Four Santa Fe artists pool their resources for a show opening at new studio
Four Santa Fe artists who’ve been friends for years have pooled their artistic resources to create a show opening today at Four Friends Studio in the space that formerly housed Works on Paper Gallery on Johnson Street. Bette Brodsky, Norma Evans, Donna McWilliams and Mary Thompson are presenting an eclectic exhibit of old techniques put to today’s art needs. It will feature wire sculpture, wooden vessels, glass vessels and jewelry, etchings, watercolors and wood engravings.
The show will run through Aug. 16, and the joint-show artists will see that it remains open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily during that period. As a show space, “we’re kind of testing the waters,” Thompson told the Journal. The four friends have been working together on a weekly basis for several years. The original impetus to work together was a shared interest in wood engraving, but that interest has broadened over time. These days, the four friends are as likely to bring carving, beadwork, drawing or music to their meetings.
The works they are showing in “Four Friends” are equally diverse. Brodsky, for instance, is an awardwinning graphic artist who designs books for both New Mexico Magazine and the Museum of New Mexico Press. In addition, she has a background in theater, costume, fashion and design. That background is evident in the work she is exhibiting at the studio: polymer clay acrobats, books and — new for Brodsky — a group of wire sculptures.
Brodsky calls these wire sculptures “Show People.” They are dynamic figures of acrobats, strippers, chanteuses and other performers, originally designed as illustrations for her father’s book, “Songs My Mother Never Sang to Me.” These linear yet three-dimensional characters have elements of both drawing and sculpture, changing shape as the viewer looks at them from different angles.
Evans, a longtime member of the Santa Fe Etchers Club that meets with Jo Basiste, is showing etchings, watercolors, egg temperas and turned-wood vessels. A native New Mexican, Evans used both native and nonnative woods for her bowls and often incorporates turquoise and other materials in her works.
McWilliams uses fused, tacked and slumped glass to create unique vessels and jewelry. The bowls are reminiscent of old-world glass in weight and depth, with deep and complex overlays of color. She also collaborates with beadist Loretta Goeller to make glass and beaded jewelry, infused with color and sparkle.
Thompson is showing wood engravings, a relief printmaking process related to wood cut. Unlike wood cuts, which are made with plank-wood blocks and cut with knives and chisels, wood engravings are made with end-grain blocks, often boxwood or hard maple, and cut with a variety of small, specialized tools.
“I work with light in the engraving process, from block to finished print,” Thompson said. “I think of wood engraving this way: the uncut surface of my block is black, a surface of darkness. As I cut the block, I let the light in, bit by bit. Eventually, the block reveals an image. That image, of course, is the reverse of the image I intend to produce. To fully illuminate the image, the block is printed onto paper.”
While the “Four Friends” are all Santa Feans, an artist from a long way away is being featured at Eight Modern’s contemporary venue. The Delgado Street gallery is opening a show today of mixed-media works by Ming Fay, a native of Shanghai, China. Fay emigrated to the U.S. and has remained here, living in New York City and teaching sculpture at William Paterson University in New Jersey.
In his own work, Fay creates mythical folk gardens from wire, foam, papier mâché and paint. The works can be separate, but in their collaborative entirety, the are a monumental work called “Jungle Tango.”
Evoking a utopian vision of the jungle, the artist explores, he said, the contentious, sometimes collaborative relationship between humankind and nature. Fay described Jungle Tango as “a piece about movements, connections and mysterious shapes and forms.” He draws on extensive research in botany to create colorful, fantastical, mock-organic ecosystems, which he called “calligraphic floating forests of reeds, branches and surreal species.” He also has recently begun including human and animal symbols in his artwork. Both are present in “Jungle Tango.”
Fay has had solo exhibitions in New York and California, most prominently at MOCA Shanghai and the Whitney Museum, and has received numerous commissions for public works, including the Delancey Street-Essex Street Subway Station in New York. He is a professor of sculpture at William Paterson University.
If You Go
WHAT: “Four Friends:” wire sculpture, wooden and glass vessels, etchings, watercolors, engravings, jewelry.
WHEN: Today through Aug. 16; reception 5-8 p.m. today.
WHERE: Four Friends Studio, 229a Johnson St.
CONTACT: (505) 469-9499
WHAT: Ming Fay: “Jungle Tango” mixed-media sculptures
WHEN: Today through Sept. 21; reception 5:30-7:30 p.m. today
WHERE: Eight Modern, 231 Delgado St.
CONTACT: (505) 995-0231
