In a land too vast for conformity, eccentricity becomes a way of survival—and an art form of its own.

New Mexico Eccentrics is a portrait gallery of visionaries, craftsmen, musicians, mystics, and dreamers who followed their own orbits beneath the desert sun. Journalist and author Brian D’Ambrosio gathers years of encounters with artists, builders, and seekers who live—and create—on their own terms. Some are names from history: George McJunkin, the cowboy archeologist; Ernest Thompson Seton, the storyteller who helped found the Boy Scouts; Carl Magee, the crusading editor who exposed corruption and invented the parking meter. Others are contemporary makers whose hands and hearts still define the state’s creative pulse—Ed Sandoval, Cliff Fragua, Estella Loretto, Ken Wolverton, Doug Coffin, and dozens more whose work blurs the line between art and devotion.

Through D’Ambrosio’s eyes, these eccentrics are not curiosities but exemplars of purpose—individuals who turn solitude into invention and craft into witness. Their studios, roadside shrines, and improbable lives form a map of the state’s restless imagination.

To call someone eccentric is to admit that they move by a different light. In this book, that light becomes a symbol of integrity and imagination. New Mexico Eccentrics is both a love letter to a landscape and to the individuals who make meaning within it—a reminder that every act of creation, however small, pushes the horizon a little farther.