Bobcat Stories

While most Bosque School classrooms buzz with noise — students and teachers collaborating to make meaning across the curriculum — visual arts studios are dedicated to developing student voices without the cacophony. While the room might still hum with conversation, the focus is on the internal dialogue within each student artist, responding to questions about who they are and how to interpret the world around them through the mostly silent language of the tangible and visible.

This issue’s department spotlight highlights our four visual arts department teachers: Alaura Nellos, Sasha Custer, David Minkus, and Nick Otero. As artists themselves, each brings a range of experiences, skills, and talents, with a consistent commitment to guiding Bosque School students toward a love of the visual arts and the confidence to discover and express themselves.

Alaura Nellos has been at Bosque School for a remarkable 21 years. She has always viewed art as a means of expressing thoughts, feelings, and ideas. Given her background in a community where work centered on making things and using tools, she emphasizes tool use and skill sets as a foundation for learning the arts. One inspiration to become a teacher was her high school English teacher, who noticed her doodling sketches of the authors they were studying. She encouraged Ms. Nellos to illustrate her work, especially her poems, which made Ms. Nellos feel seen and understood, now one of the primary goals in her teaching. 

Ms. Nellos’ undergraduate studies in developmental psychology enriched her approach to art education. After earning master’s degrees in fine arts and art education at the University of New Mexico, she taught at Albuquerque Academy from 1998 to 2000 and helped launch the school’s ceramics program. From there, she continued working at independent schools and began teaching at Bosque School in 2005. In those early years, she offered yoga and meditation during the activity block and later, in immersive terms, for both students and teachers on campus. She believes that mindfulness and the arts go hand in hand.  

This concept of intersection informs how she thinks about her own art. She’ll start with a photo or drawing of something — plant, animal, human — then integrate other forms and elements into the image. If it’s a human, she might add elements of a piñon tree or a bird into her depiction. She also has a home studio where she makes functional ware, such as bowls and plates. Until Covid-19, she displayed and sold her work at The Fragrant Leaf, a local artisan tea shop. She has also shown her pieces at the Weyrick Gallery and the Kimo. She was also in a wood-fired group called Fuse in Madrid for 20 years. Some of her pieces were purchased by collectors when the giant wood kiln, which holds hundreds of pots made by up to a dozen artists, opened. Her study of Japanese porcelain inspired connections to tea ceremonies, meditation, and other Buddhist practices, and working with Acoma potters, local craft potters, and potters in Mexico created additional opportunities for intersection. Ms. Nellos noted that, as she has native ancestors, studying the pueblo potters and being in touch with the ancient qualities of their practice are very special to her.

Ms. Nellos believes that metaphor and symbolism are great ways to reach young people, so they have become the foundation of her curricular design and teaching. She teaches 8th-grade art, where students work from observation and build skills in giving and receiving feedback, with significant choice in media and subject matter. This year, she is also teaching upper school ceramics. She was the department leader for several years, and her daughter Zoe (‘12) is an alum. Ms. Nellos has seen the school from all angles — as a teacher, in a leadership role, and as a parent — and she fully believes in Bosque School’s mission and loves coming here every day to be part of a beautiful and supportive community.

Sasha Custer, department leader since 2018, holds a bachelor’s from Skidmore College and a master’s in fine arts from the University of New Mexico, with a concentration in sculpture and ceramics. She was the first graduate student in her program to study abroad in Prague — at the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design. That experience led her to oversee a series of exchanges over the next few years. She taught several classes at the University of New Mexico in 3D design and ceramics. Then she worked at Explora Museum as an exhibit developer before pursuing her teaching accreditation. She joined Bosque School as a teacher in 2010. At Bosque School, she developed a curriculum for every course, including 2D Design, 3D Design, Digital Arts, Advanced Painting and Drawing, and Independent Study Portfolio, which has since become a popular senior program that connects to the art capstone program. She and Ms. Nellos developed the upper school ceramics curriculum. About 10 years ago, they added pot-throwing wheels to the ceramics program, expanding the scope of what ceramics students could create.

Like Ms. Nellos, Ms. Custer wants her students to know themselves and develop self-expression skills. She believes the most important skill is observation of the world, themselves, and each other. She inspires her students to notice the beauty around them and lean into imperfections, which underlies the Japanese concept of “wabi sabi” — beauty in the imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. She teaches them to develop a positive, focused internal dialogue by how they talk to themselves about the good, then communicate that way with others. For each project, she and her students provide one another with constructive, specific, and helpful feedback. Because of this focus on developing student voices, she’s more interested in process over product, and helping each student build on their existing skills to create a visual language, a way to express themselves, and visualize the world.

Ms. Custer is also the parent of an alum, her daughter Ruby (‘25). She loves how Bosque School teachers get to know the students so well. Those close relationships and the flexibility to develop curriculum around student interests are the basis of her teaching philosophy. She also feels lucky to work at a place that’s so close to nature. The bosque provides so much inspiration. Ms. Custer also has a home studio where she works in a variety of media, including drawing and painting, but especially sculpture. She makes functional pottery and sculptural animals, and she draws in an abstract style, playing on the intersection of accident and intention in her materials. She thinks a lot about the interconnections of life when she’s making art, discovering how each of our energies affects others and shapes our encounters. From accident and connection comes something new.
 

Sixth-grade art teacher David Minkus has always enjoyed making art and minored in studio art at Barat College, a small liberal arts college outside Chicago that is now affiliated with DePauw.  He then worked in IT and customer service. When he had the opportunity to move to New Mexico, Mr. Minkus enrolled in the University of New Mexico's master’s program in art education. He taught at APS elementary schools for 10 years. Mr. Minkus’s kids are also Bosque School alums — Jonah Minkus (‘21) and Ben Minkus (‘24). 

Mr. Minkus adapted his elementary curriculum — enhancing and elevating it — for his first year of teaching 6th grade. One of the things he'd always wanted to do was a stop-motion animation unit, and now it’s a highlight of the 6th-grade art curriculum. His goals are to foster a love of art and expose students to a range of media and styles, always hoping something clicks for each of them, whether or not they see themselves as artists. He introduces technical skills such as value, three-dimensional drawing, and perspective. Through this simple but important foundation work, he encourages students to explore their own voices and put themselves into their art, clearly a goal shared by the entire department.

On his own, Mr. Minkus creates digital drawings and collages, producing surreal images using iPad tools and Photoshop. He also designs stickers and experiments with printmaking and some painting. He offers a popular printmaking course during Bosque Summer for 3rd and 4th-graders. This is also his fifth year teaching the yearbook class, which includes an introduction to photography and graphic design, as well as extensive planning to cover Bosque School's important events, traditions, clubs, activities, and sports, and to capture the year's scope and excitement. 

Like his colleagues, Nick Otero, middle and upper school art teacher, began his artistic journey at a young age. In high school, he began sharing his work at shows and, as a senior, taught a gifted art class to other students. He began his tradition of painting with natural pigments and carving sculptures, which he first exhibited in a Santa Fe gallery at age 18. He attended Western New Mexico University and the University of New Mexico, earning a bachelor’s degree in education with an emphasis in fine arts. He has been practicing his art for over 28 years and is often commissioned to create works for clients from diverse backgrounds. 

He joined Bosque School in 2023 and has collaborated on various initiatives and projects. He appreciates how the department works cohesively to continue growing and refining the visual arts program at Bosque School. He has been fortunate to design a curriculum based on historic methods of art-making. The use of natural pigments and other traditional materials brings about a curriculum that you won't find anywhere else. His vision for a successful program is to sustain a growth mindset. Students who become familiar with a range of visual art topics broaden their knowledge, which serves them well in the future. Unique problem-solving and discovering big ideas through self-expression are his priorities. 

Mr. Otero continues to make art and is represented by Blue Rain Gallery in Santa Fe, and has work in various museum collections. He was recently contacted by the Smithsonian American Latino Museum, which requested that his work be included in their collection. Mr. Otero loves sharing his artistic experiences with his students. His hope for them is that they find their passion and remain creative. 

Students from all visual arts classes contributed work to the recent HeART show, which opened with a festive event on Wednesday, February 4. The first HeArt show, in 2015, was both an exhibition and a fundraiser for the newly established Distinguished Artists Guild (also known as DAG, or the Art Honor Society). Founding members included Isabella Blewett-Raby, Diego Herrera, and Shelby Rashap from the class of 2016, all of whom enrolled in art school after graduation. This year, the event raised $600 for the community art studio ArtStreet. In the past, proceeds have also been donated to programs based out of Bosque School, such as Horizons and the Bosque Artists Therapy Society (BATS), which use them to bring art into public schools that lack art classes. This year’s show was a beautiful continuation of this tradition; students saw how their work could raise money for a meaningful cause, which motivated them to create their artwork, particularly the large array of inventive Valentine’s Day cards, ranging from sweet to comic. Sixth graders made Valentine-themed shadow boxes, with the freedom to choose their own medium and message to use the 3D space.

This year, students also competed in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards program and won awards in a variety of categories, including Cheyenne (‘26) Gold Key, Photography and Silver Key, Painting; Addi (‘26) Gold Key, Digital Painting; Lauren (‘26) Gold Key, Mixed Media; Milo (‘27) Gold Key, Painting; and Emmy (‘26) Silver Key, Illustration. Their work was on display throughout February at the Orpheum Event Space in downtown Albuquerque. Five students earned Honorable Mentions, including Amelia (‘26) and Kiki (‘28) in Painting and Abby (‘28), Rainey (‘27), and Gabby (‘28) in Sculpture. Their work will be displayed digitally.

We could not be prouder of our Bosque School artists and their dedicated teachers. Their heartfelt work has the power to touch, connect, and inspire. Sit in silence with a painting, drawing, sculpture, or even a Valentine’s Day card created by one of our students.  It will teach you something.