In the walls and within the collections of the Nuevo Mexicano Heritage Arts Museum (fka Museum of Spanish Colonial Art), a story about our state unfolds. Across countless works including retablos, tinwork, applique, santeros, carvings, paintings, textiles and…and…and…the John Gaw Meem-designed space holds riches told and untold, and it doesn’t stop with the works of yesteryear. The museum is all about the ongoing collection and curation of contemporary and living artists like Arthur Lopez, Vicente Telles, Marie Sena, Luis Tapia—the list goes on and on—and under the watchful eye of E Boyd Curator and Museum Director Jana Gottshalk, that dedication to living artists has been the impetus for a number of exciting shows over the last 10-ish years.
Currently, NHAM is in the midst of an ongoing partnership with the Española Teen Center, a nonprofit that operates under the auspices of the YMCA and which plays host to an astounding number of teen-focused programs. For no cost whatsoever, area youths can try out classes based in cultural and personal pursuits like photography, technology, robotics, visual arts and lowrider bicycles, the last of which became the impetus for the center’s Lowrider Bike Club, which this year enters its second annual showing with the Nuevo Mexicano Heritage Arts Museum.
Lowrider Bike Club is simply one of the Española Teen Center’s offerings, but it’s one that has had a serious impact across a range of artistic practices. These include metal work, airbrushing, fabrication, mechanical know-how and problem-solving, and behind much of it is Teen Center founder and Director Ben Sandoval.
Adam Ferguson
Ben Sandoval
“This is my baby,” Sandoval tells SFR, “and it’s kind of crazy that it’ll have been open for 18 years next month. It’s like raising a child.”
The results of raising that child, at least insofar as this moment, is the ongoing show Beyond the Bike at the Nuevo Mexicano Heritage Arts Museum. Included therein are a number of painted skateboards created by Española kids and teens (and one by Sandoval, even, emblazoned with Mortal Kombat’s Raiden) and featuring a wide array of cultural touchstones. Throughout the show, you’ll find homage to superheroes and lowrider culture; nods to hip-hop greats and video game characters; broader car culture; anime; and more. That’s in addition to a number of lowrider bikes and pedal cars that look like miniaturized versions of the cars themselves.
Perhaps it’s less obvious outside of Northern New Mexico, but lowriders are a big deal in our region. Though 2016 seems practically ancient at this point, even Santa Fe got in on the lowrider action with a series of joint exhibits at the New Mexico Museum of Art and the New Mexico History Museum. Twenty-ish minutes north, however, Española is still known as the Lowrider Capital of the World. With countless gearheads and families making car transformation a matter of everyday life, the city and its surrounding areas are packed with unquantifiable automotive riches. Even CBS news program 60 Minutes caught lowrider fever in late-2024 and presented a long-form story about the cars—a story that included a hefty dose of Sandoval and his work with Española kids.
Now, with Beyond the BIke running through the year and a skateboard painting workshop slated for November, the story continues. And just like the bigger brother cars, the impact and importance of lowrider bikes and their outwardly spiraling artistry remains a boast-worthy New Mexican way of life.
Adam Ferguson
Something We Needed to See
“Initially I was just curious what the [Lowrider Bike Club] was doing, because it seemed like an interesting concept and…it was so high-quality and the sentiment behind it—that kids were learning different skills—felt like something we needed to see,” NMHAM curator-director Gottshalk tells SFR. “It felt like something we needed to see.”
Gottshalk says she curates at least one youth-focused show a year, though sometimes more, and that even the museum’s group shows with bigger-name pros will often feature younger artists.
“To see it on a wall? When we did the opening, the impact of the community showing up for kids could only have put a lot of pride in them for their accomplishments,” she says. “It also opens up how museums are for them and what they’re making.”
Lowriders and lowrider bikes aren’t confined to New Mexico, of course, but they are something in which our communities take immense pride. To showcase those processes and results is less common elsewhere, particularly when it comes to kids and their work. Gottshalk says museum attendance has been on the rise, perhaps due in part to its relatively new admission-free model, but certainly the exhibits have some role in that as well.
“This type of exhibit represents what I think a museum should really be right now,” Gottshalk explains. “It’s reflecting the community and supporting the community and allowing the community to take a leadership role while the museum gets to be a supporting character.”
Adam Ferguson
Gentle Ben
The Teen Center’s Sandoval agrees with that notion. He grew up in Santa Cruz, New Mexico, and is open about how having little to do as a teen led him to drugs and drink. Ultimately, he joined the Army young and shipped out of the area, but when he returned more than two decades ago, he decided to embody the axiom of being who you needed when you were younger. By 2006, he was working for the YMCA in Los Alamos when the son of then-Española mayor Joseph Maestas enrolled in that program.
“He told his dad we ought to have something like that in Española,” Sandoval says. “The Teen Center was seeded through a collaboration between the Y and the youth who had an interest. It was an idea from a kid to replicate the work in Los Alamos—we took it to his dad, and the rest is history.”
The city managed to procure the three buildings in which the center still resides through a donation from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Sandoval has been with the center ever since. His vision is simple: Make it worthwhile for kids to get out and learn how to do and to make. In order for that goal to work, he says, it’s about looping those kids into the planning, but also creating a space where they’d actually want to spend time.
“A lot of teen centers are in dark basements or in cruddy areas, but let’s be real, you’ve got to make it appealing to draw them in,” he says. “Ours is…a cool spot. It’s visible. They don’t have to be in a dungeon. Let’s not forget, they’re human beings.”
In other words, Sandoval understands that each youth is their own person. The Teen Center, he says, responds to their needs rather than defining them.
Adam Ferguson
Join the Club
On a recent cool yet sunny afternoon, Sandoval sits in the workshop space at the Teen Center surrounded by lowrinder bikes in various states of completion. Strewn about tables are any number of skateboards, airbrushing paraphernalia, RC cars and 3D printed bric-a-brac. The walls are lined with workout gear and computer lab equipment. There is so much for kids to do here, but the bikes have proven particularly popular.
“The initial project was called Lowrider Bike Club through a partnership with [lowrider enthusiast] Diego Lopez and I,” Sandoval says. “He had called me up and said he had an idea to do something with lowriders, something with bikes. So we had a meeting at Socorro’s restaurant in Hernandez, shared some ideas and he said he could get funding through the DEA Community Outreach program.”
Sandoval admits the Drug Enforcement Agency isn’t exactly the first entity one imagines when thinking about arts funding for kids, but the idea that busy youths won’t have time to get into drug use makes a certain kind of sense.
“This sparked a fire in both of us,” Sandoval contiunes. “It was, ‘let’s go do this!’ and the DEA loved it. We pitched it in 2022, in 2023 we were actually working. In 2024 is when we started to get calls to show. It’s fast, I know, but we’re known to be doers out here. We don’t sit if there’s funding. In fact, some of the project was already running without us having the money yet.”
And though
Adam Ferguson
the lowrider bikes served as the centerpiece of the program, Sandoval says they rolled up multiple other facets as well, including drawing, design and various other visual elements dedicated to lowrider arts and culture. For example, he notes, they created a lowrider bike coloring book page through which participating teens could parse out design thoughts before they ever started work on a bike itself.
“We also incorporated teachings on the culture,” Sandoval continues. “We’d have guests come in and talk about their lowriders, what connected them to the culture, how long they’d been working on their car—they had these continuous explanations and we had a flow.”
The response from the kids was surprising for Sandoval. If you’ve ever been to Española when the lowriders are out in force, you might understand just how widespread the culture goes in our neighboring city. Even so, that first iteration of Lowrider Bike Club only heralded one youth who’d had experience with lowriders. Still, Sandoval says, others had attended car shows or appreciated the cars and bikes from afar, “but most of them never thought they could do anything like this.”
So he brought in experts like mechanic Abel Devargas and pinstriping master Victor Martinez. They taught the kids how to work with Bondo and how to fix mistakes; how to twist chrome and upholster seats; how to thread a chain through a fabricated body so the bike can operate—even if most lowrider bikes are more about showmanship than practicality. Even so, the core of the program isn’t even so much about the projects and products themselves. Yes, the kids are learning how to create, but they’re also learning how to become people.
“When I was 15, I lost my mom, Sandoval says. “The choices I made dealing with those struggles? I don’t want them to have to face those struggles. When it hurts, we need to find an outlet to overcome the pain. You can get involved. You can get a wrench. Thought you could never airbrush? Guess what? You just did. I want them to have an outlet.”
Shredding the Gnar
This year’s Lowrider Bike Club showing the Nuevo Mexicano Heritage Arts Museum certainly has a few bik
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es and pedalcars on display, but much of the focus for Beyond the Bike is the skateboards. Created through a workshop with instructor-artist Jessica Ortiz, the pieces not only provide insight into the long tradition of skateboards as a medium for fine arts and design, it highlights another avenue through which the Teen Center is empowering youths to experiment with nontraditional media.
Ortiz hails from Santa Fe but has lived in Española for years. She has shown at the Contemporary Spanish Market under her Bittersweet Artworks moniker, collaborated with the Alas de Agua Art Collective and, as of last year, has become a mainstay at the Teen Arts Center across its programs, including the bikes and RC cars. The skateboard project is her baby, however.
“The kids were a little intimidated at first, but I let them know they could do whatever they wanted with the skateboards,” she tells SFR. “You see skateboards at Walmart or pre-built for sale, and they’re plastic and cheap and don’t last, and I think a lot of the kids didn’t know you can build your own—you can customize everything.”
Like the lowrider cars and bikes, customization is key. And though some of her younger students at first balked at the idea of crafting their own designs for their custom boards, the experience was ultimately freeing for them, according to Ortiz.
“People think all art is drawing, and if you can’t draw an apple you’re not an artist,” she explains. “The art is the creation itself, I tell the kids, and you don’t have to know how to draw. I’m envious of abstract artists because they’re free in a way, and I tell that to the kids—that there aren’t mistakes.”
That feeling of artistry grew once their boards and bikes were installed at the Nuevo Mexicano Heritage Arts Museum, Ortiz adds.
“It felt very real for them, like, ‘I can do this,’” she says. “There was even one person who fell in love with a skateboard and wanted to purchase it, so this one boy sold his piece. I was jumping for joy.”
The benefits for the adults are many, too. Ortiz says learning about newer pop culture from her students has her feeling energized, as has working with the Teen Center and Sandoval.
“I told Ben that from here on out, I’m his,” she says. “There’s this fresh perspective the kids have. They have totally new ideas.”
Adam Ferguson
The Kids Are Alright
In materials provided to SFR from the museum, participating youths say Lowrider Bike Club and its various accompanying arts opportunities have been both eye-opening and worthwhile.
“Just because it seemed impossible for some kids to make something great doesn’t mean they don’t have talent,” says Jennifer Orozco, a featured artist in the show.
The classes and exhibit have paid off other dividends as well, including interpersonal.
“I learned to be closer with other people,” participating youth Sereneity Barela says. “It made me realize that you need to work hard to accomplish great things.”
Adam Ferguson
Given the fallout from COVID-19, which struck when many of these kids were even younger, learning new skills alongside others feels like a particularly helpful boon at this point. And it goes even further.
“Patience was a major factor,” according to participant Stacie Spilman. “It was rewarding in a fun way, a fun use of my time.”
As Ortiz puts it, “In Española, if you don’t give kids something to do, they’ll find something to do.”
Why not give them practical skills while also showing them how arts are a viable career path? Ortiz will even broaden her painting workshop scope this November with a free workshop and demo as part of a free event dubbed Community Day (3-5 pm Saturday, Nov. 1. Nuevo Mexicano Heritage Arts Museum, 750 Camino Lejo, nmheritagearts.org)
Sandoval, meanwhile, says that DEA funding will continue, and that the Teen Center is not in danger of losing that money as its streams have not been identified as a potential cut from the Trump administration. Even if it were, he says, he and the other instructors would find a way to make it work.
“If somebody has a skillset surrounding bikes and they want to volunteer, by all means come in and share,” he says. “We have a plan here, and I think, ‘what haven’t we done?’”
