In June I drew at both the morning and evening figure sessions in Santa Fe; blogged about the PRINTERS PLANET in Taos and started a ALEBRIJE print project; went to the CURRENTS NEW MEDIA exhibition in Santa Fe and installed 2D-to-3D programs on the powerful computer at Quelab.
- SONNY ROLLINS, saxophone colossus, passed on May 25, 2026 -- he was the last living jazz musician featured in the 1958 photo "A Great Day in Harlem," and played on a Rolling Stones song
- ENRIQUE FLORES, printmaker of Oaxaca, passed on June 2, 2026
- DAVID HOCKNEY, English painter, passed on June 11, 2026
DRAWINGS
Long 3 hour drawing
- Kirsten is like the Albuquerque version of Mabel Dodge Luhan for all the artists and models she brings together
PRINTMAKING
My inner circle of printmakers is joining me in an Alebrije Print Project. I asked them to make a small 8x8 inch print of an Alebrijes, like the 8 big ones in downtown Albuquerque from June 1st to July 17, 2026. Then I planed to scan them, color and turn them into 3D with AI, and use that 3D result for Augmented Reality:
Virgil's print enhanced with AI and put into
PRINTERS PLANET TAOS
I caught a ride up to Taos on June 20, 2026 for the PRINTERS PLANET print market, and BLOGGED about it:
Dana Zed, current president of the California Society of Printmakers,
was one of the residents at Remarque
Virgil Velasco made a print drying rack
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PRINT EXCHANGES
Ellie finished her print edition for the IPE 2026 -- the International Print Exchange in the UK:
- I signed up for the Southwest Print Fiesta Print Exchange 2026 on June 30, 2026
AI ART
- I signed up for a year's subscription on MESHY on June 22, 2026
- UPDATE (July 4, 2026) -- (YouTube): Tripo Just Killed Meshy - Don’t Buy AI Subscription Before Watching This
- Adam also gave me remote access to the program on July 2, 2026, so that I can generate 3D Gaussian Splats from the coffee house.
MIDJOURNEY finally gave me access to their new v 8.1 model when they made it the default model on June 11, 2026 (it has been out since April 14th). However it has a Kate Moss heroin chic feel, more "cinematic" I guess, which I don't like. So after comparing all the Midjourney models -- I am using the previous v 7 model now for AI generations:
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Download: "twowomen.GLB" (775.20 KB)
The sculptural women into 3D
I'm all FAKE these days
Art is getting really weird these days. It seems that the computer is taking over, and the progressive art creation tools lean more towards coding than say drawing (like in a Photoshop environment):
This AI Art option in the recent KREA
is more coding than Photoshop
ANTHROPIC DRAMA
- JUNE 1 --The Claude drama started when they raised their prices, charging by the token instead of an "all-you-can-AI" subscription.
- JUNE 9 -- Claude/Anthropic released FABLE 5, their most powerful AI model. However they crippled it, censoring questions about biology and other things, including more benign questions that should not be censored
- JUNE 12 -- The US government shut down FABLE 5 for foreigners, essentially for everyone
- (Still a free tier for Claude, and a $20 a month version)
- JUNE 26 -- Regulatory Capture -- now only select companies get to use the latest AI models, as approved by the government
- JULY 1 -- FABLE 5 was reinstated for the public, BUT ...
- Build your own AI computer for under $100:
- (YouTube): I Gave ChatGPT a Body
- (YouTube): VibeOS - Fully Hallucinated Operating System
EXHIBITIONS
NOE BARNETT at his opening
NOE BARNETT was also featured in the Albuquerque Museum in the exhibition -- The Woods Before Sunrise: Environment and Place in New Mexico's Black Contemporary:
NOE BARNETT was also featured at the
Albuquerque Museum
Karsten Creightney also has a lot of work
Judah Kismetti put on a "Halftones" exhibition
at the Mothership Alumni,
featuring this great piece about the Barelas barrio
Mark Archuelta showed his latest film
-- THE COST OF CREATING --
at the Guild Cinema on June 7, 2026
This Cooper's Hawk attacked me
on the UNM campus next to the printmaking department
- FLAX ART and DESIGN closed in Oakland on March 28, 2026...after closing their main San Francisco store (where I worked in the 90s) in March, 2016
- CALIFORNIA COLLEGE of ART is closing in 2027
- The SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE closed on July 15, 2022 -- but Steve Job's widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, bought it and will open the California Academy of Studio Arts, which will not be a school, but will house artists in the Black Mountain College style
- CALIFORNIA ACADEMY of STUDIO ARTS -- not yet open
- Earlier the oldest art academy in the country, the PENSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF ART, closed it's degree programs in 2025
- The Philadelphia UNIVERSITY of the ARTS closed abruptly on June 7, 2024