NM Showcase Exhibition 2012 Opening Reception at 516Arts Gallery @ 516 Central Avenue, ABQ, NM. Show curated by Peter Frank.
Exhibition continues through April 28, 2012. Go see it.
Check out event photos and see my Badlands #6 ……. http://516arts.blogspot.com/2012/02/new-mexico-showcase-opening-reception.html
(that’s not me in front of the piece)
Musings on a state of mind……….The Elsewhere.
Working on “Re-Visions“, a new series of drawings
Writing about the Elsewhere, a revised perspective (or not)
Re-designing Altered Landscapes site
Re-Visions #7e
Road Trip. To CO.
Durango & nearby Mesa Verde
.
A windy damp gray day – good time for a visit to a national park since there were only about 5 other 21st century people there.
Early inhabitants.
Wild horses.
I had not been to Mesa Verde in over a decade, way before devastating fires had transformed thousands of acres of trees, grasses, ancient structures.
These images of the altered landscape, so different from the last time I was there.
After a meal in Cuba, we decide to drive back to Santa Fe by going through the mountains to Los Alamos – a long but very scenic winding route in warmer weather- and uncertain in Winter. In fact, much of it is closed during cold snowy weather. As we drive, the sun is shining, although it is rather cold and windy, and the snow drifts get higher by the mile; we have not passed a single farm or building for at least 10 miles. We reach a cattle guard with a sign warning that there might be difficulties ahead. We stop to consider our options. At that moment a couple appears on foot from the opposite direction – the woman is extremely pregnant; the man is carrying a very young child; they have a large dog on a leash. They wave their arms at us to tell us their car has gone off a dirt road into the snow about a mile or so down the hill. 
We devise a temporary plan. V. drives in his truck down to the site with the other guy to assess their situation; the woman and her very adorable little daughter and I remain at the turnoff where we are to flag down any other cars/trucks for assistance. Time passes, and we begin to get edgy. Our cell phones don’t work up here. There is no traffic. 
Finally a truck with two guys and three huge black labs stops – they say “No problem, we have a winch and shovels.” Off they go. 
Finally, after another eternity, V. appears in his truck and has a very serious look on his face. All the vehicles have driven in over ½ mile; V.’s truck and the hay bale truck have had to back out; the other two vehicles have gone off the road into the snow banks in their attempts to help. Everyone has been helping get everyone else out. But it has not been a success. And the snow is getting softer. Will people have to wait till night till the temperature drops? 
Homage to Hokusai
Homage to Gauguin
Why do so many viewers feel compelled to put labels on images that are non-figurative, non-representational? Is it too upsetting to be confronted by uncertainty? Too challenging to some basic or fictional human characteristic that demands recognizability & the known? Why don’t they just look? Let the image tell its own story? It doesn’t seem to matter whether the viewers are “just folks” or artists who create in the non-representational realm themselves: most, though certainly not all, people seem to need the identifiable.
We are familiar with aspects of why people create abstractly, perhaps having to do with issues of detachment, etc., etc.; but such psychologizing isn’t really relevant. These are questions about the present role of representation. Even if we are using photographic means of capture, we see the underlying anomalies which make realism so fascinating. The surface is just that, a skin over other layers that tell different stories.
Comments, please.
mystery and ambiguity:
wander in the realm of what is not
shake up the ordinary and mundane circumscribed by the rules of day-to-day