The Pinata Factory Presents
Baca Railyard: Wage Urban Art Fair
Crafts; Photography; Modern Folk Art; Wearable Art
June 25 + 26
Baca Railyard: 928 Shoofly rd
Guggenheim & MTV team up to SELL ART ONLINE
Erik Benson – 8 Modern Gallery
SANTA FE: April 15 – July 4, 2011 – Eight Modern Gallery on Canyon road features the work of Erik Benson.
Erik Benson was born in Detriot, MI in 1973. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2001. Benson’s paintings of corporate office towers, strip-malls and graffiti-scarred highway barriers appear at once as delicately balanced, nearly abstract compositions of geometric color, and also as particularly beautiful condensations of highly poetic loneliness. He has previously exhibited at, among other venues, Galerie Schuster (Frankfurt), Finesilver Gallery, Houston & San Antonio, Rare Gallery, NYC, Angles Gallery, Santa Monica and Artpace, San Antonio.
Do you know an excellent New Mexico artist?
Excellence in the Arts, Governor’s Award deadline extended to March 18, 2011.
“The annual Governor’s Arts Awards are recognized as New Mexico’s highest and most prestigious artistic honor and are intended to celebrate lifetime achievement. Nominations can be submitted by individual New Mexico residents or representatives of businesses or organizations in New Mexico. Self nominations are discouraged.
Nominations for the awards may include New Mexican individual living artists working in any discipline who have demonstrated outstanding lifetime achievement in the arts, individual non-artists who have consistently made significant or distinguished contributions to the arts in New Mexico, and businesses, nonprofits or foundations with sustained involvement in and support for the arts.” — excerpt from the NM Arts Press Release, dated March 10, 2011.
Nominations must be received by Friday, March 18, 2011. More information available here.
Virginia Castellano, New Mexico Arts
505/827-6490 or 800/879-4278 (statewide)
virginia.castellano@state.nm.us
Tête de Veau @ LAUNCHPROJECTS
Tête de Veau on display at LAUNCHPROJECTS in Santa Fe – March 10-27th. Doubtlessly the exhibition will be an enticing amalgamation of furs, frills, and found objects. More information about the artist collective Tête de Veau can be found on their webiste: www.tetedeveau.net. Visit LAUNCHPROJECTS for details about the exhibition.
SITE Santa Fe, SPREAD
SMALL GRANTS FOR BIG IDEAS, March 18, 2011
SPREAD seeks to provide micro-grants for innovative projects conceived by New Mexico-based artists. SPREAD is a community dinner that funds artists’ projects and creative initiatives.
Inspired by FEAST in Brooklyn and inCUBATE in Chicago, SPREAD is a recurring public dinner designed to generate community-driven financial support to fund artistic innovation.
For more information about SPREAD, check the following link.
Willy Bo Richardson: Artist Profile
Willy Bo Richardson, known for his vertical strokes of color, was born in Santa Fe NM. His father was a master wood-worker, and his mother founded the first mediation center in the Southwest, the Santa Fe Mediation Center. Both parents lived creative lifestyles and were artists as well. After spending 15 years away, in 2007 he returned to Santa Fe with his wife and soon to be born daughter.
In Austin TX in 1994 – 1996 he studied with Peter Saul and Linda Montano. He moved to Austin after living in India for 6 months. Montano helped him through his culture shock, by pointing out the bridge between the realm of the artist and the realm of the shaman, and Saul introduced Richardson to the concept that high and low art can exchange in dialogue and reverse. Saul’s luxurious paint surface qualities, separated from content in an almost transcendental manner remain an influence.
He followed his current wife Kim to Philadelphia in 1997. At the time, he was deciding between writing and painting. He states, “I wrote a really bad coming of age novel, and the next year I checked myself in to graduate school for painting at Pratt Institute”.
Richardson had been looking into different MFA programs in New York in 1998 when “painting was dead”. When he visited the School of Visual Art studios, a grad student, who was tying her shoes and other personal objects to her studio floor told him, “If you want to keep painting, don’t get an MFA here.” It reminded him of a zombie film where all the painting students became installation and video artists. “Get out, while you can,” was her warning. So he went to Pratt Institute instead, the only school where the painting studios were filled with painters. Brooklyn was still a dusty neighborhood with boarded up crack houses and rent was still under $1000/month.
Richardson graduated from Pratt Institute in 2000. He worked as a painting technician at Cooper Union from 2001-2007, where he sat in on lectures, hung out in the studios with students and exchanged ideas with the teachers. He lived in New York City for a decade with his wife Kim Richardson.
Richardson is currently an adjunct Faculty member at Santa Fe University of Art and Design.