Inaugural Exhibition
exhibition catalog
December 9, 2006 - January 27, 2007
516 ARTS 516 Central Avenue SW Downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico
Green The dawn was apple-green, The sky was green wine held up in the sun, The moon was a golden petal between. She opened her eyes, and green They shone, clear like flowers undone, For the first time, now for the first time seen. — D.H. Lawrence
CONTENTS Introduction
4
Suzanne Sbarge & Andrew John Cecil
Essay
6
Sharyn R. Udall
Artists
14
23 New Mexico artists
Tribute to Luís Jiménez
24
Ellen Landis
Exhibition List
39
Credits
42
GREEN INTRODUCTION
Suzanne Sbarge & Andrew John Cecil
W
elcome to 516 ARTS!
We are pleased to present GREEN, the inaugural exhibition of 516 ARTS, an independent, nonprofit, museum-style gallery. The exhibition celebrates the regeneration of the arts at this unique site in the heart of Downtown Albuquerque, the urban center of New Mexico. We have selected diverse group of artists who make New Mexico their home, working in a variety of visual media from painting, sculpture and fine craft to photography and digital arts. The 23 featured artists come from Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos, Acoma Pueblo, Hondo, Cochiti Pueblo and Apache Creek. GREEN pulls from the past and looks to the future, giving an expansive view of the state of art in New Mexico today. Each of the artists in this exhibition express a powerful thread of the rich artistic life of New Mexico, reflecting our unique time and place in world culture. We dedicate this exhibition to Luís Jiménez, who recently died while working
on a
monumental sculpture at his Hondo valley studio. Luís once said, “An artist’s job is to constantly test the boundaries.” He challenged us with his vision and commentary through the mastery of his creative life, and he will be remembered as one of the great voices of American art. As we launch this new chapter of arts activity in the newly renovated 516 ARTS building, we extend our gratitude to all the artists participating in GREEN and look forward to presenting work by many more of the accomplished fine artists of the Southwest and beyond for years to come. Very special thanks to the McCune Charitable Foundation, John Lewinger, Chair of our Board of Directors, and all the generous supporters from the New Mexico business community who have joined together to help establish 516 ARTS and make Downtown Albuquerque a true destination for arts and culture. Exhibition Curators
5
GREEN ESSAY
Sharyn R. Udall, Ph.D.
GREEN: A Vision and a State of Mind
L
aunching a new artspace with an exhibition called GREEN is an imaginative and
altogether appropriate idea. The word itself is rich in possibilities, deeply entwined with the natural and cultural history of humanity. Since neolithic times, when agriculture began, visual images have been made representing the sacral unity between humans and nature. A popular subject was Dionysos, whose multiple identities encompassed those of vegetation god, teacher of agriculture and the
As it flows through this
arts, inspirer of divine madness, and keeper of life’s creative mysteries. Those attributes
exhibition, the energy
and his consequent frequency in classical art, make him one of the prototypes for some
of green, accompanied
later supernaturals, the Green Man (and occasionally the Green Woman), whose avatars
by pathos or humor or
have survived for several thousand years in the art and nature-lore of many Western cultures.1 Often represented as a carved foliate head, images of Dionysos/Green Man
meditative silence, can
were incorporated very early into Roman-Christian tombs as images of immortality. Even as
assume a life-or-death
many other “pagan” images were suppressed in Early Christian art, the Green Man/Woman
urgency tied to our very
endured into the Roman and Christian eras, grafted onto the symbolism of the vine and the Tree of Life in Christian imagery. Sculpted in stone and wood, their faces and bodies
survival: art is that
appeared (often with greenery emerging from the mouth) in the complex decorations
fundamental.
of church doorways, pulpits, vaulting, capitals and choirstalls. That literality — the body issuing forth vegetation — sets up an unmistakable union of the body of the allegorical Green Man/Woman with the botanical world. Variations appear throughout Europe: as la tête de feuilles and dames vertes in France; as Der Grüner Mensch or the Blattmaske in Germany; and as Robin Hood, Jack in the Green or King of the May in England. Carried forward in time, poets and artists of the Renaissance, perhaps most famously, Botticelli in his Primavera (c. 1478), embraced the creative vitality of green. To subsequent generations of viewers, the meanings embedded in Primavera have constantly invited new interpretations. This exhibition encourages a renewed consideration of the rich visual and allegorical potential of green. I propose you think about it as the germ of creative vitality, revealed either directly (by using specific figures or objects) or indirectly (by conceptual or abstract means). Good allegories should be flexible, even intractable in their refusal to be fixed permanently, and green embodies a relentless urge to visualize concepts in order to present what is sometimes nearly unpresentable. Seen this way, there is a vital, visceral energy latent within the term green, an energy that inspires a whole set of nested meanings. From the generative energies latent within plants
7
arises the larger spectacle of life cycles, seasonal transformations, birth, growth and death. Enter the artists of the early twenty-first century, as modern surrogates for the venerable Green Man/Woman; they (along with modern scientists) have assumed the Dionysian mantle as keepers of life’s creative mysteries. Artists carry forward a kind of intelligence that is rooted in humanity’s experience of itself within nature and extending outward to embrace our relationships with others (as individuals and within groups): living creatures, the environment we inhabit (and often manipulate at our own peril) and to the very consciousness that clarifies the contours of our humanity. As it flows through this exhibition, the energy of green, accompanied by pathos or humor or meditative silence, can assume a life-or-death urgency tied to our very survival: art is that fundamental. To begin in a direct manner, sculptor Beverley Magennis crafts large-scale garden goddesses whose lineage, one can imagine, descends from the fabled Green Woman. Within her capacious, room-size skirts, she provides shelter and reconnection to nature. Garden Lady, a life-sized version of one of these tile mosaic figures, represents her monumental sisters in the exhibition. If the interior spaces created by Magennis’s garden goddesses suggest natural sanctuaries,
uses pulsing marks, ostensibly the product
they share a spiritual orientation with the lush, shrine-like assemblages of Cynthia Cook.
of surrealist-like
The Green Room, for example, addresses environmental concerns by transforming recycled
automatic gestures,
debris, using diverse traditional metalsmithing techniques, and framing her collages like
but at the same time
icons of nature-based spirituality. The title of Anne Cooper’s wall piece Fecundus LXXXI borrows two meanings: of fecund as fruitful, and, figuratively speaking, as imaginatively rich in invention. Within a matrix of apparent sameness, the artist imposes momentary, even mathematical, order on nature’s randomness: on each of eighty-one delicate plaster squares, she has drawn a lone blade of grass, a gestural mark distinct from all its neighbors. Into her austere installations, Cooper often incorporates regenerative motifs such as live growing plants, as well as receptacles for seeds, and potentially for time itself. Remembered time is an important element within the work of abstract painter Orlando Leyba, who mines his own childhood recollections of New Mexico places, creating memoryinflected compositions and layering with lush color and collage techniques into mixedmedia works that reference history (Los Alamos) or the natural world (Lotus). Bill Gilbert knows that human consciousness, together with time and space, is an element of our confrontations with nature. Like John Wesley Powell, to whom he dedicates this series of map-derived works, Gilbert functions as explorer and guide, combining modern GPS technology — something Powell could never have imagined — with the necessarily slow pace of a walker treading rough, unfamiliar terrain. The results, in this exhibition, are two-dimensional digital prints charting points at which Gilbert made journal entries. When scanned onto a USGS map and joined in a connect-the-dots fashion, those points,
8
The artist (Dixon)
profoundly personal, evocative of a mind and hand working to coax meaning from the void.
even while documenting a journey on earth, resemble nothing so much as celestial constellations. Painter Grant Hayunga uses the idea of mapping in yet another way. In his Ojo de la Tierra series, the artist “maps,” as he says, “the abstract imaginal world of human consciousness into realistic landscapes.” In works such as Black and Blue and Dawn, bloated organic shapes, oddly whimsical and poignant in their quasi-humanity, float transparently against the vastness of the New Mexico sky. Vast expanses — not skies, but pregnant voids bathed in lush coloration — form the anti-illusionistic surfaces of Tom Dixon’s canvases. The artist uses pulsing marks, ostensibly the product of surrealist-like automatic gestures, but at the same time profoundly personal, evocative of a mind and hand working to coax meaning from the void.
In a manner metaphorically similar
Emptiness, psychic as much as physical, also characterizes the work of Marc Ouellette. His figures, often males who, as he says, “are disengaged and seem to be cut off from life,”
to the yeasty process
reach to the heart of a perennial dilemma: the difficulty of being human in a world from
of breadbaking, Joyce
which nature, as well as other beings, is visibly absent.
turns metal remnants
But alienation can take place within nature too, as world-roaming Douglas Kent Hall shows
(vested with their own
us. In the photographs he exhibits in GREEN, Hall ranges geographically from Florence to
history) inside out,
New Jersey to Venice Beach (The Beach Boys), with a stop somewhere in between to focus
constantly folding fresh surfaces to the inside.
on a stigmatized Barbie doll. All are captured within a rich context of nature’s lushness, yet all are cut off, somehow, from its beneficence. Death and life hover uncomfortably near in Joel-Peter Witkin’s photographs, which question old certainties about art, religious imagery and the classical past. In this exhibition an eerily armless Satiro (actually a photograph of a beloved Mexican comedian) resembles nothing so much as a satyr, one of the rustic goat/man companions of Dionysus, who embody the lusty verdant energies that propel art, unbridled nature, and madness. Sculptor Tom Joyce folds multiple histories and meanings into the iron he smelts and forges, conscious always of “creating new life in the womb of the forge.” His forged iron piece Bloom (its title, in smelting terminology, a reference to the transient state of soft iron ready for shaping) is all about potential. In a manner metaphorically similar to the yeasty process of breadbaking, Joyce turns metal remnants (vested with their own history) inside out, constantly folding fresh surfaces to the inside. Hidden surfaces, energy transfers, the responsiveness of a formidable material — these are the surprises and pleasures of Bloom. Several other artists exhibiting in GREEN have hybridized light with extraordinary surfaces to reinvent luminosity. Working in sculpture, prints or mixed media, they have plumbed the properties of light, finding fresh sources in nature and testing new applications in technology.
9
Larry Bell, in works such as Cube 44, creates an illusionary work of transparency and reflection. He uses industrial processes to coat the glass surfaces of his scupture. The result is an invitation to contemplate the complex interaction of light and reflection. Contemplative surfaces and elegant geometric forms are also preoccupations of Florence Pierce and Frederick Hammersley, who represent the vital energy of the elder generation of New Mexico’s great contemporary artists. Pierce works in low-relief resin and pigment paintings. In her Untitled #74, we glimpse a slice of luminous blue, as if seeing sky through an open window set into a triangle within a larger rectangle. The effect is utterly tranquil and mysterious, drawing us into a contemplation of simplicity and inducing what the artist calls “a meditative quality and Zen-like ‘stilling of the mind.’” Hammersley’s inventive color-and-form abstractions, integrated with the artist’s own hand-crafted frames, create a continuous aesthetic, both whimsical and infectious. Jennifer Lynch’s large-format photolithographs also study light and form in compositions that are at once familiar and abstract, emerging into and fading from recognition. Shimmering with water droplets, the surfaces of her untitled works in GREEN reveal patterns achieved through skillful manipulations of black and white. Gently mysterious, the
but always writhing
images are decidedly nature-based, up-close encounters with details from the vegetal world,
with energy, Jiménez’s
perhaps also from the human body.
people and animals,
Questions of identity, often in relation to the natural world, form another important
like the artist himself,
component of this exhibition. When artists take on environmental issues, human rights and
transcend the very
politics, they not only are acting out of their personal imagination but are simultaneously
ordinariness of their
asking perennial questions about identity, setting in motion energies that can resonate with and transform ideas and icons of the past. Working in the time-honored tradition of hand-coiled Pueblo ceramics, Acoma potter Mary Lewis García has resurrected nearly-forgotten polychrome designs, combining animal motifs and other nature symbols with abstract geometric design elements. Secure in the knowledge that she is extending her own heritage and identity, she has reinvigorated a living tradition. Diego Romero, on the other hand, has chosen to blend traditional Pueblo pottery forms with a politically-aware sensibility that exposes the flux and contradictions present in contemporary Indian culture. In Industrial Landscape, he uses a variant of political-cartoon imagery to lament the intrusion of smoke-belching power plants into the ancient, serene landscape of the Southwest. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, like many artists today, leverages her prints and paintings for the sake of a social agenda, blending art with activism and identity with expression. She calls herself a cultural art worker, leavening issues of human rights, the environment and tribal politics with a sure sense of irony and humor to raise both their visual and political impact.
10
Earthy, flashy, tragic,
beginnings.
The late Luís Jiménez, like Romero and Smith, used images from the vernacular to punctuate the politically-charged imagery in his paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures. Often working out of his own Chicano heritage, he turned an unflinching gaze on the embattled people of the borderlands, like the timeless figures in his lithograph Border Crossing. Earthy, flashy, tragic, but always writhing with energy, Jiménez’s people and animals, like the artist himself, transcend the very ordinariness of their beginnings. Mary Tsiongas also employs animal imagery to explore humanity’s impact on the natural world and to measure, as she says, “the experiential distance that separates us from the lives of our ancestors.” In GREEN, she exhibits pieces from her series When the Hunter Gathers, in which she meticulously conflates digital images of herself with animals, assigning fragments of each to alternating rings on a target. In Hindsight, the artist’s related sculptural piece, a taxidermist’s skeletal deer pauses, surrounded by spent arrows, at an oil-dark pool. The overall effect here is a powerful narrative of the totemic relationships between humans and animals, those living intelligences prized — but perennially subject
Place is an aspect of context, an ingredient
to annihilation — by their pursuers. “I worked,” writes the artist, “from the initial stance of grief, but eventually reached a new and unexpected place of empathy for both modern hunter and modern prey.” Both hunter and prey share, in effect, the mutual
floating alongside
poignance of endangered species.
vertiginous formal
Whether as ritual activity or sport, hunting is one of humanity’s oldest occupations, a
inventions and
game (usually masculine) of give-and-take with nature. Apart from that natural matrix,
fermenting ideas in the
other games, some with typically female players, play their own roles in shaping identity.
crucible of creativity.
In a series called A Woman’s Life, painter Iva Morris portrays adolescent girls, halfway between the worlds of children and womanhood, at play with a string game. The identity implications are larger: in their fancy dress, they explore their own self-realization, and female power, in the game of life. In Delilah Montoya’s work, Morris’s subtle, nuanced views of emerging female identity give way to explosive, in-your-face portraits of women who break all the rules of female decorum. Her series Women Boxers: The New Warriors blends gritty social realism with transgressive physicality in these photographic portraits of women who want to be encountered on their own terms. Yet Montoya’s fight scenes of powerful, clashing female bodies tap into the strange beauty of some art historical precedents: they invite comparison (however unintended) with the boxing scenes of Thomas Eakins and George Bellows, and with a continuum of iconic combatants stretching into the ancient past. Melissa Zink’s mixed media piece Fragmenting Identity recognizes that identity is a process, not a fixed state. It coalesces, shifts, dissolves and transforms itself, a process paralleled in Zink’s work by materials she continually chooses, rearranges and discards. Laced with humor and irony, other of Zink’s titles (Flourishing Flora, Living Green), suggest her ability to access the natural world, but her real home is in the capacious realm of books, letters and words, through which she frames visual questions about art, identity and life.
11
Finally, a word about art in place and transcending place. With the globalization of much of our culture, is it important, even appropriate, to address specific places? If art made in New Mexico used to be readily identifiable, is that true in any sense now? Does it matter in the twenty-first century where art is made? Here is my response: however much or little attention artists give to their specific surroundings, they take in the natural and cultural atmosphere they inhabit. Gertrude Stein, who knew many places, said it best: “Anybody is as their land and air is. Anybody is as the sky is low or high. Anybody is as there is wind or no wind there...Everyone is as their...climate is.” So place is an aspect of context, an ingredient floating alongside vertiginous formal
function at the leading
inventions and fermenting ideas in the crucible of creativity. As the inaugural show at 516
edge of society’s cultural
ARTS demonstrates, there is no single visual narrative, no common philosophical approach
sensibilities, mediating
in contemporary New Mexico art, a statement equally true of the larger experience of
between what society
American art. If there are any constants in this show, they reside in the artists’ abilities to render new tellings of stories we thought we knew, stories of art’s relationship to enduring aspects of human consciousness. Even as 516 ARTS helps to raise the presence of the arts in Downtown Albuquerque, it will be judged ultimately not on where it lives but by what it does. A future tied to the imaginative reach of its planned exhibitions, building audiences that include, but at the same time stretch beyond usual museum-goers, is an exciting prospect. Artistic venues in New Mexico, like those everywhere, function at the leading edge of society’s cultural sensibilities, mediating between what society actually endorses or consumes and the outer limits of the artist’s imagination. As 516 ARTS comes of age, it promises to access and interpret New Mexico’s artistic riches in unprecedented ways, functioning as a portal, right in our midst, to the extraordinary. The old neighborhood will never be the same.
(Endnotes) 1. Deities and spirits associated with flora appear, of course, in many other cultures. For a discussion of its ubiquity and variations, see William Anderson, Green Man: The Archetype of our Oneness with the Earth (London: HarperCollins, 1990).
12
Artistic venues...
actually endorses or consumes and the outer limits of the artist’s imagination.
Sharyn R. Udall, Ph.D. Sharyn Udall is an Art Historian, author, and independent curator who has written, taught and lectured widely on American art. She takes a special interest in women in the visual arts, the transnational arts of the Americas, and interdisciplinary associations among artists and writers. She has lived in the Southwest for most of her adult life and has taught Art History at the University of New Mexico and the College of Santa Fe. Dr. Udall's books include Modernist Painting in New Mexico; Spud Johnson and Laughing Horse; Inside Looking Out: The Life and Art of Gina Knee; Contested Terrain: Myth and Meaning in Southwest Art; O'Keeffe and Texas; and most recently a book and traveling exhibition on three women artists of North America entitled Carr, O'Keeffe, Kahlo: Places of Their Own. Her current book project titled American Art and Dance: A Long Embrace looks at the many ways visual artists have helped to define and express American culture through images of the dance.
13
GREEN ARTISTS
LARRY BELL Taos
Cube 44 coated blue azure/water clear glass, 20 x 20 x 20 inches, 2006
“I love beginnings. Thinking about old work makes me nervous. Some of it I like. The rest of it has me confused, not because I don’t like it, but because I can’t remember why I did it. I have a passion for the new, what’s being done right at the moment. The conception.” Larry Bell is one of the most prominent artists to have come out of the Los Angeles art scene of the 1960s. He attended Chouinard Art School during the late 1950s, where he was a student of Robert Irwin. Bell’s work was exhibited in the ground breaking Minimalist exhibition titled Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum in 1966. He quickly achieved international recognition for his work, with exhibitions in New York, London and Paris. In 1973, Bell moved his family to Taos, New Mexico to build a home and studio. He continues to investigate the complexities of highly refined surface treatments of glass, creating luminous glass cubes and glass sculpture installations that are a masterful blend of science and industry. This ongoing investigation of the properties of light takes place with lab coats and white gloves, amongst massive vacuum chambers and associated machinery in his Taos studio. Bell’s pursuit of conception has manifested in the recent body of large scale public work, the Sumer figures. These monumental bronze figures were featured in his retrospective exhibition Zones of Experience: The Art of Larry Bell, held at the Albuquerque Museum in 1997. Bell’s work is featured in countless private and public collections throughout the world, including the Albuquerque Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, England and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France. His work is represented by Frank Lloyd Gallery in Santa Monica, California, and Bernard Jacobson Gallery in London, England. photo by Jennifer Lynch
15
CYNTHIA COOK Albuquerque
The Green Room mixed media, 11 x 9 x 3 inches, 2006
“This ‘shadowbox’ series explores the dialogue between man-made objects and natural ephemera…the song of patterns and the intent of placement. ‘Dream Landscapes’ (Day Dreams and Sleeping Reverie) inform my art, and I believe in the symbolic and talismanic power of seemingly mundane elements. The sense of mystery and the promise of positivity continue to seduce my imagination and direct my actual reality.”
Cynthia Cook is celebrated for her innovative use of recycled materials to create provocative expressions of a nature-based spirituality. Cook, who is of Mexican and Irish descent, was born in Albuquerque. Her reverence for cultural and spiritual diversity is tempered by her advocacy for the preservation of the natural environment. Cook attended Parsons School of Design and the New School for Social Research in New York in the early 1980s. She went on to complete her studies at the University of New Mexico where she minored in Women’s Studies and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Metals. Cook’s use of materials has involved the conscious choice to use post consumer goods in a traditional manner. She employs traditional New Mexican tinwork and Native American silversmith influences with medieval chase work and deep repousse, transforming common food cans into beautiful settings for her archival quality collages. These compositions are combined with elements from the natural world to create shrines that are profoundly New Mexican in form and content. She has exhibited nationally and internationally for the past 20 years. She has also conducted numerous mixed media workshops at home and abroad. Cook’s work is in many private and public collections across the country. She has had solo exhibitions in New York City and New Orleans and has participated in over 400 international juried and invitational exhibitions.
16
photo by Cynthia Cook
ANNE COOPER Albuquerque
Fecundus LXXXI wood, plaster, graphite, 51 x 51 inches, 2005
“My intent in my installations is to focus attention on the beauty of mundane, small and insignificant elements in the natural environment. I view my work as an effort to engage the viewer in the process of life — with its intricacies, death and rebirth — and in the hope that the environmental degradation on our planet will cease.”
Anne Cooper’s minimalist wall pieces and installations explore regenerative motifs, incorporating living plants and bronze casts of seeds. Through her work, Cooper recreates the stillness of contemplative time. Cooper received an undergraduate degree in English Literature and Philosophy from the University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas, and went on to become a professional potter. Eventually, she departed from focusing on the utilitarian clay vessel to explore non-functional forms, experimenting with combining metals with clay. Cooper went on to receive her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Houston and then moved to New Mexico, where she expanded her materials vocabulary into wood and steel. In the 1990s, she worked on an environmental effort to save a piece of property in Albuquerque’s North Valley from development. That effort gave her a new direction, leading her into working with an installation format and using natural materials such as living grass, bee’s wax and grass paper. Cooper has exhibited her work for over 20 years and is represented in many private and public collections across the country, including the Albuquerque Museum, the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe and the Hallmark Collection in Kansas City, Missouri.
17
TOM DIXON Taos
Untitled (blue) oil on masonite, 66 x 48 inches, 2006
“My painting pursues neither illusion nor pretty object, but instead expresses personal emotion by utilizing the idea of automatic marking, intuition and chance — a concept rooted in surrealism.”
Tom Dixon’s large abstract paintings offer a pure experience of expressionist painting. Raised in the American West, Dixon grew up in Denver and attended the Colorado Institute of Art from 1965-66. In 1966, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. In 1968, Dixon attended the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was the recipient of the Ford Foundation Scholarship. He was drawn back to the western United States, where he continued to paint. He landed in San Francisco and worked in the shipyards while living and maintaining a studio in a tin building in Sausalito. Dixon then traveled and worked his way back to the intermountain West. In 1980, he settled in Taos, New Mexico, where he still lives and maintains his studio in a small adobe house in the center of town. Dixon’s work as a painter is a journey, much like his early days of traveling and working across the West. At any given time, he has twenty paintings in progress, and it is through this manner of working and re-working the compositions that he brings a fresh physical vitality and sense of memory to his compositions. His success as an artist is by “word-ofmouth.” Collectors from across the country make the trek to the humble adobe in Taos to view and purchase his recent work. Dixon has exhibited his work for the past 30 years across the United States. His work is held in private and public collections, including the Harwood Museum in Taos, New Mexico.
18
MARY LEWIS GARCIA Acoma Pueblo
Untitled (detail) traditionally fired clay, 16 x 12 x 12 inches, 1987
“The potter’s life has never been easy. It has always been a hard way to make a living, but it’s important to continue the traditions.”
A renowned Acoma potter and teacher, Mary Lewis García’s work represents a powerful link connecting the contemporary world with ancient traditions. Lewis García grew up in the Acoma pottery tradition, for which her family is famous. Her mother, Lucy M. Lewis, encouraged her to work in the family tradition, mastering each step of the process, from gathering the raw materials to make the clay, to shaping the pot, to applying the designs, to the final phase of firing. As testimony to her commitment to transferring her knowledge to younger generations, Lewis García has taught at the University of Minnesota and the University of New Mexico. She worked in conjunction with the Land Arts Program at the University of New Mexico. Students traveled to her studio and made the clay, built pots and fired the works in the traditional manner. Lewis García has inspired students with her insight and dedication to making pots, and her own investigation and use of the ancient polychrome designs have reinvigorated the work of her contemporaries. Lewis García’s work has been exhibited across the United States and Canada, and is represented in many private and public collections including the Fredric R. Wiseman Art Museum in Minnesota, the Cincinnati Art Museum in Ohio and the University of Edmonton in Alberta, Canada. photo by Bill Gilbert
19
BILL GILBERT Cerrillos
(For John Wesley Powell) Attempts to Walk the Grid One Hour in Each Cardinal Direction, September 9, 2005 Good Hope Bay digital print, 40 x 40 inches
“These works are created by choosing an arbitrary starting point and walking for an hour in each cardinal direction. Points are recorded along the way in a GPS unit and journal entries are written down as the path evolves in response to the terrain. The resulting points are transferred to a scan of the appropriate USGS map and blown up to the final dimensions.” Bill Gilbert is an explorer, mapmaker and cultural guide to the landscape of the western United States and northern Mexico. His work in practice personifies the cultural exchange between peoples that has occurred for centuries along the natural migration routes found in the southwestern region of North America. After earning his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Montana in 1978, Bill Gilbert moved to northern New Mexico and developed a body of work that includes site-specific sculpture and a series of ceramic tablets and vessels. Gilbert’s work continues to evolve in technological process and media, which often comments on the human presence and our relation to the changing world. Gilbert has taught at the University of New Mexico since 1987. Since 2000, he has been co-directing Land Arts, a collaborative, field based art and design program between UNM and the University of Texas at Austin. Land Arts takes students on a journey of cultural exploration and discovery through the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Gilbert has also directed and participated in programs focusing on the ceramic traditions of the Americas. Begun in 1993, his Casas Grandes program affords students the opportunity to work with the potters of Mata Ortiz, Mexico. Gilbert’s work with Mata Ortiz is extensive and includes a documentary film he made using a grant in 2000. In 1994, Gilbert received a Lila Wallace Art International Grant to work with the Quichua potters in Ecuador. In addition to having given lectures and written publications and reviews, Bill Gilbert has exhibited across United States and Europe. Gilbert’s work is held in private and public collections, including the Albuquerque Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, the Lannan Foundation and the Capital Arts Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
20
DOUGLAS KENT HALL Albuquerque
Desktop Images: The Beach Boys giclee print, 20 x 26 inches, 2005
“‘Desktop Images’ are the photographs I have always shot; they are about light‚ ephemeral yet oddly demanding in their effort to dominate...They were taken with a digital camera and processed in my dry darkroom, which is not dark at all. They claim their share of light and guard it while they engage the imagination and create a separate materiality that sets them apart from the original object that seduced the camera before the object dissipated into the past. For the photograph, acceptance and denial are the same thing.”
Douglas Kent Hall is a renowned photographer and author, who captures the poetry of the human condition. Hall grew up in Vernal, Utah and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Brigham Young University and his Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. Following graduate school, Hall taught Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Portland. In 1965, Hall started working with a camera. For over 40 years, Hall and the camera have been the best of partners, traveling the world. His inseparable relationship with his camera and craft developed on the streets of New York. His adventurous approach to his subjects has produced iconic images of legendary artists, writers, poets and rock musicians of the 1960s. In 1977, Hall settled in New Mexico, which inspired many images of the people and land of the Southwest. He has published 24 books, and has written numerous screenplays, including The Great American Cowboy, which won an Academy Award for best feature documentary. Hall’s photographic work has been shown in more than 75 solo exhibits and more than 40 group shows across the United States and Europe. His work is represented in many private and public collections, including the Albuquerque Museum, the Brooklyn Museum and the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France. In 2005, Mr. Hall won both the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in New Mexico and the Gold Medal Career Award from the Internazionale Dell’Arte Contemporanea, Florence, Italy. His work is represented by Riva Yares Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico. photo by Devon Hall
21
FREDERICK HAMMERSLEY Albuquerque
Steak and Ale #6 oil on rag paper on linen, 8 x 9.625, inches, 1989 courtesy Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico
“Painting is just like living. After you make the first move, every other move is related to it.”
An abstract painter working from a classical perspective, Hammersley allows himself to be guided by his intuition while remaining highly practiced and informed by the history of art. His work offers “a rational crystallization of intuitive experience.” Born in 1919 in Salt Lake City, Utah, Hammersley attended the University of Idaho, Chouinard Art School in Los Angeles, California and L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, France. During and immediately after World War II, Hammersley ran the art department for the Information and Education Section Office of Military Government in Frankfurt and Berlin, during which time he viewed the great works housed in the museums of Europe. He moved to Albuquerque in the late 1960s to teach painting at the University of New Mexico. Hammersley’s present work addresses the relationships between contrasting colors and shapes through his self-designated “hunch painting” technique. Through this process, the artist applies isolated color forms to a canvas and then waits for the next color and shape to suggest itself to his imagination. He often works on his initial ideas in a series of notebooks that become his resource for future paintings. Hammersley was also a pioneer in exploring the use of a computer to create drawings using black and white typography. Hammersley’s work has been exhibited across the United States and internationally for 49 years, including the Whitney Museum in New York, the Museums of Modern Art in New York and San Francisco, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, England. He has been the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Arts in Painting and has been a returning guest at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque. Hammersley’s work is represented in many private and public collections, including the Albuquerque Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California. His work is represented by Charlotte Jackson Fine Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
22
photo by Daniel Barsotti
GRANT HAYUNGA Santa Fe
Dawn oil and mixed media on canvas, 40 x 32 inches, 1998 courtesy Linda Durham Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico
“From my mind’s eye I paint the landscape as a memory or an imagined place. The black lines show the unconscious hand of a man...the wiseman, the fool, the dreamer.”
A native of New York and a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Grant Hayunga currently lives and works in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico. Through his work, Hayunga maps the abstract and imaginary world of human consciousness, creating landscapes that evoke the romantic and the sublime. Hayunga’s series Ojo de la Tierra celebrates the vastness of the New Mexico sky. Balancing the formal aspects of landscape painting with carefully wrought figurative abstraction, Ojo de la Tierra depicts pre-industrial landscapes inhabited by seemingly omniscient yet mute post-technological creatures. His masterful use of color to emanate light, in combination with heavy impasto and delicate lines, creates a lush surface of experience for the viewer. Hayunga has exhibited across the United States and is represented in private and public collections, including the Stephanie Janssen Collection of Contemporary American and European Art and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman, Oklahoma. His work is represented by Linda Durham Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
23
LUIS JIMENEZ 1940 - 2006 Hondo
L
uís Jiménez died earlier this year, a sudden and
Born in El Paso, Texas in 1940, Luís Jiménez began his college
tragic death, in the middle of a long and distinguished career.
studies at the University of Texas at El Paso, majoring in
Everything about Jimenez was unique: his style, his content, his
Architecture. Midway through, he changed his major to Art
media and his intent. He was interested in figurative art at a
and his college to the University of Texas at Austin, where he
time when abstraction was in fashion; he was interested in all
earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1964. After graduation,
people but especially those of his ethnicity, who he elevated to
he attended the Ciudad Universitaria in Mexico City. He was an
a new and proud place in the history of art; he was interested in
Associate Professor of Sculpture at the University of Arizona and
the flashiness and boldness of fiberglass when bronze was the
on the art faculty at the University of Houston.
preferred sculpture medium; and he was interested in making art for the public that was accessible to the masses, at a time when other artists were striving to have their work collected by private collectors and museums.
Jiménez won numerous awards, including the Steuben Glass Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship, the Academy of Arts and Letters Hassan Fund Award, a fellowship from the American Academy in Rome and
From his early works of honky-tonk people, barflies, and sensual
the Environmental Improvement Award from the American
as well as sexual depictions of pin-ups with Volkswagons to his
Institute of Architects. His work has been included in over
later representations of illegal immigrants, farmers, dancers,
75 exhibitions and is in major collections throughout the
horses and death, Jiménez followed the one theme of social
country, but perhaps he is best known for his major public art
commentary in all its various forms and manifestations.
commissions. These works include Vaquero for Moody Park,
Whether in colored pencil, fiberglass, bronze, or print media,
Houston, Texas; Sodbuster for Fargo, North Dakota; Southwest
his works spoke to and were understood by everyone.
Pieta for the City of Albuquerque, New Mexico; Steelworker for
To Luís Jiménez, life and art were one and the same and both were a continuum of the good and the bad in the society in which we live. His vision of the world was emblematic of the human condition, and this is his legacy.
the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority in Buffalo, New York; Flag Raising for the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Oklahoma City; Howl for Wichita State University, Kansas; Border Crossing for Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles, California; Fiesta Dancing for General
“The public sculptures reflect my own agenda. I would like to
Services Administration in Otay Mesa, California; and Bronco
make a horse piece, like I wanted to make a cowboy piece, like
for the Denver International Airport in Colorado. Jiménez died
I wanted to make the Pieta, like I wanted to make a farmer.
in an accident in his studio on June 13, 2006, while working on
I want to pay tribute to the mustang, the same way that I
a 32-foot fiberglass sculpture of a mustang, the very subject he
developed the Howl, that eventually became the desert wolf,
had hoped to immortalize in his art.
an animal on the verge of extinction.” Ellen J. Landis Independent Curator and Curator of Art Emerita, The Albuquerque Museum
24
“The most unrecognized element in art today is the human one. Art should in some way make a person more aware, give on insight into where he or she is at, and in some way reflect what it is like to be living in these times and in this place.�
photo by Oscar Lozoya
Baile con la Talaca lithograph, 42 x 30 inches, 1984 collection of Douglas Kent Hall & Dawn Hall, photo by Pat Berrett
25
TOM JOYCE Santa Fe
Bloom forged iron, 22 x 24 x 24 inches, 2005
“It is the inheritance of iron and the history it accumulates along its path that interests me. There is no ‘virgin’ iron left in the world of manufacturing — it has all seen another life. In Bloom, various ingot remnants were turned inside out by forging and folding so that their original skin is now hidden on the inside of its folds and fresh material is kneaded toward the outside.”
Tom Joyce is an internationally acclaimed artist and blacksmith, who for 28 years has forged sculpture, architectural ironwork, and vessels in addition to creating public art for projects throughout the United States. He has lived and worked in Santa Fe since 1977. He has taught and lectured throughout the United States and Europe. In 1996, Joyce received an honorary award for Outstanding Contribution to the Art and Science of Blacksmithing by the Artists Blacksmiths Association of North America. In 1998, the McCune Foundation awarded Joyce a grant to implement a blacksmithing mentorship program for young adults at risk. In 2003, he was inducted into the American Craft Council’s College of Fellows with the Aileen Osborn-Webb Award. That same year, he was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. In 2004, the Smithsonian Institution’s Oral History Program conducted an extensive interview with Joyce for inclusion in their Archives of American Art. Joyce’s work has been exhibited across the United States and abroad. His work is represented in many private and public collections, including the Museum of Art and Design in New York, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the De Young Museum of Art in San Francisco, the Museum of Applied Arts in Moscow, Russia and Musée Des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, France.
26
ORLANDO LEYBA Albuquerque
Los Alamos mixed media on panel, 60 x 47 inches, 2004
“I am most interested in the remnants of information from the past that give us clues about who we are and where we came from. The stories relating to a long forgotten or undiscovered ancestor and the adventures and hardships they must have endured spur my imagination and lead me to paint...I envision each painting as a small plot of land; scarred by drilling, sanded down to reveal inner layers of textures and colors, and reflecting a personal memory of what was once an agriculturally-centered family dynamic.” Born and raised in northern New Mexico, Orlando Leyba explores the rich memories of his childhood and his experiences in and around the remote villages of Trampas, Sombrillo, Truchas and Chimáyo. Through his painting, Leyba strives to approximate a personal, cultural and historical archeology of the isolated villages and towns of northern New Mexico and the human drama enacted upon them. His most recent work explores the use of mixed media, with layered surfaces of found objects, collage and paint. Leyba received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of New Mexico in 1982, a Master of Art Education degree and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting in 1989, both from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. Leyba is a Fine Arts Instructor at the Albuquerque Academy in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His paintings have been exhibited across the United States, including at the Art Institute of Boston, Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. Leyba’s work is represented in many private and public collections, including the National Hispanic Cultural Center, the Albuquerque Sunport Collection and the Carnegie-Mellon University Collection.
27
JENNIFER LYNCH Taos
Untitled (#16) photolithograph, 40 x 54 inches, 2006
“My process begins with the camera; it is my sketchbook. I seek separate elements in the environment that share similar properties. After a picture is made, I blow it up out of proportion, change its scale, cut it apart at varying intervals or shapes, and put these elements back together like a puzzle. Color and pattern operate as metaphors for the natural rhythms that provide a point of departure for the contemplation of our relationship to nature and creation.”
Jennifer Lynch, a master printer, began her formal training at the College of Visual and Performing Arts, Syracuse University and then moved on to the Kansas City Art Institute, where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking and Photography in 1983. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking from Hunter College in New York in 1992. A master printer for Bob Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop in New York and The Printmaking Center at the College of Santa Fe, Lynch has also taught at the University of New Mexico-Taos Campus for thirteen years. Lynch runs her own business, Lynch Press, in Taos. She has worked with many notable New Mexican artists to create limited edition prints, including R.C.Gorman and Earl Stroh. In her own work, she develops her compositions of rhythm, form and light according to the natural systems of fractals. Her photolithographs are collages from multiple images that she splices together to create new abstract images. Within these studies, she plays with scale, proportion, interval and shape, attempting to reach a finished piece that exists in a place between the familiar and the abstract. In Lynch’s mind, color and pattern present themselves as metaphors for the natural rhythms that surround us everyday. Her work has been exhibited across the United States, including at the National Arts Club in New York, SITE Santa Fe, the Foothills Art Center in Golden, Colorado and the Santa Fe Art Institute. Lynch’s work is in many private collections across the country.
28
photo by Laura Shields
BEVERLEY MAGENNIS Apache Creek
Garden Lady (outdoor version) ceramic mosaic, 72 x 42 x 42 inches (gallery version), 2006
“I am currently living in the country in southwestern New Mexico, where I am building a series of large ladies with dome skirts in which one may live. These figures are about twenty feet tall and are constructed over an armature of rebar and lath, then covered with cement. The skirts of the figures are decorated with mosaic tile. The first dome lady took four years to complete and was finished this year. I am now working on the second one. Eventually I hope to build five figures.” Beverley Magennis creates works that combine her art with her life. This manner of working is personified by the Tile House, which has become a part of Albuquerque’s urban legend. Magennis completely adorned her former home in Albuquerque’s North Valley, the result of an 11-year tile project. She received her formal training at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, Canada and Claremont Graduate School in California. In 1975-76, she was an Artist-in-Residence at the Roswell Artist-in-Residence program in Roswell, New Mexico. She taught at the University of New Mexico from 1988 to 1994, and she has been a guest artist and lecturer across the country for the past 20 years. Magennis is known for her public commissioned tile mosaics around Albuquerque, which include the Tree of Life at the corner of 4th Street and Montaño, Walkway at the Albuquerque Museum, and Mosaic Children’s Sculpture at Zia Park. These projects were a part of the City of Albuquerque’s 1% for the Arts Program. Magennis’s current site-specific project, Garden Goddess, is a series of monumental female forms wearing elaborate mosaic covered skirts, which are large enough to live inside, blurring the lines between architecture, sculpture and craft. Magennis has exhibited her work across the United States and is represented in many private and public collections, including the Albuquerque Museum. Her work is represented by the Munson Gallery in Santa Fe. photo by Jim Kraft
29
DELILAH MONTOYA Albuquerque
Stephanie vs. Holly, Sandia Casino (detail) digital inkjet/pieziograph, 10 x 32 inches, 2003
“As a Chicana artist, my work, interpreted as an alternative to the mainstream, stands as a personal statement that evokes an identity. I aspire to originate the artist’s voice.”
Delilah Montoya was born in Texas and raised throughout the Midwest. Following her initial education in Omaha, Nebraska, Montoya returned to New Mexico, her mother’s ancestral homeland, to complete a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1984 and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of New Mexico in 1994. Her work centers on her understanding of the Southwest, integrating the daily experience of border towns with the blending of inter-cultural traditions and values of Mexico and the United States. She explores cultural beliefs and personal memories as they fit into the thematic matrix of identity, spirituality and politics. Her most recent series, Women Boxers: The New Warriors, represents las malcriadas, a new generation of women who enter into the ring, a traditional bastion of masculinity, to confront the brutality of the sport. Montoya has taught photography across the country, and she is currently an assistant professor of photography and digital arts at the University of Houston. She has participated in more than 30 exhibitions nationally and internationally since the 1980s, including exhibitions at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., the Houston Museum of Fine Art in Texas, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California, and her work has traveled to Mexico and as far away as the Ukraine. Montoya’s work is in many private and public collections including the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. and the Houston Museum of Fine Art in Texas. Her work is represented by Andrew Smith Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
30
photo by Luís Jiménez
IVA MORRIS Las Nutrias
Cat’s Cradle oil on linen, 43 x 65 inches, 2003
“Over the past several years, I have been working on a series of paintings that deal with cultural expectations, life’s certainties and their visual counterparts. In creating a visual calendar of a woman’s life, I hope to provoke questions about the importance of our roles in society and the assumed certainties about gender.”
Iva Morris’s work ranges from traditional pastel landscapes to figurative paintings in a colorful, pop surrealistic style to realistic oil paintings of women in curious narrative situations. She has also worked with monotypes, creating Asian-inspired aluminum prints with ceramic attachments. The narrative quality of her work encourages the viewer to consider her subjects as they are, stripped of assumption and expectation. While her subjects often appear vulnerable, even sad, the tone of her work is whimsical. A graduate of the University of New Mexico’s Art Education Program, Morris is presently working on her Master of Arts degree in Humanities at the University of Maryland, while working on a series called A Woman’s Life. In addition to running her own printmaking business, Morris’s work has been included in more than 15 solo and group exhibitions at venues throughout the nation, including the Albuquerque Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Fosdeck Nelson Gallery at Alfred University in New York, as well as international invitational exhibitions in New York, Texas and California. Morris’s work is held in private collections across the country.
31
MARC OUELLETTE Albuquerque
Apple oil on canvas, 46 x 42 inches, 2005 courtesy Box Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico collection of Lynn Marchand Goldstein & George Goldstein
“Many of my subjects are unaware strangers captured first in snapshots. I am drawn to individuals who appear isolated, even in the company of others. Consequently, subjects are often men who are disengaged and seem to be cut off from life. I am inspired by a quality of discomfort in the individual’s aloneness, the difficulty of being human. I am drawn sometimes to pathos and sometimes humor.” Marc Ouellette’s creative life has been multifaceted. When confronted with his first painting class at the State University of New York, College at New Paltz, he was intimidated and switched gears to music and philosophy. This lead Ouellete to form a rock band and move to Boston in 1985, where he plunged into the music scene for six years, performing at clubs in and around Boston and New York City. He later returned to painting and immersed himself in the process. Because of its unpredictable quality, his painting tool of choice is a pastry knife. According to Ouellette, “It’s the excitement of the accident, of what I cannot anticipate or control, that ultimately satisfies me.” He was invited to exhibit in a group show in New York at the Ward-Nasse Gallery, for which he produced a book of pen and ink drawings entitled Dong Prop. In the 1990s, Ouellete moved his family to Albuquerque to make their home and set up a painting studio. He has dazzled the New Mexico art scene with his richly textured figurative paintings. He has had solo exhibitions at Box Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico and the Pure Gallery in Taos, New Mexico. His work is in many private collections and is represented by Box Gallery in Santa Fe.
32
photo by Anna Putnam
FLORENCE PIERCE Albuquerque
Untitled #74 resin relief, 20 x 17.5 inches, 1991 courtesy Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico
“It is concerned with turning inward and becoming aware of the mysterious and the ineffable, of timelessness and luminosity.”
Florence Miller came to Taos, New Mexico to study painting with Emil Bisttram at his studio school for a summer. Two years later Florence Miller was invited back to join the Transcendental Painting Group led by Emil Bisttram and Raymond Jonson, where she met another student, Horace Towner Pierce, who became her husband. In Lucy Lippard’s In Touch with Light, the definitive book on Florence Miller Pierce and her work, Lippard states that “Light was the major player in transcendental painting, and it remained so in most of Miller’s art.” Pierce explored the element of light in many ways over the years, always from what she would term a spiritual perspective. In 1969, a fortuitous accident took place in her studio. While she was experimenting with resin, a drop fell on a piece of tin foil. Pierce held it up to the light and was fascinated by the way the resin captured the light. This event led her on a path of discovery that culminated in the luminous resign reliefs for which she became renowned and which she continues to make today. Pierce received the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2003 and the Albuquerque Arts Alliance Award for Fine Art in 1996. Her work has been represented in over 60 exhibitions nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at the Albuquerque Museum, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. and SITE Santa Fe. Pierce’s work is included in many private and public collections including the Albuquerque Museum, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York and the Sasebo Museum in Sasebo, Japan. photo by Jack Parsons
33
DIEGO ROMERO Cochiti Pueblo
Industrial Landscape ceramic vessel, 10.25 x 5 inches courtesy Robert Nichols Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico collection of Robert Nichols
“What is traditional today was contemporary yesterday, and what is contemporary today will be traditional tomorrow.”
Diego Romero is a contemporary artist whose unconventional, heterogeneous style reflects his early interest in traditional Pueblo style, Greek mythology and the cartoon aesthetic of comic books. The result is a humorous and often satirical grouping of traditional Pueblo Indian pottery shapes decorated with imagery appropriated from both traditional and contemporary Indian culture. The complexity of these cultural, political and spiritual themes, together with the diversity of his experience, is present in Romero’s aesthetic. Born in Berkeley, California, Romero spent time in New Mexico visiting relatives at Cochiti Pueblo. He was exposed to traditional artisan-style Pueblo ceramics and, at the same time, white liberal politics typical of Berkeley’s social and cultural environment. A member of the Cochiti Pueblo, he was initially alienated from the Pueblo; however, he had an epiphany when he returned for a ceremonial dance, and has been involved in the spiritual life of the village ever since. At the age of 18, Romero enrolled in the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, where he discovered his affinity for clay while working with Hopi potter Otellie Loloma. He went on to graduate from Otis Parson’s School of Design and the University of California, Los Angeles. He currently lives in Santa Fe. His work is in numerous museum collections around the world, including the British Museum in London, England, the Boston Musuem of Fine Art in Massachusetts and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Romero is currently represented by Robert Nichols Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
34
JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH Corrales
The American Landscape seven-color lithograph , edition 20 30 x 22.5 inches, 2006, collaborating printer James Teskey courtesy Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque, New Mexico
“The American Landscape is undergoing constant change by political and corporate economic agendas impacting the natural world and creating an assemblage of nuclear admixture. Some scientists believe that eventually humans will self-immolate, thus leaving the planet to the surviving insects, like perhaps the cockroaches.� Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, an enrolled Flathead Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation of Montana, was determined to create a body of work that would be found in museums around the world. The effect of her ambition has transcended the personal. Her work has paved a new path for many of her fellow Native American artists. Smith received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Art Education at Framingham State College in Massachusetts and a Master of Arts degree from the University of New Mexico. She gained recognition for pairing traditional cultural iconography with recognizable commercial icons and contemporary methods of painting and printmaking. In her work, she addresses tribal politics, human rights, spirituality and the environment with a sense of humor. Calling herself a cultural art worker, Smith actively travels, lectures, curates and advocates for contemporary Native American artists. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally for many years, including most recently, solo exhibitions at Suffolk University in Boston, the Montclair Museum in New Jersey, and Valdosta State University in Georgia. Her work is in numerous public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in Quito, Ecuador, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Mankind in Vienna, Austria. Smith is a regular guest artist at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she creates limited edition prints with collaborating printers. photo by Thomas King
35
MARY TSIONGAS Albuquerque
Bighorn Target digital print, foam target, 22 x 24 inches, 2005
“My work in the last ten years explores my changing relationship to the natural world [landscape] and as a term of opposition to the increasingly unnatural suburban/urban engineered/built environments in which I find myself. My choice of subject hinges on my deep concern about how we as humans are impacting the natural world; and on my interest in how these impacts are affecting me personally and globally.”
Born and raised in Greece, Mary Tsiongas works in film, photography, sculpture, performance art, and mixed media. Her most recent body of work, When the Hunter Gathers, explores hunting as a complex and increasingly marginalized human activity. Through the process of working on it, Tsiongas arrived at a new and unanticipated sense of empathy for the modern hunter and his/her modern prey. The body of Tsiongas’s work takes a multi-media approach to understanding and describing her present place in this moment, in the natural world. Her sense of superstition and magic first developed in her native Greece; although she has distanced herself from those beliefs, through her work she seeks to marry the mystery and ceremony of her cultural heritage with her affinity for biology and technology in an attempt to decipher evidence from the past as it transforms into the raw beauty of today. Tsiongas received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Massachusetts College of Art and her Master of Fine Arts degree in Film, Video and Performance from California College of Arts and Crafts in 1993. She has taught in Oakland, California and been an Artist-in-Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in California. Tsiongas now lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as an Assistant Professor in Electronic Media at the University of New Mexico. Her work has been shown in more than 40 solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, and she is the recipient of the 1995 WESTAF National Endowment for the Arts grant.
36
JOEL-PETER WITKIN Albuquerque
Satiro toned gelatin silver print, 29 x 25.625 inches, 1992 courtesy Hasted Hunt Gallery, New York, New York & Galerie Baudoin Lebon, Paris
“The job of the artist is to spiritualize matter.” Joel-Peter Witkin is one of the most celebrated photographers in the international art scene today. He creates elaborate tableaux, staged photographs composed with a painterly eye. His intuitive approach to the printing process includes scratching the negative and bleaching and toning the prints. His work reflects concerns similar to those of the Baroque and Surrealist movements, and he is inspired by the work of Giotto and Max Ernst. Witkin often deals with themes of death and alienation, in complex images, recalling religious episodes or famous classical paintings. Because of the transgressive nature of the contents of his pictures, Witkin’s photographs have sometimes provoked shocked public opinion. His work as a combat photographer in the Vietnam War further compounded his early awareness of death and suffering. Following the war, Witkin worked as a freelance photographer. In 1974, he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from Cooper Union in New York and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of New Mexico. Witkin lives and works in Albuquerque and regularly travels the world to stage and create his photographs. His honors are many, including the prestigious Commandeur des Arts et de Lettres from France. Witkin’s exhibitions are far too numerous to list here. His work is exhibited nationally and internationally at major museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and The Louvre in Paris, France. Witkin’s work is in many private and public collections around the world including the Albuquerque Museum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Metropolitan Museum Art in New York. His work is represented by Hasted Hunt Gallery in New York and Galerie Baudoin Lebon in Paris, France. photo by Julie Weisz
37
MELISSA ZINK Taos
Fragmenting Identity mixed media, 12 x 11.5 inches, 2004 courtesy Parks Gallery, Taos, New Mexico
“What we are looking for is transportation to that remarkable state of mind which seems like a brief glimpse of Enlightenment. It is probably irrelevant how it is produced. The state of mind, I mean. Whether a Balinese tobacco container or a Rembrandt etching takes one’s breath away, what is crucial is to become breathless.”
Focusing on her passion for literature and the physical vehicle (the book) that transmits the power of the word, Melissa Zink creates poetic works of visual narrative that become timeless. Zinc attended the Willard School at Swarthmore College, the Kansas City Art Institute and the University of Chicago. She led a full life raising a family and having a successful framing business, and in the late 1970s, she went on to pursue her passion as an artist. Zink employs various media in fresh combinations to create threedimensional tableaux and wall reliefs to explore book-related themes that inform her process — her primary concern for more than 30 years. Zink is inspired by artists such as Pieter Brueghel, René Magritte and the author Charles Dickens, whose work she combines with late-Renaissance imagery, references to Alice in Wonderland, and the lexicon of bookbinding, typography and papermaking. Zink experiments in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, ceramic and cast bronze sculpture, printmaking, collage and assemblage using graphic images and found objects. Zink’s work has been in more than 50 exhibitions, including at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. She received the Governor’s Award for Excellence and Achievement in the Arts from the State of New Mexico in 2001. Her work is represented in many private and public collections including the Albuquerque Museum, the Harwood Museum in Taos, New Mexico and the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work is represented by the Parks Gallery in Taos, New Mexico.
38
EXHIBITION LIST LARRY BELL
TOM DIXON
Cube 44 coated blue azure/water clear glass 20 x 20 x 20 inches, 2006
Untitled (black) oil on masonite, 66 x 48 inches, 2006 Untitled (blue) oil on masonite, 66 x 48 inches, 2006
CYNTHIA COOK Installation of small works:
Untitled (lavender) oil on masonite, 66 x 48 inches, 2006
August mixed media, 17 x 17 x 2 inches, 2006
MARY LEWIS GARCIA
L’Automne mixed media, 27 x 17 x 3 inches, 2006
Untitled traditionally fired clay, 16 x 12 x 12 inches, 1987
The Green Room mixed media, 11 x 9 x 3 inches, 2006
BILL GILBERT
Je Vais a la Gloire mixed media, 11 x 7 x 1.5 inches, 2006
The Kiss digital media, an ongoing project
Magnolia mixed media, 27 x 17 x 2 inches, 2006
(For John Wesley Powell) Attempts to Walk the Grid One Hour in Each Cardinal Direction digital prints, each 40” x 40” inches
Sea-Change mixed media, 15.5 x 12 x 2 inches, 2006 Splendor at Dusk mixed media, 18 x 18 x 2 inches, 2006 Ta Da Free… mixed media, 22 x 16 x 1.5 inches, 2006
September 6, 2005 Floating Island September 27, 2005 Sand Canyon September 9, 2005 Good Hope Bay
ANNE COOPER Fecundus LXXXI wood, plaster, graphite, 51 x 51 x 1 inches, 2005 Frumentum IX.IX wood, glass, dried plants, 8 x 30 x 3 inches, 2005 Untitled (Solemnis series) wood, cast bronze, 19 x 19 x 2.5 inches, 2001
DOUGLAS KENT HALL Desktop Images: The Beach Boys giclee print, 20 x 26 inches, 2005 Desktop Images: Florence giclee print, 20 x 26 inches, 2005 Desktop Images: New Jersey giclee print, 20 x 26 inches, 2005 Desktop Images: Stigmata giclee print, 20 x 26 inches, 2005 39
EXHIBITION LIST FREDERICK HAMMERSLEY New Member #7 oil on rag paper on linen, 11 x 9 inches, 1989 Steak and Ale #6 oil on rag paper on linen, 8 x 9.625 inches, 1989 courtesy Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
GRANT HAYUNGA Black and Blue oil and mixed media on canvas, 72 x 90 inches, 2005 Dawn oil and mixed media on canvas, 40 x 32 inches, 1998 courtesy Linda Durham Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM
ORLANDO LEYBA ‘55 Pinto (Frijoles) mixed media on panel, 20 x 16 inches, 2006 Los Alamos mixed media on panel, 60 x 47 inches, 2004 Lotus mixed media on canvas, 12 x 16 inches, 2006
JENNIFER LYNCH Untitled (#3) photolithograph, 54 x 40 inches, 2006 Untitled (#16) photolithograph, 40 x 54 inches, 2006 Untitled (#19) photolithograph, 54 x 40 inches, 2006
LUIS JIMENEZ Baile con la Talaca lithograph, 42 x 30 inches, 1984 collection of Douglas Kent Hall & Dawn Hall Blackjack painted modeling clay, 11 x 13 x 4 inches, 2000 collection of Dr. Frederick Cohn & Ellen Landis Border Crossing lithograph with chine colle, 34 x 23 inches, 1987 collection of Dr. Frederick Cohn & Ellen Landis
TOM JOYCE Bloom forged iron, 22 x 24 x 24 inches, 2005
BEVERLEY MAGENNIS Garden Lady ceramic mosaic, 72 x 42 x 42 inches, 2006
DELILAH MONTOYA Holly Holm, Albuquerque, New Mexico digital inkjet/pieziograph, 30 x 22 inches, 2005 Holly vs. Christy: Isleta Casino digital inkjet/pieziograph, 11.5 x 31.5 inches, 2005 Jackie Chavez, Los Chavez, New Mexico digital inkjet/pieziograph, 30 x 22 inches, 2005 Jackie vs. Audrey: Okay Casino digital inkjet/pieziograph, 11.5 x 31.5 inches, 2005 Stephanie Weighs In digital inkjet/pieziograph, 20 x 16 inches, 2003 Stephanie vs. Holly: Sandia Casino digital inkjet/pieziograph, 10 x 32 inches, 2003
40
EXHIBITION LIST IVA MORRIS Cat’s Cradle oil on linen, 65 x 43 inches, 2003
A Map to Heaven five-color lithograph with chine colle, edition 20 39 x 34.5 inches, 2002 collaborating printer Ulriche Kuehle collection of Deavours Hall
MARC OUELLETTE
courtesy Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque, NM
Apple oil on canvas, 46 x 42 inches, 2005 collection of Lynn Marchand Goldstein & George Goldstein
MARY TSIONGAS
Cane oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches, 2006 collection of Dr. Jorge Oti Virus oil on canvas, 44 x 64 inches, 2006
Bighorn Target digital print, foam target, 22 x 24 inches, 2005 Coyote Target digital print, foam target, 22 x 24 inches, 2005 Deer Target digital print, foam target, 22 x 24 inches, 2005
courtesy Box Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
FLORENCE PIERCE Untitled #74 resin relief, 17.5 x 20 inches, 1991 courtesy Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
Hindsight Installation with taxidermy foam deer, 28 wooden arrows, black plexiglass pool, 8 x 4 feet, 2005
JOEL-PETER WITKIN Cupid and Centaur toned gelatin silver print, 32.75 x 27 inches, 1992
DIEGO ROMERO Industrial Landscape ceramic vessel, 10.25 x 5 inches, 2000 courtesy Robert Nichols Gallery, Santa Fe, NM collection Robert Nichols
JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH The American Landscape seven-color lithograph, edition 15 30 x 22.5 inches, 2006 collaborating printer James Teskey Eye Candy seven-color lithograph, edition 15 30 x 22.5 inches, 2006 collaborating printers Aaron Shipps & Brooke Steiger
Satiro toned gelatin silver print, 29 x 25.625 inches, 1992 Vienna Eye Phantom toned gelatin silver print, 33 x 26 inches, 1990 courtesy Hasted Hunt Gallery, New York, NY & Galerie Baudoin Lebon, Paris
MELISSA ZINK Couplet in Glazed Damask mixed media, 11 x 9 inches, 2006 Fragmenting Identity mixed media, 12 x 11.5 inches, 2004 courtesy Parks Gallery, Taos, NM
41
CREDITS 516 ARTS Staff
Special Thanks
Suzanne Sbarge, Executive Director
Albuquerque Convention & Visitors Bureau
Andrew John Cecil, Program Director
The Artichoke Cafe
Board of Directors
Pat Berrett Photography Ron Breen
John Lewinger, Chair
Burgy
Arturo Sandoval, Vice President
City of Albuquerque Dept. of Economic Development
Joni Thompson, Treasurer/Secretrary
Clear Channel Outdoor
Advisory Committee
Doug Banks & Karen Weaver, Desert Dog Technology, Inc. Desert Paper
Kim Arthun
Downtown Action Team
Miguel Gandert
Escuela del Sol Montessori, Inc.
Arif Khan
Hart Construction
Norty Kalishman
The Harwood Art Center
Diane Karp
Historic District Improvement Company
Wendy Lewis
Loren Kahn Puppet & Object Theatre
Danny Lopez
Scott Krichau
Susan McAllister
Steve Madson
Christopher Mead
Randy McDonald, Miller Stratvert
Elsa Menendez
Don Mickey Designs National Hispanic Cultural Center
Interns
New Mexico Department of Tourism
Amanda Hanks
New Mexico Technet
Rhiannon Mercer
Anna Putnam
Fonda Murray
Theresa Bell, Romero Rose Untitled Fine Art Services
Exhibition Catalog Design: Suzanne Sbarge Printing: Don Mickey Designs Production support: Nicolasa Chavez, Kate Eaton, Marcia Edgar, Tom Richardson, Roman Wolf-Cecil
42
Vital Signs The Weekly Alibi Wingspread Collector’s Guide Word of Eye, web site design
516 ARTS Founding Sponsors McCune Charitable Foundation Anonymous Bank of Albuquerque BGK Charter Bank Coldwell Banker First Community Bank First National Bank of Santa Fe Goodman Realty Group Grubb & Ellis Heritage Hotels & Resorts John & Jamie Lewinger J.T. Michaelson Mosher Enterprises New Mexico Bank & Trust New Mexico Business Weekly Paradigm & Company SG Properties Stewart Title of Albuquerque Sunrise Bank Technology Ventures Corporation
43
516 ARTS is an independent, nonprofit art space — a unique hybrid venue somewhere between a gallery and museum. Our exhibitions program features high caliber, contentdriven work through a series of collaborative exhibitions. The mission of 516 ARTS is to serve as a museum-style gallery to attract audiences to Downtown Albuquerque for arts and cultural activities; to forge links for the arts between Albuquerque, Santa Fe and the greater Southwest region; and to help establish Albuquerque as an art destination.
Exhibition catalog published by 516 ARTS 516 Central Avenue SW, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87102 telephone: 505-242-1445 • www.516arts.org © 516 ARTS, 2006 FRONT COVER: Joel-Peter Witkin, Vienna Eye Phantom, toned gelatin silver print, 33 x 26 inches, 1990, courtesy Hasted Hunt Gallery, New York, NY & Galerie Baudoin Lebon, Paris. BACK COVER: Mary Lewis Garcia, Untitled (altered detail), traditionally fired clay, 1987.