Constellations Exhibition Catalog

ENCOMPASS CONSTELLATIONS March 7 - 26, 2020

CONSTELLATIONS Harwood Art Center March 7 - 26, 2020 Curated by Staci Drangmeister, Julia Mandeville, and GuruAmrit Smith as part of Encompass: a multi-generational art event

COVER: Tytianna Harris for Constellations // THIS PAGE: Jackie Riccio

Constellations showcases New Mexico’s artists Tytianna Harris, Stephanie Lerma, Jen Pack, Jackie Riccio, and Sophia Sanchez as they explore mythologies, mark time, and offer modes of navigation through the darkness, in an invitational exhibition honoring them as beacons of artistic voice.

Constellations is part of Harwood Art Center’s annual multi-generational art event, Encompass.

Encompass is a unique multi-generational art event presented by Harwood Art Center and Escuela del Sol Montessori that takes place annually in March. Featuring four gallery exhibitions, open studios, collaborative art making projects and activities for all ages, Encompass is both a reflection of and an offering to our community.

For 50 years, Escuela del Sol, an independent Montessori school, has nurtured self-discovery, social responsibility and passion for learning in our students. Each day Escuela supports students from ages 18 months to 14 years on their real-world quests to excel academically and to develop the skills they need for meaningful, happy and successful futures.

For more than 25 years, Escuela’s Harwood Art Center has expanded our model of intergenerational, creative and inspired learning in service to our New Mexico community. Harwood deploys the arts as a catalyst for personal empowerment, cultural enrichment and social change. Our programs include arts education, engagement and community outreach initiatives for all ages, as well as apprenticeship, teaching and professional development opportunities for artists.

Harwood and Escuela are dedicated to inspiring a passion for lifelong learning, creative expression, and positive impact on our world.

Constellations installation view, photo courtesy of Geistlight Photography

TYTIANNA HARRIS Tytianna Harris’ practice centers around community and who she is as a young DinÊ woman, often focusing on her indigenous roots and ties to the Southwest region. Coming from five generations of traditional Navajo weavers, she has a more in depth relationship with the practice of textile arts beyond self-perceptions.

In all her work, she hopes to make visible those dimensional social and cultural mores, to exhort those who see it.

Born in 1993 in Honolulu, Hawaii, Tytianna Harris is currently studying at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico in preparation to receive her BFA. She currently lives and works in New Mexico.

THIS PAGE: Tytianna Harris, Untitled I & Untitled II, studies for final Constellations Installation // THAT PAGE: Tytianna Harris, Woven Piece #1, mixed media, 2020 // Installation photo courtesy of Geistlight Photography

Stephanie Lerma, She Gathered a Rhapsody Under Her Wings, handmade paper, beeswax, 2020 // installation photo courtesy of Geistlight Photography

STEPHANIE LERMA I: make accumulate repeat transform tell.

It is: constant urgent unavoidable abundant survival purposeful work.

I feel: fear purged panic pain release surrender joy.

In much of my work, I am an obsessive accumulator.

I am also interested in the intersections of traditional craft and modern invention. Mostly, I just like telling stories and I prefer to speak with my hands. I am drawn to narrative, to social constructs, to symbols and systems that define us. I am interested in the challenges and ways of changing existing narratives through redefinition.

Art is my system for dealing with the complexities, joys, sorrows and messy-ness of living. This making has become a long sentence of thoughts, of beginnings and endings, of navigations through pleasures and disappointments. The making is an embrace, an opening, a closing, a reminder to breathe. Making is my life language.

Stephanie Lerma is a New Mexico native, a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a baker, a knitter, a musician. She is an advocate for the rights of physically and sexually abused children. She is a maker.

Many, many years ago, she received her teaching certification in piano pedagogue from L’Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, France and she holds degrees in English and Women’s Studies from The University of New York Albany. She is very fortunate to have her works in private and public collections and has had exhibitions in universities and museums throughout the United States, Japan, China, and South Korea.

JEN PACK My work embodies a space in the seam between painting and sculpture, yet is made of fabric. It intersects sculptural forms and minimalist painting while referencing traditional fiber arts in an inceptive framework. It combines softness and transparency with hardness of shaped and solid form. My work challenges the viewer to reconsider the artistic products associated with traditional feminine craft while referencing a masculine heritage. It exists in a state of duality that is familiar yet displaced and evokes conversations that examine perception and process.

I attempt to see into the depths of color, past outer distractions to meaning that resides within deconstructed forms, and listen to the hum of murmuring color. The collapsing of genres, spaces, identities, and norms is integral to my work, as are the tensions that manifest in the sound of color created through vibration and dissonance and the songs they create in resolving those tensions. b. 1976 in Astoria, OR, lives in Los Ranchos, NM I received a BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA in 1997 and an MLIS from San Jose State University in 2008. My work has been described as an artistic oxymoron: both loud and quiet, solid and transparent, hand-made and precise, delicate and aggressive, exuberant and restrained, formal and emotional. It is a reflection of me, an artist of blended culture who is both loud and quiet, urban and rural, delicate and aggressive, masculine and feminine, adventurous and routine.

I am a color explorer and consider explorations in color to be, in essence, an inquiry of truth. It is created through the activity of intense seeing and is a reflection of an exploration of the soul and the liminal relationships between truth, beauty, and identity.

THAT PAGE: Jen Pack, High Condensation, Thread, fabric, wood, 2005; Soul Light, archival digital print mounted on poplar block, 2020; Primary ColorSong, archival digital print mounted on poplar block, 2020; My Shadow and Me, Archival digital print mounted on poplar block, 2020; Aching into Blossom, archival digital print mounted on poplar block, 2020 // Installation photo courtesy of Geistlight Photography

Jackie Riccio, This is a drawing, mixed media, 2020 // installation photo courtesy of Geistlight Photography

JACKIE RICCIO My mother always liked forsythia flowers, in springtimes, I think. A dream about stealing cars and how I told it again when my voice had frogs in it and my eyes were still closed. It was close on the heels of the time they hurt my feelings when I thought they couldn’t. A steel trap like wearing my heart on my sleeve just wouldn’t cut it. Rude remarks echo chamber like a headache.

A first date in the cold, with chapped lips, it’s going to be very cold at night they say. When the heat from your breath keeps your face warm they say, don’t cry over spilled milk they say. Have you ever thought about all the people in the world all at once? Or where we all came from? Or how many times a word is said everyday, quantify intangible concepts by counting them on your hands. What happens when a neural pathway breaks in the brain? Is it like a traffic jam? They say quitters never quit, and winners never won. In all the bleaks and broke do you see a little ray of hope?

This is a drawing (key) (blue) cold front (white) spilled milk (turquoise) breathing (yellow flowers) my mother always liked forsythia flowers (red) a rude remark (rainbow line) neural pathway (pink scribble) traffic jam (rainbow) hope (X) A first date (black and white) depression

(a force) (an object) (an action) (a memory) (a behavior) (an object) (an experience) (an emotion) (a moment) (a feeling)

Jackie Riccio is an installation artist working in the space between textiles, painting, and sculpture. Her work resides in transitions, between mediums, moments, and physical objects. She is based in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she runs the Land of Plenty studio. The studio hosts her practice as well as community sewing workshops, material collection, a woodshop, and a future library. She is currently involved in The Palace Collective (organizing an international artist residency) and Leftover Sewing Collective (organizing community sewing workshops) both based in Berlin where she spent her last few years developing her practice. She received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and has since exhibited a variety of mediums in New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Seattle, Vancouver BC, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Tucson, Las Vegas, as well as Berlin, and Tübingen, (Germany), Piotriwice (Poland), Sharjah (United Arab Emirates), and Kyoto (Japan).

SOPHIA SANCHEZ My art is a physical outlet for me to explore and process my everyday pleasures and frustrations. Through the materials, imagery and text that I use, I assemble a nostalgic undertone that is aroused with childlike imagery and colors.

Sophia Sanchez is a mixed media artist born and raised in the city of Albuquerque. Sophia received a BFA from the University of New Mexico, and exhibited her work in two solo shows, Titled “See You Next Tuesday” at the Small Engine Gallery, and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’ at The Brew both in Albuquerque, NM. Sophia has also been featured in several juried/ group shows in New Mexico displayed at the Harwood Art Center, Site Santa Fe, Abq ArtWalk and with the Mothership Alumni.

THIS PAGE: Sophia Sanchez, studies for final Constellations Installation THAT PAGE: Sophia Sanchez, Vibe check, mixed media; Grocery store, mixed media; It’s ok (black sparkle) mixed media; Tooth brush, mixed media; Orange flowers, mixed media; It’s okay (Bambi friends), mixed media; Take care (melted sherbet), mixed media; Flower trip, mixed media; Baby clown, mixed media // Sophia Sanchez installation photo courtesy of Geistlight Photography

Constellations installation views, photos courtesy of Geistlight Photography

ENCOMPASS

Many thanks to our generous Encompass sponsoring partners: A Good Sign, The FUNd of Albuquerque Community Foundation, McCune Charitable Foundation, New Mexico Arts and National Endowment for the Arts, City of Albuquerque and Urban Enhancement Trust Fund, and Geistlight Photography.

Special thanks to Nusenda Foundation and Sandia Foundation for support of our Creative Roots programs.

WWW.HARWOODARTCENTER.ORG · 505.242.6367 · 1114 7th NW, ALBUQUERQUE, NM 87102