Tucson Book Festival in March
Join us on Saturday and Sunday, March 14 and 15, 2026, on the University of Arizona Mall! Attend book-related events indoors and outside on both days. Visit with Ann Hedlund at the University of Arizona Press booth on Sat. at 12:00-12:50 pm; stop by to chat, get a book signed, and peruse other authors' great books! Mac is featured in two special panels discussed below. For more information, visit Tucson Festival of Books | Home.
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"Art and the Southwest"
Saturday, March 14, 4:00-4:55 pm, UA Library Special Collections (seats 110). Artists offer a special bridge to understanding the Southwest. Artist Molly Hashimoto and biographer Ann Hedlund, author of Mac Schweitzer, discuss why works of art and books about art and artists are critical to our understandings of this special place. Moderated by Christine Brindza.
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"Seeing the Southwest"
Sunday, March 15, 2:30-3:25 pm, UA Library Special Collections (seats 110). The authors of four Southwest Books of the Year--Craig Childs (The Wild Dark), E.A. Hanks (The 10: A Memoir), Dora Rodriguez (Dora: A Daughter of Unforgiving Terrain), and Ann Hedlund will discuss the role that landscape and culture played in the development of their work. Moderated by Greg McNamee.
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Cowgirl Up! (Art from the Other Half of the West)
On March 28, 2026, if you are attending the Cowgirl Up! festivities at the Sigler Western Museum in Wickenburg, AZ, you can hear Ann Hedlund's illustrated talk at 11:00 am on Saturday morning. How did Mac relate to other men and women artists of the 1950s? Without her early death in 1962 and the disappearance of the artist's legacy, what impact might her work have made on later women artists? Looking backwards, what contemporary trends would have impressed Mac if she could look ahead? View more here.
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April Talk Slated for AAHS
Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society (AAHS) will host an illustrated talk by Ann Hedlund on April 20 or 21, 2026. Check back to see whether this will be Zoom only, or Zoom plus in-person at a Tucson location TBA. All AAHS monthly lectures begin at 7 pm. The Society's objectives are "to encourage scholarly pursuits into the history and anthropology of the Southwest United States and northwest Mexico" and related activities. We are grateful that the AAHS Subvention Grant Program provided funds that contributed to the publication of Mac Schweitzer: A Southwest Maverick and Her Art.
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Desert Exposure Features Mac in February issue
Thanks to writer Marcia Tinker for a two-page spread in southern New Mexico's monthly source for local events and features. Calling Mac's biography "gorgeously illustrated," the reviewer quotes Sharman Apt Russell, an award-winning author, as saying "Mac Schweitzer's artwork is powerfully energetic and infused with the singular beauty of the Southwest . . . The horses alone will knock you out." She goes on to note that the story of Mac's rediscovery is relevant to this day, "a story that can inspire us still."
| | "Mac" was in Silver City, NM, through February | | Light Art Space Gallery Hosted Month-Long Exhibit Downtown | | An exclusive Silver City, New Mexico, showing of a special selection of Mac's serigraphs, lithographs, and drawings was on display in the Flash Gallery of Light Art Space from Thursday, February 26th through 2 pm on Sunday, March 1st. | | Photos by Larry Ollivier Star in Flash Gallery | | | | Mac didn't take many photographs of her beloved desert and canyon landscapes. Instead, she observed carefully and worked from memory, never painting from photos. To provide context, we selected a series of landscapes by Larry Ollivier to augment the illustrations in Mac's book. During February, a group of his remarkable black-and-white prints was displayed alongside Mac's artworks at Light Art Space's Flash Gallery. The gallery also included a rotating slideshow featuring more of both artists' works. | | |
Two Silver City Friends Join Forces
The Silver City debut of Marty Eberhardt's third Bea Rivers botanical garden mystery, Crime on the Coast, will take place at Avalon Books and Music on March 21, at 1:00 pm. Ann Hedlund will join Marty to read from her 2025 biography of Mac Schweitzer. Ann and Marty have known each other since the early 1970s at Prescott College. These days when not writing, they share the love of native plants and Southwest art and are periodic hiking partners.
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Thoughts on Mac's Imagery...
Beyond Mac's biography, as I prepare illustrated talks, I've been looking even more closely at some of her artworks. One feature that stands out is her fascination with storms and cloudy skies. Many works including the three shown here--a watercolor called Hopi Herder, a silkscreen titled Catalina Torrent, and an oil of Second Mesa--Hopi--feature dramatic cloud formations. In each, bright rays of sunlight also poke through the storms. Mac titled an unpublished children's book manuscript, Storm Baby, and told the story of a colt rescued from a raging rainstorm to become the beloved companion of a young boy; they grow up together and appear to "live happily ever after" (although Mac's archives preserve only remnants of the story). What, if anything, can one infer about the artist's intent from these scenes? How might such design elements reflect her mindset and outlook?
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