VOL. 23 BREAD

Meet Our Presenters

Matt Burns  |  A Spontaneous Culture

In A Spontaneous Culture, Baker Matt Burns dives into the art of sourdough, where the practice of care and commitment to the health of a culture mirrors our collective experience.

Bio

Matt Burns is the owner and baker of Tomorrow and Tomorrow in Taos, New Mexico. A chef, creative entrepreneur, traditional sourdough baker and filmmaker, Matt is a multi-disciplinary artist originally from South Dakota where he grew up in a small DIY punk scene on the Great Plains. He was the founder of The Brooklyn Salsa Company, a shelf-stable food brand in New York City that grew to international distribution, and across the USA with retailers like Whole Foods. He created Family Meal in the Catskill Mountains of NY, where he built an earth oven on a rural hillside and brought community together through the experience of wood-fired sourdough bread baking, open hearth cooking and communal tables.

As a filmmaker he has directed national advertising campaigns, working with brands like Chime, Nike, Unity Technologies and more and is currently in production on his first feature. He stars in the upcoming movie Lovers, directed by Taylor McFadden and produced by Nathaniel Ratliff. Matt trained as an actor and director at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama and National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, Australia, living for many years between New York and Los Angeles before finding his home in New Mexico.

A father of two young daughters, Matt is aligning his passions for the collective creative process with the experience of traditional sourdough baking, community, and café culture with Tomorrow and Tomorrow, a naturally leavened, sourdough bakery at the entrance of Taos’ historic plaza district. There is no menu, only daily offerings, a passionate curation of minimalist food and drink, natural practices and organic ingredients. A destination for community and a welcoming table for visitors, “TNT” offers an experience of Spontaneous Culture, where bread, baked in a French brick oven, is a catalyst for each new day.

Summary

The practice of working with sourdough is a care and commitment to the health and well-being of a culture. The baker, the artist, the self, attempts to participate with a sense of purpose, returning always to questions of meaning, individualization within a collective whole. By offering our experience, our unique perspectives, histories and talents to our community we engage the creative spontaneity of culture, and like bread, a rising as mysterious and intangible as it is proof. In A Spontaneous Culture, Creative Entreprenuer Matt Burns shares his passion to nurturing connective culture through his love of sourdough and his Tomorrow and Tomorrow café.

Black and white headshot of Ward Hendon.

Ward Hendon  |  Does Capitalism Have a Future?

In Does Capitalism Have a Future?, Venture Capitalist Ward Hendon examines the evolution of capitalism from a profit-driven system to a more holistic, sustainable, and impactful model.

Bio

Ward Hendon is Co-Founder and General Partner at Dangerous Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm with offices in Santa Fe, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Dangerous backs founders building a more resilient future for people and the planet. Prior to Dangerous Ventures, Ward was a member of the founding team of Axiom Law. Axiom is the world’s largest and fastest growing provider of tech-enabled legal services. Ward is a board member of New Mexico’s Climate Investment Center, the first Green Bank in New Mexico. After starting a teaching career at San Quentin’s Mt. Tamalpais College, he now teaches classes on Entrepreneurship and Impact Investing at UCLA Anderson Business School. Ward graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC-Chapel Hill Law School. He then clerked for the Hon. Wm. L. Osteen, Sr. (United States District Court for MDNC) before practicing law for two years at King & Spalding LLP in Atlanta. He lives in Santa Fe, NM with his wife, 3 children, 3 dogs, 3 cats, and (at last count) 6 chickens.

Summary

In his presentation Does Capitalism Have a Future?, Ward Hendon explores the potential evolution of capitalism from heartless profit maximization machine to something more holistic, sustainable and impactful. Ward takes us on a journey that begins with a French baker, introduces us to an ex-con master chef and a Scottish maker of bio-char. Ward’s life work demonstrates a more sustainable mode of bread-making through impact investing and stakeholder capitalism.

Rachel Lee  |  Stories Give Life

In Stories Give Life, Creative Entrepreneur Rachel Lee showcases Artisans of Nations, a storytelling platform inspired by her rich cultural heritage, empowering Indigenous artists and building connections through diverse narratives.

Bio

Rachel Lee was born and raised on O’ahu, Hawai’i. She is a growing entrepreneur and strategic marketing professional with a robust background in website management. With a keen eye for detail and a passion for creativity, in 2020, Rachel developed a custom platform tailored for independent artists, providing them with the resources to showcase and sell their work effectively. Currently, Rachel is building her third venture, Artisans of Nations aimed at transforming the customer experience for acquiring contemporary art made by Native artists from around the world.

Summary

Entrepreneur Rachel Lee shares her creative venture with her third start-up Artisans of Nations—a multimedia, storytelling platform of Indigenous artists. In Stories Give Life, Rachel shares the richness of her family’s mixed roots — Chinese, Korean, German, and Native Hawaiian and how it compels her to build this social enterprise.

Stories are at the heart of Indigenous artists. As they reframe traditional craft into modern context, Artisans of Nations amplifies Indigenous contemporary stories with their authentic work to challenge romanticism and stereotypes, and to increase awareness of current Indigenous social issues. 

How might we be nourished by their stories and cultivate a more harmonious world?

Kathleen McCloud  |  Raised to Wonder

In Raised to Wonder, Artist Kathleen McCloud reflects on her journey toward wholeness through a life of creativity and wonder.

Bio

Born in White Plains, NY, Kathleen McCloud spent her childhood in downriver Detroit. She attended the University of Colorado-Boulder, learned to ski, weave, and make bread. In 1983 she moved to New Mexico and restored Southwestern textiles, skills evident in her current mixed-media art projects, which includes painting, printmaking, installation, and performance.

In 2022, she installed textile art at the Willard Cantina and demonstrated her novice tortilla making skills with guidance by an experienced tortilla maker raised in Willard, NM. The ClearSky.org project—How to Roll a Mean Tortilla—is an example of Kathleen’s interactive approach to art making. Art and storytelling are interwoven throughout her 30-year career as an exhibiting artist with 12 solo exhibitions since 2001.

She has worked as a freelance arts-culture writer for local and national publications and has produced audio tours for museum exhibitions, with projects including the Library of Congress American and World Treasures Exhibitions 1998-2001. Her artwork is included in private and public collections: New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe Community College, Hyatt Collection, NM Central Community College NMAIPP and the Herradura Collection. She is represented locally at GF Contemporary.

Summary

In Raised to Wonder, Artist Kathleen McCloud tracks her path as an artist to the sense making required as a child growing up in industrial suburbs during the 1960s when pollution was the price of progress. The disconnect between the world outside and the one at home, depicted in the pastoral scenes her mother painted in each house they lived in, required a bridge. She considers how her hands, as modeled by her artist mother, tapped into her heart’s-desire for a world as magical as the smell of the Wonder Bread factory.

Mark Oppenheimer  |  Bread Is Raw Toast

In Bread is Raw Toast, Private Chef Mark Oppenheimer shares how baking his first loaf of bread challenged his identity as a cook and transformed his perspective on his own identity.

Bio

After retiring from the film industry a decade ago, Mark Oppenheimer made a bold move to Santa Fe, embarking on a dynamic second act as a private chef and food writer; interviewing some of Santa Fe’s most notable chefs. With a deep passion for the umami flavor, open-flame cooking, and sharing meals with friends, Mark has crafted a life that blends creativity, connection, and bold flavors.

Summary

Mark Oppenheimer has spent his entire life cooking, but despite his deep curiosity about food, he had never attempted to bake a loaf of bread, make a pie crust, or pasta dough—until now. While preparing for his presentation Bread is Raw Toast, he decided to bake his first loaf of bread, an experience that unexpectedly challenged his identity as a cook and deeply impacted how he views cooking and himself. Ironically, even though he didn’t enjoy the process of baking that first loaf, he now feels compelled to continue and see what unfolds. As Mark navigates a personal upheaval, he’s left wondering: can cooking and baking truly coexist, or are they at odds within him? Baking bread requires time and patience—qualities that will guide him as he explores what this new journey reveals about cooking, bread and himself.

Janaki Ranpura  |  Broken By Bread

Writer Janaki Ranpura makes a compelling argument for why we should crown corn as queen and take a stand against wheat in her presentation Broken By Bread.

Bio

Janaki Ranpura, American playwright and artist, uses her research and projects to ask: how does being embodied affect our decisions, and how can we keep what’s invisible relevant to us? Ranpura rewrites Western narratives as a method of interrogating commonly accepted cultural assumptions, using strategies such as object plays, temporary monuments, and unusual applications of common internet technologies.

Summary

There is an epic battle here in this land: Wheat vs Corn.

Learn why we must stand against wheat, criticize bread, and crown corn queen of all that is good in culture and thinking. A corn-fed Ohioan transplanted to New Mexico Janaki Ranpura will guide you through the intricacies of the argument in her presentation Broken By Bread.

Christine Sperber  |  How We Rise

In How We Rise, Experiential Educator Christine Sperber observes human transformation through the communal bread making ritual at Modern Elder Academy.

Bio

After an almost 20 year career in action sports that included roles as the general manager of a glacier-based summer snowboard camp and a stint as a professional snowboarder, Christine Sperber co-founded multiple hospitality projects in Baja California Sur, Mexico. Recognized as a powerful igniting force for new ideas, a keen knack for developing talent, and riding roughshod over challenges, she has the perfect combination to successfully launch businesses. Turns out that operating a camp on a glacier and a luxury beachfront hotel in a rural agricultural and fishing village had strange parallels rooted in tenacity, big dreams, and an occasional lack of common sense. There is a vast difference between wellness and amusement. Christine recognized that with intention, moments in time can be crafted to be memorable, valuable, and transformative. As the Cheif Experience Officer of Modern Elder Academy, the world’s first midlife wisdom school, designing the emotional arc of the workshops and utilizing the power of ritual has held her attention for the last 7 years.

Summary

Former professional snowboarder turned experiential educator Christine Sperber shares why the bread making has become one of the most beloved rituals at Modern Elder Academy — the world’s first midlife wisdom school, which Christine co-founded with Chip Conley and Jeff Hamaoui. In her presentation How We Rise, Christine shares the transformative experience she has witnessed, the personal and community transformations that have transpired when people and communities are willing to open up and play.