Friends of the Orphan Signs in Collaboration with Axle Contemporary
Project Interchange
June 16, 2023, 9-11pm
Harwood Art Center in Albuquerque and CURRENTS Festival at the Santa Fe County Fairgrounds

​Project Interchange is an event that brings together poets from Albuquerque and Santa Fe in a performative, creative dialogue about connection and community and will occur simultaneously in both cities. This project is organized by Friends of the Orphan Signs in collaboration with Axle Contemporary.

​Poets in each city will text each other via a live group message which will be projected onto large-scale outdoor walls. The conversations will expand from guiding questions about our relationship to one another. Albuquerque poets include Sara Rivera, Valerie Martinez, Beca Alderete Baca, and Amaris Ketcham. Santa Fe poets include Edie Tsong, Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, and Loretta Trujillo.

​Though only separated by 56 miles, Santa Fe and Albuquerque are divided by socio-economic and cultural factors which inform our experiences of each place. Project Interchange seeks to explore this gap and to offer expansive dialog about those factors that separate us and those that connects us. This project offers a space that seeks to expand how we understand and connect to each other and ourselves.

Friends of the Orphan Signs (FOS) is a collaborative public art organization of artist-educators that creatively revitalizes abandoned or unused road signs with artwork, with a particular focus along historic Route 66 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. FOS facilitates innovative collaborations and educational workshops with local communities with the aim of designing new imagery to install in the signs as public art pieces. We work to revitalize the visual landscape of underserved urban neighborhoods while centering the voices of its residents. Our signs are public, accessible on foot and in car, and are on major thoroughfares throughout Albuquerque.