A woman with glasses and shoulder-length hair sitting in a mustard yellow armchair in a room with white walls. She is wearing a yellow sweatshirt with a bird graphic and black pants. There is a wooden star and framed photographs of a close-up of a hedgehog on the wall behind her, and a striped rug on the floor.

Hi, I’m Michelle Villas.

I’m a mixed media artist.
I’m also a publications designer.

Those two things bring me to where I am today.

I relocated to New Mexico in 2023 and started devoting more time to my personal artwork. As I started showing around Albuquerque, I saw the diverse range of art and the people creating it. I experienced the feeling of community that artists have created here.

Like many of you, I’ve submitted to open calls on Instagram. After browsing some regional arts journals, I wanted to see something like that here. This crazy thought just wouldn’t go away: to create something that I would want to look at and also be in.

I’ve been designing magazines for 30 years. I’ve brought many people’s visions to life in print, but I’ve never done it for myself. I pictured a clean space with room for the art to shine.

So Enchanted is my leap of faith and a bit of a love letter to the artists of New Mexico. I hope you’ll join me on this journey.

see my mixed media work
see my magazine design work