Francis Bacon: Late Paintings Opening Day Lecture with Curator Alison de Lima Greene
ATRIUM GALLERY
The Atrium Gallery is the central hub of the Fine Arts program. The highly active, and sometimes impromptu work space, provides an atmosphere that promotes inspiration and community. The Atrium Gallery hosts several professional artists a year as well as provide numerous opportunities for students work with these artists as well as exhibit their own work. Students are given full support when requesting space to work in large-scale, directly on the walls, and installation-based work. The communal environment brings students to the space daily to gather, share food, and critique work.
The Atrium Gallery is open Monday-Friday from 9-5pm.
The gallery is closed on national holidays as well as summer, winter, and spring breaks.
Click HERE for exact dates of school breaks.
CURRENT EXHIBITION
Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 exhibitions to be announced soon.
PAST EXBITIONS
2023
Jana Greiner: The Abyss
April 12 to May 5, 2023
OPENING RECEPTION: April 19th from 5-7pm
The Abyss, an abstract body of work by Jana Greiner, tells the story of how profound grief takes over everything. Color, form and texture are the main characters in this tale of sadness and loss. Sumptuous fabrics and soft fibers that would usually feel comforting against one's skin do not get that opportunity as presented in the abstract forms Greiner constructs. The sculptures throughout the work play with soft, repetitive forms and fabric manipulations made out of black yarn and fabric. The empty nest represented in their process book is exaggerated on the wall to create the large installation, sucking the viewer into the artist’s emotional rabbit hole. Process is very important to Greiner’s work. They see art as an opportunity for emotional healing. “I find the pounding of the sewing machine foot and the vibration the machine makes healing. I feel a sense of calm when finger knitting.”
Jana Greiner is a practicing installation artist whose art relies heavily on form, concept and material. The variety of materials used include fiber, recycled materials, pvc, mud and clay. They identify as a queer sculptor and interdisciplinary artist who has been working with needle and thread since they were a child. Drawn to the traditional idea of textiles being ‘women’s work,’ Jana uses this life-long skill to create art that challenges that perspective. Jana is a graduate of University of New Mexico’s College of Fine Art. They live off the grid, outside of Taos, in a home made with their hands from adobe, which was Jana’s passion and profession for over 20 years. Jana is currently the Creative Producer at the Paseo Project.
Jessamyn Lovell: She’s Everywhere Now
March 1 to March 31, 2023
OPENING RECEPTION: March 2nd from 5-7pm
She’s Everywhere Now is Jessamyn Lovell’s first solo exhibition since their mother, Raven Singlefeather, was killed in a violent accident in May 2018. This is also their first solo exhibition in Taos, New Mexico, which is fitting for this particular body of work since Lovell spent a good chunk of time in Taos processing their early days of grief. Lovell says that one of the many gifts of this grief was that they were able to tap into their senses in a way that they had never done before, which led them to make this work. The artist describes the process that unfolded in photographing feathers they found since their mother passed: “I find at least one single feather upon my path. For the first year following her death I dutifully picked each one up reading it like a message from her. I would hold it in prayer and then carry it home where I placed it carefully among the others. Eventually, I amassed an impossible collection of hundreds of feathers until I no longer felt the need to collect them physically to honor her.”
The work in this exhibition includes a collection of photographs taken of the feathers along with images taken during and after Raven Singlefeather’s death. Also on view by Lovell is As Above, a video projection on a high wall in the tall gallery. Viewers look up to see a video of birds circling in the sky overhead. The artist tracks the birds’ spiraling movement in their video, which is meant to inspire a similar feeling of vertigo to which they describe in their grief.
Jessamyn Lovell (b. 1977, Syracuse, NY) is a gender-fluid artist, reluctant academic, and licensed private investigator based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Lovell is of French, Sicilian, Irish, and Choctaw heritage and grew up in rural poverty in upstate New York. Lovell is a Principal Lecturer at the University of New Mexico Albuquerque campus. They work with photography, video, and surveillance as tools to document their life experiences, often making connections between class and personal identity. They have received international recognition for their work including Dear Erin Hart, for which they found, followed, and photographed their identity thief.
Read the Taos New article on Jessamyn Lovell's show HERE.
Sarah Parker: Circling Lives,
a look at my people and their bones
January 23 to February 19, 2023
OPENING RECEPTION: January 26th from 5-7pm
Circling Lives, a look at my people and their bones is Sarah Parker’s first solo exhibition. It explores the complexity of relationships between ourselves and our environments, focusing on the tenderness and fragility of survival. This exhibition is motivated by the idea that life is delicate, whether one lives off the land or in the cities. It considers the push to survive and the universal theme of inevitable death. We cannot escape our old people’s bones, Parker says. Parker began this work during the pandemic while being sequestered allowing her to explore the isolation that is a part of living on the land. She questioned how she arrived at this solitary place and what right she even had to be there. She began to think about the dotted path of her old people’s bones along the land marking the roads that they took to place her in this space. This, and the social reconning of the times fueled and inspired her to create works questioning the biproducts of American capitalism, such as mass incarceration, gender expectations, and our ever-tenuous modern relationship with the land. The work in the exhibition ranges from fiber art, large-scale block prints on both fabric and paper, mixed-media pieces, as well as animation and video projection.
Parker has lived in Sunshine Valley (North of Questa) for the past 18 years. Since coming to the area, she has produced radio for local community radio stations and she currently teaches at Red River Valley Charter School. She is a working member of The Lost Sunshine Cinema Collective, regularly showing digital art in Taos County. She is also a member of the Ennui Gallery, a collective of local artists in Taos. She holds a Master in Special Education, and is currently enrolled at the University of New Mexico in the Bachelor program for a BA in Interdisciplinary Arts focusing on Animation and Experimental Arts and Technology, while continuing to take art classes at UNM-Taos to improve her skills. Parker is an interdisciplinary artist who has moved from painting pictures, signs, and murals to audio-documentaries, interactive community art projects, printmaking, and multimedia video projections. She embraces the fact that her work is rooted in what is traditionally considered craft, and she uses these materials along with “high art” materials while assigning no hierarchical structure. Sarah Parker’s work is accessible to everyone. She believes art is from the people, not handed down by an elite group in a white box.
Read the Taos News article on Sarah Parker's show HERE.
2022
Heather Lynn Sparrow: The Dark is Light
November 14 to December 9, 2022
The Dark is Light is Heather Lynn Sparrow’s first solo exhibition — a long overdue presentation as she has been a fixture in the professional local art scene for 27 years. Suicide is the primary killer of teen youth in the US, and this exhibition of large-scale photographs and other works addresses this pandemic with ethereal and approachable imagery. The Dark is Light is a series of photographic portraits made in collaboration with teens grieving the suicide of their friend and Sparrow’s son Trempealeau Hagios Morninglight.
Heather Lynn Sparrow uses photography as a ritual for grieving and healing. She has focused on documenting her family and, as her children grew, darker experiences unfolded. Photography became the cathartic means and most elegant way to describe something that is deeply disquieting. Amplifying the voices of Taos Youth, Heather uses photography to expose and resolve problems. By respecting young adults and addressing topics that our culture has failed to prepare them for, Heather’s photography creates a space of shared learning, allowing for personal growth, and by extension, social change.
She developed and taught a Literacy Through Photography program in Taos Public Schools for 25 years. While at Taos Academy for 8 years, she taught Dual Credit and Wheatpaste workshops at UNM-Taos. Sparrow created the BIG PICTURE TAOS & designed, photographed, produced videos & promoted seven local musician's albums, winning the New Mexico music award for best Album design in 2012. Sparrow has featured images in a number of publications, including, Taos News, Mothering Magizine, La Pocha Nostra’s A Handbook for the Rebel Artist, SOMMOS CHOKECHERRIES, and 3AM, and was nominated for the CENTER excellence in Teaching award 2022. Heather has an AFA from UNM-Taos and is graduating with a BFA w/ Honors Thesis at UNM-Abugqureqe this year. As the current Director of Photography of True Kids 1, her mission is to provide the impetus to amplify the voices of Taos Youth, create jobs for at risk youth and make explicit connections to how photo rituals can work both artistically and cathartically.
Read the Taos News article on Heather Lynn Sparrow's show HERE.
Carrie Fonder: What Sticks
August 25 to October 14, 2022
Harwood Museum of Art Talk - Wednesday, August 24th at 5:30pm
What Sticks is a solo exhibition of new work by Carrie Fonder that explores power, longevity, and residue. Fonder intuitively weaves materials, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional, into a series of interrelated works. Depicted are art critics, curators and the artist herself, in a parody of people parodying people and materials parodying materials. It’s all an act of grand make-believe that leads to rumination on the final question: what sticks? The slippery title can be understood linguistically in several ways: what sticks (What stays? What remains?) or what sticks (What has residual takiness?) and finally what sticks (What tree branches/weapons/tools?).
Carrie Fonder is the first professional artist exhibition in the Atrium Gallery since the onset of COVID. Fonder is a New Genres artist and an Associate Professor at the University of West Florida. She earned her MFA in sculpture at Cranbrook Academy of Art and her BFA in sculpture at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. She has lived and worked in India as a Fulbright Nehru Award recipient. Currently a member of Good Children Gallery in New Orleans, she has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, from Detroit to New Delhi. For more information about her work visit www.carriefonder.com.
ATRIUM GALLERY CLOSED DUE TO COVID-19
Due to safety concerns and social distancing because of COVID-19, people around the world are coming together to find virtual community. UNM-Taos Art Department is also striving to make up for the loss of personal interactions and engagements within the art community. Please join us during our Zoom Events where guests within the art community are invited for live interviews and demonstrations!
The UNM-Taos Fine Arts and Digital Media welcomes proposals for exhibitions. Please refer to the gallery policies and email a synopsis and 5-10 jpegs of artwork to taosarts@unm.edu with the subject line - Atrium Gallery Proposal. The Gallery Director will contact you if your proposal is a good fit for our programming. Please do not send follow up emails.
Friday, May 8th @5-6pm
Let's get together and talk about art! During this Art Happy Hour we have invited Natalina, multidisciplinary artist, award winning fashion designer, and musician. We are excited to discuss Natalina’s diverse studio practice, her use of recycled materials, and her community outreach during COVID19. We will open up the happy hour for group discussion, so we encourage anyone who connects with this topic to participate. Please join us with your favorite beverage and snack for a casual conversation led by UNM-Taos Art Department Chair, Sarah Stolar.
Join URL: https://unm.zoom.us/j/583010507
You do not need to create an account on Zoom to join.
If you are joining from your phone you will need to download the Zoom app first.
DISCLAIMER: This is a public event and not a user authenticated session.
UNM-Taos Art Happy Hour
The UNM-Taos Fine Arts and Digital Media welcomes proposals for exhibitions. Please refer to the gallery policies and email a synopsis and 5-10 jpegs of artwork to taosarts@unm.edu with the subject line - Atrium Gallery Proposal. The Gallery Director will contact you if your proposal is a good fit for our programming. Please do not send follow up emails.
Friday, May 1st @5-6pm
Let's get together and talk about art! During this Art Happy Hour we have invited Jenny Roesel Ustick, educator, artist, and internationally recognized muralist. We are excited to discuss Jenny’s studio practice and her commitment to education and community engagement in the arts. We will open up the happy hour for group discussion, so we encourage anyone who connects with this topic to participate. Please join us with your favorite beverage and snack for a casual conversation led by UNM-Taos Art Department Chair, Sarah Stolar.
Join URL: https://unm.zoom.us/j/583010507
You do not need to create an account on Zoom to join.
If you are joining from your phone you will need to download the Zoom app first.
DISCLAIMER: This is a public event and not a user authenticated session.
UNM-Taos Art Happy Hour
The UNM-Taos Fine Arts and Digital Media welcomes proposals for exhibitions. Please refer to the gallery policies and email a synopsis and 5-10 jpegs of artwork to taosarts@unm.edu with the subject line - Atrium Gallery Proposal. The Gallery Director will contact you if your proposal is a good fit for our programming. Please do not send follow up emails.
Friday, April 24th @5-6pm
Let's get together and talk about art! During this Art Happy Hour we have invited Andrea Vargas, interdisciplinary artist and community activist. We are excited to hear her discuss her various approaches to art as well as her recent community project No Kids in Cages — a body of work that brings awareness to children that are in detention centers across the nation. We will open up the happy hour for group discussion, so we encourage anyone who connects with this topic to participate. Please join us with your favorite beverage and snack for a casual conversation led by UNM-Taos Art Department Chair, Sarah Stolar.
Learn more about Andrea Vargas on her website: AndreaVargasFineArt.com
Join URL: https://unm.zoom.us/j/583010507
You do not need to create an account on Zoom to join.
If you are joining from your phone you will need to download the Zoom app first.
DISCLAIMER: This is a public event and not a user authenticated session.
UNM-Taos Art Happy Hour
The UNM-Taos Fine Arts and Digital Media welcomes proposals for exhibitions. Please refer to the gallery policies and email a synopsis and 5-10 jpegs of artwork to taosarts@unm.edu with the subject line - Atrium Gallery Proposal. The Gallery Director will contact you if your proposal is a good fit for our programming. Please do not send follow up emails.
Friday, April 17th @5-6pm
Let's get together and talk about art! During this Art Happy Hour we have invited Jessamyn Lovell, artist, licensed private investigator and Undergraduate Coordinator and foundations professor at UNM. We are looking forward to hearing how she is balancing her full-time career as a teaching artist and PI with being a mother who must now homeschool during the COVID19 pandemic. We will open up the happy hour for group discussion, so we encourage anyone who connects with this topic to participate. Please join us with your favorite beverage and snack for a casual conversation led by UNM-Taos Art Department Chair, Sarah Stolar.
Join URL: https://unm.zoom.us/j/583010507
You do not need to create an account on Zoom to join.
If you are joining from your phone you will need to download the Zoom app first.
DISCLAIMER: This is a public event and not a user authenticated session.
UNM-Taos Art Happy Hour
The UNM-Taos Fine Arts and Digital Media welcomes proposals for exhibitions. Please refer to the gallery policies and email a synopsis and 5-10 jpegs of artwork to taosarts@unm.edu with the subject line - Atrium Gallery Proposal. The Gallery Director will contact you if your proposal is a good fit for our programming. Please do not send follow up emails.
Monday, April 6th @3-4pm
Join Sarah Stolar, Art Dept. Chair, for a tutorial on building a website using the free online platform WIX. In this professional development workshop, we will learn the basics of building a website and how to navigate the platform, including adding pages, images, text, links, and contact information.
Before joining the meeting, it is recommended that you navigate to the WIX website and create a free account. https://www.wix.com
Join URL: https://unm.zoom.us/j/567806537
You do not need to create an account on Zoom to join.
If you are joining from your phone you will need to download the Zoom app first.
DISCLAIMER: This is a public event and not a user authenticated session
Learn to Build a Website with Wix
The UNM-Taos Fine Arts and Digital Media welcomes proposals for exhibitions. Please refer to the gallery policies and email a synopsis and 5-10 jpegs of artwork to taosarts@unm.edu with the subject line - Atrium Gallery Proposal. The Gallery Director will contact you if your proposal is a good fit for our programming. Please do not send follow up emails.
Friday, April 3rd @5-6pm
Let's get together and talk about art! During this Art Happy Hour we have invited Marya Errin Jones, curator of The Tannex and founder and co-producer of the Albuquerque Zine Fest. We are excited to chat with her about her projects, her experience developing an artist-run space, and how the ABQ Zine Fest came to fruition. Last session we opened it up for group discussion and connection, and we plan to do this again. Please join us with your favorite beverage and snack for a casual conversation led by UNM-Taos Art Department Chair, Sarah Stolar.
Join URL: https://unm.zoom.us/j/583010507
You do not need to create an account on Zoom to join.
If you are joining from your phone you will need to download the Zoom app first.
DISCLAIMER: This is a public event and not a user authenticated session.
UNM-Taos Art Happy Hour
The UNM-Taos Fine Arts and Digital Media welcomes proposals for exhibitions. Please refer to the gallery policies and email a synopsis and 5-10 jpegs of artwork to taosarts@unm.edu with the subject line - Atrium Gallery Proposal. The Gallery Director will contact you if your proposal is a good fit for our programming. Please do not send follow up emails.
Friday, March 27th @5-6pm
Let's get together and talk about art! During this Art Happy Hour we have invited the new curator of the Harwood Museum, Nicole Dial-Kay, to chat with us about her curatorial practice, what's in the works at the Harwood, and how she is managing in this crazy new world in face of COVID19. Join us with your favorite beverage and snack for a casual conversation led by UNM-Taos Art Department Chair, Sarah Stolar.
Join URL: https://unm.zoom.us/j/583010507
You do not need to create an account on Zoom to join.
If you are joining from your phone you will need to download the Zoom app first.
DISCLAIMER: This is a public event and not a user authenticated session.
UNM-Taos Art Happy Hour
2020
Artist
Taos News Tempo
Opening Reception
Artist
Ritual and Remembrance
January 21st - February 6th
Opening- January 23rd @ 5-7pm with video installation and a live performance
Nikesha Breeze is an American born African Diaspora Artist. She is a descendent of the Mende People of Sierra Leone and Assyrian Refugees. Her work is interdisciplinary and multi faceted. As a primarily self-taught artist with minimal schooling in the Fine Arts, her work is intuitive, spiritual, ritual, and focused. Her work centers around paths of reclamation of the black body and the human soul. She has received great success in her short time working in the visual arts, and has completed a sold-out Solo Museum show of: Within This Skin, and has been awarded National recognition and the 3D Juried Grand Prize Award as well as the Contemporary Black Arts Award, for her Sculptural installation: 108 Death Masks: A communal Prayer for Peace and Justice, at the 2018 International ARTPRIZE exhibition. www.nikeshabreeze.com
Read the Taos News Tempo regarding Nikesha Breeze's Show Here
Borders and Bounty; A Retrospective of Drawing
February 13th - March 12th
Opening- February 13th @ 5-7pm
Vargas exhibits a heartfelt community driven art installation. The installation most prominently illustrates the portraits of migrant children that have died in the detention camps this past year. The larger than life portraits hang on paper tapestries that envelope the viewer, depicting doves and flowers that glisten with highlights of gold and silver. The juxtaposition of fine art rendering with student prose and abstract edges gives the installation a raw and honest quality. Over fifty students contributed to the art installation, some painting for the first time, but inspired by the and meaning of the artwork. www.andreavargasfineart.com
2019
Love Letters & MetaMemories
August 19th - September 19th, 2019
Opening- August 23nd, 4-7pm with live music and projection art @ 5:30
Her first solo show, Natalina, explores concepts of connection to self, others and the Earth through ceramic sculpture, paintings, old and new technology as well as a multitude of reimagined waste. An advocate for women and the environment, her work favors female forms and regularly employs discarded elements. Love Letters and MetaMemories tells a story common to the collective experience. A graduate of Purdue University, Natalina is currently enrolled in continuing education classes at UNM-Taos. This dynamic installation is her contribution to the transformation she envisions for the world- Alchemic UpCycling. www.natalinadesign.com
Read the Taos News Tempo Press regarding Natalina's show here
Artist Natalina
Artist Natalina
Jenny installing her Mural in the UNM-Taos Atrium Gallery
Jenny installing her Mural in the UNM-Taos Atrium Gallery
Murals by Jenny Roesel Ustick
September 23rd - October 25th
Jenny Roesel Ustick is Interim Director, MFA Program, Foundations Coordinator, and Assistant Professor of Practice at the School of Art, College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati. She manages large-scale public murals, with eleven walls in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky; she has also worked on projects in Miami Beach, Florida, the Villa Crespo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and in Granati, Italy. www.jennyroeselustick.com
Amy Cordova y Boone
October 28th - November 20th
Córdova is a nationally recognized children’s’ book illustrator and acclaimed arts educator and lecturer. Córdova has made numerous keynote speeches as well as art with thousands of children and adults throughout the U.S. A descendant of a family who has resided in Northern New Mexico preceding the seventeenth century, Córdova holds great reverence for New Mexico’s landscape, history, cultures and traditions. Brilliant color, dreams, the natural world, and the wisdom of children contribute to Córdova’s inspirational, artistic vision. amycordova.com
The UNM-Taos Fine Arts and Digital Media welcomes proposals for exhibitions. Please refer to the gallery policies and email a synopsis and 5-10 jpegs of artwork to taosarts@unm.edu with the subject line - Atrium Gallery Proposal. The Gallery Director will contact you if your proposal is a good fit for our programming. Please do not send follow up emails.
