original article from Artsy, Alexxa Gotthardt, May 17, 2019
For generations, artists from Georgia O’Keeffe to Ken Price have followed New Mexico’s magnetic pull, finding inspiration in the high desert’s expansive vistas, quietude, and respite from social and market pressures.
Several months after photographer-gallerist Alfred Stieglitz presented O’Keeffe’s first New York solo show, in April 1917, the 29-year-old painter embarked on a trip across the American West with her youngest sister, Claudia. While they’d planned to head straight from Texas to Colorado, their train detoured to Santa Fe. New Mexico’s vast, mercurial skies and incandescent light mesmerized the artist. “I’m out here in New Mexico—going somewhere—I’m not positive where—but it’s great,” she gushed in a letter to Stieglitz, dated August 15th. “Not like anything I ever saw before.”
“There is so much more space between the ground and sky out here it is tremendous,” she continued. “I want to stay.” By 1949, O’Keeffe had made the New Mexican high desert her permanent home, indelibly tattooing its landscape to her work, identity, and legacy.
Portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe in Abiquiu, New Mexico, 1974. Photo by Joe Munroe/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
The Santa Fe University of Art and Design will be closing in the spring of 2018.
SFUAD during outdoor vision fest 2015
School administrators cited ongoing financial challenges and the need to offer their roughly 650 students more clarity about the school’s future. Still, administrators say they are considering other options, such as public-private partnerships that can keep the school open.
The school is owned by Laureate International Universities. The city of Santa Fe leases the campus to the university for $2.2 million a year. Laureate had hoped to sell its assets to Raffles Education Corp. of Singapore, but the deal fell through.
The school has transfer arrangements with several accredited institutions. Administrators say the goal is to see eligible students transfer with as little financial or academic disruption as possible. Freshman and Sophomores will not have a school to come back to next Fall. Juniors and Seniors will have a skeleton faculty and facilities to finish their degrees. Marketing and outreach departments at SFUAD have already closed up shop.
The 2016 biennial, dubbed “Much Wider Than a Line,” is the second edition of a rethinking of the event.
Xenobia Bailey, Sistah Paradise’s Great Wall of Fire Revival Tent (1993–ongoing). Courtesy of the artist
Margaret Randall, self-described “feminist poet, writer, photographer and social activist,” was born in New York City in 1936. Amid a life of many peripatetic adventures, she found herself in Mexico City during the 1960s, where she co-founded the pioneering bilingual journal of poetry and art, El Corno Emplumado (“The Plumed Horn”), with the Mexican poet Sergio Mondragón. The journal, which prided itself in showcasing work by “communist guerrillas, Catholic priests, indigenous poets,” and “consecrated masters,” according to Randall, will be celebrated next week by an installation in the SITElines biennial in Santa Fe, which opens July 16. Indeed, it can be thought of as one of the muses for the show.
The editors of El Corno Emplumado took a stand for the Mexican student movement, which faced violent repression in 1968. The ensuring scrutiny from the Mexican government effectively marked its end. “When the repression hit us and I had to go underground, that was the end of the magazine,” Randall recalls in a video dedicated to its history.
Randall’s subsequent life took her to post-revolutionary Cuba, through the social upheaval of Nicaragua, and back to the United States in the 1980s, where she was nearly ejected again for the anti-imperialist sentiment of her writings. Today, she lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
With a continent-spanning creative significance but at a right angle to the typical globe-trotting paths of the art circuit, her story serves as a precedent for the kind of energy that SITE Santa Fe’s biennial is attempting to capture.
Two years ago, the organizers of Santa Fe’s venerable biennial (founded 1995) decided to rethink the project amid a glut of international art events. They committed themselves to a six-year cycle of events, called SITElines, that would focus on “New Perspectives on the Art of the Americas,” a remit that performs a balancing act between expanding the focus of a regional biennial, while still telling a specific story.
“Part of why we set out to change the biennial in the way we did was to create a platform for many voices that were not included in the traditional biennial circuit, especially in the United States,” explained Irene Hofmann, director and chief curator of the new biennial’s organizing institution, SITE Santa Fe.
Graciela Iturbide, Self Portrait with the Seri Indians, Sonoran Desert, Mexico (1979). Courtesy of the artist
“You will recognize names on the list,” she continued, “but we are also bringing forward a number of artists who haven’t been a part of the conversation, partly because they are indigenous, or because they are artists who often pigeonholed in strictly Latin American, or Caribbean exhibitions.”
As part of its rethinking, SITElines has ditched the model of superstar curator, employing instead a collaborative team. For 2016, the five curators represent different geographies and specialties—even if at least three of the five work for New York institutions: Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, curator at New York’s El Museo del Barrio; Kathleen Ash-Milby, curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian; and Pablo León de la Barra, curator of Latin American art at the Guggenheim.
Rounding out the roster are Pip Day, director and curator at SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art in Montréal, and Kiki Mazzucchelli, an independent curator who splits time between London and São Paulo.
Over the course of a year and a half of collaborative discussion and reading, this group honed the theme. Each contributed four to six artists representing their interests.
The title of the biennial, “Much Wider Than a Line,” is cribbed from Indigenous poet and scholar Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s book Dancing on our Turtle’s Back, which looks at the traditions of the Nishnaabeg people as a resource for contemporary thinking about society.
Cildo Meireles, The Southern Cross/Cruzeiro do Sul (1969 – 1970). Courtesy of the artists, Galeria Luisa Strina, Sao Paolo.
All told, the event features 36 participants, from Brazilian art great Cildo Miereles to “social practice” star Pablo Helguera.
“It is certainly not the usual suspects,” Hofmann told me. “At the same time, even the artists you do know, it frames them in ways that create important new connections.”
Below, the full list:
Jonathas De Andrade (b. 1982 Maceió, Brazil; lives in Recife, Brazil)
Xenobia Bailey (b. 1955 Seattle, Washington; lives and works in New York)
Lina Bo Bardi (b. 1914 Rome, Italy; d. 1992 São Paulo, Brazil)
Anna Boghiguian (b. 1946 in Cairo, Egypt)
Margarita Cabrera (b. 1973 Monterrey, Mexico; lives in El Paso, Texas)
Raven Chacon (b. 1977 Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation, Arizona, lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico)
Benvenuto Chavajay (b. 1978 Guatemala City; lives in Guatemala City)
Mariana Castillo Deball (b. 1975 Mexico City, Mexico; lives in Berlin)
William Cordova (b. 1971 Lima, Peru; lives in Miami/New York/Lima)
Lewis deSoto (b. 1954 San Bernardino, California; lives in Napa, California)
Aaron Dysart (b. 1975 Minneapolis, Minnesota; lives in St. Paul, Minnesota)
Carla Fernández (b.1973 Saltillo, Mexico, lives in Mexico City)
Miguel Gandert (b. 1956 Espanola, New Mexico; lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico)
Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972 Colorado; lives in Hudson, New York)
Jorge González (b. 1981 San Juan, Puerto Rico; lives in San Juan)
Maria Hupfield (b. 1975 Georgian Bay, Ontario, Canada; lives in New York)
Encore of a New Mexico PBS Original Production PAINTING ALBUQUERQUE Monday, August 17 at 8:30 p.m. on Ch.5.1 — A Complete List of Painters Profiled & Mentioned, Along With Venues & Participants Are Included Below —
Raymond Jonson – Casein Tempera No. 6 1941 UNM Art Museum
Albuquerque’s great paintings, its masterpieces, tell a story long waiting to be told. The paintings of Raymond Jonson, Carl von Hassler, Pabilta Velarde, Betty Sabo, Lez Haas, Helen Hardin, Clinton Adams, Howard Schleeter, Frederick Hammersley, Richard Diebenkorn, Esquipula Romero de Romero and others, tell about a spirit and a place in a way no other medium can.
PAINTING ALBUQUERQUE is one of the first full- length programs to bring together the stories of Albuquerque’s painters. This ground breaking documentary celebrates the culturally diverse painters and institutions that have contributed to Albuquerque’s cultural identity and artistic legacy. Some of the painters in PAINTING ALBUQUERQUE are known, others are almost lost to time.
In addition to its great artists, it was also vitally important for Albuquerque to have a venue for its artists — a way for the community to see the great work being done and help determine Albuquerque’s artistic identity. Taos and Santa Fe had established artistic identities, but what is Albuquerque’s?
Funding for PAINTING ALBUQUERQUE was provided in part by The Urban Enhancement Trust Fund of the City of Albuquerque. Michael Kamins is Executive Producer. Anthony DellaFlora is Co-Producer.
Painters profiled – In Alphabetical Order:
Clinton Adams – Return to Collioure, 1997 Collection UNM Art Museum
Clinton Adams: Adams had a love for canvas and stone. He was a painter and lithographer when he came to UNM in the early 1960’s. Instrumental in setting up the Tamarind Lithography Institute, Adams began the UNM Art Museum and brought a new level of academic achievement to UNM’s art department. As an artist, his work had an elegance and simplicity of form.
Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled, 1951 The Richard Diebenkorn Foundation
Richard Diebenkorn: One of the best American painters of the latter half of the 20th Century. Diebenkorn received his Masters from UNM in painting and credits UNM and New Mexico as a significant influence.
Lez Haas: A California painter who arrived at UNM in the post WWII years. Over a decade, he led the UNM Art Department to unprecedented heights. It would become one of the best art schools in the United States.
Frederick Hammersley: One of the nation’s top hard edged painters of the latter half of the 20th century. In Albuquerque, Hammersley found a unique environment where he could stay focused on his painting.
Helen Hardin – Listening Woman, 1982 Collection of Cradoc Bagshaw
Helen Hardin: Daughter of Pablita Velarde, Helen Hardin was ambivalent about painting initially. When Hardin entered UNM in 1961, she saw a future as art history and anthropology classes deepened her interest in Native American symbols. She would soon become part of a generation of ground-breaking Native artists who would transform Native American painting. At the height of her career in 1981, she created two of her most celebrated works, “Changing Woman” and “Medicine Woman.” They were the first of what would become her “Women’s Series” and embody the height of her artistic, intellectual, and spiritual awareness. Then Hardin learned she had breast cancer. She began undergoing treatment, but kept painting. “Listening Woman” completed her “Women’s Series.” She passed away in 1984.
Raymond Jonson: Arrived in N.M. in 1922. He first lived in Santa Fe, then later in Albuquerque. He taught at UNM and set-up the Jonson Gallery, one of Albuquerque’s first showcases for art. A prophet for modern art, over the course of Jonson’s prolific career he championed abstract painting. He had a deep self-conviction that art was the noblest calling for any human being.
Betty Sabo: One of Albuquerque first women arts leader, she was instrumental in supporting and bringing acclaim to Albuquerque’s arts. Summing up her approach to painting, Sabo said, “I try to give you an awareness of the simple everyday world. For then I will believe I will have achieved artistry.”
Howard Schleeter: Howard Schleeter’s contribution is almost lost to time. At one time Schleeter was one of NM’s most prolific and well known painters. Beginning with WPA work, he soon transitioned into one our most highly regarded modernist painters. Having found his archives after years of searching, we bring Schleeter back to the attention of the public.
Pablita Velarde – Old Father The Storyteller, 1959 Estate of Margarete Bagshaw
Pabilta Velarde: One of Albuquerque’s most loved painters, Pablita’s story is one of courage. Growing up in Santa Clara Pueblo she found tremendous resistance to her passion for painting. She persevered and became one of the first nationally recognized Native American woman painters and one of Albuquerque’s most beloved.
Carl von Hassler: Arriving in 1922, he played a pivotal role in having Albuquerque become a place for art making. He went on to influence a body of students (Betty Sabo, Ben Turner, Sam Smith, Novella King, etc.) who would continue the fine arts tradition of representational painting. They painted what they found beautiful in Albuquerque and its surroundings. His murals at the KiMo theater are renowned and one of Albuquerque’s first public artworks.
Painters Mentioned:
Elaine de Kooning-Albuquerque, 1960 Collection Bob and Linda Schmier
Elaine de Kooning: DeKooning was from NYC and the heart of painting in the US. A visiting professor at UNM’s Art Department, she had unbridled enthusiasm for the great painting she found in Albuquerque.
Esquipula Romero de Romero: Hispanic Albuquerque painter who captured Hispanic traditions. Not enough known about him at this point.
Florence Pierce: Initially was involved with the Transcendental Painting Group began by Emil Bisttram and Raymond Jonson. Florence would later become one of Albuquerque’s best known artists.
Willy Bo Richardson’s, “Number 1,” 1999. Albuquerque Museum Permanent Collection
Willy Bo Richardson’s painting titled, “Number 1″, 1999 was added to the Albuquerque Museum Permanent Collection. The Albuquerque Museum Permanent Collection features artists living in or influenced by the South West region and includes masterworks by Georgia O’Keeffe, Raymond Jonson, Fritz Scholder, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.
Wilson Hurley: One of Albuquerque’s most recognized western landscape painters. He is nationally appreciated and has two paintings of the Sandia Mountains, two masterpieces, on permanent exhibit at the Albuquerque International Sunport.
Venues: Much lamented by von Hassler and many others artists over the years; Albuquerque had a major problem to overcome – the lack of a permanent place for the community to see the great work being produced.
Kurt and Edith Kubie (Salon): Escaping Nazi occupied Vienna in 1938, the Kubie’s came to Albuquerque in the early 50’s. They wanted to create the salons they loved in Vienna. So they became arts patrons for Albuquerque’s painters.
The Jonson Gallery, UNM: By the 1950s Raymond Jonson was ensconced on the UNM campus in a combination residence, studio, and gallery intended to be a permanent art laboratory. Retiring from teaching in 1954, his gallery became a lifeline for artists.
The Albuquerque Modern Museum: There was not a consistent venue in Albuquerque to show art. Outside of UNM, some artists took the problem in hand. In 1953, a heroic enterprise, the Albuquerque Modern Museum, debuted. The first of its kind, the museum created an important direct connection between the community and Modern Art exhibiting such stars as Richard Diebenkorn, Agnes Martin, Florence and Horace Pierce, among others. The museum closed in 1956.
The UNM Art Museum: Clinton Adams enlisted photographer and historian, Van Deren Coke, to launch the UNM Art Museum in 1963. The Museum was a quantum leap for Albuquerque. Having the distinction of being the first permanent large scale exhibition space in Albuquerque, the Museum would host scores of impressive exhibitions. They began with Taos and Santa Fe: The Artists Environment, followed by Impressionism in America, and Georgia O’Keeffe.
The Albuquerque Museum: In 1979, the city opened the new Albuquerque Museum, a sleek, modern, temperature-controlled building in Old Town, to replace the quaint Sunport museum. Initially the exhibition space was small, but the impact was significant. Art was now much more a part of the city’s life and played a concrete role in helping Albuquerque residents to see themselves and in the process better determine our artistic identity.
Program Participants: Jim Moore, Ellen Landis, Andrew Connors, Robert Ware, Marjorie Devon, RoseMary Diaz, Joe Traugott, Wesley Pulkka, Doda White, Dave Sabo, Karen Clark, William Peterson, Nick Abdalla, Rini Price, Mary Ann Weems, Billie Walters.
Original music composed and performed by UNM’s Peter Gilbert.
Ray with one of this new works in 2013. Photo: Facebook
Rex Ray, the San Francisco-based fine artist and graphic designer known for large-scale, brightly colored, 1960s-inspired, often psychedelic paintings, has succumbed today after a long battle with cancer. Ray, who’d been active on Facebook up until the last week of his illness, entered hospice care over the weekend and posted — or had help posting — one final message to friends this morning, saying, “I’ve left the building. xo.”
SFist confirmed the death with Ray’s gallery, Gallery 16 in SoMa, which submits their own obit that you can read in part below.
Ray had shown work at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, University Art Museum in Berkeley, San Jose Museum of Modern Art, The Crocker Museum in Sacramento, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, and Cheryl Haines Gallery. In 2013, he was commissioned to do a mural for the barricade covering the construction of the new Levi’s flagship store on Market Street.
In addition to his paintings, Ray was well known to local concert-goers for having designed over 100 concert posters for Bill Graham Presents, including for shows by The Rolling Stones, Patti Smith, REM, Bjork, U2, and Radiohead, a couple of which you can see below. He had also done graphic work for Apple, Dreamworks, Sony Music, Warner Brothers, City Lights Publishers, and Matador Records, as well as package designs for Diamanda Galás, Matmos, and Deee-Lite.
Writing for ArtSlant last year on the occasion of a solo show at Gallery 16, Kara Q. Smith wrote, “[These latest works] reflect a zenith of Ray’s prolific body of work, beaming proudly forward, as the artist himself battles illness. Prednisporata represents Ray’s unrelenting need to create beauty, to create that which will never fade, even as his health flickers and dims.”
From Gallery 16’s obituary, in part:
Celebrated artist and graphic designer Rex Ray died on February 9, 2015 in San Francisco, California after a prolonged struggle with cancer. A major cultural force in the art, literary, and activist communities in the Bay Area, he was recognized for his collage pop aesthetic.
Born Michael Patterson in Germany on a United States army base in 1956, he grew up in Colorado Springs and studied fine art at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. In 1981 he moved to San Francisco, completed his BFA at San Francisco Art Institute, where he entered graduate studies. During an era of anti-beauty aesthetics, Rex Ray committed himself to a lifelong practice embedded in beauty.
His career took off with ubiquitous digital designs produced as guerrilla marketing for nightclubs and rock ’n’ roll shows. He created the first t-shirts and posters for the San Francisco chapter of the protest group Act Up. An innovator in graphic arts, he was one of the first to embrace Mac-based technology combining color xerox, photo souvenirs, and typefaces of his own design…
In the early 90s, rebelling against his own highly successful computer graphics business, he returned to his studio practice generating a prolific body of work. His collage and painting of the last twenty years is marked by the use of parabolic forms, double images, and seemingly infinite repetition of eye-popping compositions. In Rex Ray: Art + Design (Chronicle Books, 2007) acclaimed novelist and cultural critic Douglas Coupland writes “Rex’s art correlates closely to that of other artists who seemingly cross over from design or pop art graphics, such as Takashi Murakami or Ryan McGinness.”
… Rex Ray is survived by his sister, Jean Cathey, and his brother, Kevin Patterson; Tim Gleason, Amy Scholder, Cydney Payton, Gent Sturgeon, and an enormous community of beloved friends.
For over 20 years, in a variety of formats, New Mexico PBS weekly art series ¡COLORES! have explored the arts, music, history and culture of New Mexico and the American southwest. ¡COLORES! stories, originating from New Mexico, continue to be seen and shared with other PBS stations across the U.S.
New Mexico painter Willy Bo Richardson shares how discovering real world limitations allows him greater flexibility in the moment.
“What’s beautiful about painting is that it does everything that you want it to in that moment. So you have the materials, you have the artist and you have the action and they are all coming together instantaneously.”
The Producer of PBS art series ¡COLORES! is Tara Walch; Unit Coordinator is Kathy Wimmer. Executive Producer is Michael Kamins. Major funding for ¡COLORES! is provided in part by Frederick Hammersley Foundation.
