Donate

Margarita Paz-Pedro

Born in Albuquerque, raised in Las Cruces and with family in Laguna Pueblo, Margarita has ties across New Mexico. Her multi-ethnic background (Mexican-American, Laguna Pueblo & Santa Clara Pueblo) is core to her artmaking. She is a ceramic artist, teacher, organizer and muralist. She received her BFA with an emphasis in Ceramics in 2003 from the University of Colorado-Boulder. Then an MA in Art Education in 2008 at the University of New Mexico. In 2006, while at UNM, she was able to do an apprenticeship abroad in Paris, France with an internationally known ceramicist, Madame Fance Franck for five months. In 2020, she was an Artist in Residence at Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe for a month, just before the pandemic.

Since 2009, she’s worked as a lead artist with the ALMA Summer Institute of ALMA, creating large-scale public art mosaic murals across New Mexico. In 2015, she helped start a non-profit called ALMA (Apprenticeships for Leaders in the Mosaic Arts) and is the Operations Director/ALMA Artist. In 2020, ALMA was awarded the Creative Bravos Legacy award in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has also been a full time Art teacher at a Charter High School, in Albuquerque, New Mexico since 2009. Both of those bridge her passion for working with community and youth through art.

She is the fiancée to a fellow artist and together they have a beautifully rowdy eight-year-old.