A new UNM-Taos Art Department is pleased to offer Modern Art, a new Art History course taught by Paula King. The Modern Art course opens spring term 2021 and tracks Modern Art developments in northern New Mexico, on the underpinnings of European and American Modern Art movements. The Modern Art Period, 100 years of avant-garde and eclectic styles seen in major art movements set the stage for this art history study, a period seen as art that rejects traditional values and methods. 

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From Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism, artists reimagined the visual arts and what it means to be an artist. The Modern Period - the most exciting century of art making ever. Consider these movements: Post Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Pop ART, Performance Art, Minimalism, to mention a few studies. The course curriculum is purposefully designed to bring relevance and interest to all New Mexicans interested in the study of the raucous history of art, architecture and technology during the decades of 1870 -1970. It takes advantage of the Harwood Museum collections of Taos N.M., as a rich repository of modern art. Two recently produced NMPBS documentaries are featured in the course: “Poetry in Paint, Bea Mandelman in Taos” and “Awakening in Taos, The Mabel Dodge Lujan Story”; as well as “Agnes Martin, with my back to the World” (New Deal Films, INC).

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The Department of Fine Arts and Digital Media is pleased to welcome Martín Wannam to teach Art Practices II this Spring 2021. Martín (b. 1992, Guatemala) is a visual artist and educator whose work looks critically at the historical, social and political climate of Central America, specifically examining its impact on the queer individual. He uses photography, sculpture, and performance as a tool of constant evaluation of systematic structures such as religion, folklore, and wester beauty standards through a queer lens. Martín in an internationally exhibiting artist who holds an MMFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico, a Diploma in Contemporary photography from La Fototeca (GT), and a BA in Graphic Design from the Universidad Rafael Landivar (GT). Currently, he resides in Albuquerque, NM working with Szu-Han Ho, Bernadine Hernandez, and Hazel Batrezchavez in the Fronteristxs Collective to end migrant detention and abolish the carceral state. See Martín's work at http://www.martinwannam.com

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The Department of Fine Arts and Digital Media is thrilled to welcome Teena Lee Ryan, an interdisciplinary artist, as Adjunct Faculty for Photography. An educator from Cincinnati Ohio,  Teena's work has been featured nationally in both solo and group exhibitions, as well as in Photographer’s Forum Best of Photography. Teena has collaborated on several mural projects including To Spread Happiness with Nate Nez and Albuquerque Health Care for the Homeless. In addition to an AS in Digital Art & Design, she received a BA in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin and an MFA in Studio Art from the University of New Mexico. See Teena's work at www.teenaleeryan.com

Vital Spaces, in partnership with 516 ARTS and The Paseo Project, received 200  submissions for A Window on the Future, a series of month-long storefront art installations that will take place across Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Taos for the month of July.

Windows on the Future will turn storefront and commercial windows, including the SITE Santa Fe window, into art installations and invite viewers to walk and drive by to see them from the sidewalk and street, working with temporarily closed spaces as well as active and vacant storefronts. The collaborative effort aims to bring vibrancy and vitality to Northern New Mexico’s commercial districts in these challenging times while also encouraging social distancing.

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 UNM-Taos Alumini Laurel Taylor and Heather Bergerson were amongst the 60 artists selected to participate. Both works will be installed in Taos for the month of July. Locations will be announced soon. Congratulations!

Dedicated and tenacious Fine Arts student Jeffery Oxford was one of thirty students in New Mexico to receive an All-State Academic Award. Jefferey was presented his Academic Achievement Medal by Dr.Valdez at the State Capitol in Santa Fe, New Mexico. New Mexican governor made a surprise visit and congratulated all recipients of the Academic Award.

Special guest Paige Williams, dean of Art Academy of Cincinnati, came to visit our Art Department and meet with students for one on one portfolio reviews and conversations about art school applications and protocol. Paige Williams provided great energy for our students and encouraged all to continue forward in art education. Thank you Paige!

Sarah Stolar, Head of the Taos Art Department, displayed her award-winning film ‘Bella’ at Santa Fe 20th anniversary Film festival : Spotlight on New Mexico Filmakers. This film screening was hosted by the beautiful Scottish Rite temple, beautiful surroundings for a thought-provoking feature.

What a brilliant collaboration! Sarah Stolar, Heather Bergerson, and Enrico Trujillo combined forces to create a body of work featured in Currents Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Not only was this work visually to die for, the technology of 3D mapping to create it is cutting edge! Team work makes the dream work, fantastic job!

The University of New Mexico–Taos Atrium Gallery featured Ritual and Remembrance, a solo show by award winning artist Nikesha Breeze. Through a dedicated Interdisciplinary practice, Nikesha Breeze, weaves together painting, sculpture, literary work, film and performance. Working from an AfroCentric and AfroFuturist perspective, where the black and brown body are seen as sacred and inviolable, Nikesha reimagines the ability to heal intergenerational traumatic inheritance both past and future through deliberate ritual engagement with the materials and layered symbolism within the work. This show was a fantastic success.

Seven regional artists, working in a variety of media, coming together to show & sell their art at the studios and gallery of Dean Pulver & Abby Salsbury.

The doors will be open on Saturday & Sunday, December 7th & 8th from 11-5pm. Come join us for a visual feast, unique, handmade holiday gifts, refreshments and some pretty great views. 

The artists include: Jane Ellen Burke, Julie Lake, Lindsay Locatelli, Dean Pulver, Abby Salsbury, Tracy Turner Sheppard & Alice Watterson.

40 artists under 40 is curated group show exhibiting works in all media November 18, 2019 - January 12, 2020 at the TCA. Congratulations to UNM-Taos Artists Katie Osborne, Laurel Taylor and Audrey Valentine! The photo depicted here is an image of Audrey Valentine's work accepted in the show!

The UNM-Taos Art Department is representing in full force at this year's PASEO! The PASEO is a free, immersive, nighttime art festival that brings installation, projection, and performance art to Taos, New Mexico. Art Department student Katie Osborne will exhibit a large-scale sculpture she made at UMM-Taos in Sculpture I. It is a giant set of fully functional headphones that creates an interactive listening station. Click HERE for more info on Katie's piece. Sarah Stolar - Art Dept. Chair, Enrico Trujillo - DMA Media Specialist, and Heather Marie Bergerson - Art Dept. Work/Study, with international artist Seth D. Myers, will exhibit their collaborative installation Tripping the Light Fantastic - an interactive Screendance experience. Click HERE for more info on Tripping the Light Fantastic. 

UNM-Taos Artist Jill Clive exhibited a couple pieces from her V Series at Arte de Descartes XIX at the TCA Stables Gallery. The show was up August 24th through September 7th, 2019. Powerful work, Jill!

"V Series 2 and 3 were juried into the 2019 Arte de Descartes show this fall, the requirement being that all pieces be made of recycled or reused materials. Both are 11”x14” but contrast vividly in process and tone.

V Series 2 started as a scraper painting that I built up in layers with neon pink tape, acrylic paint, carpet padding, yarn, fruit and vegetable packing and feminine product wrappers. The centerpiece was created by cutting in half a pussyhat to create a yonic shape that was then filled with shredded history book pages and a wasp’s nest. I continued to build the layers with yarn, paper dots from the three hole punch, glue and paint. Pink is used as a rallying call to feminism rather than a gender color-coding stereotype.
V Series 3 continues the exploration of yonic shapes through using a cut of wood covered in fake grass that provides an altar for the divine goddess (thank you Jeff Oxford!), surrounded by materials that push against each other - the soft wispiness of the bird’s nest, the hardness of the coyote bones, the sharpness of the horseshoe, nails and rusty wire. This is the world of the divine goddess, venerated on her altar but imprisoned and tortured in a cage.

To have had two pieces juried into this show was indeed an honor, but to be able to say that I exhibited with Erin Currier, whose image of Saharawi human rights activist Aminatou Haidar was included in the show, is something I could never have imagined. Currier’s voice on post-consumer waste, as expressed in her riveting collage portraits, is truly amazing. As a volunteer with The Harwood Museum’s Art in the Schools program, I was able to study her work on a weekly basis when we would take the kids through Currier’s exhibit in the spring of 2018. To see her art through the eyes of grade school children was, excuse the pun, eye opening! Currier’s sketchbooks were also on display in the Museum, documenting the breadth of her vision and her artistry, and the huge amount of focused preparation needed to collect the collage materials on her travels in order to create those pieces. Who knew that I would ever have pieces of art hanging on the same walls as her ...?"

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Click HERE to read more about the show.

The Art Department is thrilled to welcome Jess Peri, a multimedia artist, as Adjunct Faculty for Photography. Jess creates work that speaks to the land and the waves of communication that are not visually evident to the naked eye, using the media of photography, digital imaging, GPS, and video. Peri received his BFA from the University of North Texas and a MFA from the University of New Mexico. His work has been included in multiple national and international exhibitions. See his work at www.jessperi.com.

The University of New Mexico-Taos is embarking on a campus-wide project to create a large-scale mural representing the cultural diversity of the student population on campus. UNM-Taos students will conceptualize the imagery in collaboration with two well respected professional artists--local and nationally recognized artist, Amy Córdova, and internationally recognized muralist, Jenny Roesel Ustick.

The creation of this mural empowers underrepresented students to have a voice in the visual depiction of their culture in a way that is not only meaningful and directly connected to their personal narrative, but is represented on a large-scale and highly-visible way in the institution where they are being educated. The mural will be located at Klauer Campus, on the south wall of the Art Department in Fred Peralta Hall.  The project will launch August 19th and is scheduled to be completed by mid-October.

The mural project is an outcome of a federal Title V: Hispanic Serving Institution cooperative grant awarded to UNM-Taos, New Mexico Highlands University, and Adams State University in 2014. Among other student support initiatives, the grant program, UNIDOS: Building Pathway to Access and Opportunity for the Upper Rio Grande Region has supported the on-going goal of building greater capacity for diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education.  

Sarah Stolar, Art Department Chair will exhibit drawings and paintings at Alcoves 2020 at the New Mexico Museum of Art. These new works were created within the last year and some while in residence at the Vermont Studio Center - Summer 2018. The images depict power women and non-binary artists, models, writers, mothers, and activists. Many of the models for this series are UNM-Taos students.

UNM-Taos graduate Carol Schrader was hired to teach art in the Santa Fe Public Schools! She is teaching 7th & 8th graders at El Camino Real Academy, a bilingual school.

"I also had a small solo show of my Pomegranate Series at Paradiso. The show was in conjunction with Wendy Rule's concert touring her double album song series on Persephone. The Pomegranate drawings were done in ink wash as part of the Persephone Series I completed in my independent study this spring. The series explored the Goddess Persephone's journey into the underworld, with the pomegranate representing her agency or choice." 

Black Hole/Atomic City (State of Decay) is an exhibition dedicated to alternative stories related to “the nuclear business” in New Mexico since the dawn of the Anthropocene/Trinity test near Tularosa in July 1945. The combined burden of nuclear byproducts and waste that decays over tens of thousands of years weighs heavily on New Mexico, a “national sacrifice zone.”

Sheri and Anna-Bush are mentioned in the ABQ Journal! Click HERE to read more.

"Detailed observation is required to convey not only the visage but also the character of the subject of a portrait. The ability to analyze the very subtle variations that define a face, as well as the translation of those features onto a canvas and subsequent need for corrections, adjustments, is a gift which is developed through practice and repetition. Decades of figure drawing and portrait painting have provided me the opportunity to hone these skills, a challenge which I love."

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Lawrence J. Herrera at Magpie is the final show of the gallery’s season, and opens this Saturday October 5th, with a reception for the artist from 5-7pm. 

Click HERE to read more.

Audrey Valentine, UNM-Taos art student, will give a Pecha Kucha talk for The Taos Characters Edition, Thursday, June 6th, 2019 at the TCA, 7pm. This will be a special night featuring the 'Taos Characters' that live among us as they share their stories and creativity on stage using the unique Pecha Kucha 20x20 format. Audrey will be speaking on Growing in Art Practice.