Last week, I attended my first TED event, TEDx ABQ Salon Art, held at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History to a sold out audience. Speakers from a wide range of backgrounds, education and art experience pondered the question, “Why Art?” They toyed with, tackled and confronted its function, importance, purpose, and place in the world using videos, slides, and performance art.
John Grassham, the Executive Director at Creative ABQ, and Carlos Contreras, an award-winning performance poet, were the event organizers. They set the stage with original artwork created by Cloud Face, one of the original founders of Foundations of Freedom, a collective involving a number of rising stars in the street art, dance and music fields. Together they created an intellectually stimulating evening featuring the following speakers:
