Elizabeth Abrams: Photography exhibit @ New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum, Las Cruces - Antidotes: Seeing Beauty, Finding Connection

Elizabeth Abrams: Photography exhibit

Antidotes: Seeing Beauty, Finding Connection

New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum, Las Cruces

August 19 - December 2, 2023

ELIZABETH ABRAMS

Desert Horizon

© Elizabeth Abrams

Courtesy New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum

For Elizabeth Abrams, the art of photography offers an opportunity to connect deeply with the world around us, especially in the form of nature.

The show features 24 beautiful landscape and wildlife images by Elizabeth Abrams, who lives in Las Cruces. The show also includes a “Death and Life” display, a memorial work dedicated to horses and other animals.

“My own journey of reconnecting with the landscape of the Chihuahuan Desert has brought experiences of deep healing and meaning,” Elizabeth Abrams says in her Artist Statement. “I think about photography as a practice of seeing the land and animals with love, care, and attention, and acknowledging our interdependence. This is my way of contemplating the mutual antidotes humans and the rest of nature might be able offer each other in facing the unique challenges of the times we live in.”

Her landscape photographs reflect the light and texture of the environment and the seasons, whether it’s the Rio Grande or the Organ Mountains. The 12 wildlife images in the show feature everything from a bobcat to a variety of birds.

Elizabeth Harvey Abrams is a nature photographer and interdisciplinary artist. She grew up in Alamogordo and Las Cruces with multiple generations of farming and ranching on both sides of her family. Abrams returned to Las Cruces after a 15-year career in federal government and related work in Washington, D.C. After changing careers, she now practices as a mental health counselor focusing on grief, trauma, and ecotherapy.

NEW MEXICO FARM AND RANCH HERITAGE MUSEUM

4100 Dripping Springs Road, Las Cruces, New Mexico 88011

www.nmfarmandranchmuseum.org

Gerry Snyder and Marco Rosichelli: The Surreal Life, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe

The Surreal Life: Gerry Snyder and Marco Rosichelli

New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe

September 25, 2009 - January 31, 2010

The Surreal Life sets up a dialogue between the work of two artists, Gerry Snyder and Marco Rosichelli, who share a desire to create alternative universes both familiar and strange. 

Gerry Snyder and Marco Rosichelli present in their art extremely well known elements – Snyder’s beautifully crafted paintings with their Renaissance inspired backdrops and Rosichelli’s finely crafted playground toys. However, they juxtapose these artistic elements with surreal content, Snyder with amorphous balloon-like cartoon shapes and Rosichelli with fetus-like forms. 

Marco Rosichelli’s sculptures evoke common objects reminiscent of childhood icons and toys. He says, “…the viewers are enticed to interact with the work.”  

The figures in Gerry Snyder’s paintings have an unruly organic quality that suggest Darwinian principles run amok; they can’t stop growing extra breasts yet lack basic necessities like arms or mouths. 

We are asked to consider the anthropomorphic forms represented in both artists’ work, either through our subconscious dream-fueled mind or as literal symbols. Is the Rosichelli sculpture in the exhibition, “Spring Fetus 2,” the realization of some dream gone bad or more literally a hobby horse common to children’s playgrounds? Is Snyder asking us to look at the forms in his paintings as if through a window or is the canvas a mirror?

Exhibition curator Tim Rodgers, Ph.D., said that he hopes the viewer will, “…find such art inspiring in that it opens up new possibilities and alternative worlds.”

Gerry Snyder earned his BFA from the University of Oregon and his MA in Art and Media, at New York University. Gerry Snyder lives in New Mexico. His work has been exhibited internationally and is in the Whitney and DeYoung Museums’ permanent collections. Marco Rosichelli received his BFA in sculpture and design from Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon. He recently earned an MFA in sculpture from Arizona State University, in Tempe, Arizona. He was recently the recipient of a public art commission through the Scottsdale Public Arts Commission, in Scottsdale, Arizona. Rosichelli currently lives in Arizona. Marco Rosichelli has mostly shown in Arizona and Oregon and The Surreal Life is a good opportunity to see emerging and more established artists’ take on this topic.

NEW MEXICO MUSEUM OF ART

Santa Fe’s Plaza at 107 West Palace Avenue

www.nmartmuseum.org 

James Koskinas & Julie Schumer, Farrell Fischoff Gallery, Santa Fe - Without Hesitation

James Koskinas & Julie Schumer: Without Hesitation

Farrell Fischoff Gallery, Santa Fe

June 23 - July 24 2006

Farrell Fischoff Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings by New Mexico artists James Koskinas and Julie Schumer. 

This is the second two-person show Farrell Fischoff has given James Koskinas and Julie Schumer, and their work has grown stronger and more compositionally sophisticated in the intervening two years.

James Koskinas describes himself as an Expressionist painter: "I do not own my talent. The paintings come from somewhere. All I have to do is hold on to the brush."

In his current series of paintings, Portraits of Women, James Koskinas explores his subconscious archetypes of woman and femininity with boldly colored studies of women's faces. These striking paintings portray a wide range of expression and emotion, demonstrating James Koskinas' skill with the brush, and his fascination with the human form.

Julie Schumer’s geometric abstractions are drawn from her acute observation and sensitivity to the world around her. They distill the southwestern landscape using color, light and form. Painted over time, layer by layer, each canvas or work on paper has developed a compelling depth and warmth.

Originally from Arizona and California, respectively, James Koskinas and Julie Schumer now reside in Lamy, New Mexico where they have lived and worked together for the past 6 years.

FARREL FISCHOFF GALLERY

1807 Second Street, #29, Santa Fe, NM 87505-3801

www.farrellfischoff.com

Erika Wanenmacher at SITE Santa Fe - Grimoire

Erika Wanenmacher: Grimoire

SITE Santa Fe

March 31 - May 27, 2001

SITE Santa Fe presents ERIKA WANENMACHER: GRIMOIRE, a large-scale installation designed especially for SITE Santa Fe. The exhibition is organized by SITE Santa Fe.

For GRIMOIRE, Erika Wanenmacher presents an exhibition of personal spell-making; a journey of gathering and storing magic. In a preliminary exhibition description, Erika Wanenmacher writes:

"Although the term grimoire usually denotes a traditional encyclopedia of western magic, this show really describes my own personal territory of art-making. Several years ago I realized that what I was constructing -- physically and mentally -- were spells. My favorite definition of magic comes from Dion Fortune who declares it "the art of changing consciousness at will." In considering my work as spells, the most important aspect is the intent. It is imperative to be clear. What do I want this spell to do? The intent is out in front of any action. As a storyteller, if I can get my story (intent) across, then I have acted upon the consciousness of the viewer. Magic."

In her exhibition, Erika Wanenmacher shows both early two- and three-dimensional pieces and newer installation work made especially for SITE Santa Fe. She will present a large installation featuring her car -- a 1972 Volvo station wagon with a Chevy 350 engine that runs on propane -- in the middle of a 16 foot pentacle sand painting, covered with a net held by 5 large cast aluminum heads. The heads, (a recurring image in her work and based on the likeness of Erika and the Aztec goddess Teoloztatl), will hold the ends of the net clamped in their teeth. The car will be loaded with pieces of art packed in found boxes. On the walls will be 4 videos, each one representing a different element (earth, air, fire, water).

The exhibition also features light boxes, showing x-rays of the box pieces in the car and individual sculptures that are magical tools; including a trickster box containing raven and coyote arms; a post-apocalyptic travelling magic tool set; and a giant necklace of the Hindu goddess Kali.

Erika Wanenmacher is a Santa Fe, New Mexico-based artist who works in multi-media. She has attended the Feminist Studio Workshop, The Woman's Building in Los Angeles, California and the Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, Missouri. Erika Wanenmacher has been involved in many one-person exhibitions including Terrible Beauty, Tangibles, Storyteller, Grace, and Buzz at Linda Durham Contemporary Art, Galisteo, New Mexico; and Devotionals at Braunstein/Quay Gallery, San Francisco, California. She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions around the world including Contemporary Botanica, Tweed Museum, Duluth, Minnesota; Ship from the Desert, The Moorings Project, Schiffbauergasse, Potsdam, Germany; El Mundo Del Arte De Nuevo Mexico, Guadalajara, Mexico; and Edgy: Five Contemporary Northern New Mexico Artists, Coconino Art Center, Flagstaff, Arizona.

SITE Santa Fe

1606 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, New Mexico

www.sitesantafe.org

Teresita Fernandez at SITE Santa Fe

Teresita Fernández

SITE Santa Fe

October 7, 2000 - January 14, 2001

SITE Santa Fe presents New York-based artist TERESITA FERNÁNDEZ in an exhibition of new works. The exhibition is organized by SITE Santa Fe and curated by Louis Grachos, the Director & Curator of SITE Santa Fe. An exhibition catalogue specific to her SITE Santa Fe exhibition and published by SITE Santa Fe is available.

For SITE Santa Fe, Teresita Fernández has chosen a 5000 square foot space that she will alter and modify for her new works. Teresita Fernández writes, "I am currently developing a body of work which deals with the impossibility of wilderness. I am interested in landscape in terms of exotic place, extreme place and objectified space. The concept of wilderness in particular is at the core of these new works‹thought as a kind of place where one loses one's way, goes astray and becomes literally bewildered. But this very notion of wilderness already implies human presence because in fact, this wandering remains an act of human presence, and the wandering becomes about finding, choosing, marking sites that are most grand, most extreme, most exotic."

The SITE Santa Fe exhibition consists of an entirely new body of work. It will focus on large-scale sculptural works and wall pieces where, unlike the installations, it is the viewer who surrounds the individual works. Teresita Fernández elaborates, "These works will incorporate abstracted references to natural phenomena, sites in the landscape and states of arrest and movement. For example; references to frozen waterfalls, land formations, and foliage will be used as vehicles for situations that place the viewer as witness to the objectified "site" in nature.

Teresita Fernández was born in Miami in 1968 and holds a M.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions in New York, Miami, Washington, Chicago, Toronto, Tokyo, and Amsterdam, among others. Teresita Fernández has received fellowships from the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and a Cintas Fellowship. She had a residency in 1998 with the American Academy in Rome, Italy. This year, she received a Tiffany Foundation artist grant.

SITE Santa Fe

1606 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, New Mexico

www.sitesantafe.org