EartVO K AT I O N culture inspiration
JANUARY 2O22
An EVOKE Contemporary publication E VO K AT I O N
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A Note from Evoke Ringing in a new year is always a splendid reason to celebrate with the optimism and potential of new beginnings. We celebrate 2022 with a series of group exhibitions that include inspired work by our renowned artists and introductions to exceptional new creators. Beginning with a compelling display of landscape paintings, followed by a show featuring the use of unusual media, we close our spring season with our much-anticipated nudes show. In March we invite you to join us at Evoke for the launch of Michael Scott’s new book, Preternatural, and a featured showing of his latest work that precedes the opening of a nearly year-long exhibition at the Cincinnati Museum Center. A new feature in Evokation, Curators We Love, is an homage to the creative and essential people who work behind the scenes in the art world, researching artists and art as they build and preserve important collections, recognize deserving artists, and bring their works before the public. Also in these pages you’ll learn how to romance Santa Fe with our tips on the most diverting venues, activities, and indulgences to enjoy yourself or share with someone special. We wish you a Happy New Year! Kathrine Erickson + Elan Varshay, Owners and Publishers
OUR NEXT ISSUE Our May issue will introduce the wildly enchanting world of Irene Hardwicke Olivieri. In June we present Alice Leora Briggs’s new book, Abecedario de Juárez: An Illustrated Lexicon, to coincide with an exhibition of her provocative artwork. To bring our summer season to a close, Lynn Boggess unveils his latest plein-air achievements in a July–August show.
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CONTRIBUTORS Ashley M. Biggers is an awardwinning freelance journalist and author based in Albuquerque. Susan Guevara is a visual storyteller and award-winning book illustrator who has been an integral part of the Evoke team since 2017. Mara Christian Harris is a marketing and communications professional who recently retired from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. She has been associated with Evoke since its inception. Richard Lehnert is a poet, music critic, and freelance copyeditor who for 40 years has edited arts copy for many New Mexico publications. After 30 years in Santa Fe, he now lives in Ashland, Oregon. David Mendez has been a graphic-design professional for the past 19 years, specializing in work for museums, galleries, and other cultural institutions. John O’Hern retired from a 35-year career in museum management and curation and now writes full time as Santa Fe Editor for the five magazines of International Artist Publishing. Formerly Editor of American Art Collector, American Fine Art, and several other art magazines, Joshua Rose is now Senior Vice President of the Santa Fe Art Auction. Freelance writer and editor Eve Tolpa is a former longtime Santa Fean currently living in Atlanta. MaLin Wilson-Powell is a writer and independent curator who lives in Santa Fe.
CONTENTS
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Calendar of events
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Crossroads
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Medium Rare
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Gravitas
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A Closer Look: Michael Scott
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Artist Spotlight: Irene Hardwicke Olivieri
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Curators we Love: Laura Finlay Smith
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How to Santa Fe
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Santa Fe Railyard District
EVOKATION is printed three times annually by EVOKE Contemporary, 550 S. Guadalupe St., Santa Fe, NM 87501. © EVOKE Contemporary. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. On the cover: B. Shawn Cox, Firm Grip on His Side Arm, dibond print on aluminum, 40”× 40”.
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CALENDAR OF EVENTS 2O22 All events take place at EVOKE Contemporary, 550 S. Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501. Visit evokecontemporary.com to sign up for special previews + for further information.
Jan 28 Crossroads | a landscape exhibition featuring the diverse views of three compelling painters: Jay Bailey, Francis DiFronzo, and Jeremy Mann. On display through February 19, 2022. Feb 25 Medium Rare | an exhibition created from unusual media featuring the work of Mariella Bisson, B. Shawn Cox, Kay Khan, and Gugger Petter. On display through April 23, 2022. Mar 25 Preternatural | a book launch and signing with Michael Scott featuring the artist’s work, which explores what is beyond the realism of nature in search of the sublime. On display through April 23, 2022. Apr 29 Gravitas | an exhibition of the nude in painting and sculpture, with contributions from Harry Holland, Cheryl Kelley, Soey Milk, Kristine Poole, Wade Reynolds, Andrew Shears, Daniel Sprick, Bernardo Torrens, Kent Williams and Shane Wolf.
May 27 Irene Hardwicke Olivieri | Olivieri’s debut solo exhibition in Santa Fe unveils enchanting, idiosyncratic, and curiously complex artworks that explore the sub-terranean aspects of life—love and relationships, secrets and obsessions—while opening a window on what the artist calls the “mysterious workshop of nature.” On display through July 23, 2022. Jun 24 Abecedario de Juárez | exhibition, book launch, and signing featuring Alice Leora Briggs. Abecedario de Juárez, an illustrated lexicon by Julián Cardona illustrated with evocative drawings by Briggs, uses vocabulary created by the violence in Juárez, Mexico, to tell the stories of the people who live with it every day. On display through July 23, 2022. Jul 29 Lynn Boggess | annual solo exhibition of this artist’s distinctive and heavily textured oil paintings, created outdoors in lush wooded landscapes. On display through August 20, 2022.
On display through May 21, 2022.
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Opposite: Jay Bailey, Dust Storm in the Petrified Forest, oil on canvas, 40” × 30”. Above, Francis DiFronzo, Where We Are Now (Part 2), oil over gouache and watercolor on panel, 36” × 72”. Below, Jeremy Mann, Composition 179, oil on panel, 48” × 48”.
Crossroads
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ow do we respond to the world around us? More important, how do artists of our time respond to it? Not just the world we have created—the human world of bustling streets, cell-phone towers, multilane highways, and throngs of people going about their daily lives—but also the world we see beyond this: the permanence behind the fleeting, the physical realm of nature that serves as backdrop and stage to our physical lives. Fittingly for the turn of the New Year, Evoke Contemporary has curated Crossroads, an exhibition of contemporary landscape painting from three distinctly different voices: perennial
gallery favorites Jeremy Mann and Francis DiFronzo, and an invited guest: Jay Bailey. Each artist is working toward a personal vision in his work, and each has been creating that vision through the past few years, when the landscapes of the external world has come to symbolize so much more than we can see on the surface.
what surrounds them—what’s seen above the horizon. In DiFronzo’s painting Where Are We Now, Part II, a lone boxcar sits in the middle of the desert, its sliding doors open on both sides to reveal the sprawling cloud shapes seen at sunset in the desert southwest. The boxcar is completed in fine detail, including
Francis DiFronzo is well known for his paintings of the trains, boats, cars, and abandoned hotel signs he finds in the far reaches of the Mojave Desert. A resident of Southern California, DiFronzo travels to this large, expansive space to find unusual relics and objects that seem to be leftovers of past lives. While at first glance one might think that these paintings are about the objects that typically occupy the foreground, for DiFronzo the work is actually about E VO K AT I O N
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Bailey found himself drawn to these landscapes after he’d removed himself from them. “I moved to Texas, but I spent most of my life in northern Nevada,” says Bailey. “I would go out my parents’ front door and see the Sierras right there. Ultimately, I missed home, missed the drama of the landscape, the big storm clouds, the smell of wet sagebrush. And now, revisiting it to me is very lyrical, poetic, and these paintings are my way of communing with those early memories.”
Top to bottom: Jay Bailey, The Hard Hand of War, oil on canvas, 20” × 24”. Francis DiFronzo, While Far Off Stars Quiver, Blinking Dire Messages in Code, oil over gouache and watercolor on panel, 30”× 60”. Opposite: Jeremy Mann, Composition 180, oil on panel, 36” × 36”.
its faded Santa Fe Railway logo and weatherworn panels and paint. For DiFronzo, the painting is really about what surrounds this lonely boxcar. “My paintings are almost like mini-plays, where the landscape is the stage,” he says. “I find that things happen on this stage, and the objects I place in the landscape are like actors, characters,
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and the stage is the Mojave Desert. My work is always about the land, the temporal things that come and go contrasted with the permanence of the landscape they are found in.” Jay Bailey paints emotive and expressive landscapes that arise from his memories of Western spaces throughout his lifetime. Also a figurative painter,
For Bailey, the switch from figuration to landscapes was mainly about knowing that he had permission to do them. The connection between the two genres is something he enjoys exploring. As Bailey explains, it’s not as vast a divide as one might think: “In a landscape painting, the viewer becomes the figure in the space, and that idea is very important to me. I think when you have a figurative painting, the figure creates the narrative, so these paintings are a way to escape the narrative and to focus on clouds, skies, rain, and the way the rain sculpts mountains, desert, and earth.” Jeremy Mann’s landscapes are in fact cityscapes, completed in an abstracted style that captures the rawness of urban street environments. These paintings, which Mann refers to as his Composition series, were originally part of his master’s thesis, when the painter was exploring the various tools artists use in the creative process. “I’ve been trying to see how far I can push my control—and noncontrolled marks and representation—in the
images I was making,” says Mann. “Cityscapes are the best for these— grungy, fast, heavy, light, and dark . . . so many elements ripe with the possibility of being put into the right spots in one harmonious composition, once you got over the initial overwhelming amount
of information there is when you’re looking at them and trying to figure out where the hell the first mark goes,” Mann says. “So I decided I preferred to try and paint how it ‘feels’ once you’re in it. Soaked it up every day and night, listening to the sounds of a city’s
heartbeat, walking around those streets, sometimes in the rain, sometimes with one eye shut, sometimes just standing among the river of people and watching it all go by.” —Joshua Rose
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Medium Rare
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nconventionality is the stock in trade for the artists exhibited in Medium Rare. Mariella Bisson, Gugger Petter, Kay Khan, and B. Shawn Cox flourish in the playground of unexpected media as they hopscotch genre boundaries and elevate everyday materials to the uses of fine art. These multidisciplinary artists look beyond what
is to what could be—and in that process they take the viewer along with them. GUGGER PETTER Denmark-born global traveler Gugger Petter, a widely exhibited gallery and museum artist, employs paper in surprising ways. In the mid-1980s, seeking both limitation and challenge in a medium for her monumental portraiture, Petter found both in the usually fragile material of newspaper, which she converts into sturdier forms by rolling it tightly into tubes, weaving it, and sealing it with varnish.
“Normally, a weaver would have to comply with what’s within the craft,” Petter says. “The edges have to be fine, and it has to be perfect. I’ve never done a weaving like that. I can’t work with anything too controlled. I had to create my own technique based on what might be pure mistake.” Petter’s works embody a balance of tensions beyond the loom on which she weaves. The tapestries hover between opposites: control and chaos, light and dark, the everyday and the historical. Her portraits draw in the viewer: “When people see my work from far away, they
Opposite: Gugger Petter, Young Woman No. 3, woven newspaper, 64” × 44”. Above: Gugger Petter, Woman with Dog, woven newspaper, 27” × 29”.
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think it’s a painting,” she says. “It’s not until they are really up close that they see the material—then realism is gone and it’s pure abstraction.”
MARIELLA BISSON Mariella Bisson celebrates nature’s forms and textures through multilayered collage. Her Vermont upbringing instilled in her an affinity for thick woodlands, cascading waterfalls, and tumbles of moss-covered rock. For decades, however, the Northwoods woman swam upstream in the urbanity of New York City. After earning a BFA from Pratt Institute, she worked as a curator, arts advocate, and educator in Brooklyn while building her full-time studio practice. Since then, her work has earned the attention and support of prominent foundations and artist-inresident programs across the U.S. After September 11, 2001, Bisson answered the mountains’ call and relocated her studio practice to the Catskills. In this haven she captures landscapes in sculptural relief, beginning with custom-stretched linen canvases or wood panels, on which she works in layered paper, archival sealant, and oil paint. In the final creations, light cast from above catches minuscule edges of paper, creating the dappled shadows flickering in a forest, and subtle textures emerging from under the paint mimic such natural objects as foliage or bark. The result is not purely representational, but it is evocative. “There’s always a need for nature. It’s what we’re made of,” Bisson says. “I hope people looking at one of my paintings feel that sweet spot between person, painting, and planet.”
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KAY KHAN Santa Fe–based Kay Khan’s fiber sculptures slowly reveal their intricacy to the viewer. Hailing from a family of makers, Khan trained as a painter and ceramist. It was while reassembling a motorcycle seat while working a post-graduate job as an upholsterer that she began to realize new possibilities for textile art. Inspired by amphorae, ancient Greek jars or vases that served as both sculptures and storytelling objects, Khan’s early textile sculptures began with vessels often rendered on a grand scale. She uses cottons, silks, satins, and felts, as well as a full repertoire of sewing techniques: quilting, stitching, embroidering, appliqué. She rarely uses wire armatures—the fabric stands on its own. Today, Khan is continuing her Armor and Façade series, which reconstructs and reimagines aspects of garments as figurative sculpture. It is, “at the most basic level, about how we protect (armor) and present
Opposite top to bottom: Mariella Bisson, First Falls, Spruce Creek Trail, mixed media on linen, 50” × 38”. Mariella Bisson, Split Birch, Bluestone, Red Trail Series, mixed media on linen, 38” × 50”. Left: Kay Khan, Finestra, stitched cotton, silk, felt, wire, 26.5” × 16” × 8”. Above: Kay Khan, The Lion, the Cardinal, and the Rose, stitched, quilted, embroidered mixed media, 16” × 16”.
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(armor and façade) ourselves through what we wear,” Khan says. “A friend once said to me, in an offhand remark when giving me advice, ‘Guard your heart.’ That intriguing phrase inspired the armor.” Ceremonial masks comprise a subset of the series. They are “perhaps the ultimate armor, because they both represent and highlight, as well as hide a true identity,” Khan says. Khan’s works are now among the collections of the Albuquerque Museum, a long-held dream of the artist’s, who set herself that goal when she arrived in New Mexico more than 25 years ago. They are also held by the New Mexico Museum of Art and many other institutions. Often, the pieces compete against more conventional sculpture for these coveted spots.
lawyer in Austin, Texas, he graphically challenges the iconographic figure. Cox sometimes literally flips the image of the cowboy on its head. In his lenticular prints he simulcasts male and female images, leading the viewer to question where one begins and the other ends. In his fabric works, floral patterns back the printed steely gaze of a cowboy and vintage cowgirl pin-ups as he subverts contemporary social mythology. Cox’s architectural training informs his sculptural paper works. His discrete materials, which have included pages from
a Bible, children’s books, and copies of Playboy magazine, slough their original meanings as he disconnects them from their sources. Then, with origami paper building blocks, Cox creates new meanings through juxtaposition. Cox—and each of the artists in Medium Rare—enlists materiality to create the unexpected and unusual. Each calls on the viewer to consider that things aren’t always what they seem. —Ashley M. Biggers
B. SHAWN COX B. Shawn Cox refashions conventional narratives with his choices of materials, deconstructing and rebuilding story through a handful of mediums: acrylic on fabric, reassembled modulated paper, and lenticular printing (i.e., printed images that produce an illusion of depth that appears to shift or move when viewed from different angles). Cox’s recent work stars cowboys, those visual icons of the West. His West Texas youth of dusty days spent turning out cattle stood in stark contrast to the polished glamor of the cowboys he’d watch on TV in the evenings. He saw little of the stereotypical masculinity of these Hollywood figures in his own home, where his dad may have been the ostrichboot–clad figurehead but his mother managed ranch operations. Today, through this lens of personal memory and his urban experience as a practicing 12
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Above: Kay Khan, Flicker, stitched and quilted silk, cotton, felt, 25” × 32” × 9”. Opposite: B. Shawn Cox, clockwise from top left: Curlee Q Stach, Lavender Dreams, Yella Fella, Midnight Sky; oil on fabric, 48” × 36” each.
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Opposite: Kent Williams, Upright, mixed media on paper, 24” × 19”. Above, Daniel Sprick, Reclining Nude, oil on panel, 36” × 48”.
Gravitas
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ong before Isaac Newton reasoned that a falling apple is acted upon by an unseen force of nature called gravity, the Roman virtue of gravitas denoted weightiness in all its senses, from physical heaviness to seriousness, dignity, and depth of character. Physically, Earth is a speck in the universe. We are specks on that speck,
yet our bodies and the world we live in are almost unfathomably complex—our bodies contain the ability to comprehend gravitas and to generate cells.
in a mix of power and sweetness: words, song, gesture, passion, ideas, ingenuity, devotion, merriment, vanity, and virtue.
In her poem “Evidence,” Mary Oliver writes:
Over the centuries, artists have used the human body as an object of beauty and as a means to express the noncorporeal ideas listed in Oliver’s poem.
As for the body, it is solid and strong and curious and full of detail: it wants to polish itself; it wants to love another body; it is the only vessel in the world that can hold,
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acknowledges; “maybe 84% beautiful. . . . There’s something marvelous about everyone.” When Sprick’s painting Reclining Nude was first exhibited, artists and nonartists clustered in front of it to appraise its surface and its depths, its lights and darks, its soft and hard edges. The model’s hip and left buttock are emphasized by her pose
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and by Sprick’s use of light on her supple flesh. The light on her torso has a highlight that emphasizes her nipple. Her head is turned away, concealing her individuality and allowing us to look on her as an epitome of womanhood, formed by nature to bring life into the world and to nourish it. Despite her fecundity, the dried, cracked skin of her feet, at lower left, suggests the transitory nature of her vitality.
Wade Reynolds’s Figure with Folding Screen presents a female nude in a provocative pose softened by shadow. Reynolds was a master of light and Below: Wade Reynolds, Figure with Standing Screen, oil on canvas, 48” × 60”. Opposite, top: Kristine Poole, Duende, fired clay, 24.5” × 22” × 21.5”. Bottom left: Shane Wolf, For Thee I Sing, charcoal, chalk, sanguine, and pierre noire on prepared paper, 35.6” × 38”. Bottom right: Soey Milk, White in Shade, graphite on paper, 16” × 14”.
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shadow, as Sprick is today. If his minute brush strokes were enlarged to resemble those of the Impressionists or the pointillism of Seurat, you would see myriad juxtaposed colors. They remind us of the complex physical process of seeing and perceiving—of suspending the belief that the surface is merely paint. His model is exposed to the external effects of light and temperature while delving into the internal processes of her psyche. In Universal Ties II, a study for his diptych Eros, Shane Wolf has drawn life-size figures of two nude men. The foreshortened foreground figure is supported by the background figure—either in trust or from necessity. “I find it troubling that
Left: Bernardo Torrens, Liz II, acrylic on panel, 32” × 20”. Above: Shane Wolf, Eros: Universal Ties II, charcoal, chalk, sanguine, and pierre noire on prepared paper, 58.4” × 35.6”. Opposite: Harry Holland, Group, oil on canvas, 36” × 40”.
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male nudity is censored so aggressively,” Wolf writes, “and why so many of my fellow artists avoid male genitalia all together. Something I find absolutely ridiculous is to see an otherwise lovely drawing or painting of the male figure that has an ambiguous,
amorphous, fuzzy, and nondescript ‘haze’ around the pubis. The figure, in its entirety, is something to be admired from all angles.” The Czech writer Milan Kundera observed, “The male glance has often been described.
It is commonly said to rest coldly on a woman, measuring, weighing, evaluating, selecting her—in other words, turning her into an object.” In a male-dominated art world, woman as object became the norm. The “measuring, weighing, evaluating” E VO K AT I O N
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Opposite: Lee Price, Surfacing, oil on linen, triptych, 64” × 28” each. Above: Cheryl Kelley, Jewel and the Indigo Children, oil on panel, 48” × 36”.
of the male figure by the male gaze, and the fear of the male figure being perceived as erotic, challenge the male perception of being godlike and heroic. Whether Mary Oliver’s “solid and strong and curious / and full of detail” or St. Paul’s “temple of the Holy Spirit,” the body contains our being, our means of experiencing and communicating both physically and spiritually. Nevertheless, Kenneth Clark observed in his book The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form: “No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling, even if it be only the faintest shadow—and if it does not do so it is bad art and false morals.” —John O’Hern
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A CLOSER LOOK 22
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Michael Scott The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) posited that the power of matter acts upon the imagination of the artist to create works that kindle the soul’s response to something true. The momentous movement of energy I encountered during my visit to Michael Scott’s studio was vivid and humbling, true as the elements. Scott’s otherworldly landscape paintings—which depict, seemingly by magic, the matter beneath the form—are chronicled in an exhibition and book that share the name Preternatural.
moments that captured his attention, portals to the form and matter of the places that stopped him in his tracks. While the form is captured in the shapes of rocks, geysers, clouds, and blazing forests, its matter, or substance, is comprised of nothing less than the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. It is no coincidence that Preternatural takes heed of these elements. Scott’s relationship to the essence of the landscape informs every image he paints. His grand paintings, produced through years of studio work, are more than mere flights of fancy. They are more than precise depictions of beauty or of
frightening occurrences, more than plein air memories. As they transcend narrative, these paintings become condensed aspects of earth, water, air, and fire. Thomas Cole once said, “If imagination is shackled and nothing is described but what we see, seldom will anything truly great be produced within a painting or poetry.” Cole was the founder of the Hudson River School, the first North American art movement to emerge from the Romantic period of art and literature Opposite: Michael Scott, The Witness, oil on canvas, 87” × 58”. Below: Michael Scott, Preternatural book cover.
“I am a wanderer,” says Scott. “Something happens out of meditative walking that encourages me to start a conversation with the landscape—though it’s not the landscape that stops me. It is something beyond the landscape. I don’t have a clue what is going on, but I want to participate in it. It is what you’re made of, what I’m made of, what the tree is made of.” Some call it life force, this undefinable thing that pumps the heart and vivifies matter. Anthropologists say that listening to the natural world is an animistic practice and that attributing sentience to the environment—indeed, to all things—is not only a worldview but a way of being. Perhaps it is sentience that calls out to Scott when he is immersed in nature. Regardless of its source, the call is acknowledged by the artist and recorded masterfully with hue, value, edges, and interlocking shapes. Scott’s plein air studies become memory maps of the
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Above: Michael Scott, Old Growth, Forest, oil on canvas, 72” × 102”. Opposite: Michael Scott, Rogue Wave, oil on canvas, 96” × 108”.
in Europe. In their reaction to the dehumanizing effects of industrialization and the destruction of pristine environments, the Hudson River artists illuminated the landscape, through image and palette, for its preservation. Their artistic depictions of America’s wild places were instrumental in the
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creation of the first national parks in the United States. Michael Scott’s oeuvre extends the legacy of these American landscape painters who, like so many artists and writers of the late-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth century, made the free expression of feeling their primary concern.
To see—and, in turn, to depict—what lies beyond the realism of the landscape is to search for the sublime. Scott’s own search for the sublime might be described as a search for the unknown, not of the material world but of the soul.
“The starting place is always, ‘I know nothing,’” he says. “Painting is a dance between the particular and the cosmos.” For Scott, the greatest artistic pleasure lies at the intersection of those two elements, where a new conversation emerges and takes form. As art historian MaLin Wilson-Powell writes, “Scott’s paintings offer a place where the natural world, the human
world, and the world of the spirit or the soul can commingle. Together they comprise an area that oscillates between what is there and what is not there.” Preternatural, published by the Museum of New Mexico Press, features essays by Laura E. Fry, MaLin Wilson-Powell, and Amy Scott, with a forward by Elizabeth Wiecher Pierce.
A book launch and signing will take place at EVOKE Contemporary on March 26, 2022, from 11 am to 1 pm. America’s Epic Treasures: featuring Preternatural by Michael Scott is an immersive exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center running from May 27, 2022, through January, 2023. —Susan Guevara
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ARTIST SPOTLIGHT 26
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Irene Hardwicke Olivieri EVOKE welcomes to its roster of artists Irene Hardwicke Olivieri. “My vagabond heart has led me to live in a variety of habitats; each one finds its way into my paintings,” she says. An ongoing theme in Olivieri’s work is rewilding the heart, to inspire deeper connections to wild animals and wild lands. Her intricate, lovingly rendered paintings explore the subterranean aspects of life: love and relationships, obsessions, mortality. Primarily a painter, she also makes things out of bones, bringing old skeletons to life. A quotation from the poet Rilke is tacked to her studio wall: “Is not impermanence the very fragrance of our days?” Olivieri was born in the Rio Grande valley of Texas, moved to Brazil in her late teens, and then to Mexico, New York, Oregon, Arizona, and Maine, before finally settling in Santa Fe. “I grew up at the mouth of the Rio Grande River in south Texas, and after taking some tributaries over the years, I’ve moved upstream from my childhood home.” Irene Hardwicke Olivieri will be the featured artist of an exhibition from May 27 to July 23, 2022. Opposite: Irene Hardwicke Olivieri in her studio, photo courtesy of the artist. Above right: Irene Hardwicke Olivieri, The Painter and Her Skeleton, oil on panel, 31” × 20”. Bottom right: Irene Hardwicke Olivieri, Disappearing by Nature, oil on panel, 30” × 43”.
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CURATORS WE LOVE
PHOTO: ELAN VARSHAY
Laura Finlay Smith Laura Finlay Smith is the curator and administrator of the Tia Collection, “A global art collection that is a testimony to the value of diverse cultures, histories, and aesthetics” and is based in Santa Fe. In 1988, fresh from completing her bachelor’s degree at Denison University, a liberal arts school in Granville, Ohio, Smith’s first job, at the Gerald Peters Gallery, was filing transparencies. Two decades later, while working at the Nedra Matteucci Gallery, she met the anonymous collector behind the TIA Collection. Since 2012, Smith has used her formidable intelligence, energy, and integrity to further the Tia collector’s intent to share his love for art, which embraces multiple styles, and spans continents and more than a century. She works to build alliances with artists, galleries, museums, scholars, and collectors through their acquisitions, and by lending art, organizing traveling exhibitions, publishing catalogs, and commissioning art works.
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Following is a brief exchange between curator Laura Finlay Smith and author MaLin Wilson-Powell, who collaborated on the traveling exhibition and catalog New Beginnings: An American Story of Romantics and Modernists in the West. MaLin Wilson-Powell: Please talk about your priorities as the Tia Collection’s curator and administrator. Laura Finlay Smith: They are always changing, but since 2012, the priorities have been two-pronged and based on balancing which artists to collect with what the collection will be doing in the long term. I’m constantly reading, doing research, listening to podcasts—learning about artists. And, of course, all artists have other artists they admire, and I always pay attention to that. Also, balancing the historic interests of the collection with the contemporary. MWP: You seem cognizant of but not swayed by trends, always finding strong artworks by underrecognized or overlooked artists. LFS: I think this comes from being a dealer. There were so many talented artists we represented at
Matteucci, and some of their contemporaries were receiving more recognition. It always kind of broke my heart. MWP: The Tia Collection includes a high proportion of work by women artists. How did this come about? LFS: This started because of the collector’s only child, a daughter whose name is Tia. When she was young, Tia was very creative—loved art, loved dance, loved music. He was creating this with her as the inspiration. We talked about how the women in this collection would, in the long term, be her mentors, and how these women have worked so hard for recognition. I think about Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and all the recognition she has received in just the last five years. In 2020, when the National Gallery acquired a painting of hers, it was the first work they had acquired by any contemporary Native American artist. Ever. Women are receiving recognition, as are artists of color and indigenous artists. I am hopeful that this is a long-term trend, not the idea du jour.
or the inspiration—whatever story the artist wanted to tell. The collector sees an image sent by the gallery or artist and whatever supporting material they send. Going forward, this begins to capture a dialog in a more focused manner, with the artists’ voices representing themselves. You can hear Quick-to-See Smith, for example, talk about her work or a specific piece in the collection, and this keeps the maker’s voice front and center, and reflects the Tia Collection’s focus. MWP: When and how did you enter the art world? LFS: It was my parents and grandparents both. Going to museums and special exhibitions was crucial, from their perspective—to expose us as young people. My Mom’s parents lived in Fort Worth, which has wonderful museums. When the King Tut exhibition first traveled to the US, in the mid-1970s, my parents took us out of school, and we went down to New Orleans to see the show. We typically would go for a meal, and there would be a discussion: What did you see? What did you like? Why did you like it? And
there were, obviously, no wrong answers. When I started working for Peters, I have to give Jerry credit: not once did he ever make me feel that I couldn’t do whatever I wanted to do, even though I was only twenty. The learning and the education and being exposed to so much—I found it all exhilarating. Then, making connections between artists who inspired other artists . . . getting those connections, that big picture. Working for Jeff Mitchell [founder of Mitchell Brown Fine Art and former museum director], I learned about the greater responsibility of working with living artists and introducing them to collectors. And when I was working at Matteucci, from 2004 to 2012, I got to do research all day, every day. I just loved it. For me, I’m the storyteller. That’s my role in life: Telling stories that are not intimidating, and that move forward with those who are thrilled to be along for the ride. —MaLin Wilson-Powell
It is remarkable what we are beginning to watch unfold in the market. I try to work directly with galleries that have artworks on consignment from the artists themselves, so that the artists are benefiting in the moment MWP: Talk about your ongoing emphasis on building archives, including documents, sketches, notes, audio, and video. LFS: The archives came from the idea that, until the collector had visited Santa Fe, he had not seen much of the work in person. So the archives provide supporting stories, whether handwritten descriptions
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, I See Red: 10,000 Years, mixed media on canvas, 60” × 100”.
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meat, topped with Amaretto foam and a sprinkling of cocoa and cinnamon. It’s perfect for celebrating with that special someone. Reservations strongly recommended.
ROMANCING THE CITY
505.983.8604 221 Shelby Street Sazonsantafe.com
Don’t just give flowers and a card for Valentine’s Day (though by all means do that too!). Here are a few of our favorite spots for romantic interludes:
SAZÓN PHOTO: SAZÓN
Award-winning chef Fernando Olea, originally from Mexico City, creates sophisticated dishes that draw on Mexico’s rich culinary traditions, all in a warm, intimate setting. Although Olea is famous for his moles—rich, complex sauces popular throughout Mexico that can have up to 30 ingredients—our favorite item on the Sazón menu is his signature Sopa de Amor (Soup of Love), a memorable cream-based, poblano-chile soup with lump blue crab30
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KAKAWA CHOCOLATE HOUSE PHOTO: KAKAWA CHOCOLATE HOUSE
A romantic city at the best of times, Santa Fe in winter offers even more opportunities for quiet connection. Cool, clear, blue-skied days and crisp, starry nights are perfect for convivial dinners and tranquil walks. Crowds are generally smaller, and you can often make a dinner, spa, or entertainment reservation without having to wait for days.
TEN THOUSAND WAVES AND IZANAMI PHOTO: TEN THOUSAND WAVES
HOW TO SANTA FE
If chocolate be the other food of love (along with music), then Kakawa Chocolate House will transport you to new realms of romance. Kakawa fulfills its mission to reintroduce the public to chocolate by specializing in authentically historic chocolate drinks. These are not your average hot chocolates, but elixirs concocted from recipes ranging from 1000 BCE to the present, including from the Pre-Columbian Mayan and Aztec cultures, 17th-century Europe, and colonial America and Mexico. Kakawa also offers chocolate confections—truffles, chocolates, caramels, ice cream—with an array of classic and contemporary flavors, such as pomegranate, chocolate chile, or prickly pear. Two Santa Fe locations: 1050 Paseo de Peralta 505.982.0388 1300 Rufina Circle #A4 505.930.5460 Kakawachocolates.com
Ten Thousand Waves is a Japanese-inspired spa, boutique hotel, and restaurant on the mountain road that leads to the Santa Fe Ski Basin. Private outdoor hot-tub suites, and a full spa menu that includes massages, facials, and packages, make for a romantic experience found nowhere else outside Japan. In Houses of the Moon, you can stay in a ryokan-inspired room just steps from the spa and restaurant. Guests have priority for private spa suites and services. Izanami is an award-winning izakaya restaurant (small plates, casual atmosphere) that emphasizes fresh, locally sourced ingredients in all its preparations. There’s a stellar selection of premium Japanese sakes, and plenty of gluten-free, vegan, and vegetarian options, all in an authentic Japanese atmosphere. The cozy outdoor pavilion can be used year-round for a warm, safe dining option. 21 Ten Thousand Waves Way (3.5 miles up Hyde Park Road) Reservations and information: 505.982.9304 Izanami meal reservations available through the Open Table app Tenthousandwaves.com
AND, OF COURSE, YOU’VE GOT TO GET A CARD . . . PHOTO: KATIE KEENER
as downhill-skiing paraphernalia, and can be rented from several shops in Santa Fe. Dress in light, windproof layers—no need for heavy parkas or goggles. Go as slowly as you like, taking in the silence of a snow-covered landscape—or, if you’re feeling adventurous, sign up for a snowshoe race or group meeting. Rental stores can advise you as to the best places to go to match your skill level, transportation options, and current snow conditions. Outspire Hiking and Snowshoeing 505.660.0394 outspire.com
For Valentine’s Day—or any other occasion for which you need just the right sentiment—visit our new favorite card shop, Pushpin Collaborative. Local and American-made cards, stationery, and gifts designed with a modern aesthetic convey your thoughts for any special occasion. 1925 Rosina Street, Suite D 505.372.7728 Pushpincollaborativeco.com
OUTDOORS
FIRESIDE CHAT
INN AND SPA AT LORETTO The Living Room lounge, just off the lobby of the Inn and Spa at Loretto, features big, cushy leather sofas and armchairs— a perfect place for an aperitif, or an after-dinner Kahlua coffee and dessert. The Inn and Spa at Loretto 211 Old Santa Fe Trail 505.988.5531 Hotelloretto.com PHOTO: ALLY KERANS
We love a good downhill powder day as much as the next snow enthusiast, but if you’re not feeling that athletic, or don’t have ski gear, the answer may be snowshoeing—if you can hike, you can snowshoe. The equipment needed is neither as technical nor as expensive
LA REINA AT EL REY COURT The hippest spot in town is La Reina bar at El Rey Court, a reenvisioned 1930s motor court with a contemporary Southwest vibe. Mezcals and signature cocktails, occasional music, and sometimes a pizza truck, all in a cool, Alexander Girard– inspired design. El Rey Court 1862 Cerrillos Road 505.982.1931 Elreycourt.com
SkiTech Santa Fe 905 S. St. Francis Dr. 505.983.5512 santafe.skitechrentals.com Christy Sports (formerly Cottam’s) 740 Hyde Park Road 505.982.0495 christysports.com/backcountry/ snowshoes
cozy fireplace and a hot toddy. Some of our favorite hotel bars for snugging up to a crackling fire:
ELDORADO HOTEL AND SPA The Agave Restaurant & Lounge at the Eldorado Hotel has a cool, modern ambiance, a great happy hour, and food offerings ranging from shared plates in the bar to full dinner in the adjoining dining room. Eldorado Hotel and Spa 309 W. San Francisco Street 505.995.4530 Eldoradohotel.com
After an active day of shopping or outdoor activities, nothing beats retreating to a
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SANTA FE RAILYARD DISTRICT
Visit santaferailyardartsdistrict.com for a complete list of galleries and events.
The Santa Fe Railyard continues to be a new hub of culture and activities for the city, and includes the Farmers’ Market, a premium movie theater, shopping, restaurants, the museums and galleries of the Railyard Arts District, and a beautiful 20-acre urban park.
Through January 9, 2022 SITElab 15: Joanna Keane Lopez: Land Craft Theatre
RAILYARD ARTS DISTRICT Part of the Railyard Santa Fe, the Railyard Arts District is the city’s contemporary-art destination. With eight contemporary art galleries and two—soon to be three—museums, all within walking distance of each other, the Railyard Arts District is an art lover’s paradise. The final Friday of each month is the District’s Art Walk, with galleries open late with featured exhibitions.
PHOTO: SITE SANTA FE
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SITE SANTA FE The Railyard Arts District is anchored by SITE Santa Fe , a noncollecting contemporary art museum.
Through March 31, 2022 Poetic Justice: Billboard Project Through March 27, 2022 Helen Pashgian: Presences January 21–April 22, 2022 Kate Joyce: Metaphysics SITE Santa Fe 1606 Paseo de Peralta 505.989.1199 sitesantafe.org
THOMA FOUNDATION ART VAULT This free, nonprofit exhibition space features a collection of digital art by emerging and mid-career artists, internationally known pioneers of video sculpture, self-taught computer artists, and influential digital time-based artists. Through April 30, 2022 Networked Nature Through April 30, 2022 Saint Somebody: Technologies of the Divine 540 S. Guadalupe Street Artvault.thomafoundation.org THE VLADEM CONTEMPORARY Scheduled to open in fall 2022, the Vladem Contemporary is a satellite space for contemporary art that complements the historic site of the New Mexico Museum of Art on the Santa Fe Plaza, and further cements the Railyard Arts District as a contemporary art destination. Corner of Guadalupe and Montezuma nmartmuseum.org/about-us/vladem
PHOTO: SKY RAILWAY
SKY RAILWAY: ALL ABOARD!! Fifteen miles south of Santa Fe lies the village of Lamy and Amtrak’s main east-west trunk line, from which runs a spur line that stops at the Santa Fe Depot, in the Railyard. The former Santa Fe Southern Railway used to run freight up from the main line and, until 2014, an excursion train between Santa Fe and Lamy. The railway has now been purchased by a consortium of investors, including author George R. R. Martin, and re-envisioned as Sky Railway, an adventure excursion train.
EL MERCADO DEL MUSEO PHOTO: MARA CHRISTIAN HARRIS
Using historically restored cars, the Sky Railway features engines and cars painted with a fierce wolf or ferocious dragon. The trains now shuttle between Lamy and Santa Fe with a roster of entertaining trips that make it one of the most original, imaginative, and exciting short-line railroads in the country. On the schedule are many activities: sunset serenades with live music and cocktails; murder-mystery escapades; immersive theater experiences; stargazing excursions; culinary and history adventures; and more.
Across the train tracks from the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market is the building of El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe, which houses a weekend flea market, El Mercado del Museo, that delights the senses. Multiple vendors showcase textiles, jewelry, books, antiques, rugs, and clothing from around the world. El Mercado del Museo at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe 555 Camino de la Familia Through May 29, 2022 Saturdays 8 AM–4 PM Sundays 10 AM–4 PM
Santa Fe Depot 430 W. Manhattan Avenue Lamy Depot 152 Old Lamy Trail, Lamy 844.743.3759 skyrailway.com
PHOTO: MARA CHRISTIAN HARRIS
Excursions last from 1.5 to 3 hours, depending on the activity, and leave from the Santa Fe Depot or the Lamy Depot. (See the Sky Railway website’s Tickets page for details of each activity.)
SANTA FE FARMERS’ MARKET This year-round market gets much smaller in the winter months, as produce can be sourced only within a radius of about 25 miles from Santa Fe, and the growing season
ends with the first freeze, usually in October. Consequently, through winter and early spring, you’ll see root vegetables, winter greens, hothouse lettuces, and crafts and canned goods made from local bounty. Visit the Gift Shop for a diverse selection of market-themed gifts and accessories. Saturdays 8 AM–1 PM 1607 Paseo de Peralta santafefarmersmarket.com NEW ON THE SCENE BUILT DESIGN Interior-design firm Built Design recently opened a retail shop featuring home accessories and furniture—select items from the store, or take advantage of their full design services. We appreciate their warm, modern aesthetic and mix of ethnic and contemporary décor, and welcome them to the neighborhood! 500 Market Street, Suite 109 505.629.5847 built-design.com
For a full list of the Railyard’s restaurants, galleries, businesses, and events, visit railyardsantafe.com. E VO K AT I O N
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