2024 Official Artists

Nathan J. Chavez is creating a vivid storytelling world, one drawing at a time. An artist from Lincoln County New Mexico, Nathan was born in Albuquerque and raised in Lincoln County. He has a deep understanding and respect for New Mexican culture and heritage. Nathan specializes in vivid, colorful and artistic cartoon inspired art. His work has popped up all over the state of New Mexico, in various ways. He has created murals, logos, flyers and t-shirts that can be seen all over the state. 

Nathan is inspired by cartoons, music, street art, comic books, movies, imagination, cultures, religion and folklore. Nathan has worked with a a variety of New Mexico companies, among them Allsup’s, Bravo Mic Communications for Zia Country 99.5 KXPZ, EcoServants, and Hatch Chile Country. 

Mike Graham De La Rosa is the Cyber-Tlacuilo behind Cosmic Desert. This earthling lifeform (H. Sapiens) has lived on both sides of the US-Mexico Borderworld downriver of federal nuclear material sites on the Rio Grande. His medium employs the use of digital brushes that create visual data in the form of layered vectors. Cosmic Desert prints portray the cultural and physical landscapes of the US-Mexico Borderworld. Heavily influenced by spaghetti westerns, anime, neon 66 nights, pop-music, gamer, and latinx cultures, Cosmic Desert art remixes our cultural and physical geography to create a true portrait of human life in New Mexico/Mexico the way we actually interact in our cyber existence.

Leo Macias’ path toward the Zozobra poster prize started in art class at Piñon, where students annually draw their own version of the infamous effigy. He decided to submit his art to the contest, saying “Since I had done it last year, I wanted to enter again because why not? What’s going to stop me?” Looks to us like nothing stops this young Zozobra fan!

Despite his confidence in submitting his work, Leo was still astonished he’d won. It was unexpected, he said, and a little overwhelming because the contest itself combines two of his favorite things: Zozobra and art.

The sixth-grader has been attending the annual celebration with his family since age 4, when he watched the fiery festival from atop the shoulders of his dad, Leopoldo Macias. “I’m proud and excited because I know that something he loves to do is art,” says his mother, Estela Macias. “I’m so happy for him because that’s like the ultimate thing.”

My name is Jessica Knox. I am a political science and history major at UNM. I entered the Zozobra Art Contest because I have always enjoyed making art for fun, and I love a good competition.  

And Jessica is a double winner! Thanks to her perfect eye for the iconic attention to the millennial era, one of her images will also be used for tickets!

Aveaha Martinez is a 5th grade student at Piñon Elementary School o\in Santa Fe, NM. Aveaha’s drawing of Santa Fe’s most infamous figure, complete with flames flickering around his torso and fireworks exploding around his head, will decorate this year’s Zozobra toddler T-shirt.

Aveaha isn’t the first member of her family to win the Zozobra youth art contest. Her older brother, Marcos Martinez, won the youth T-shirt contest in 2018, and he was there to cheer on his younger sister’s achievement at the assembly. “She’s always said since her brother won the competition when he was this age, ‘I’m going to win it just like my brother.’ And she did,” said Aveaha’s dad, Nicholas Martinez.

Ticket Poster Artist Bob Boucher says I distinctly remember that all throughout the end of 1999, many people were saying that all our computers were going to die, and the entire world would crumble.

I knew better, and just wanted to celebrate entering a new century!

I am a graphic designer, illustrator, sculptor and photographer, and I have have also been involved with a couple documentary films. My avocation and passion is riding my motorcycle, Raven…a BMW R1200RS. I started out in Boston, then moved to San Francisco, then to Austin TX, and now I’m in Santa Fe. Having lived in such cool, creative cities has allowed me to come into contact with copious incredibly talented people. Writers, filmmakers, designers, painters, illustrators, musicians, and many other creatives, all make up my wonderful circle of friends.

Marcelina Yanes was born in Santa Fe and lives in Nambe. Marcelina is 8 years old and is a 2nd grader at Pablo Roybal Elementary in Pojoaque, N.M. She has had an interest in art since Pre-K, where she would create her own paper books, with illustrations. She really developed her love for art in Kindergarten and has been drawing on a daily basis. She has won two other art contests in the past year.

My mom told me about the Zozobra art contest and encouraged me to enter. So she helped me research what was popular in the 2000s and 2010s. I decided on a Funko Pop. I am excited and thankful that my artwork was picked. I’ve only seen Zozobra on TV and now I get tot see the burning this year in person!!! Thank you for picking me!

Destyni Baca is an artist born and raised in New Mexico. Some of her favorite mediums to work with are acrylic paint, pencil, and digital drawing. She enjoys crafting of all types in her free time, including costuming, jewelry-making, and 3D printing. 

Destyni began featuring Zozobra in her artwork in 2020 when she created three paintings inspired by Breaking Bad. She chose the Burning of Zozobra as the destination for her bachelorette party in 2022. She is a UNM alum, having graduated in 2019 with a BA in Media Arts. Destyni is happily married to her husband, Santiago, and together they have two dogs, Rufus and Neo, and reside in Rio Rancho where she continues to create art daily while maintaining her IT job at the library.

Joseph Montoya is extremely proud and happy to get the chance to be a part of Zozobra for the second year in a row. Joseph spent his last 15 years with the Walt Disney company, both in Walt Disney World Florida, Radio Disney, and working in the film industry here in Albuquerque. After returning locally, he is continually perusing his Digital Art career.

Born and Raised in Santa Fe and Salt Lake City, Utah, RaeLynn Martinez is a self-taught artist. She began drawing at a young age, inspired by the PBS show, “Secret City”, and painted her first mural at the age of 17. She currently calls, Roswell New Mexico home and continues to share and inspire others with her own works of art.

Jorge Reza, born, raised and educated in Northern New Mexico, has always had a love for the arts. In addition to art, Reza is a freelance make-up artist, model and entrepreneur. With his own cosmetic and clothing lines, Reza represents New Mexico’s talent. With over 7 years experience as a full time freelance makeup artist, he’s had the opportunity to be contracted with major cosmetic brands as well as working with reality television personalities.His work can be seen in over a dozen high definition magazines and music videos, and on billboards. Reza is currently working for Walt Disney Productions on an up and coming film.

Representing this year’s 2000s theme, Jorge wanted to showoff some popular items of that time such as the release of the game counsel PlayStation and flip phone. You can’t forget about the popular phrase “THAT’S HOT!” which fits perfectly for this event. 

Paris Digeorgina Rojero was born on August 14, 2004 in Ciudad Juárez, México. She studied art at the Universidad Autónoma of Ciudad Juárez and had three collective art shows starting at 7 years old. At 8, she painted the cover of the book “La pintora de sueños”. In 2020, she won the contest Creando mi ciudad of the Instituto Municipal de la Juventud of Ciudad Juárez with her painting, “We all have talents.” 

In 2021, she illustrated the book “Tita, la tortuga voladora” and in 2022, she illustrated the books: “Algodón de azúcar,” “La casa al final de la historia,,” “Din din” and “¡Quiero ser una luciérnaga!” In 2023, Paris painted two murals at Public Preschools´ Libraries: Juan Escutia in Ciudad Juárez and Niños Héroes de Chapultepec in Jiménez, Chihuahua.  

Nowadays, she is studying for her bachelors degree in Graphic Design and Animation at Tecmilenio in Ciudad Juárez, where she won the Proyecta award in 2022 for having the highest grades of that year.

My name is Osman Barragan, and I am an artist from Santa Fe, NM. Currently, I am a full-time student at Otis College of Art and Design, and will be graduating with a bachelors in fashion design. From then I’m hoping to transition into becoming a costume designer for films here in New Mexico. All thanks to the support of the Santa Fe Community Foundation! Growing up in Santa Fe has been a privilege, as I was constantly surrounded by creative individuals and artwork. Despite how busy I get sometimes, I still make time for drawing and illustrating in my free time. 

This year, I am honored to be a Ticket Artist for Zozobra 2023, and I was thrilled to submit my work for consideration. For this year’s Zozobra Decades Project theme, I wanted to explore a Y2K aesthetic that would be nostalgic. For my two entries I wanted zozobra to be in a flat art style similar to super flat pioneered by Takashi Murakami. 

Says Matt Martinez, I was born and raised in Santa Fe but lived in few other places. I started drawing in high school and used to draw cartoons for the school paper. I stopped all my art projects for years but started back up in 2014 drawing pictures for some patients and workers in a hospital my dad was in. I started becoming more serious with art and design a few years back and am currently designing stickers and shirts as a hobby. August 22, 2017 was probably the date when everything started clicking again for me and my love for creating was born. 

The art I submitted was a hand drawn, digitally edited Zozobra design I created a few years back. I really wanted to incorporate the year and 2000 decades design into my art without changing zozobra to drastically. I wanted it to feel like the Zozobra events I went to as a kid. 

Rhiannon Nicole Barela (25) is a Hispanic artist born in Santa Fe and currently based in Albuquerque. She was trained in creating traditional Spanish-Colonial Art, doing retablos in Spanish Market for 5 years. As an artist, she works with multiple different mediums and styles. She has a certification in Film Production and works with Props and Makeup. Her:

Skater-punk Zozobra graffitis his name in flames!

Bobby Sandoval was the 2022 Zozobra Poster Artists and was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He says, I’ve always loved going to the fiestas de Santa Fe events and I’ve always enjoyed going to the Zozobra event as well I.As far as back as I could remember I’ve always enjoyed going to Zozobra, and my favorite is Zozobra would probably be the year 1989; as far back as that was, I could still remember like it was yesterday. I’ve always wanted to become a cartoonist, I never went to school for it, but in a way if you look at my piece of art, you will see exactly what I mean. I’m all self-taught. 

This year’s piece that I created was after the Transformers movies hit in the year 2000s .I made Zozobra a “decepticon” because well you know Zozobra is a bad guy. I also Incorporated a lot of characters from the 2000s era such as.Lady Gaga ,Eminerm, SpongeBob SquarePants, fairly odd parents, Patrick Bateman Batman, Captain Spaulding, and The Joker from the Christopher Nolan’s Batman saga. I’m very thankful to win for this year’s ticket entry, and I just want to say thank you very much.