Artist Leighton Fossum & Southwest Regional Museum of Art

Victoria Chick, the artist spearheading the Southwest Regional Museum of Art & Art Center in Silver City, New Mexico, joins Lisa D. Smith on Big Blend Radio’s "World of Art" Podcast. They start with October’s pop-up museum weekends, where temporary walls and museum-quality exhibitions showed Silver City what’s coming. Victoria also explains why a first-rate art museum matters for the whole southwest corner of New Mexico, a region about 270 miles wide with no museum close by.

Then the conversation turns to Leighton Fossum (1922–2011), a graphic designer and illustrator born in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, a destination on the historic Jefferson Highway. He retired to Tucson and later New Mexico and became a fine artist. Several of his paintings are now in the museum’s permanent collection. Victoria shares what she found going through his belongings: patents for his inventions, his Air Force discharge papers, and an easel covered in faces. She also talks about his tiny pen-and-ink detail, his fast-drying casein paints, a cow at a gas pump, a tumbleweed flying through the air, and why she thinks he pushed his compositions to the edge on purpose.

Read Victoria’s article on Leighton Fossum, play the online puzzle of his painting Going Home, and learn more about the museum using the links below.

LINKS: - Read the article: https://www.southwest-art-museum.org/articles/leighton-fossum  - Episode highlights and "Going Home" painting jigsaw puzzle: https://www.bigblendmediahouse.com/p/artist-leighton-fossum-southwest-regional-museum-of-art  - Southwest Regional Museum of Art & Art Center: https://www.southwest-art-museum.org  - Victoria Chick: https://victoriachick.com  - World of Art Podcast on Big Blend Radio: https://www.bigblendmediahouse.com/the-world-of-art