Ingredients: Sage Mountainflower brings sustainable ranch couture to art exhibition at Ghost Ranch
Sage Mountainflower (Ohkay Owingeh, Taos Pueblo, Navajo) is a beadwork artist and fashion designer. She will be one of the many featured artists at the Eight Northern Art Exhibition at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico on March 20.
By Aminah Syed, Fry Bread Creative Digital Storytelling Intern
Fry Bread: How long have you been creating fashion?
Sage: I’ve been sewing for about…I know my kids are in their 30s now. When I had my kids is when I got this whole thing started, so I can create clothing for them so they can participate in the traditional ceremonies.
FB: What’s the theme of this exhibit or your art for this exhibit? What are you trying to bring? What are you trying to show to the public?
Sage: So this past year I was in a residency at Ghost Ranch in Albuquerque , New Mexico – that’s in northern New Mexico – and it was the Estudio Corazon residency. I was selected among eight of the Northern Pueblos artists to be there. There was one chosen from each Pueblo that represented the eight Northern Pueblos. And I was chosen for the Ohkay Owingeh artist. We had to be there for two weeks.
It was right after Indian Market, and it was nice to just have that moment to calm down from Market and just be out there and think about what was next. So what’s coming is this exhibit at Ghost Ranch, which will be for one year. The opening will be March 20th, 2026, and it’ll extend to the following year. It was a really cool experience, got to be out there in Ghost Ranch.
What I decided to do was upcycled raw denim line, like a ranch couture line for this exhibit that I’m working on.
FB: Tell us more about why you’re excited for this exhibit.
Sage: So being in northern New Mexico, Okewinge is just about those are ancestral lands to the, our Pueblo to Tewa country to those eight Northern Pueblos. Being a part of that exhibit is going to be exciting. I’m excited because of our lineup of artists and the people I got to meet. But just to have all those artists, just a lineup of artists, I think is what makes this exciting for me.
FB: What do you want to tell people about the work that you’re doing and what they should take from it?
Sage: It’s sustainable, it’s reused denim created in different layers of denim. And it’s really looking at the geology and the landscape at Ghost Ranch, because you see all the different layers of the geological features there. So you can see that it kind of, that’s kind of what I was looking at when I was completing this line.
It’s not a solo exhibit, it’s a collaborative exhibit. I think it’s exciting to be out there because so many, there’s a lot of people that actually go to Ghost Ranch, you know, as vacation or spend time out there.
It’s inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe’s legacy, things like that. But for us, we have our sacred sites there. It’s one of the mountains that is held sacred, which they call – I forget what the English name for it – but something that Georgia O’Keeffe always painted. But it’s exciting to be able to be a part of, to be there and kind of like taking that space back to for indigenous, for the, sorry for our, it was our space prior to that.
I’s kind of cool to be able to be a part of Ghost Ranch in that aspect and spend time there and just get to know the history of Ghost Ranch too was something that was exciting.
FB: What are your goals? What’s your next step after this exhibition?
Sage: Right now during the exhibition, I’m going to also add a fashion show to the opening night. So on March 20th, we’ll have a fashion show. The opening is at 6:30 p.m. and we’ll do the fashion show about a little bit after 7 p.m. But we’re adding that to this exhibit opening. So that’s going to be exciting. We completed a photo shoot and video shoot for this exhibit as well.
