We Are. Here Together. - Exhibition Catalog by Harwood Art Center

BRIDGE: RESIDENCY FOR ART & SOCIAL JUSTICE

WEARE. HERETOGETHER. Rica Maestas

ABOUT HARWOOD ART CENTER’S RESIDENCY FOR ART & SOCIAL JUSTICE Each fall for thirteen years, Harwood’s galleries are devoted to artists working at the intersections of creative Harwood Residency for Art & Social Justice expression and social justice. In 2021, for the occasion of Harwood’s 30th Anniversary, we expanded this offering and formally established our first official annual residency program. We invite New Mexico-based artists whose practice is socially/politically engaged to submit project proposals for our annual Bridge: Residency for Art & Social Justice. Our 2023 Artist in Residence, Rica Maestas, received a private artist studio at Harwood Art Center to work in for the duration of their 9 month residency, a five week exhibition in both of our gallery spaces, project, promotional and professional support from our staff, a $1000 artist honorarium to support their time and creative work and a $500 materials stipend to support their project costs. We are grateful to New Mexico Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, City of Albuquerque, Urban Enhancement Trust Fund and McCune Charitable Foundation for their resourcing of this program.

Harwood Art Center September 20 - October 26, 2023 www.harwoodartcenter.org COVER: Rica Maestas, Family Portrait, Performance documentation / photo, 2022;

WEARE. HERETOGETHER. We Are. Here Together. is an interactive, multi-gallery exhibition of sculpture, sound, text, and performance by Albuquerque-based artist Rica Maestas. The exhibition invites viewers into a cross-species conversation, building trust, tenderness, and support between people and plants. In the Front gallery, a pair of whimsical yucca forms invite viewers to sit together and contemplate rotating statements on a LED message board. These sculptures and statements originated in collaboration with a group of sixteen 2nd and 3rd grade students during a two-week summer workshop at Harwood Art Center led by Maestas. Designed to follow the interests of the students while imparting valuable lessons on local ecology and working with natural and recycled materials, the resulting artworks emphasize the specialness of being alive together in the same space and time. The Hall gallery also contains a collaborative body of work centering yucca, this time adding voices of other desert plants and local artists into the conversation. Developed by Maestas and fellow Queer and BIPOC artists Hank Cooper, Pico del Hierro Villa, mk, and Gabriel Maestas, this installation presents a cast of uncanny hybrid plantpeople ruminating on their own experiences and interacting with each other. Discussing their lived experiences ranging from pleasure to intergenerational trauma and climate grief, these strange characters are voiced by tonal sound developed by Ryan Parker and “translated” on LED message boards. Emphasizing our closeness with and interdependence on the broader natural world, We Are. Here Together. illustrates the potential for healing and solidarity when we Page 3: WE ARE. HERE TOGETHER, live performance, image by Harwood Art Center, All Rights Reserved, 2023.

Collaborating Artists: Hank Cooper, Pico del Hierro Villa, Gabriel Maestas, mk, Ryan Parker and Harwood Art Camp Students

Pages 10-12: Min Che & Yoon Jin, WE ARE HERE // HERE, WE ARE, installation, Images taken by Aziza Murray & Harwood Art Center, All Rights Reserved; Page 13: Min Che, The Self in Transience (detail), Acrylic & Korean Ink, 2022. Pages 14-15: Min Che & Yoon Jin, Moon, Sun :: Two Epochs (detail), 2022

In collaboration with Harwood Art Camp Students In the Front gallery, a pair of whimsical yucca forms invite viewers to sit together and contemplate rotating statements on a LED message board. These sculptures and statements originated in collaboration with a group of sixteen 2nd and 3rd grade students during a two-week summer workshop at Harwood Art Center led by Maestas. Designed to follow the interests of the students while imparting valuable lessons on local ecology and working with natural and recycled materials, the resulting artworks emphasize the specialness of being alive together in the same space and time.

The Hall gallery also contains a collaborative body of work centering yucca, this time adding voices of other desert plants and local artists into the conversation. Developed by Maestas and fellow Queer and BIPOC artists Hank Cooper, Pico del Hierro Villa, mk, and Gabriel Maestas, this installation presents a cast of uncanny hybrid plant-people ruminating on their own experiences and interacting with each other. Discussing their lived experiences ranging from pleasure to intergenerational trauma and climate grief, these strange characters are voiced by tonal sound developed by Ryan Parker and “translated” on LED message boards.

Emphasizing our closeness with and interdependence on the broader natural world, We Are. Here Together. illustrates the potential for healing and solidarity when we reenvision our relationships with the world around us.

RICA MAESTAS is a burqueñx artist, author, and arts worker nurturing spaces where no one has to be whole. Inspired by home, loneliness, hybridity, and misunderstanding, they make gifts, offerings, and rituals as invitations into dreamy and emotionally demanding spaces. Maestas holds a MA in public humanities from Brown University and has received numerous grants for her socially engaged projects, performances, paintings, and assemblages. Her multidisciplinary practice has included exhibiting artwork nationwide, curating independent and institutional projects, publishing diverse written works, and participating in the Santa Fe Art Institute’s Labor Residency. Profiles of her artistic and curatorial work have appeared in the Santa Fe Reporter, the Santa Fe New Mexican Pasatiempo, the Coastal Post, the Providence Journal, the Brown Daily Herald. Their first solo show, I’m Sorry (I cannot hold you.) opened at Vital Spaces in Santa Fe, June 2022.

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HArWood ArT CENTEr 2023 eXHIbITioN cALeNdAr Harwood Art Center is dedicated to providing exhibition, audience expansion and professional development opportunities to artists working in any media and from diverse creative fields. Featuring established, emerging, and youth artists, our Galleries Program engages a supportive process from concept development through installation and public opening. For more information, or to learn how to apply, please visit harwoodartcenter.org

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JANUARY 18 - FEBRUARY 23

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Blossoming: The Artists of ArtStreet, Albuquerque Health Care for the Homeless ArtStreet, an outreach program of Albuquerque Health Care for the Homeless, presents: Blossoming, a visual representation of the renaissance taking place within the ArtStreet community and featuring a collection of works by individuals, as well as a collaborative installation made by the artists and representatives of ArtStreet.

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Reception: Saturday, February 4 | 4:30pm - 6:30pm

MARCH 8 - APRIL 13 ENCOMPASS: A Multi-Generational Art Event An annual celebration that is both a reflection of and an offering to our community, Encompass features Open Studios, art making activites, installations by student artists, and four invitational exhibitions including: Grief Movement: breana connor, matthan cowart, jordan alvarenga, sarah hodland-gurulé and caroline netschert Archive of Memory: Juliana Coles

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Reception: Saturday, April 1 | 4:00pm - 8:00pm

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APRIL 26 - JUNE 1

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Aging... A Female’s Perspective: Susan Roden A multi-platform installation comprised of fine art dresses, mixed media tondos and printed words culled from anonymous surveys, centralizing upon the female perspective on aging’s physical and emotional impacts.

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We Are the Gods: Jamie Rose This exhibition, which consists of large-scale figurative drawings and glass, celebrates the beauty and power of those who have in any way lived the female experience. Reception + Artist Talks: Saturday, May 13 | 4:30pm

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JUNE 14 - JULY 27 SURFACE: Emerging Artists of New Mexico Harwood Art Center’s annual juried exhibition, professional development and endowed awards program honors emerging artists currently living and working in New Mexico. Tears of My Ancestors: Cortney Metzger Solo Exhibition Award Winner of our 2022 SURFACE: Emerging Artists of New Mexico program. Reception + Artist Talks: Saturday, June 24 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm

AUGUST 9 - SEPTEMBER 14 Ithacan Mythologies: Harley Kirschner Ithacan Mythologies merges Art Nouveau renditions of Greek Mythologies and baroque Vanitas with trans and queer ecologies and the embrace of the continuous apocalypse. Using discarded mirrors and glass, laser etching, furniture design, oil paint and metalsmithing, Harley Kirschner creates works that feel, at once, unmakeable and deeply personal. miss me when i’m gone: mk By printing larger-than-life reproductions of archival photographs from the artist’s family photo albums, and incorporating different media such as found/stolen objects, printmaking techniques, and sculpture, they confront their identity as well as their upbringing as it transitions to their present-day life as an adult, and within the function of photographic memory. Reception + Artist Talks: Saturday, August 26 | 4:30pm - 6:30pm

SEPTEMBER 20 - OCTOBER 26

Residency for Art & Social Justice Harwood’s Residency for Art & Social Justice features and art, supports artists working at the intersections of creative expression and social justice. The nine month program includes a private studio at Harwood, artist and material honoraria, project support and a public exhibition.

Reception + Artist Talks: Saturday, October 14 | 4:30pm - 6:30pm

DECEMBER 1 & 2 12x12 Fundraising Exhibitions Harwood’s annual fundraising exhibitions: 12x12, 6x6 and Prelude featuring work by established, emerging and youth artists from New Mexico. This event includes ~200 works that remain anonymous until sold – for the flat rates of $144 (12”x12”) or $36 (6”x6”). Prelude highlights the intersections of art, design and daily living with works by notable New Mexico artists. Exhibition Reception: Friday, December 1 | 5:30pm - 7:30pm 12x12 Online Store Opens: Saturday, December 2 | 6:00pm Image Credits (Left; Top-Bottom): Juliana Coles, Studio WIP; Alina Pozas, Box for Bones; Grief Movement; mk, Our last Family Portrait; (Right; Top-Bottom): Susan Roden, BROKEN EGGS / Barren & Infertility Dress; Cortney Metzger, first touch; Harley Kirschner, Persephone’s Apothecary; Jamie Rose, The Scorpio.

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Harwood offers four capstone exhibitions annually, ENCOMPASS: A Multi-Generational Art Event, SURFACE: Emerging Artists of New Mexico, and BRIDGE: Residency for Art & Social Justice.12x12 is our annual fundraiser; all proceeds support our free community arts education, outreach and professional development.

ABOUT HARWOOD ART CENTER & ESCUELA DEL SOL MONTESSORI HARWOOD ART CENTER’S GALLERIES PROGRAM is dedicated to providing exhibition, audience expansion and professional development opportunities to artists working in any media and from diverse creative fields. Our galleries program is curated and managed by our Chief Programs Officer and Associate Directors of Opportunity and Engagement. Artists are invited to exhibit during three of our annual capstone events, Encompass, Residency for Art & Social Justice & 12x12, and the rest of our exhibitions are awarded to individuals and groups through a competitive application process. Most of our applications are free to apply; any collected fees allocated to replenishing Harwood’s endowed cash awards for the program. Each featured exhibition is a supportive process and we work with the artists from concept development to installation in the galleries. For each exhibition we create comprehensive outreach and digital materials including exhibition catalogs, virtual galleries and artist talks to support the unique visions and voices of our gallery artists. Seeded in 1991, Harwood Art Center blooms the philosophy of our parent organization Escuela del Sol Montessori, with recognition that learning and expression offer the most resilient pathways to global citizenship, justice and peace. Harwood engages the arts as a catalyst for lifelong learning, cultural enrichment and social change, with programming for every age, background and income level. We believe that equitable access to the arts and opportunities for creative expression are integral to healthy individuals and thriving communities. In all of our work, we cultivate inclusive, reflective environments where everyone feels cared for. We nurture long-term, multi-faceted relationships with participants, building programs with and for diverse communities of Albuquerque. We integrate the arts with social justice, professional and economic growth, and education to cultivate a higher collective quality of life in New Mexico. For 55 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 13 years on their real-world quests to excel academically and to develop the skills they need for meaningful, happy and successful futures. SURFACE Emerging Artists of New Mexico, group exhibition 2022, Image by Aziza Murray & Harwood Art Center 22

HARWOOD ART CENTER’S PHOTOGRAPHER IN RESIDENCE We are so thrilled to have established an official Photographer in Residence opportunity- a new ongoing residency at Harwood Art Center. This residency includes an annual honorarium and rent credit for a studio at Harwood. Aziza Murray, who was our inaugural Galleries & Exhibition Photographer, is now our Photographer in Residence. We are able to present this residency and honorarium thanks to the Urban Enhancement Trust Fund, New Mexico Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and the McCune Charitable Foundation.

AZIZA MURRAY is a New Mexico based artist working primarily in photography. In 2015 she graduated with an MFA from the University of New Mexico where she also worked as a pictorial archiving fellow for the Center for Southwest Research. Since then, Aziza has worked in different capacities in the film industry in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, further piquing her interest in cinematography. Much of her work stems from a well of nostalgia for objects and moments, the materiality of photography, and her personal history—from experiencing tragic loss at an early age, to her multilayered experiences as a biracial person growing up in Washington, DC. She has shown her work in DC at Connersmith and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, in Albuquerque at the Harwood Art Center, the UNM Art Museum and the National Hispanic Cultural Center and, at MASS Gallery in Austin, TX. azizamurray.com azizamurray@gmail.com

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