May 5, 2005
Joe Ramiro Garcia
“Some people believe that paintings have meanings. Although I employ images from cartoons, animals, and objects in my work, I do not believe in creating a specific narrative. Instead I am sensitive to the charge or implication imagery lends to the painting’s surface. Currently I am using cartoon characters and other media images to conjure up new and old observations of the familiar.” “I am inspired by our experiences with life and mortality. Paintings are like walls. They remind me of the places I’ve lived around. Their surfaces recall kitchens, bedrooms, and backyards.” “I believe that we possess more than five senses and I’m convinced these extra perceptional senses allow us to create and digest art. If there is a message in my painting, it’s that I’m not sure of anything and I’m okay with it.”

Joe Ramiro Garcia was born in Houston and studied art from a young age. He is represented by several galleries, including the regional LeWallen Contemporary in Santa Fe, NM and Exhibitions 2D in Marfa,TX. Garcia shows extensively in numerous group, solo and invitational exhibits.

Patrick Harris
Patrick Harris will be discussing his work, America, of which people in the paintings look fairly normal; no outlandish color, in brief, the intent is to emphasize reality, not to be confused with realism. The images are finger paintings, which make use of everyday human activities in situations and recreates them as plastic tableaus.

Patrick Harris has a Master of Fine Art in Painting from University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has shown extensively in New Mexico at galleries such as LeWallen Contemporary and Anderson Contemporary Art, as well as nationally at venues such as Yellowstone Art Museum, Billings, MT and Washington Pavilion of Arts and Sciences, Sioux Falls, SD. Harris has received many awards including a Pollock- Krasner Foundation Individual Support Grant in 2000.

April 7, 2005
Nic Nicosia
presented 30 minutes of his film, 9.5 HOURS to SantaFe. A 10 hour real-time motion picture of the drive from Dallas, Texas where Nicosia previously lived to his current residence of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

“Technically, the entire trip was filmed in real-time with 3 cameras inside the car. One is mounted facing the front of the car, one mounted facing the rear as well as a hand-held camera. There was never a moment when at least one camera was not running, whether driving, stopping to change tapes, to fill-up with gas or simply to take a bathroom break. I have made this trip several times over the past few years and have never become bored with the beauty and the varying landscapes that change with each passing hour. From the city, to the soft rolling hills of north Texas, to the vast, minimal, landscapes of west Texas and New Mexico that become as surreal, provocative and as emotional as gazing at the ocean.”

March 3, 2005
NIGHT
Composer, Performer and Director Molly Sturges and her partner, Composer, multimedia/visual artist and soprano/tenor saxophone player Chris Jonas will discuss creating their polymedia performance, NIGHT.

Topics central to the development of the work include the integration of mediums, the relationship between open and closed forms, interdisciplinary performance, dynamics of collaboration in the context of family life and NIGHT as a response to the recent western construction of notions of terrorism and fear of the other/unknown. The discussion will also touch on other recent Jonas/Sturges polymedia projects including their new media Glove Boxes and an upcoming project for the EU City of Culture 2005 in Cork, Ireland.

This First Thursdays is in conjunction with CSF’s 9th Annual Santa Fe International Festival of Electroacoustic Music.

Molly Sturges
is a composer, performer and director focusing on the intersection of improvisation and composition. She has performed widely as an improvisational vocalist and holds a MA in composition from Wesleyan University. She has performed widely as a vocalist specializing in extended vocal techniques with recent performances with composer/improvisers Anthony Braxton and Malcolm Goldstein. She has been commissioned to create and perform original scores for a wide variety of projects including music for American dance companies, circuses and silent film. In New Mexico, Sturges is the co-leader of BING - a creative music performance ensemble, directs mJane, her improvisational ensemble, is a member of Out of Context (J.A. Deane) and is the co-founder of LittleGlobe Productions which creates film scores, experimental theater, new media and sound installation projects. In 2005 Sturges will be directing a large-scale, site specific performance project for The European Union Festival of Culture in Cork, Ireland.
http://www.mollysturges.com

Chris Jonas
Composer, multimedia/visual artist and soprano/tenor saxophone player Chris Jonas has gained international attention for his work as a composer, experimental jazz musician, conductor and new media artist. Since 1991, he has been a prominent member of the New York 'downtown', leading The Sun Spits Cherries and amitosis and has been a side-person in bands led by Anthony Braxton, William Parker, Cecil Taylor, The Brooklyn Sax Quartet and in Butch Morris' conduction ensembles. Jonas has also become well known for his work guest conducting ensembles in cities all over the US and Europe, composing works for film, orchestras, installations, string quartets, electro-acoustic music ensembles and jazz/new music ensembles. Locally, Chris co-leads BING (of Circus Luminous, silent film soundtracks such as The Man Who Laughs commissioned for the 2004 SITE Santa Fe Biennial and performed at the Lensic, and the 2nd module of NIGHT now in development, 2005), and has been working more and more as an installation and performance artist, combining music, performance, video and new media into structures for performance. Additionally, Jonas was Curator and Director of Installation and Performance arts at the Center for Contemporary Arts of Santa Fe 2002-2003 focusing on works that involved collaboration, new media, installation and emerging artists and artforms. He is the co-founder of LittleGlobe Productions.
http://www.chrisjonas.com

February 3, 2005
Michael Bergt
Michael Bergt has lived and worked in Santa Fe for sixteen years. In 1980 he started his career with the John Pence Gallery, in San Francisco. In 1991 he moved on to Midtown Payson and then DC Moore Gallery in New York City. Locally, he’s been represented by Turner Carroll Gallery in Santa Fe since 1995. Bergt’s works cover paintings in egg tempera, drawings and bronze sculptures. Working primarily with the figure, his compositions refer to a range of interests: classical myths, sensuality, the human condition, and topical events. Bergt's latest body of work combines his lyrical figure studies with the designs and patterning found in erotic Japanese “Shunga” prints.

Bergt has worked primarily in egg tempera for over twenty years. Although egg tempera is composed of humble elements--the yolk of an egg and the colored minerals of the earth--it possesses a rich, distinctive voice unique in the history of art. Bergt's figurative compositions utilize tempera's simplicity and directness to combine a classical aesthetic with a contemporary narrative quality.

In 1997, Bergt co-founded and is currently the President of The Society of Tempera Painters. An organization to “improve the art of tempera painting by the interchange of the knowledge and experience of the members.”

Cristina González
González received her M.F.A. from the University of Washington, Seattle, and her B.A. from Yale University. Among the grants she has received are fellowships to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Roswell Artist-in-Residence program. Her work is in three public collections in New Mexico, and is represented by Klaudia Marr Gallery in Santa Fe.

“My work is figurative and highly personal, concerning itself with questions of conventions of form in relation to specific cultural contexts. That is, the work strives to integrate classical form—for example, female figures from the Western European painting tradition—with the flat, decorative spatial patterning of folkloric traditions. My ambition is to create works of compelling beauty, insight, and rigor.”First Thursdays is funded in part with support from The Burnett Foundation, Lannan Foundation, The McCune Charitable Foundation, and through a generous donation from Dick and Dottie Barrett.

December 2, 2004
SFAI Member’s and First Thursdays Salon forum to discuss SFAI

We invite all in the community to participate in an open forum by asking questions, giving their opinions and joining a dialogue on the Santa Fe Art Institute’s past year and it’s future direction. Tell us what you think and get to know the people and ideas that make Santa Fe one of the richest creative centers in the country. A roaring fire and good food will be waiting for you in the intimate and welcoming atmosphere of the SFAI lounge.

November 4, 2004
Author Frederick Turner

In September 2001, following the moments when civilization seemed to have unraveled, Frederick Turner undertook a quest for confirmation that art does matter and that it is the preeminent human expression of the Life Force. In the Land of the Temple Caves: From St. Emilion to Paris–St. Sulpice (Counterpoint, April 12, 2004) is the story of Turner's moving journey. Turner begins his adventure at the gateway to the country of the caves known as St. Emilion, and ends it in Paris–St. Sulpice. In the caves and prehistoric shelters, along the valleys, in the war-ravaged village of Orador-sur-Glane and in a city church far removed from the country of the caves, Turner finds resonant meaning in what he has always believed to be true that art does matter. This is a beautiful, multifaceted travelogue that puts France's land of temple caves and the inviting life of friends, food, and wine above them on a timeless map.

Upon investigating the caves and prehistoric shelters of France, Turner finds an underlying connection between the past and the present in the 32,000 year-old paintings and engravings mythographer Joseph Campbell called "temple caves." Turner discovers art's ability to unify mankind as a Life Force that not only records man's history, but also tells of his hopes for the future. In the Land of the Temple Caves invites us to reflect on the failures,successes, hopes, and dreams as they are expressed through the cave paintings of our primitive predecessors.

Frederick Turner captures the thoughts and emotions triggered by his journey in candid and humble language. Turner's ability to connect art to events both past and present – from World War II to the tragedy of 9/11 endears and engages us in a most contemplative fashion. A cri de couer from one of America's most eloquent and respected naturalists and original essayists, In the Land of the Temple Caves is a profound and compelling look at ourselves as told through the history of our art.

Frederick Turner is the author of seven books of nonfiction, one novel, and extensive literary journalism. He has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

October 7 , 2004
Simón De Agüero and Chase Melendez

Simón De Agüero and Chase Melendez will present and discuss their work. These emerging artists share a similar approach to their work, as well as an aesthetic of inspiration and practice.

Simón De Agüero primarily works in a calligraphic style with pen and ink. He has been creating storytelling cards for several years, and he says of the work, “My storytelling cards are a journey to map the influence of thought in relation to the many systems of communication. I choose to stimulate the five senses with mellifluous entertainment, entangle the mind with numerous statements in a non-didactic pattern, and embrace unrestrained questions of what is to follow.”

Santa Fe local Simón De Agüero graduated with a BFA in studio arts from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2001. He has curated and organized several exhibitions including Treats at Core New Art Space in Denver, Colorado, and Against the Wall at the Santa Fe Art Institute. He has participated in a variety of group exhibitions including Reflexiones de la Alma at UNAM in Mexico, Diversity in America at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, and Unity Gain, a annual multimedia collaboration in Boulder, Colorado. De Agüero has worked extensively with public outreach programs at CU Art Galleries in Boulder as well as Fine Arts for Children and Teens in Santa Fe, and is currently the Education Outreach Coordinator for Santa Fe Art Institute. He has been awarded with an Undergraduate Research Grant, CU Boulder, and the Simple Shoes Scholarship in 2001

Of his work, Chase Melendez says, "My intent is to convey emotionally complex human scenarios—the tragic, humorous and sublime, with childlike innocence. It has been my experience that far more can be said with much less, and my paintings reflect this philosophy. I purposely limit the facial expressions on the characters I create in order to bring the message of each piece into clear focus, just as a child would draw what he or she saw with unabashed honesty and simplicity. The subject matter in my work is far more adult with themes ranging from depression and sex to ironic humor and political commentary. I attempt to imply story in each work, to make the viewer imagine how these characters reached the point at which they are witnessed and what will become of them down the surreal road ahead. My paintings are part of something much larger yet to be revealed.”

Santa Fe artist Chase Melendez was born in Portland, Oregon, where the Pacific Northwest's grey rainy days and evergreen forests cradled his strange dreams of other worlds filled with skinny black and white archetypes and colorful surrealist landscapes. Spending much of his early childhood in poverty, watercolors became the most accessible way to express his creative ideas to those around him. This experience resulted in an sophisticated painting style and an extensive knowledge of how water and pigment work. Melendez's work has been shown at solo exhibitions in Portland, Oregon, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, and as featured in WIRED magazine, band CD booklets, and numerous websites. His recent move to Santa Fe has resulted in a flood of new work and the launch of his online portfolio (www.chasemelendez.com).

September 2, 2004
Susan York and Deborah Hede

Susan York, a sculptor and installation artist, and Deborah Hede, a painter and drawer, will present their work and discuss their shared aesthetic. Their individual approaches to art distill elements of calm and tension in various media. Over the past few years, they have met weekly to discuss their work, careers, and lives. This collaboration has had meaningful implications as they discuss their solitary studio practices and examine questions of intention and production. Ongoing concerns include solving technical and aesthetic problems while achieving authenticity in life and work. The artists also address how they find appropriate audiences for their work, and how public viewing and dialogue create larger influences. The process of clarifying one's vision, assisted by the other's viewpoint (a viewpoint that is at once compassionate and related in spirit), leads to deeper understanding of the work and its connections to the larger world.

Susan York is a sculptor who creates objects and installations. She is an assistant professor at the College of Santa Fe and has recently taught and lectured at Harvard University and the Cranbrook Academy of Art. York is currently collaborating with the sound artist Steve Peters on a project at the Betty Rymer Gallery in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been presented in recent group exhibitions at Charlotte Jackson Fine Arts, Santa Fe; 2d Art, Marfa, Texas; the Europees Keramisch Werkcentrum, s’Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands; and the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche, Faenza, Italy.

Of her work, York says, “Even more than the influence of Minimalism, growing up in New Mexico beneath wide mesas, mud buildings, and a large sky is at the heart of my work. The absence of objects has become a part of me, like magnetic north. I am trying to get to the center of this absence in my work."

“In early 1980 I met Agnes Martin and for a few years we visited each month. She helped me understand the importance of calm and quiet when one works. It is the quiet world in my studio where I make hundreds of shards of the same shape, over and over that forms my work. My hope is that the viewer can taste this calm and sink into a moment of emptiness."

“At the same time, the works also force one into a visceral tension. In cartoons I watched as a child I often saw a character jump off a cliff while carrying a very high stack of plates. Hovering in mid-air for an excruciatingly long period, time was suspended and the tension grew unbearably. It is this absolute, suspended tension that I make palpable in these works. These opposite experiences; infinite calm and profound tension are at the heart of my work.”

Deborah Hede has exhibited in New York and Los Angeles. Most recently, Kate Ganz, ACE Gallery, and Patricia Faure Gallery have presented her art. The Phoenix Museum included Hede's large-scale drawings as part of its Triennial Exhibition in 2001. Hede's work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum of Art, New York; The Los Angeles County Museum; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe.

Hede explains, "The unpredictability of experience and the limits of knowledge interest me. Randomness, the unknown, fear, insecurity, the impossible, and the absurd—these are inevitable conditions that predicate our lives and mortality. The tendency to habits and the false security habits generate also shape part of a narrative in my art. My surfaces and images touch upon the passage of time, and suggest the ephemeral nature of materiality, of dissolution. Working in my studio, with detachment, I am able to place these unsettling tensions within a sanctuary of contemplation—the art itself."

August 5, 2004
Emmi Whitehorse and Rebecca Bluestone

Painter and printmaker Emmi Whitehorse and tapestry weaver and teacher Rebecca Bluestone will address the differences in their techniques and the similarities in their artistic vocabularies.

Emmi Whitehorse uses a private language of symbols and memories, to make personal diaries of her life as an artist and of her aboriginal heritage. She creates textures and colors that conjure up the atmosphere and experience of the New Mexico landscape. Of Whitehorse's work, art critic Lucy Lippard has written, "This land appears in her work simultaneously as very distant and very close up, in atmospheric washes and sharp details and lines. As we see, her paintings are consummate abstractions, welcome in the world of art for art's sake for their finely balanced forms and colors. They are also metaphysical views from the Navajo world. As such, they offer to viewers 'from both worlds' a glimpse of what art can be."

Whitehorse says, “As an artist I have intentionally avoided politically oriented subject matter and angst-ridden or physical wrestling with the act of painting itself. To make art, the act of making art must stay true to a harmonious balance of beauty, nature, humanity and the whole universe. This is in accordance with Navajo philosophy. I have chosen to focus on nature, on landscape. My paintings tell the story of knowing land over time—of being completely, microcosmically within a place. I am defining a particular space, describing a particular place. The paintings are purposefully meditative and mean to be seen slowly. The intricate language of symbols refers to specific plants, people, and experiences."

Rebecca Bluestone is a contemporary abstract artist who uses traditional tapestry techniques and hand-dyed silks of varied textures and sheens and metallic threads woven on a cotton warp as her medium. Instead of applying paint to canvas, she dyes the fibers first and then, in essence, weaves her own canvas. In this way the work is rendered in a very painterly manner.

In 2002, the Denver Art Museum exhibited a 12-year overview of Bluestone's work. This exhibition represented the first time the Denver Art Museum had shown a contemporary fiber artist. Bluestone has received numerous commissions, including a recent Federal Art in Architecture commission for the U.S. Courthouse in Albuquerque. Bluestone's work is in numerous public collections, including those at Chicago Art Institute; Museum of Arts & Design, New York; Denver Art Museum; Albuquerque Museum; New Mexico State Capitol, Santa Fe; and the U.S. Embassy, Ottawa, Canada; as well as in the private collection of Robert Redford. Her work has been featured regularly in national publications such as The New York Times, American Craft, Fiberarts, Handwoven Magazine, Southwest Art, and Shuttle, Spindle & Dyepot. She is represented by the Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Of her work, Bluestone says, "My desire to create art has always come from an intense need to communicate those aspects of human experience that exist in the interstices, the space between the words. I am constantly exploring visual art's abstract language that reaches to the depths of discovering what it means to be human. I think we access these innermost places through a contemplative, quiet state. I use color and the Fibonacci progression of numbers as a means to approach our many layers of knowing."

July 1, 2004
Dana Newmann and Eugene Newmann

Collage artist Dana Newmann and painter Eugene Newmann will explore their work and discuss their collaborations with other artists. In addition to creating collages, Dana Newmann has recently completed a book in collaboration with photographer Jack Parsons, Personal Spaces: Studios of New Mexico Artists, in which she interviewed 50 artists throughout New Mexico about their individual workspaces. A long-time resident of Northern New Mexico, Eugene Newmann will explore his atmospheric paintings that combine images drawn—or, withdrawn—from yoga primers with sketchy elements of the scrub pine- and juniper-dotted landscape in which he lives.

Dana Newmann was born in Prairie City, Illinois—in the American heartland—and her work rescues and re-formalizes the fragile remains of the American record as found in clippings, diaries, 19th-century letters and other ephemera. Her interest in the history of art has led, among other work, to a page by page reworking of Un Semaine de Bonte, Max Ernst's Surrealist collage novel. She also constructs memory maps of her travels to Uzbekistan, Russia, Mexico, and North Africa. In her work, the materials themselves—distressed papers, glass negatives, ivory piano keys, 19th-century end-papers, found notes, and shopping lists—dictate the individual compositions.

Personal Spaces: Studios of New Mexico Artists is scheduled for publication by The Museum of New Mexico Press in May 2005. She has shown her work extensively in the Southwest, as well as in California, New York, and Mexico. Her one-person exhibitions include an "Alcove Show" at the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe. Newmann is currently working in her Ribera, New Mexico, studio on a continuing series of collages incorporating ivory piano keys.

Eugene Newmann is primarily an easel painter, though in the late 1980s and early 1990s the artist collaborated with sculptor John Connell on the Raft Project, a series of large-scale installations that were mounted at institutions in Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico. Newmann's contribution to the project, mural-size paintings based on star-maps, harkened back to themes of navigation and travel that recur in his work. References to the human body, often reshaped by impulses both formal and informal, are also a persistent feature of his work.

Eugene Newmann has exhibited widely in New Mexico, and elsewhere, over the last 30 years. His work is in many private collections, as well as in public collections throughout the United States. In 2002, the Santa Fe Rotary Foundation selected him as their Distinguished Artist of the Year. He was born in 1936 in Bratislava, Slovakia. His early years were spent in Colombia, South America, and he has lived in the United States since 1946. In 1972, Newmann moved to Santa Fe, where he lived and worked until 1986; he currently resides with his wife Dana in Ribera, New Mexico, 40 miles east of Santa Fe.

June 3, 2004
Trey Jordan and Roy Wroth

Architect Trey Jordan and urbanist Roy Wroth will explore the necessary and the habitual in Santa Fe's architecture, including style, vernacular technology, the role of innovation in tradition, and how urban form relates to community. This event is an opportunity to discuss a vision for the future that integrates an evolving architectural vernacular with a preservation ethic.

Trey Jordan has been designing buildings in Santa Fe since 1990. He started his own firm, Conway Jordan Design, in 1994, working on residential and small commercial projects in the historic districts. His work has evolved from historic renovation to modern buildings whose aesthetic stems from the historic vernacular of northern New Mexico. Several recent and current projects explore the relationship between this contemporary aesthetic and the existing historic fabric of Santa Fe.

Roy Wroth is an urbanist practicing in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, whose work integrates architecture, preservation, community planning, and urban design. He has been a member of numerous interdisciplinary teams, with experience in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. He was involved in the Santa Fe Railyard Project, Downtown Albuquerque revitalization, and preservation/revitalization efforts in Las Vegas and Los Ranchos. A New Mexico native, Roy is a member of the Congress for the New Urbanism and the New Mexico Heritage Preservation Alliance.

May 6, 2004
Keep Adding, curators of The Domino Effect

Keep Adding discusses the artists in their current exhibition at SFAI, as well as a brief history of their formation and philosophies. This emerging artist and curatorial group is gaining international recognition, and will share some of their experiences as artists who are pushing boundaries and often working with mediums not common in the art world.

Keep Adding is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Two artists who felt the need to create a way to encapsulate their collective work started the group in the year 2000. Using digital prints, drawings, murals, and installation, Keep Adding redefines concepts of geometry, architecture, destruction and abstraction. The work is often dense, colorful, abstracted, and organic. When viewers take a closer look they discover disfigured forms, creatures, and subtle patterns. Ghost-like anomalies emerge as hundreds of layers melt into each other, creating lush texture-scapes.

Keep Adding recently remixed photographs for Funkstörung’s 2004 CD release Disconnected, and the related DVD (to be released later in the year). When they aren’t busy with collaborative projects Keep Adding stays focused on personal work. Wizards of modern machines, purveyors of stylistic perfection, Keep Adding continues to push boundaries and defy categorization.

http://www.keepadding.com

April 1, 2004
Linda Durham and Zane Fischer

In 1978, Linda Durham founded Linda Durham Gallery in Santa Fe. Ten years ago, she moved the gallery to Galisteo and changed its name to Linda Durham Contemporary Art.

For the past 26 years, Durham has devoted her time and energy to representing New Mexico-based artists and is an untiring advocate of contemporary arts in New Mexico. A businesswoman and entrepreneur, she is also "an artist whose medium is other artists' work." Linda Durham Contemporary Art has participated in many international art fairs, and mounted special exhibitions in Houston, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Edinburgh, Cologne, Madrid, and New York. Durham has lectured and/or given workshops at many universities and institutions on topics including the Art of Business, Entrepreneurship, the Artist and the Studio, Women and Money, and Issues in Contemporary Art.

Zane Fischer is an award-winning columnist and writer for the Santa Fe Reporter and a critic for THE magazine. He was the co-director of Offsite Artspace and the executive director of the Center for Contemporary Arts under the Plan B moniker. He is also a convicted instigator of many art exhibits, performances, and general hoopla. He has even made some things by hand that have been mistaken for art.

March 4, 2004
Jennifer Joseph and Dara Mark

Jennifer Joseph's artistic investigations involve pattern, chance, and the development of systems through which chance can act on pattern. She describes the repetitive nature the pattern-creating process as a way to open up a deeper, more expansive state of contemplation and glimpse one's inner space. While pattern answers the natural human desire to impose order on chaos, the visual situation gains interest through the introduction of chance. The transformative effect of chance acting on structure begins to mimic nature–a conceptual framework that she finds endlessly fascinating.

She expresses her ideas through diverse and unexpected media, especially through the proliferation of readymade objects. Beauty is an important aspect of the work, and often the choice of material is integral to making the work as beautiful as possible. Recent work is in media that is reflective, shiny, or sparkly, making light becomes a vital component as it interacts with the form. Joseph's quest is for "a cohesive visual experience that results in some "sort of interaction with the mystery, the ephemeral, the subtle energies.

Dara Mark holds degrees in architecture and ceramic sculpture, but abstract painting is where she feels at home. She cites her father, Mayo Sorgman, as her first artistic influence and traces her love of abstract work back to the time they spent in New York museums and galleries, drinking in the work being shown during the 1950s and '60s. She grew up, she says, on Matisse and Picasso, De Kooning, and Pollock.

Mark is drawn to old Asian paintings, with their suggestive, indefinite spaces, and loves Mark Rothko and Brice Marden perhaps for the same reason. From Agnes Martin's paintings she learned to honor the delicacy and precision in her own work.

February 5, 2004
Ramona Sakiestewa and Signe Stuart with Hollis Walker

Well-known in the contemporary art world for her exquisite tapestries, Ramona Sakiestewa is one of Native America's most influential artists. Born of Hopi ancestry and raised in the American Southwest, she taught herself to weave by evolving and adapting techniques derived from prehistoric pueblo weaving. She has woven the work of other contemporary artists including Frank Lloyd Wright and Kenneth Noland, and designed two limited edition series of commercially woven blankets. The first series was inspired by historic trails of the Southwest, the second by National Monuments in Arizona and New Mexico and the ancient cultures that inhabited those places. She has had solo exhibitions at the Wheelwright Museum and the Newark Museum, and her work is in the collections of a dozen museums including the Smithsonian Institution. Sakiestewa has also received numerous awards at the annual Santa Fe Indian Market.

As chair of the New Mexico State Arts Commission, she influenced state arts policy for 16 years. She currently serves as a Native design consultant working to build the National Mall facility of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. She mentored the development team for the master planning of The Native Universe, one of three major permanent gallery themes planned for that institution. She has also consulted as a designer with the architectural team for Enchanted Skies Park, a public observatory and astronomy center sponsored by the University of New Mexico to be built west of Albuquerque near Grants, New Mexico. In addition to the National Museum of the American Indian, Sakiestewa's current public art and design projects include the Tempe Center for the Arts in Arizona; the American West Heritage Center in Wellsville, Utah; and the Chickasaw Cultural Center in Sulphur, Oklahoma.

Sakiestewa has lived and worked in New York City, Mexico City, Peru, Japan, and China. She has traveled throughout Europe. She currently lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Signe Stuart describes her paintings as "mnemonic devices triggering resonance with the dynamics of nature...the interplay of seen and unseen, of being and becoming." Her paintings utilize sewn canvas, sometimes with plexiglass, and layers of acrylic glazes. Works on paper are generally sewn and collaged mulberry paper with acrylic and sumi. Processes of constructing, connecting, sewing, and layering structures, patterns, and paint are metaphors for processes occurring in nature. They are her ways of knowing and her means for discovering kinds of order. In the end, her work is about conjuring beauty.

Stuart has shown her work nationally and regionally since the1960's. Her works are in museums, and corporate and private collections. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Painting Fellowship, a commission from the National Endowment for the Art in Public Places Program, and a residency at the Ucross Foundation.

Hollis Walker has written features, criticism, and academic essays on fine art. She has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Art & Antiques, Los Angeles Times, Ms., and many other publications.

December 4, 2003
Sydney Cooper and David Hirschi with Jon Carver

Sydney Cooper's silver-leaf paintings fuse her interests in surface, time, change, and the relationship of the precious to the everyday. She has shown her work in New Mexico, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York.

Cooper was born in Los Angeles, California. She attended Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont, where she received a B.A. in art and literature in 1988. Since then Cooper has lived in Los Angeles, Paris, Tokyo, and New York. For the past 10 years she has lived and worked in Chimayo, New Mexico.

David Hirschi's monochromatic paintings have been called "quiet abstractions" by New American Paintings. A self-taught artist, Hirschi has spent the last decade simplifying his paintings. His most recent body of work, oil and wax on wood, is a distillation of his investigations into color and the repetition of a single stroke.

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Hirschi moved to San Francisco in 1974 after graduating from the University of Utah, where he received a B.A. in creative writing and art history. A resident of New Mexico since 1991, he now lives and paints in Chimayo. His work is shown at Chiaroscuro Gallery in Santa Fe and Scottsdale, and at Rule Gallery in Denver.

Jon Carver is a regular contributor to THE magazine and an arts educator.