Sculptor Erika Wanenmacher has been named the 2025 Rotary Club of Santa Fe distinguished artist award recipient, marking the first time the honor comes with a $25,000 prize—five times the traditional $5,000 award amount. The recognition caps off a remarkable period for the artist, whose seven-year installation "what Time Travel feels like, sometimes" at SITE Santa Fe concluded in February after drawing widespread community attention.

Wanenmacher will be honored on November 5 at La Fonda on the Plaza in a ceremony that doubles as a fundraiser for the New Mexico School for the Arts. The event will also recognize gallerist Linda Durham with a Lifetime Achievement Award. "Almost everybody agreed that it was Erika's time, especially since she just had this gigantic installation at SITE Santa Fe," said selection committee member Stuart Ashman, co-director of Artes de Cuba on Lena Street.

The substantial increase in the award amount reflects the committee's desire to make the recognition more meaningful. "[The financial award] used to be $5,000, and somebody said, 'You know, it really should be $10,000.' Then I said, 'If you really want this to be significant, it should be $25,000.' Now it's really a major gift," Ashman explained. Arts committee chairman Brian McPartlon called Wanenmacher in February to deliver the news while she and her longtime husband, singer-songwriter Scott Cadenasso, were preparing for a trip to Mexico.

The artist's journey to Santa Fe began in an unconventional way. Growing up on the west side of Cleveland, Wanenmacher participated in a vocational commercial art program during her junior and senior years of high school. "I was in high school on the west side of Cleveland, and it was right when they were pouring a lot of money into vocational programs," she recalls. "We had our own studio; we had our own darkroom. It was a satellite program, so all the art weirdos from the west side of Cleveland found out about this program."

After studying for about two and a half years at the Kansas City Art Institute, where she found the sculpture department "too macho for her taste," Wanenmacher planned to join the Feminist Studio Workshop at the since-closed Woman's Building in Los Angeles. The workshop was co-founded by visual artist and writer Judy Chicago, who now lives in Belen, New Mexico. However, a brief stop in Santa Fe, where her then-boyfriend's father taught at St. John's College, changed everything.

"The whole time I was in L.A.—for, like, nine months—New Mexico landscapes were in my work and in my head," Wanenmacher explains. "I did some pretty weird drawings that were very transitional, drawings that all had New Mexico landscapes in them. So I came back here and stayed." She returned to Santa Fe in 1980, during punk music's zenith, bringing with her the movement's attitude of defiance and self-reliance that she still embraces today.

The Santa Fe of 1980 was vastly different from today's city. "There were basically five punks in Santa Fe," Wanenmacher remembers. "I've been with my husband since 1980, and he was one of those other punks. We would get chased around downtown; back then you could live right by downtown and hang out downtown." She worked as a bicycle mechanic in the city center, where she crossed paths with Stuart Ashman, who was then a waiter at the Palace restaurant and would later become a prominent figure in Santa Fe's art scene.

Wanenmacher's career has been marked by an impressive do-it-yourself ethic that sets her apart in today's art world. "In this day and age, artists conceive and have somebody else make the stuff for them," Ashman notes. "But she does everything: She welds, she paints, she photographs everything, and it's all manufactured by her in her studio." This hands-on approach has been consistent throughout her five-decade career in Santa Fe, during which she has mounted an remarkable 20 exhibitions in the City Different.

Her first solo show at the Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe in 1985 launched what would become a distinguished local career. The recent SITE Santa Fe installation represented a career pinnacle, taking seven years to create and running from November 16, 2024, through February 3, 2025. The show's impact extended beyond the typical art world audience. "I've got to say, that show at SITE was pretty amazing, because a lot of people in town went to see it—just regular people. People I'd never met would stop me in the grocery store," Wanenmacher said.

The artist describes the unique way New Mexico has influenced her perception. "After I'd been here a year or so and I went back to Cleveland, I noticed everything looked different—like, it was lighter and sort of brighter—and I realized that my peripheral vision had expanded," she explains. This physical expansion of vision mirrors the creative growth that many artists experience in the Land of Enchantment, though Wanenmacher's case was notably literal.

Reflecting on receiving the Rotary award, Wanenmacher maintains her characteristic humility. "I thought he was going to tell me he was nominating me for it, which he's done before," she said of McPartlon's call. "It's a big deal—and it's kind of weird getting an award for doing something you just do, right?" Despite her surprise at the recognition, the artist acknowledges the significance of the moment, coming as it does after the successful conclusion of her major SITE Santa Fe installation.

The upcoming ceremony at La Fonda on the Plaza will celebrate not only Wanenmacher's individual achievement but also her role in Santa Fe's broader artistic community. Her story—from a Cleveland punk who stopped briefly in Santa Fe to a distinguished artist with five decades of local exhibition history—embodies the city's ability to attract and nurture creative talent. The increased award amount signals the community's growing recognition of its artists' contributions and the desire to provide meaningful support for their continued work.