Exhibition at the Eugene and Clare Thaw Research and Education Center at the Edwin Brooks House
Timeless Waters: Acequia Culture in New Mexico
An Exhibition and Programs featuring Photography by Sharon Stewart
Friday, June 27th | 5 PM
Exhibition continues through September 26, 2025
At the Thaw Education & Research Center in the Edwin Brooks House
553 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501
Sharon Stewart Private Reception and Artist Talk
July 10, 5-7:30pm
Image Credits: Sharon StewartABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Historic Santa Fe Foundation announces the exhibition, Timeless Waters: Acequia Culture in New Mexico. The show features two projects by artist Sharon Stewart: El Cerrito: A Village Life Portrait, and FIRESCAPE. Stewart’s work addresses traditions surrounding water in New Mexico and the challenges of acequia maintenance, preservation, and utilization in the face of the population changes and climate change.
Alongside Stewart’s photographs HSFF will provide talks that contextualizes and discusses the role that acequias play in New Mexico and Stewart’s work. Jesse Roach, City of Santa Fe Water Division Director, will present July 24th on the structure and planning for the City’s water supply. Jake Barrow, Program Director for Cornerstones Community Partnerships, on the Rael Ranch Acequia in La Cienega, NM and its assistance in their annual cleaning and stone masonry repairs, date TBD. More programming will be announced throughout the summer.
Stewart will present a public talk at 6pm at the opening on June 27 and HSFF will host a private reception on July 10 from 5-7:30pm. The exhibition continues through September 26, 2025.
EL CERRITO: A VILLAGE LIFE PORTRAIT
In a region of ghosted presences, the remote and tiny village of El Cerrito south of Las Vegas, New Mexico.
and situated on a triple oxbow of the Pecos River has endured through centuries. This black-and-white photographic survey, began in 1992, presents a portrait of village life animated by an interdependence on water from the hand-crafted community irrigation ditch, the Acequia Madre, which by gravity, flows one and a half miles through the village.
“Acequia” also refers to a self-governing association of users that honors water as a community resource rather than as a commodity. This is anchored in the Islamic Law of Thirst, which ordains that all beings have unfettered access to water; that it never be hoarded or sold. As parciantes, members of the acequia hold water rights and elect a mayordomo as caretaker to oversee its maintenance throughout the year and especially during the annual limpia, or spring cleaning.
In El Cerrito, the limpia is the one social gathering, outside the rare wedding and more common funeral, for which extended family, friends, and curious students of traditional village life return. Generations of parciantes have shared in the responsibility of maintaining this waterway that feeds their orchards, gardens, fields, and livestock.
El Cerrito’s revival is partially attributed to several friends who came upon the village in the early 1970s when its population numbered five, created a tenants-in-common living situation, bought land from an exiting family, and settled into their rural lives. Other village residents, having migrated to urban centers for employment, have returned over the years to renovate family homes for their ensuing retirement or weekend visits. Another family has been an anchoring force to ensure the water still flows, the land thrives, and village life abides.
FIRESCAPES
Upon returning after a month’s evacuation from the Hermit’s Peak + Calf Canyon Fire, Stewart found her home, studio and pasture unburned, though the damage to her village of Chacón was extensive. The spring-sourced community water system was burned over and potable water had to be trucked in for 10 months. Vegetation along the numerous acequias was burned, which, when the summer floods came, contributed to the silt and ash fill that rendered the waterways unusable for irrigating fields. With acequia use and care being deeply woven into the cultural identity of residents in the Mora Valley of Northern New Mexico, the efforts to maintain a vital tradition ensues by determining damage, filing for restoration funding, and commencing work, which continues three years hence with some acequias repeatedly being flooded and filled.
About the Artist
As founding vice-president of the Houston Center for Photography, Sharon Stewart served on its board for many years. She volunteered and exhibited during the biennial festival FotoFest’s formative years; apprenticed in corporate and fashion photo studios; and, with writer Steven Fenberg, embarked on the Toxic Tour of Texas, a survey portraying citizen – activists who effectively challenged government and industry hazardous waste practices that were damaging their communities’ air, land, water, health, and culture.
At the time, she was simultaneously energized by the photo-narrative’s activist impact and the pull to leave the commercial and urban world for a quieter rural life. Wanting to live fully in the restorative face of nature, she resettled in the village of Chacón, high in the mountains of Northern New Mexico. Her interest in the link between culture and landscape began with a childhood in agrarian South Texas on the Mexican border and from far reaching travels with her parents, both of which made her aware of the landscape’s intertwining influence on people’s lives.
Stewart has lived in Chacón for 31 years where she set out establishing a studio and gardens, building soil and relationships, while also pondering her photographic purpose. She was inspired to serve history by exploring and chronicling a local culture redolent in tradition and ritual. She photographed the Mora Valley’s land-based way of life supported by acequias that were significantly damaged by the 2022 Hermit’s Peak + Calf Canyon Fire and ensuing floods.
Stewart’s work is in the collections at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; Harwood Museum of Art, Taos; and the Art Museum Princeton University, among many other notable collections. Her recent exhibitions include El Cerrito: A Village Life Portrait, Ray Drew Gallery, NM Highlands University, Las Vegas, NM; What Creeps From the Earth, Tavros Art Space Athens, Greece; Off/Center: New Mexico Art, 1970-2000, Vladem Contemporary, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe; and Going With The Flow: Art, Actions, And Western Waters, SITE SANTA FE.
More of her work can be found on her website: www.sharonstewartphotography.net.
2024-2025 PAST EXHIBITIONS -
THAW EDUCATION AND RESEARCH CENTER
The launch of the programming started in 2024 with an exhibition celebrating the re-publication of Don Usner’s Sabino Map: Life in Chimayó's Old Plaza: Life in Chimayó's Old Plaza. HSFF displayed Usner’s photographs documenting the people and place of one of the oldest extant plazas in New Mexico. His portraits, landscapes, and still lifes prompted conversations and a series of lectures discussing life in a small town and its challenges with preservation in a contemporary context of growth and influx of new residents along with the exodus of the younger population.
2025 Grant Funding Cuts
In early 2025, HSFF planned to continue this series with funding from a New Mexico Humanities Council (NMHC) grant. We were among the many nonprofits whose grants would be pulled due to the federal cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities. While NMHC is making a slow recovery, thanks to the Mellon Foundation and Federation of State Humanities Councils, we had to turn to private donors to continue with the educational programming at the Thaw Education and Research Center. We still require more funding to cover the production and staffing of the upcoming exhibition. We are pleased to announce that we will open our next exhibition on June 27, 2025, featuring the photographs of Sharon Stewart, resident of Chácon, New Mexico in Mora County.
Donations for the exhibition can be made on the exhibition webpage: historicsantafe.org/timeless-waters. We appreciate your support for this educational programming.