Trend Magazine

For over 22 years, Trend magazine has explored New Mexico’s unique influence on art, design, architecture, and now cuisine. With well-written articles and engaging photography, each issue spotlights a broad spectrum of extraordinary artists, their creations, and the unique, cutting-edge products and services that enhance readers’ knowledge of the creative forces behind the trends.  You can subscribe or purchase 10 past issues here.

IN THESE CHALLENGING TIMES, publishing a magazine like Trend is more important than ever. Trend is a homegrown New Mexico publication that has been available locally and nationally, even internationally, for more than two decades. Conceived and created by our dedicated team of women, it has consistently brought our readers the art, design, and culture of our region.

At the helm is founder and publisher Cynthia Canyon, an LA transplant who has lived in New Mexico for 33 years and whose affection for the region has only grown over the decades. She brings her creative spark and deep commitment to telling the stories of the fascinating artists and artisans who make the Southwest such an intriguing place. At her side for more than 20 years is art director Janine Lehmann, a former New Yorker who studied fine art photography and worked as a graphic designer before decamping for Santa Fe. She approaches the task of creating Trend’s visual identity with grace, elegance, and a subtle minimalism, adeptly showcasing the finest of the Southwest’s unique array of talented creators.

Contributing to graphic design and managing our production with efficiency and eternal patience is Jeanne Lambert, an anchoring presence on our team, while editor Christina Procter and copy editor Cyndi Wood bring their commitment to excellence to the editorial content. Consulting editors Rena Distasio and Nancy Zimmerman have guided Trend’s editorial integrity throughout most of its lifetime and continue to write stories that matter for each issue. Providing fresh insight, Cyndy Tanner doubles as creative consultant and marketing director. Our local distributor, Ezra Leyba, makes sure we see Trend throughout Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Taos, and Abiquiu, allowing our visitors from around the world to enjoy the beauty of the Southwest and share it with friends and family back home.

We hope our efforts to bring you the best of the region’s art, design, and culture, both in print and online at trendmagazineglobal.com, will continue to move and inspire our readers. With the pandemic- induced revenue shortages and limitations on our ability to interact in person, publishing has never been more difficult. Yet we persevered in overcoming these obstacles via small business loans and with the support of our longtime readers and advertisers. Supporting the arts and keeping our readers informed is more important than ever during this era of social distancing.

We are proud, humbled, and deeply grateful to bring you this issue in print. And we plan to bring you a magazine that matters for many years to come.

I recently went through several early family photo albums, and the thing that strikes me most (other than my unfortunate series of little kid haircuts from about 1967 to 1970), is the number of snapshots my mother took of her stuff. Copper pots and pans she’d hauled over from Europe (she was a German immigrant), paintings by dad and other friends, the Navajo rugs she bought from the locals, even our Christmas trees, decorated with her distinctive flair.

The people also jump out at me—not my parents, brother, or relatives, but the others. Novelist Bill Eastlake and his artist wife, Martha, from whom we rented our house in my hometown of Cuba, New Mexico. R.C. Gorman, mugging wildly during a visit, neighbor Kirk Hughey dodging the camera. I remember how carefully my parents saved up to buy one of Hughey’s paintings and how my mother’s hard-won, polarizing choice quickly became part of family lore. When she died ten years ago, a common refrain among family members was, “I’d love to have something to remember her by—just don’t send me that Hughey.”

Unfortunately, there are no photos of Agnes Martin. Memories will have to do. Or, rather, my memories of my mother’s—I barely remember the woman with whom she shared a love of roaming the desert scrublands that surrounded both our homes. But I do remember the postcard-sized pen and ink drawing Martin gave my mother that I last saw stuffed in between the pages of a book. (Note to self: find that sketch!)

That was my early childhood, in a nutshell: surrounded by artists, surrounded by art, much of it now in my care. The pots hang in my kitchen, the rugs lie on my floor, the paintings—even that Hughey—hang on my walls. I keep them because my mother loved them because she believed we should surround ourselves with objects that speak to us. That’s how we know who we are, she said. I long ago gave in and took her beliefs to heart.

I chucked a business degree in favor of art history to become, to borrow from the music-obsessed main character in Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity, a “professional appreciator.”

As I am about to help put my first issue as editor of Trend magazine to bed, I like to think it would resonate with my mother—indeed with anyone who has had a profoundly personal response to a work of art. In this, as in all our issues, we spotlight not only artists but also their champions, because for every impulse that wields a paintbrush, manipulates a piece of clay, or snaps a shutter, there must be another impulse willing to give it sanction, to show it to the world and say, “See, here? This is how we tell the stories of who we are.”

Born and raised in Northern New Mexico, Rena Distasio’s interest in the arts began at an early age. A brief run at a business school in her late teens proved futile when she kept falling asleep during Econ 202. Eventually, she shifted her focus to art history and photography, earning a degree in both from the University of New Mexico. Since then Distasio has worked as a graphic designer, photo archivist, ghostwriter, and as an associate editor for a coffee table book publisher. She currently provides writing, editing, and researching services for clients nationwide. She lives with one husband and two dogs in Tijeras, New Mexico.

Christina Procter is a writer and documentary filmmaker as well as a student of social work at New Mexico Highlands University. She is interested in stories, projects, and partnerships that advance justice and equity in our communities. 

Janine Lehmann has twenty years’ experience in graphic design and print publications in New York and Santa Fe.

She worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council on their quarterly publication the Amicus Journal (now OnEarth magazine), the Children’s Earth Fund, and volunteered for various environmental campaigns.

In 1994, Janine, a native New Yorker, relocated to Santa Fe and was hired by John Muir Publications to design and produce books on travel, health and other special interest titles including the redesign of Rick Steves’ European travel guides (1998–2000). In 2000, she founded Janine Lehmann Design and became the art director for Trendmagazine (formerly Santa Fe Trend).

Janine’s wealth of experience in fine art photography (Hunter College, C.U.N.Y), graphic design (Fashion Institute of Technology, NY) as well as her work at interior design and architectural firms in New York informs her editorial vision and design work today.

Passionate about the issues of ecology and sustainability, Janine heartily supports fostering the goals of sustainability in her community and shares this vision through her design work at EcoSource.

Jeanne Lambert Kidd grew up in Maine. She currently resides in Asheville, NC with her family. She graduated with a BA in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic, focusing in museum exhibit design and creative writing, and holds an MFA in Design from the University of Texas at Austin.

Traveling inspires Jeanne’s creative process and human-ecological awareness. She has interned with the Smithsonian Institution’s Office of Exhibits Central; a museum in New Zealand; a museum exhibit design firm in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Through her graphic design business, Magic in the Everyday est 2011, she contracts many publications, small businesses and non-profits.

At Trend, Jeanne enjoys deepening her understanding and appreciation for publication design, leadership, and community/national trendsetting as she manages print production and advertising design and placement.

— Mara Leader —

With a BFA in painting from the School of Visual Arts, NYC, and an MFA in producing and filmmaking from the Seattle Film Institute, Mara Leader has worked on narrative, documentary, and experimental films as a producer, director, and production designer. Her feature Coppermine Ruin, in development, is the story of a recently divorced dancer who suddenly inherits her father’s island home. Her transformation takes place in “paradise” post Hurricane Irma. Originally from New York, Leader currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

— Susan Bell —

Susan Bell was raised in Albuquerque and returned to New Mexico to settle in a house she built outside Santa Fe. In previous issues, she collaborates with her husband, Peter Ogilvie, and rediscovers her love of art criticism, studied long ago at Mills College.

— Audrey Darrell —

Audrey Derell’s lifelong journey in the arts began as a child in Finland. She lived and studied performing and visual arts in the Philippines, Belgium, France, Spain, and finally New Mexico. After a 20-year career in dance arts, Audrey transitioned into photography. Twelve years ago a pollen-laden bee in the heart of a desert bloom captivated her mind and heart. Derell specializes in macro-botanical studies and dance imagery, and she enjoys meeting the fascinating artists whose portraits and oeuvre she captures for Trend magazine.

— Kathryn M. Davis —

Kathryn M Davis, art historian, writer/editor, and curator, specializes in modern and contemporary visual arts and critical theory. Based in New Mexico, she is a contributing writer for various Santa Fe–based and national magazines. Davis hosts a weekly radio show about art on KVSF 101.5 FM.

She has taught art history at the Santa Fe University of Art + Design and the University of Tennessee as well as at nonprofit arts organizations. Davis received an MA in the Art of the Americas from the University of New Mexico in 1998.

— Rena Distasio —

Rena has worked as a writer and freelance editor for numerous online and print publications for nearly 20 years. In addition to serving as a member of Team Trend in various capacities since 2011, she also works as a freelance content editor, helping new and established writers craft compelling stories, both fiction and nonfiction. When not pushing words around, she enjoys recreating in the great outdoors surrounding her Tijeras, New Mexico, home, with her husband and dog.

— Gussie Fauntleroy —

Gussie Fauntleroy began her writing career in 1986, covering the cow town of Magdalena for a newspaper in south-central New Mexico. Since then she has written about hundreds of artists for magazines both local and national, among other subjects.

Fauntleroy is also the author of three books on visual artists. She has lived in Santa Fe for about 25 years but would love to have attended one of Randall Davey’s dinner parties.

— Peter Ogilvie —

Peter Ogilvie was raised in Southern California and studied Art and Architecture at University of California at Berkeley. After graduation, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and started making documentary films. Filmmaking lead to still photography, both fine art, and commercial.

Pursuing his career in advertising, fashion, and fine art photography, he has lived in San Francisco, Milan, Paris, New York,and now New Mexico. He has traveled the world on assignments and has won numerous advertising and graphics awards for his work with clients like Saks Fifth Avenue, GAP, AT&T, Levi Strauss & Co., Sony, Macy’s, Vogue, Marie-Claire, and GQ.

— Mark Oppenheimer —

Mark Oppenheimer strives to be as fearless in life as he is in the kitchen. A self-trained cook, student of meditation, and lover of all things Miles, Coltrane, Fellini, and the Fermi Paradox, Oppenheimer is endlessly fascinated with words and always on the quest for good food and wine. A private chef, he also writes a long-running column with chef interviews. Oppenheimer grew up in Chicago and relocated from LA to Santa Fe in 2014 after a fruitful career in the film industry.

— Robert Reck —

Robert Reck is an internationally recognized architectural and interior-design photographer whose work is distinguished by a masterful use of light and a passion for design found in nature and the built environment.

He has been traveling for Capella Hotels for the past two years and is a staff photographer for Architectural Digest. He was the lead photographer for the book Santa Fe Style and the exclusive photographer for The Small Adobe House, Facing Southwest, and Stone Design for the Home.

— Rick Romancito —

Rick Romancito recently retired from The Taos News. During his 30 years at the paper he covered the arts, Native American topics, veterans, and breaking news in award-winning articles and photographs. He is also an accomplished movie actor, artist, and filmmaker. He is of Taos and Zuni Pueblo heritage.

— Kate Russell —

Kate Russell is a nationally recognized photographer based in Santa Fe. Known for her ability to create evocative images and elevate simplicity, Russell’s sensitivity to light and the moment can be seen in her photos.

Her work has appeared in numerous local and national publications, including The New York Times, Western Interiors, Santa Fean Magazine, and the books Old World Interiors by David Naylor and Designers Here and There by Michele Keith.

Kate’s work with a traveling circus and the arts brought her to the world of photography, and they continue to provide inspiration for projects both near and far.

— Cyndy Tanner —

Cyndy Tanner loves nothing more than being in bed with a stack of literary, cuisine, and design magazines and a cup of Earl Grey. She is a consummate interpreter of people and places, weaving stories of depth and truth. Entertaining at home in Tesuque as well as producing events and photo styling for her company, Parasol Productions, she aims to bring happiness, wit, and delight. Tanner works as a creative director and has recently completed two major book projects.

Publisher:  Cynthia Marie Canyon

Editor:  Rena Distasio, Christina Procter

Art Director & Graphic Designer:  Janine Lehmann

Production Manager & Associate Graphic Designer:  Jeanne Lambert

Photo Production:  Boncratious

Contributing Photographers for Lookbook Summer 2018:  Audrey Derell, Michael Jensen, Marc Malin, Douglas Merriam, Peter Ogilvie, Robert Reck, Rick Romancito

Regional Sales Director:  Mara Leader, 505-470-6442

Account Representatives: Anya Sebastian, 505-470-6442

North American Distribution:  Disticor Magazine Distribution Services, www.disticor.com

New Mexico Distribution: Ezra Leyba, 505 690-7791

Accounting and Subscriptions:  Patricia Moore

Social Media Marketing:  Loka Creative, www.locacreative.com

Subscriptions:  click here to subscribe

Printing:  Publication Printers, Denver, Colorado, United States

Manufactured in the United States. All rights reserved. No part of Trend may be reproduced in any form without prior written consent from the publisher. For reprint information, please call (505) 988-5007 or send an e-mail to [email protected].

Trend art + design + architecture + cuisine is published annually

Please ask your newsstand (anywhere worldwide) to carry Trend and like/follow us on Facebook,  Twitter  and Instagram .