Independent Voices Community Gallery: Art Rooted in Belonging

On the second floor, the first gallery on the right opens like a doorway into memory. Inside, photographs, paintings, and mementos echo the spirit of Huerfano County — the richness of its landscape, the resilience of its people, and the stories that continue to shape this place. This is the Independent Voices Community Gallery — a place where art remembers what the heart never forgets.

From the beginning, the Museum of Friends has stood apart from the hierarchies that define much of the art world. It was founded on a radical idea — that art could be given freely, shared openly in community, and could be valued not for its market worth but for its authenticity. This Community Gallery carries that vision forward, honoring artists who create from the pulse of daily life — from what is remembered, felt, and rooted in the land.

The story of the Independent Voices Community Gallery began earlier than its first exhibition. In March 2022, the Museum of Friends hosted Pleas and Petitions: Hispano Culture and Legislative Conflict in Territorial Colorado, a public program featuring noted historian and author Virginia Sánchez. Her research on Hispano legislators during Colorado’s territorial period illuminated the cultural resilience and political struggles that shaped Southern Colorado. The event sparked renewed dialogue within the community about ancestry, representation, and the importance of preserving local histories through art.

That same summer, those conversations grew into planning sessions for what would become the gallery’s inaugural exhibition. Opening in September 2022, The Early Hispano Families of Huerfano County featured family photographs and mementos shared by Sylvia Lucero Brandle and Ron Sandoval, shown alongside The Historic Churches & Chapels of Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico by Ted Shaffer. Shaffer’s quiet photographs, each steeped in reverence and light, traced the sacred architecture of the region — chapels and churches that have anchored families across generations.

Together, these two exhibitions formed a dialogue between ancestry and faith, between memory and art. Brandle and Sandoval’s pictorial collection preserved the faces and artifacts of early Hispano settlers whose stories might otherwise have been lost to time. Shaffer’s work, meanwhile, captured the endurance of place — the sanctuaries and still horizons that not only trace the migration path between New Mexico and Southern Colorado but also hold the region’s collective spirit. This pairing marked the beginning of MoF’s Independent Voices initiative: an effort to celebrate cultural heritage through the museum’s lens of inclusion, generosity, and civic dialogue.

In the years since, the Independent Voices Community Gallery has continued to evolve, reflecting MoF’s ongoing conversation with its community. Today, it houses works from the Gardner Cowboy Museum — artifacts and stories that highlight the county’s ranching and agricultural roots.

Among its most celebrated additions is the western-themed artwork of Harold Vargas — rancher, founder of the Gardner Rodeo, and local artist whose expressive paintings capture the humor, hardship, and humanity of rural life. His depictions of working horses, open country, and daily labor embody the creative resilience of Huerfano County itself. Vargas’s paintings, available for purchase, continue MoF’s commitment to accessibility and to supporting local artists whose work keeps regional stories alive.

The gallery also features pieces by local artist Ken Martinez and others whose art explores Indigenous, Western, and regional narratives through painting, photography, and mixed media. Their work expands the conversation from ancestry and faith to labor, landscape, and identity — forming an ongoing continuum of intergenerational voices that reflect the museum’s guiding belief: that art belongs to everyone, not as an elite pursuit but as a shared human expression.

To walk through this gallery is to move through a story of place. Each photograph, painting, and assemblage carries echoes of the land and the people who have tended it — artists, ranchers, storytellers, and families whose hands and hearts have shaped this region through both life and art.

Here, independence has never meant isolation. It means standing firmly in one’s truth while honoring the presence of others. The Independent Voices Community Gallery remains a living testament to the Museum of Friends’ founding philosophy — that art is a communal act of seeing, remembering, and belonging that connects us across time and story.

And perhaps, more than anything, this gallery reminds us why generosity, respect, and stewardship matter now more than ever. In a time when division has frayed so many communities — even our own — art offers a space to listen, to reflect, and to find common ground. These works are quiet bridges between neighbors and newcomers, between past and future. In honoring the voices of this region, we also honor the spirit that continues to draw people here along with the enduring belief that what we build, we build together.