Artists Use Simple Shape To Link Disparate Cultures
When Rose Simpson pondered what could possibly link 25 artists from 16 countries with a multiplicity of cultures and languages, she thought of the line.
“What’s the simplest form of expression that absolutely everyone can understand?” she asked. “What is our common thread? Our common thread is the line. That line can tell everyone’s stories.”
Simpson, her great aunt Nora Naranjo Morse and her cousin Eliza Naranjo Morse are lifting, plastering and painting three-dimensional “lines” of clay at the Institute of American Indian Arts downtown, the St. Francis Auditorium at the New Mexico Museum of Art, the School for Advanced Research and at SITE Santa Fe for its seventh annual Biennial, or “Lucky Number Seven.”
The Biennial opens June 20; the three women have until June 19 to erect the installations.
A Santa Clara Pueblo sculptor, Simpson got the idea after listening to her cousin Eliza talk about her studies with lines at Santa Fe’s School for Advanced Research.
These artists are grounded in mud. Eliza had been painting clay abstractions, while Nora had been working in contemporary clay — she’s known for her large installations. Simpson creates in everything from spray paint to clay to music.
“It comes from the idea of wanting to describe emergence and family,” Eliza added, “emergence from (your) mother and traveling through the world and space.”
For Nora, the project segued easily with pueblo concepts of collaboration and community.
“We started looking at line and form and how it affects who we are as women, as pueblo people, as human beings, as members of this planet,” she said.
The thickest “line” — looping and snaking along the IAIA roof, then winding back down inside the building — is constructed from the wattles used in highway construction. They’re tubes made of wire mesh stuffed with rice straw and laid on the side of the road to prevent erosion.
It was Nora who spied the structures by the side of the road and slammed on her brakes. She’d found their materials.
“Pueblo people are real survivors, so we’re always looking at things,” she said. “We’re very sensitive to looking around and collecting what we need for our resources.”
The trio will create narrower “lines” using pantyhose stuffed with quilt batting, then coated with clay.
In keeping with Biennial curator Lance Fung’s theme, the clay structures are also ephemeral.
“I can see putting these on a truck and taking them back to the rez and throwing them in the arroyos,” Simpson said.
Although the women were nervous when they presented their idea to Fung, Simpson said she wasn’t surprised by the curator’s enthusiasm. According to his non-themed “theme,” all the projects have to be site specific; the work will be destroyed or recycled at the Biennial’s January end. He devised that constraint hoping its noncommercial nature will encourage more experimental work. None of the artwork will be for sale. Each artist was allocated $7,500 to complete their piece — no deep pockets allowed.
“I don’t believe in the (expletive) art scene,” Simpson said. “It depends on what you think is important. I’d rather be putting my hands in the dirt than schmoozing with rich people.”
Family connections also link the three off-site locations. Simpson’s uncle performs with the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival at St. Francis Auditorium. Both Nora and Eliza were fellows at the School for Advanced Research. And both Simpson and her mother — famed Santa Clara sculptor Roxanne Swentzell — have exhibited at IAIA.
The Biennial has greatly widened the women’s opportunities to meet other artists. Simpson discovered they all had more in common than they expected when she escorted a group to Santa Clara.
“The most interesting thing was the familiarity,” she said. “They were like, ‘This looks like home.’ ’’
The Cold War reasserted itself when she accompanied Bulgaria’s Luchezar Boyadjiev to Los Alamos.
“He said something like, ‘This place was like the devil to us,’ ’’ Simpson said. “He thought it would be more ominous.”
The women were behind schedule Monday. They’d rented the wrong kind of cherry picker to hoist the 12-foot-long wattles onto IAIA’s two-story roof. The machine was for less-strenuous indoor projects like changing light bulbs. When the sturdier version finally arrived, it teetered back and forth like a hurricane-swept tree. Despite the rocky ride, Simpson gave a thumbs-up after placing the last wattle into her great-aunt’s waiting hands.
“Beam us down, Scottie,” she said.
