Media Mix
Mark Spencer
Santa Fe’s art scene is known for reaching beyond traditional fine-art materials, and these days, glass, clay, video, and other new media are taking center stage. (This summer, for instance, find examples at New Mexico Museum of Art’s contemporary basket show, Intertwined, through September 6, and our first annual Sculpture Objects & Functional Art West expo, June 11–14.) That’s why we’ve asked a dozen local art professionals and aficionados—curators, collectors, educators, and gallerists—to name standout area talents whose work in any medium distinguishes them from the crowd. The 50-plus artists identified create everything from puppets to photographs, from watercolors to woodwork. Yet all share one thing in common: an ability to make art with creativity, depth, and mastery.
AVRA LEODAS, owner, Santa Fe Clay
Clay Max Lehman: Whimsical, subversive figurative work. Michael Corney: Fantastic drawn surfaces, cartoon imagery—but more political, irreverent. Mike Jabbur: Beautiful sculptural vessels and closed forms. Wood/Mixed Media: John Tinker My husband, an underexposed standout!
CARMELLA PADILLA, collector
Paint Mark Spencer: His interpretation of humanity is powerful and profound, sometimes dark, other times light and lovely. His technical skills are phenomenal. Susan Contreras Her unique vision often goes to Hispanic/Latino traditions, such as ancient masked dances of Mexico. Even when representing the past, she evokes a modern Latina.
Photography Miguel Gandert: No one can even touch Gandert when it comes to photography that expresses a true local insider’s view of Santa Fe and all of Hispanic New Mexico. His photographs are direct and revealing to Hispanics and non-Hispanics alike. And while much of his focus is on New Mexico, his work truly knows no borders.
Fiber Joan Brink She takes the ancient art of basketmaking to new levels of expression. Using traditional materials, she weaves age-old techniques with the symbolism of deeply
rooted cultures. Her baskets are at once sleek, sculptural, sacred, and durable, speaking to the functionality of the art form and the delicate balance of nature.
Mixed Media Bob Haozous: A master sculptor whose works express a fully contemporary vision and interpretation of traditional Native culture. Haozous is never afraid to tackle sensitive or controversial issues. The results are always powerful, thought provoking, and ultimately enlightening.
JULIET MYERS, director of education and public programs, SITE Santa Fe
Ink David Leigh: Wall drawing.
Graphite Lory Pollina: Drawing.
Susan York York’s graphite installations and cubes embody elegance and mindfulness.
Glass: Flo Perkins
Mixed Media: Ligia Bouton Site-specific installations. Sculpture: Erika Wanenmacher. Found-object assemblage: Bob Gaylor.
Video: Peter Sarkisian
These artists take their practice into uncharted territory and bring fresh experiences to the viewer that range from playful and humorous to profound, ambiguous, and challenging.
CHERI FALKENSTIEN-DOYLE, curator, Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian
Metal/Mixed Media: Maria Samora. Exquisite, handmade contemporary jewelry. She combines silver and gold, accented with diamonds, pearls, and other stones. Her pieces are simple and elegant, based on forms found in nature, and really work with the body. Liz Wallace works in a variety of styles, ranging from traditional handwrought Navajo silver to plique-à-jour enamel (a European technique). Wallace experiments constantly, and in spite of working professionally for a number of years, continues to deepen her understanding and mastery of metalsmithing.
JACK LEMON, founder/owner, Landfall Press
Graphite/Glass/Print Media/Video: James Drake. I don’t think Drake
has tried a medium that he has not quickly mastered. Wide recognition both in the U.S. and abroad, in combination with a quick mind and wit to match, makes him the standout in any crowd. Glass Ax: What is more poignant than a tool that would shatter on impact? Feast of Four Rivers: It’s one of the largest lithographs we’ve created.
JACKIE M, director of education and public programs, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Paint: Shelley Horton-Trippe. Thought and feeling translated into great painterly abilities.
Photography: Erika Blumenfeld. She’s back and forth between Santa Fe, Marfa, Antarctica, and other places—a photographer of light who deals with time and change. Her photographs take the medium to its essence: what makes a photo exist in the first place? Light reactions, the capture of a moment, etc.
Metal: Tom Joyce Sculpture. Burnt pieces.
Wood/Mixed Media: Michael Motley. My life partner. I love to watch this often impatient designer focus on a detail-oriented piece; making art becomes his meditation.
Mixed Media: Eve Laramee. A part-time resident of Santa Fe. Wow. Each piece is an investigation of a fascinating idea. Her work is diverse, complex, and communicated masterfully. You need to experience it. Jennifer Joseph I love the fact that these works look playful and spontaneous, when they are, in fact, by nature of the materials she uses (acupuncture needles, etc.), amazing executions of detail to create larger forms with sculptural presence.
Video/Mixed Media: Susanna Carlisle and Bruce Hamilton. Often featuring the human figure and elements in life—a praying mantis, boats, water—abstracting, creating a dance of color, sound, feeling. I love the vision; the considered, timed execution; the forms, like video projected out of a flagstone fire pit. Intriguing, with a depth of understanding of making art and art-historical precedents.
RIXON REED, founder/director, Photo-Eye
Photography: Debbie Fleming Caffery. Her intense, darkly printed pictures of sugarcane field workers, Mexican prostitutes, and victims of Katrina exhibit her intense compassion for—as she likes to say—her people. Her work transcends traditional documentary photography, moving into the realm of visual poetry.
JOAN LOMBARDI and LEE NASH, collectors
Paint: Edward Gilliam. Wonderful use of bright colors; he spends a lot of time in Mexico, capturing its vibrant environment. He often paints on large canvases, which makes his work ideal to be the focal point of a room. James Gasowski Great design, understanding when less is more. His best work usually uses a grayish background with interesting, subtle, colored shapes in the foreground.
Watercolor: Sarah Bienvenu. An “old pro” in the Santa Fe art scene, she produces fabulous colors and shapes, often based on the marvelous outdoor scenes of Northern New Mexico. Her work always seems fresh.
Photography: Ward Russell. He captures the majesty and uniqueness of Santa Fe and its inhabitants on black-and-white film.
Photography/Digital Media: Linda Vi Vona. A transplanted New Yorker who has been producing work for 50 years; her early career focused on abstract expressionist paintings. Due to a serious automobile accident, she is now confined to a wheelchair and has limited use of her hands—but she has transformed her art into eye-catching computerized photographic pieces. She truly needs to be rediscovered.
Metal: Alex Watts. She studies the human form and produces stunning, moving sculptural objects, such as a dancer piece we own.
JINA BRENNEMAN, curator of visual arts, The Harwood Museum of Art, Taos
Paint: Tom Dixon. His process is all blood, guts, and bruises. He gouges, tears, throws—the extreme physicality of his process somehow results in lyrical and deeply poetic paintings.
Graphite/Digital Media: Kai-sa a.k.a. Mike Lopez. Take a wildly imaginative kid who grew up in Taos Pueblo and transplant him to Tokyo. Give him a pencil, some paper, and a computer. Magic.
Ink/Print: Media Ann Saint. John Hawley In the middle of a recent lecture featuring the 89-year-old Taos artist, someone in the audience yelled out, “Eat your heart out, Leonard Baskin!” Ann has buried herself in her work all these years; we are just now getting to see the breadth of it.
Clay: Mary Witkop I’ve never met anyone closer to the raw process of pottery making. She chooses the path of most resistance and produces uncommonly present vessels.
Performance/Puppets Cristina Masoliver She can’t describe what she does and I can’t describe what she does. I can say that what happens as a result of it is influential, innovative, and masterful.
Performance/Robotics: Christina Sporrong and Christian Ristow. This is worth watching: youtube.com/watch?v=KXR4vYPbuZw
KAREN BEDWELL HERHAHN, collector
Paint: Joseph Breza. The artist William Vincent mentioned to me several years ago that Breza was the most talented impressionist around and said to keep my eye on him.
Metal: Glenna Goodacre. Nedra Matteucci’s sculpture garden, full of Goodacre’s work, is magnificent. Joshua Tobey A very talented sculptor. David Pearson I am a big fan.
STEVE PARKS, owner, Parks Gallery
Paint: William Acheff. He paints oil-on-canvas still lifes, usually of Southwest subject matter, in a superrealist manner. Acheff has many imitators, but none comes close to his ability to render the sublime.
Paint/Mixed Media: Erin Currier. Combining painting and drawing with paper-trash collage, she is a political artist with an abiding concern for human rights. Her subjects range from heroes of the Civil Rights Movement to the everyday people she meets in her travels. Her use of trash creates a fascinating statement: The medium is literally the message.
Fiber: Mical Aloni. An amazing, self-taught talent, she creates images of stunning verisimilitude with needle and thread, one stitch at a time. I first saw a piece of hers about a decade ago in a large exhibition of Taos artists (a tiny, two-by-two-inch portrait) and
it gleamed like a gem in a big pile of slag.
JANE SAUER, owner, Jane Sauer Gallery
Paint/Mixed Media: Michael Bergt Bergt’s work has all three elements that make an exceptional piece of art. It is filled with layers of alternative meanings; the figures
are psychologically charged; and it shows his mastery of his tools of expression—silver point, bronze, egg tempera, gouache, ink, pencil.
Mixed Media: Geoffrey Gorman. He uses materials that lie in the path of everyday life—branches, wire, fabric, and pieces of used metal—bringing animal figures to life through these modest means. His creative, inventive mind and exuberant personality are evident in all that he touches. I want to take home every one.
