We’re thrilled to announce the three makers joining Make Santa Fe this summer as our 2026 Maker in Residence cohort.
This cycle brings together two very different projects, but both share something that defines the spirit of this program: they sit at the edges of what’s been done before, and they couldn’t happen anywhere but here.
Máyọ̀wá Tómọrí & Monica Silva Lovato: Where Ancestral Craft Meets Emerging Technology
This summer, artist and cultural technologist Máyọ̀wá Tómọrí is collaborating with Indigenous creative technologist Monica Silva Lovato on a cultural reproduction project that brings together 3D scanning, ceramics 3D printing, and other emerging technologies alongside traditional fine craft.
It’s a collaboration that makes a lot of sense once you know these two.
Máyọ̀wá (he/they) is a Nigerian-American artist whose career has been built around using technology to challenge the institutions that control cultural narratives. Their work — including Loot Co, which used illicit 3D scanning and mixed reality to virtually repatriate looted African art, and Queer Icons XR, the world’s first AR filter designed for Queer and Trans People of Color — is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Design Museum and Indiana State Museum. They co-founded AMPL Labs, a creative technology studio that produces mixed-reality games and digital preservation tools in partnership with Indigenous communities. They teach Creative Entrepreneurship at Santa Fe Community College and, as of this summer, they’re building in our studios.
Monica Silva Lovato is a visual artist from the Pueblos of San Felipe and Santo Domingo — a fourth-generation traditional potter and third-generation silversmith. Her practice is centered on Trace: the idea that identity, culture, and history leave tangible deposits across generations, and that those deposits are worth preserving, honoring, and making accessible. Her research on the intersection of Indigenous pottery and 3D clay printing has been published in the Proceedings of the ACM on Human Factors in Computing Systems, and she’s been recognized with dual first-place ribbons at the SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market and back-to-back Innovator Awards at the Cherokee Art Market. She’s currently collaborating with the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture on Transformative Reproductions — 3D-printed educational objects that let Native and rural youth physically engage with ancestral artworks that would otherwise be too fragile to touch.
Together, they’re going to be doing something ambitious with our ceramics studio and digital fabrication tools. We’ll be documenting the process every step of the way.
Jonathan Meade: One Grand Vision
Jonathan Meade is building something that’s going to be hard to miss.
One Grand Vision is a collapsible mobile art car, part sculpture, part garden, part gallery, part creative studio, designed to be towed by electric bicycle through Santa Fe. Solar-powered, speaker-equipped, and embellished with symbols of an ancient future, the cart carries original works of art and a pop-out booth for photography, podcasting, and music. Wherever it stops, strangers are invited in to make something and broadcast their voice.
Jonathan is a Santa Fe–based multidisciplinary artist working across photography, ceramics, painting, sound, and public intervention. His practice is about connection, creating portraiture, ecological collaborations, and ceremonial gatherings that build myth and belonging. He was born at the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and raised between Santa Fe and Bellport, New York, and that tension between desert and ocean shore runs through everything he makes.
During his residency, Jonathan will be using Make Santa Fe’s fabrication studios to bring One Grand Vision to life — building the structure, figuring out what works, and inevitably redesigning a few things that don’t. That process is exactly what this program is for.
Follow Along
Both projects run May through July. Our residents are expected to document their process publicly, share monthly talks with the community, and present their work at the end of the residency.
We’ll be posting updates here on the blog and across our social channels as the work develops. The finished pieces matter — but honestly, we’re most excited about the middle part.
If you’re at Make Santa Fe this summer, you’ll probably run into them. Say hello.
Interested in supporting the Maker in Residence program? Each residency costs approximately $2,500 to support. Donate here or contact us about sponsorship opportunities.
Applications for the next cycle (August–October) open July 15. Learn more and apply.