in Central America. She has received nine honorary degrees and many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Literary award, and a lifetime achievement award from the College Art Association.

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Jerry Wellman is a Santa Fe based artist whose cultural work includes curatorial projects, performance, writing, video and studio production. Wellman earned an MFA from CalArts. Wellman’s paintings and drawings have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Holly Solomon Gallery in New York City, Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn, The Downey Museum, and The Orange County Center of Contemporary Art in California, The El Paso Museum of Art, The Revolving Museum in Boston, and The Paseo Project in Taos, NM. His drawings were selected for a traveling show sponsored by the Smithsonian. His work with Axle Contemporary has been exhibited at SITE Santa Fe, 516 Arts in Albuquerque, The. Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock AZ, The Western Heritage Museum in Hobbs NM and the Roswell Art Center in Roswell NM. Awards of note include: Art Matters Foundation Grant, LINE Grant, Puffin Grant, and an NEA grant. Wellman has taught at the Pasadena College of Art and Design, CalArts, and New Mexico State University. He was formerly the head curator at Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art. He is the co-founder of Axle Contemporary artspace