Santa Fe Arts Journal

Visual Art

A close mentoring relationship developed between American painter Agnes Martin (1912-2004) and New Mexico sculptor Karen Yank during the last 17 years of Martin’s life. 

Yank and Martin met in 1987 at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine at a time when Yank had just graduated from art school. 

“Agnes told me I was all over the place with my art and that I would never achieve success unless I narrowed my focus,” recalls Yank. “She encouraged me to meditate.”

Taking Martin’s advice, Yank built up a meditation practice that helped her find her artistic path. Some of Yank’s most recent pieces are on display in a new show opening on September 21 at Turner Carroll Gallery titled “Karen Yank and Agnes Martin.” [Read More…]

Music

Singer/songwriter Lexy Pettis may be a new voice on the Santa Fe music scene, but residents of Albuquerque have been hearing her heartfelt tunes at venues throughout the city since spring.

“Last March, I opened for my brother’s band at Duel Brewing ABQ and did four songs,” explains Pettis, who plays guitar and harmonica.

“I was really well-received by the audience. I know this is the right time for me to go out on my own and be a full-time musician. I want to be a one-woman band and the female Bob Dylan of my generation.” [Read More…]

Visual Art

“Las Meninas,” Erin Currier’s new body of work that’s featured in a solo show opening at Blue Rain Gallery on September 14, pays homage to classical and modernist masterpieces while addressing contemporary issues such as the rights of women, immigrants and blue collar workers.

Ordinary and famous women, including United Farm Workers’ co-founder Dolores Huerta, are the focal point of Currier’s paintings. Huerta replaces the male gardener in Currier’s interpretation of Vincent Van Gogh’s painting “The Gardener.”

“Directly translated, the title of my show, Las Meninas, means ladies in waiting,” explains Currier, who lives and paints in Santa Fe. [Read More…]

Theater

The cast of the International Shakespeare Center Santa Fe’s production of “King Lear” has spent a solid year preparing for a presentation of its production, which takes place from September 14 through 30 at the Adobe Rose Theatre.

Starring Santa Fe neurologist Paul Walsky, “King Lear” features a cast that participated in a master workshop with Rodney Cottier, the director and head of drama at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, a master class with Edward Daranyi from the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and a Laban movement workshop with Ariana Karp, the director of the Ducdame Ensemble.

“Paul is breathtaking in the role of King Lear,” says the production’s director Caryl Farkas, who is also the president of the four-year-old International Shakespeare Center Santa Fe. [Read More…]

Music

“Cris Williamson, Barbara Higbie, Teresa Trull: The Reunion Tour,” which takes place on September 29 at the James A. Little Theater, brings together three long-term friends who love playing music together.

“What this concert is all about is three people with a deep friendship singing folk, R&B and bluegrass tunes powerfully,” says Williamson, who has been in the forefront of the women’s music movement since 1975 when she released her pivotal album “The Changer and the Changed.”

“We sing solo and do lots of duets and trios during the performance. This is our second year of touring together. It’s really fun for us. We amuse each other so much.” [Read More…]

Dance

The paintings of Claude Monet are the inspiration behind Compañia Chuscales y Mina Fajardo’s new production “Monet’s Moon,” which is presented September 28-30 at Teatro Paraguas.

“I was little when I saw first Monet’s work in Japan,” explains the show’s choreographer and dancer Mina Fajardo, who was born and grew up in Japan and feels a special connection with Monet’s paintings. “There is so much Japanese influence in his work. Monet even made a Japanese garden with water lilies at his home.”

Fajardo, along with the show’s assistant director and dancer Monze Diaz, has created a dance production that pays homage to the great impressionist painter. [Read More…]

Theater

Teatro Paraguas has the great honor of presenting the world premiere of Augusto Federico Amador’s new play “Atacama,” which opens at the theater company’s studio on September 7.

This two-actor, one-act play is about two strangers that search the Atacama Desert, a plateau in South America west of the Andes mountain, for remains of their loved ones 30 years after the war waged by General Augusto Pinochet’s regime on the Chilean people.

“It’s a universal story,” explains director Juliet Salazar. “It’s a very human story about the dichotomy in human nature and discovery.”  [Read More…]

Visual Art

The time-honored tradition of stacking stones is fascinating to Bay Area sculptor Roger Arvid Anderson. Instead of piling rocks in an organized fashion, Anderson stacks chunks of industrial foam that he cuts and tears. “I get to do, in minutes and hours, what Mother Nature takes eons to do,” he says.

Works from Anderson’s “Megaliths” series are on display in a two-artist show with photographer Steven A. Jackson that opens at 5 p.m. on September 7 at New Concept Gallery.

Anderson says his Megaliths are metaphors for events and forms that invite the viewer to give them personal meaning. “My goal is to stimulate your imagination,” he says. [Read More…]

Photography

For Glen Wexler, finishing school at the Art Center College of Design took a back seat to his blossoming career as a photographer. Wexler shot his first album cover by the age of 22 and had created literally hundreds of album covers before his 30th birthday, photographing musicians including ZZ Top and Michael Jackson.

“I haven’t worked with any artist who was difficult to photograph,” explains Wexler, who shows six black and white images of rock stars during Edition ONE Gallery’s exhibit “Hail, Hail Rock ’N’ Roll: Portraits of an Era 2018.” The opening reception is set for 5 p.m. on September 7.

Two of Wexler’s previously unpublished images of Michael Jackson are in the show. [Read More…]

Visual Art

More than one dozen abstract figurative paintings of women by Melinda Cootsona are part of a new show shared with painter John Chang that opens at Mill Contemporary on August 31.

“These works are oil and cold wax on panel,” explains Cootsona, who has only been using cold wax in her paintings for the past three years. “I get beautiful, beautiful textures with the wax.”

Cootsona, who lives in Silicon Valley and had a 15-year-long career in the field of design, loves working with thick, gooey oil paint mixed with wax that she adds to her panels in layers with palette knives and a squeegee-type tool. Part of her process is controlled, but lots of surprises emerge in her paintings. [Read More…]