ELI RUBEL/Herald photos

L to R: Rebecca Barfoot’s “Serena and Me 1917-2007″ won Best of Show at the 31st annual juried art show “Emotion.” Prizes were presented at a reception at the Durango Arts Center on Friday, June 8. Judy DeVincentis Morgan received an Honorable Mention for “Chili Pickers.” Rod Craig’s pastel “Songs in the Evening.”

A stunned Rebecca Barfoot won Best of Show at the Durango Art Center’s 31st annual juried art show reception Friday night.

The young artist held back tears of joy as Exhibits Director Susan Andersen presented her with a check for $500 for “Serena and Me, 1917-2007,” a collage painting representing the artist’s connection to her female ancestors.

The theme of this year’s show (through June 23) is “Emotions,” and Barfoot’s sensitive depiction of women sharing inspiration through time was a likely choice, as was Mary Ellen Long’s “Bonnets of Aging.” Awarded the Juror’s Choice Award of $150, “Bonnets of Aging” is an installation of blue-and-pink satin baby bonnets trailing ribbons of handmade paper books filled with comments about life and growing older.

“It’s a work that showed tons of emotion and sensitivity,” said juror Gregory C. Gummersall, a contemporary painter and collage artist, who whittled down the 124 submissions to 65 with the help of his wife, Jenny Gummersall, a photographer.

The Gummersalls selected a quote by Josef Albers, the Bauhaus artist and former Black Mountain instructor, to summarize their approach to art.

“Art is revelation instead of information, expression instead of description, creation instead of imitation or repetition. Art is concerned with the HOW, not the WHAT; not with literal content, but with the performance of the factual content. The performance – how it is done – that is the content of art.”

The jurors selected work that spoke to them on an instinctual level. They also valued artists who did not let a lack of materials stop them from creating. Their merit and honorable-mention awards went to artists Marsan (Susan Andersen), who created “Feeling
peek-id” from found objects, bone, shell and porcupine quills, and to Karen McIntyre for her wire sculpture “Mis Hijas Roxie and Murphy.”

The most poignant moment came when Mike Austed was awarded an honorable mention for a pencil drawing called “The Actor.”

Austed has a disability and is part of the Kindred Spirits program at the DAC. His grin expressed the emotion he captured in his drawing. Austed told the crowd that the drawing was not for sale because he had given it to his mom for Mother’s Day.

Several members of the Plein Air Painters of the Four Corners have work in the show featuring people working in fields or figures integrated into landscape. Judy DeVincentis Morgan received an honorable mention for her oil “Chile Pickers.” And Sharon Abshagen reveals a completely different side with “Blue Line,” a painting that features several female forms, darkened faces and a blue line of barbed wire running across the painting, seeming to restrain the figures.

Barbed wire is literally wrapped around a canvas by Maryellen Morrow, who strapped bark over a painting of a figure. The effect doesn’t work for me, and I’d like to see Morrow create more abstracted landscapes as she did for the last juried show at DAC.

There is a playfulness to this show evident in work like “Eenie, Meenie, Minie, Ain’t No Moe” by Howard Searle that also received an honorable mention. A folk-art narrative is also evident as expressed by artists Thaddine Swift Eagle, Tirzah Camacho and Dave Sipe.

But it is the more serious work that stands out for me. Durango artist Rod Craig submitted three large, pastel paintings. “Songs in the Evening” hangs prominently at the entrance of the gallery. It features a repetition of angles, doors and walls, with light coming through into a room, each wall a different, vibrant shade. It’s a play of color and shape and form and light. The emotion? For me it seems to be inspiration.

artsjournalist@centurytel.net Leanne Goebel is a freelance writer specializing in the visual arts.

Contents copyright ©, the Durango Herald. All rights reserved.

New owner focusing on art inspired by the Southwest

Photo courtesy of Leanne Goebel
Wild Spirit Gallery closed this spring but re-opened May 1 under the ownership of Madeline Lyon, a teacher from Lumberton, N.M.

The downtown gallery scene in Pagosa Springs is limited. In February 2005, Taminah Gallery & Gift Shop closed its doors. (Its framing division was reincarnated and still exists today under its third owner.)

A handful of local artists represented by Taminah were thrilled to learn later that year that a new gallery would open: Wild Spirit.

Originally owned by Ken Patterson, an emergency room doctor from Texas, Wild Spirit opened on July 1, 2005, with nearly 30 artists, but no gallery director.

Jean Magnelli, a former sales associate and framing consultant at Taminah Gallery, had been enlisted to help invite artists to exhibit at the new gallery. On opening day, she was helping Patterson hang lights, when he hired her as the gallery director.

Magnelli was the sole employee at the gallery for a year. She worked tirelessly without a break, with only local artists as volunteers to help give her a needed day off until July 2006, when Lizz Baldwin was hired.

Patterson asked Baldwin, a local jewelry artist, to create a jewelry department within the gallery where she sold her work and the work of other artists.

It all seemed to be working. The gallery had strong sales in the fall of 2006, said Magnelli and Baldwin, and then out of the blue, owner Patterson e-mailed them to say he was closing the
gallery.

Enter Madeline Lyon, a seventh- and eighth-grade teacher from St. Francis School in Lumberton, N.M. She was a patron of Wild Spirit before buying the gallery this spring.

“About a year ago I bought a painting,” Lyon said. “I heard from Jean that the gallery was doing well, then – boom – it closed.”

Lyon is an experienced businesswoman. She and her former husband owned an anodizing company in Ohio for 14 years. After having spent the last 23 years as an educator, Lyon had a yen to get back into business.

“I have no art experience,” Lyon said. “Therefore, the first thing I determined was is Jean willing to stay. And she was. She is totally committed to this gallery.”

But there were other business decisions to consider.

“I looked at the numbers and realized that we had to make adjustments,” Lyon said. “The gallery was losing money, but we are restructuring.”

By restructuring, she means that Magnelli is taking a pay cut, Baldwin has decided to leave the gallery and commission payments to artists have been redefined. Lyon herself doesn’t expect the gallery to provide her an income or a salary.

“Basically, we want to disseminate art because it is something that inspires people, and it’s a peaceful thing,” Lyon said.

The gallery hosted a grand re-opening May 26 that was attended by about 200 people. Twenty-four of the 56 artists represented by the new Wild Spirit were present, a bit shy of the 62 artists represented when the original Wild Spirit closed. Several artists chose not to return under the new commission terms and some were not invited back.

The gallery will remain focused on Southwestern art, and gallery director Magnelli makes all artistic decisions, which is quite a change from her former career as a certified dietary manager for a multi-million dollar retirement community in Naples, Fla.

When asked how she got interested in art, Magnelli said her grandmother inspired her artistic interest and taught her to draw and paint at a very young age.

“You can tell an artist by how they look at the world,” Magnelli said. “I look at the world and say how can I paint that?”

“I am very happy with where we are,” Lyon said. “I hope to see the gallery thrive.”

artsjournalist@centurytel.net Leanne Goebel is a freelance writer specializing in the visual arts. She lives in Pagosa Springs.

Contents copyright ©, the Durango Herald. All rights reserved.