Art Writer » Albuquerque

Doodle 4 Google – At Three Western Museums from adobeairstream.com

leannegoebel — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 15:36:46 +0000

The Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper, Wyoming has been chosen to team up with Google for the fifth annual “Doodle 4 Google” contest. On February 25, 2012, from 1-4 p.m. students of all ages can drop by the Discovery Center and doodle around during this special event. Students nationwide, from kindergarten through 12th grade, are also invited to doodle their own rendition of the Google logo for a chance to see it displayed online in the search engine’s home page. The doodles should reflect this year’s contest theme: “If I could travel in time, I’d visit….”

Guest judges for this year’s contest include: Pop Music Sensation Katy Perry; American Idol winner Jordin Sparks; Jeff “Swampy” Marsh creator of Disney Channel’s Phineas and Ferb; Caldecott winner Mo Willems; Spiderwick Chronicles creators Holly Black and Tony DiTerLizzi; Brian Nemeckay, Caryola’s Digital Design Creative Director; and Jack Martin from the New York Public Library.

Not in Wyoming? No problem. Parents, teachers and art centers can download submission instructions for students at Doodle 4 Google. March 23, 2012 is the final deadline for students to submit their drawings for the contest.

The Nicolaysen Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe will host exhibitions of state finalists and runners up.

Not familiar with Google doodles? Well, Google creates special doodle versions of their logos. All are available on one website at Google Doodles.

Here are some of my favorite “Google Doodles” from 2011 and into 2012. The featured “Splashing Google” is by Gabriel Kitzman from Elbert School Dist. #200, Kiowa, Colorado. Gabriel was a finalist in 2008 for Doodle 4 Google.

Written by Leanne Goebel // February 28, 2012 // Design // No comments

The kinesthetic vision of blind sculptor Michael Naranjo from Arts Perspective Magazine

leannegoebel — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:33:41 +0000

Sculpting is dimensional, physical, even touchable (though we rarely get to run our hands over an object).

Michael Naranjo, however, encourages viewers to touch his sculptures. To caress the smooth ebony finish of his bronze figures. To detect the bark of a tree or the wings of a bird. Feeling provides meaning and allows viewers to comprehend mass, form, and shape. For Naranjo, who is blind, his fingers are his eyes, and he has received special dispensation to touch artwork throughout Europe. In 1986, he touched Michaelangelo’s David. But there is one piece he would like to see again.

“If I could go back and see anything, it would be The Slave. I would love to touch that one again,” Naranjo told me sitting in Durango’s Sorrel Sky Gallery where he just installed a life-sized work called White Buffalo’s Vision.

Dying Slave and Rebellious Slave at The Louvre are two of Michaelangelo’s notoriously unfinished works. Naranjo falls on the side of those who believe that Michaelangelo did finish the works. He worked until he felt the need to move on, often learning something in one work that helped him finish another.

“He finished. He did it intentionally. He did what he got done, that’s what he wanted. He simply wanted to let you see what he saw, and let you know that it is in there. He gives you a glimpse of what’s inside that stone,” Naranjo said.

That experience, the ability for him to touch these masterpieces, changed the Santa Clara Pueblo sculptor.

“I got a new sense of the stone. I knew there was actual life in these pieces,” Naranjo recounted in a New Mexico television special some years ago. “My hands could ‘see’ before, but after I experienced Michelangelo’s work, I had new life in my hands. I could see twice as much as I could prior to that time.”

Naranjo infused his own work with that tactile understanding. He has sculpted in stone, but primarily works in wax and clay, which are then cast in bronze.

Born in 1944 and sighted until 1968, Naranjo began making sculpture as a child, forming chunks of clay into animals. His mother Rose Naranjo is a Santa Clara potter. Growing up in Taos, he spent time fishing, hunting, and exploring the mountains and canyons with his nine siblings. After high school, he attended New Mexico Highlands University, but was drafted in 1968 and sent to Vietnam. Caught in an ambush, a grenade explosion took his sight and damaged his right hand. But while recuperating in Japan, he asked for some clay and began making small figures. When he returned to New Mexico, he learned to live alone and kept sculpting.

“My first love was sculpture,” Naranjo said. “It’s always what I wanted to do. I was fortunate in that my left hand was preserved to allow me to be able to do this. I discovered early on that with my mind’s eye and my one good hand I could still make pieces. I was thrilled.”

Naranjo works alone, with no assistants. There is no doubt that his sculptures are from his vision, his hands, his creative endeavor. He sometimes utilizes live models in creating figurative works and prefers wax to oil or water based clay because it’s lighter and can be constructed using thinner armatures. He uses only his hand and his fingernails when working with pliable materials – no tools that other sculptors use to create fine details because he doesn’t know what is happening at the other end of the tool. He does use a pneumatic hammer to carve from stone, holding it in his damaged hand and feeling his way with his left. He’s cut and injured his fingers many times.

Naranjo is sublime and his works convey an inner life and a soul. Naranjo enjoys reading while he is sculpting and he will often see visual imagery inspired by stories and dialogue. Or they will come to him in dreams and visions. He believes the stories add to the life of the work, giving them a yesterday, a today and maybe a tomorrow. I ask him about the man, sitting cross-legged holding an arrow: White Buffalo’s Vision.

“He was out hunting and saw a heard of buffalo from a distance with a white buffalo. He goes back and finds what he thinks is the perfect arrow shaft, then finds the perfect arrowhead, and a special kind of feathers he puts on his arrow. He’s just finished it. He’s looking down the shaft to see if it’s true and if it will be what he needs when he goes and finds the white buffalo.”

In the sculpture, the eyes of the warrior are not defined, a detail Naranjo incorporated in his work long ago. Both of his eyes were enucleated after the accident and he was fitted with prosthetic eyes. When the doctors asked him what color he wanted, the man born with brown eyes asked for blue ones. They are striking with his dark skin and silver-black hair. They sparkle and are almost real because his presence is so powerful, his energy so engaging, his passion for life and for sculpting so effusive.

And it is this conveyance of love and happiness that Naranjo suffuses into his work.

Libby Lumpkin Picks Urbane and Quirky Art for New Mexorado from adobeairstream.com

leannegoebel — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 19:31:51 +0000

This post originally appeared on adobeairstream.com.

From the Harwood Museum Website:

Libby Lumpkin, art historian, curator, and professor of contemporary art history and art theory at University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, served as the primary juror. “Although most of the submissions were relatively traditional in terms of media, the intentions and sensibilities of the artists ranged widely, from sophisticated and urbane to really ‘out there’ quirky,” Ms. Lumpkin said. “Some of the quirkiest were just too good to pass up. So, the exhibition will be a kind of broad-based showcase.” Juror Lumpkin adds, “There you are a REAL art museum out in the wilderness where anything can happen. Even though the population is relatively small, there’s very little social cohesion. Taos is not like some small Renaissance town in Italy where everyone goes to the same cathedral and eats the same spaghetti. It’s more of a ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ sort of place, where maybe the only thing that connects one resident to another is that they saw a light and were drawn there. This kind of juried exhibition provides the opportunity to better know some of your scattered neighbors—to learn more about all those loners, hippies, socialites, cowpokes, scientists, and retired generals living at the end of some dirt road, some of whom are developing as artists, and a couple of whom might actually be waiting for that space ship. Think of the Harwood as the big rock butte that draws all those disparate types of people to one spot. There’s no resisting it!”

Actually, it was worth resisting. I waited until the last moment to see this exhibit. I wanted to love it. I had high expectations. I believe strongly in the idea of a creative corridor between Denver and Albuquerque–a cultural connection. I just don’t see it as alien or extra-terrestrial. The show had too much work, and too many pieces by the same artists. One or two of Ed Forde’s large canvases told the story, we didn’t need to see four of them. One sculpture by Wesley Pulkka would have made a statement, the same with Jeremy McDonnell’s cast paper work. And I know there are more artists from Colorado worthy of being in a museum exhibition other than the included choices: Pard Morrison, Kate Petley, Jean Gumpper, Margaret Kasahara, Jeff Brown, Adam Holloway, Vince Jerez Sherry, George Beggs, and Marina Eckler.

Juror Lumpkin said it herself. The show was “all over the place!” And not in a good way.

Dreaming New Mexico runner up for Bucky Prize

leannegoebel — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 22:06:49 +0000

Read about the Bucky Prize and the runner up on adobeairstream.com

Southwest artists, but no Southwestern art

leannegoebel — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:33:00 +0000

Media Credit: Courtesy of Albuquerque Museum

“Swoop” by Julia Barello, featured at the second annual Biennial Southwest exhibit at the Albuquerque Museum.

The second installment of Biennial Southwest at The Albuquerque Museum, features 83 works from artists in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. Artists competed for cash awards totaling $10,500 in a variety of categories. Dr. Stephanie Hanor, Senior Curator and Curatorial Department Head for the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego is the juror for this year’s exhibition. She selected the work from 1,394 entries.

The exhibit is up through November 30, 2008

Other upcoming events include artist talks and demonstrations:

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2
JULIA BARELLO
ALTERNATIVE MEDIA

Barello’s interest in examining the body both culturally and metaphorically led her to experiment with medical imaging films as her primary material. She is currently Professor of Art at New Mexico State University and maintains an active career as an artist in both jewelry and mainstream contemporary art. Her works are exhibited both nationally and internationally including the Museum of Art and Design in New York, the Cranbrook Art Museum, and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs de Montreal, among others.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23
CATHERINE WINKLER RAYROUD
WORK ON PAPER

Rayroud is an accomplished papercutting artist and ceramist. Born of Swiss and British nationality, the art of papercutting was instilled in her as a child in her native Switzerland. Her works have been presented in many solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Switzerland, and Korea. She moved to Houston in 2000.

WOODBLOCK PRINTING – MARY SWEET
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 1• 10:00 am -12:00 pm & 1:00-3:00 pm

Observe as Sweet demonstrates her Japanese style prints using a reductive method.
A painter most of her life, she began creating woodblock prints in 1993. Sweet graduated from
Standard University with a M.A. in art and moved to Tijeras, New Mexico in 1970. Since then, she has exhibited both her paintings and prints widely in both national and international venues. Sweet has been featured in a number of art publications including Who’s Who in American Art and Who’s Who in America.

This demonstration is part of Art Beyond Sight Awareness Day at The Albuquerque Museum, an international effort to make the visual arts accessible to those with sight loss.