Four to five hundred people are expected at the University of New Mexico-Taos Annual Art Exhibition at the TCA, Stables Art Gallery. Students, family, friends and the public are invited to this end of the school year celebration. The show runs from May 2 to the 14, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.
The opening reception with art, music, film and food takes place on Sunday, May 2 from 1 to 4 p.m.. Refreshments will be provided by UNM-Taos students in the Culinary Arts program. The band, Shades of Blue, featuring Sam Lucero and Ed Ramsey, will perform live. Work in the show will be for sale. The exhibit is sponsored by the UNM-Taos Art Club, Student Government and Arts Academy.
When asked what’s new in this yea'rs student show, Arts Academy Head, Gary Cook, answered, “Everything is new: new jewelry, paintings, photographs, ceramics, pueblo pottery, prints, film and chocolate. You haven’t seen this work before. You shouldn’t miss this show.”
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he exhibition is an un-juried show open to UNM-Taos students who enrolled in at least one art course during the 2009-2010 school year. It represents production by art majors and general education students working on two year degrees and certificates as well as non-degree seeking professional artists and second career adults. The classes also fulfill many of the first and second year requirements for four year programs offered at UNM-Albuquerque and the UNM Extended University in Taos.Students learn new technical, material and visual skills as well as how to develop content in their work. UNM-Taos provides well-equipped studio facilities. The school has programs in visual fundamentals, drawing, painting, printmaking, jewelry, digital photography, video and clay. In addition, the Arts Academy offers classes in dance, voice, music, songwriting and acting.
The range and level of work in this exhibition makes the school’s annual show unusual and particularly interesting. New instructor, Jeremy McDonnell, is “consistently surprised by the breadth and quality of the work being made at UNM-Taos”. McDonnell, who teaches students how to photograph their work in his digital portfolio class, sees a healthy cross section of the art produced at the school. According to Cook, “It is rare for a two year program to have such success. While many of Northern New Mexico's best known artists have made art in the UNM-Taos program, the success of the art program is still something of a secret.” Cook also mentioned that this summer twenty printmakers who have studied with him and Amy Rankin will exhibit at the E. L. Blumenschein Home and Museum in Taos in a show Cook is curating with Anita McDaniel, Curator, Taos Historic Museums. Approximately seventy prints will be shown in this year's student show including monotypes, etchings, block prints and collagraphs.Arts Academy Program Coordinator, Sabra Sowell, reports that, “Classes are fully enrolled. Students in my classes are busy fabricating and casting rings, necklaces and bracelets and making small metal boxes and sculpture from precious and semi precious stones, silver, copper and bronze.” One of Sowell's students, Tracy Olson, after being out of school for eleven years, says that she has found her jewelry class to be challenging and rewarding. As Olson puts it, “Learning from a master teacher, interacting with other students and Taos artists while designing and fabricating jewelry has improved all of my art.”
Although the techniques taught in the Pueblo Pottery class are ancient, the new instructor, Dawning Pollen, has given the class a slightly different emphasis from that of her mother, Bernadette Track, who is taking a break from teaching this year. Dawning Pollen, who studied art at UNM-Albuquerque, has introduced her interest in painted surface design to the spring pottery class.
Matt Adams teaches another ancient pottery technique, Raku, to his students. In this dramatic Japanese firing process, pots are fired in an outdoor gas kiln. Then, tongs are used to remove the red hot pots from the kiln and to immerse them into ash cans containing saw dust, leaves and dirt. After smoldering in the covered ash cans for a short time, the pots are immersed in water. This process imparts a wide range of copper metallic lusters, white crackle and luminescent effects on the pottery.
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tural drawings, anatomical studies, portraits and nude figures crafted from charcoal, lead and oil paint are the products of the figure classes taught by instructor Conrad Cooper.The digital media classes have created photographs and moving pictures. Joe Ciaglia’s photography students have addressed Gandhi’s "Seven Deadly Sins of Contemporary Life" and created imaginary family portraits using Adobe Photoshop software. Kelly Clement’s Technical Introduction to Video class will show short films for the duration of the exhibition.
Beginning painting, watercolor, drawing, two dimensional design and still life courses have introduced students to color, the elements and principles of design, composition and new materials. While the physical and observational skills taught in these classes are mostly universal, the subject concerns in these classes are also driven by the interests of the instructors Gary Cook, Amy Rankin, Jeremy McDonnell, Bill Stewart, Giovanna Paponetti and Sabra Sowell. The results are figurative and abstract images that depict both traditional and contemporary art issues and visual language.
Special guests at the opening reception will be the UNM-Taos Culinary Arts students. Last year their food display was reason enough to attend the year-end celebration. Their chocolate cakes and candies were the delicious hit of the show. Special praise should go out to Carol Lee, Culinary Arts Program Coordinator, for the successful program she manages.
UNM Taos Arts Academy Homepage
Photos:
"Viva de Muerte" by Amy Montoya.
Pueblo Potter by Sandra Varos and Ron Moore.
"Delusion" Fatima Rigsby.
Chocolate Cakes by UNM Culinary Arts.
