IRENE HARDWICKE OLIVIERI
Honey in the Desert
IRENE HARDWICKE OLIVIERI
Honey in the Desert
Opening, 5pm - 7pm Friday, August 30th Through September 21st
Honey in the Desert opens August 30 and runs through September 21. In addition to paintings, Irene will be showing three dimensional animals and people created from cholla cactus skeletons, ponderosa pine and juniper. While hiking in the wilderness of New Mexico Irene gathers tree cholla cactus skeletons. After making some creatures out of the local cholla (Cylindropuntia imbricata) she decided to look for larger cactus skeletons and last winter went to the SonoranDesert in Arizona to collect teddy bear cholla skeletons.
(Cylindropuntia bigeloveii) She searches for the dead cholla in the desert, brings them home, carefully cleans and sands the thorns off and uses them to create people and animals. My cousin is a kinkajou features a wild desert girl with a pet coati in one hand and in the other hand a special satchel filled with all she will need to explore the desert, fresh fruit, plant press, collecting jars, books, sketchpads, pencils, paints and brushes. Her shoulders are strong in their teddy bear cholla shapes, her cholla legs are powerful as are her painted ponderosa pine boots.
An ongoing theme in Irene’s work is rewilding the heart, exploring connections to wild animals, wild lands. Many of her paintings are also about love, relationships and obsessions, parts of life which are often subterranean. The largest painting in the show Secrets of the Neighborhood was inspired by true
stories of many of her idiosyncratic neighbors here in Santa Fe as well as other places she has lived. Other paintings portray secret worlds of sensuality, emotional autopsies, and lively explorations of mortality.
Words are another common theme of Olivieri’s work. The delicate painted lettering enlivens her paintings as it trails across the surfaces, sometimes questioning the viewer or sharing unusual details about some fascinating creature or miniature descriptions like how to grow agave from seed.
Irene grew up in the borderlands of south Texas and Tamaulipas Mexico; her childhood years were spent along the Rio Grande River . These early experiences in the natural world surrounded by rich diversity of cultures lit the way for the rest of her life. A voracious reader, she researches the flora and fauna and local ecosystem of wherever she is- she’s lived in a lighthouse keeper’s
cottage in Maine, and traveled down the Amazon River in her teens. She studied art in central Mexico and sang in an all girl punk band in Austin before moving to New York for graduate school. She drew neotropical palm for a botanist at the New York Botanical Gardens and worked in the medieval gardens of The Cloisters. She’s grown moss gardens, created waterlily and lotus ponds and today keeps a pet vinagaroon and raises caterpillars. While living off the grid in a solar powered house in the high desert of Oregon, she became active in protecting mountain lions and wolves and cofounded an organization dedicated to banning animal trapping. While living in Maine she worked at Acadia Wildlife Center. In Arizona, she connected with the Northern Jaguar Project and began donating artwork to help save the Sonoran jaguar population. A percentage of her proceeds from Honey in the Desert will go to New Mexico Wildlife Center and the Northern Jaguar Project.
Come collect the cactus fruit, I’ll write the poem, oil on ponderosa pine with teddy bear cholla cactus skeletons, rusty metal, 25” x 41” $8,500.
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Honey in the Desert oil on ponderosa pine with teddy bear cholla cactus skeletons rusty metal and objects found while hiking, 60” x 14” $8,800.
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Better is the ready, oil on wood, 74” x 31” $28,000.
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Somewhere in time, oil on panel, 47” x 33” $8,500.
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Please include title of artwork with your inquiry. After the monsoon, watercolor on paper, 11” x 13” $2,000.
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Please include title of artwork with your inquiry. Tomorrow will be beautiful, oil on panel, 35.5” x 19.5” $12,000.
Teporingo and Zacatuche, oil on ponderosa pine with teddy bear and cane cholla cactus skeletons and juniper 66” x 30” $8,500.
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Jumping Jesse, oil on wood, 34” x 11.5” $12,000.
The Gentleman oil on ponderosa pine with cholla cactus skeletons
50” x 18” $7,000.
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My cousin is a kinkajou oil on ponderosa pine with teddy bear cholla cactus skeleton
60” x 23” $8,800.
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Please include title of artwork with your inquiry. Papachongo, oil on ponderosa pine, 26” x 18” $4,800.
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Sweet Javelina, oil on wood, 16” x 13” $4,500.
Favorite Neighbors, oil on panel, 46” x 22” $16,000.
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x 19” $4,700.
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Snake in the greenhouse, oil on clayboard, 18” x 24” $4,700.
Please include title of artwork with your inquiry. My bodyguard, oil on panel, 17” x 13” $3,000.
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Where the cougar sleeps, oil on ponderosa pine with teddy bear cholla cactus skeletons, 48” x 40” $7,800.
Please include title of artwork with your inquiry. Flight of the rascals, oil on wood, 13.5” x 36” $7,500.
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Me missing you, graphite on paper, 9” x 9” $1,600.
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Please include title of artwork with your inquiry. With a sigh too deep for words, graphite on paper, 13” x 10” $1,900.
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PaleoCat, bones in wood rising bowl, 14” x 38” $6,800.
Trooper in the treetops, oil on wood, 29.5” x 7.5” $6,800.
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Tears of the Rio Grande, egg tempera on clayboard, 6” x 6” $2,400.
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x 9” $2,200.
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Little house in my heart, oil on wooden rising bowl 35” x 14” $7,500.
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