Firenza Gallery in Arroyo Seco: What happens when pigs fly

For those of us who have used the phrase “It’ll happen when pigs fly” as a way to say something will never happen. I’m here to tell you they are flying.

And stuff’s happening. Big time. Up in Arroyo Seco. Must have something to do with the flying pigs.

When Jill Shank and her husband Tom gave up their art-gypsy lifestyle to settle in Seco and do the thing they really loved to do – make and show art – without having to travel the country over – unpacking and then re-packing their work for each of the shows they’d attend each year.

They weren’t always art festival dead heads. Tom had been an investment banker and decided he need to get out of his chair and do something he enjoyed rather than sitting in front of the computer all day.

For Jill, it was an opportunity for her to unleash her inner yayas and have a little stability in her life – though many will tell you not to go into the gallery business if you want stability.

But like I said. Stuff is happening in Seco. During the weekend if you plan to drive through town you had better slow down because there are people everywhere. People stroll through the quaint shops that carry one-of –a kind art and they form lines to sample the goodies across the street at Taos Cow.

From the brightly painted bench, Tom surveys the weekend scene and you get the sense that he feels he’s made the best decision of his life – to take a chance and come to Arroyo Seco and just do it.

“My training in lampwork beads began in 2002 under guidance of Ginny Sycuro in Evergreen, Colorado, training that helped shape my current lampwork style. I have also studied with other noted regional and national artists such as Kim Miles from Taos, New Mexico, and Corina Tettinger from Camano Island, Washington.”

“Inspired by the creative processes involved with bead making, I joined the International Society of Glass Beadmakers (ISGB) and attended their national gathering in Arlington, Virginia where I was exposed to international artists whose glass bead creations were beyond fabulous! I was inspired to make art full time, and soon began traveling to shows in Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas, Louisiana and Georgia under the trade name Bluebird Beads.”

“In 2005, I relocated to Windsor, Colorado, where I was inspired by the beauty of the mountains, streams and wildlife in nearby Rocky Mountain National Park. I launched Firenza beads with Tom, and we discovered an artistic synergy with my glass beads and his handy work in silver and precious metals,” she said.

Some of her work has been featured in trade publications such as “Beadwork” magazine and in the books “The Art and Soul of Glassbeads” and “Passing the Flame – Spotlight on Beads.”

“I make the beads by melting Moretti Italian glass rods using a propane torch over a steel rod, called a mandrel.

“I turn it constantly in my left hand. The flame is about 1600-degrees. I use thin glass rods called stringers to do the detail work. Some people think of it like painting with glass,” she explained.

“Once the bead is finished, I place the mandrel in my little kiln, which is heated to 1000-degrees. This anneals, or strengthens, the glass so it doesn’t break or crack. Then I clean the beads,” Shank said.

The first time Shank demonstrated how she made these beautiful beads a giant dragonfly came and peered over my right shoulder as if to watch the demonstration, or maybe drawn to its flame. I ended up having to visit Firenza Gallery twice because my camera and data recorder got lifted from a busy Taos Plaza restaurant ( left it behind!) after I already shot pictures and had a very workman-like interview with the Shanks. It wasn’t really that big of an imposition to have to make another trip to Seco the next weekend so we could retake the photos.

The second time we visited I told Shank about how when I was thinking about her bead making demonstration the next day, another giant dragonfly came and visited me in my house through an open door, then left just as suddenly. One of those “Taos moments.”

So the painted pig perched on the roof of the studio gallery tells just a part of the story about what happens when you let them fly — like your freak flag, or your artistic spirit.

While you’re letting things fly, why not pick up an unofficial “Summer of Love” t-shirt, and slurp on something delicious from across the street, because it’s happening up there in Seco, don’t you know.

Where you can see Jill Shank’s beadwork:

Firenza Gallery
484 Hwy 150
Arroyo Seco
575-776-2828
www.firenzagallery.com

Joel Morse Lage

Everything has been Everything

“That a discarded object, resurrected by the hand and mind, can lift the heart, is a miracle,” says Joel Morse Lage’s “about the artist” page.

It’s not an attempt to justify his use of recycled materials. The communication of joy or angst though matter’s molecular memory is the kernel of an idea about of being-ness is something that matter wraps itself around like a May pole.

Lage’s studio is near his house up on Llano San Juan, a little shelf of land that sits above Penansco. He said it was easy to find once you’d been there and sure enough, he ended up having to come into Penasco to meet me at Sahd’s.

The little general store was supposed to be opened at 9 a.m. and several Penasceros waited patiently. One man cruised by asking if they were open yet. He was eating a small, green apple, sprinkling his fresh bites with salt from a shaker he held in his hand.

“OK, lady, later,” he said, smiled politely and rolled out of the parking lot – not in any particular hurry, what with holding an apple and a salt shaker and all.

Out side the store’s front door, next to a bag of fertilizer, a flat of neglected and stunted tomato plants clung to life. One small green tomato nodded from a dry stem. That tomato plant was probably buying time for the rest of them – coaxing a little water out of their caretaker now and then, because they were still for sale.

For little towns up and down the highways and byways of New Mexico, losing small business trade means a trip into Taos more than once a week. More gas, wear and tear on vehicles and the most precious commodity anyone has – time.

Hope is similar to giving thanks, but in a little town, it’s an up-front investment in the future. Hope is all that spindly plant bearing one green, small, hard tomato has in its future, besides, maybe an early frost.

Lage said he is a decades-long explorer in the science of molecular memory. He explained what he meant with a simple illustration.

“Have you ever seen something in nature that looks like something else? Like a piece of wood that looks like a bird? It is the molecules in the wood remembering themselves as a bird,” he explained.

Lage’s resume is like a McDonalds drive-in sign in reverse. Instead of billions of assembly-line meat sandwiches, though, Lage lists the number of pieces he has made from found objects. Each unique and bearing the molecular memory of what it was before it was a piece of art. One gets the feeling it remembers what it was before art (maybe a liquid acrylic polymer floating in a fiberglass soup. One gets the feeling its memory goes back even farther than that – remembering itself as oil and the dinosaurs and vegetation it was before that, reaching so far back in time you’d swear it was coming up ahead.

More than 2,500 found objects sculpture and jewelry pieces have been made and sold by Lage or his galleries. He’s the originator of the Bottle Cap Car and has made at least 600 of them.

For Lage, his colorful pile of stuff is a fountain of inspiration, and his studio, a school bus that hasn’t run for decades, is also filled with tools, colorful bits of glass, painted metal, pieces of interesting stone, shell and bone.

Lage said he’s exploring painting these days — mainly because of the damage he’s done to his hands over the years, making metal sculpture and especially those bottle cap cars. Cuts, burns, pinches and crushes over time have taken their toll on his hands, though they clearly still love what comes naturally to them – which is making art. These hands have teased molecular memory out of found objects for what they were once and what they are on their way to becoming. In this future there is still hope, because everything and everyone remembers what it was like to have it.

Lage pulled out a small leather coin purse and said he got it in the 1970s in Los Angeles. A woman had died, and because she was destitute, all of her things were scattered all over the parkway for an estate sale. He said he was drawn to pick up this little leather coin purse but didn’t even open it until he got home. To his astonishment he discovered it was filled with hundreds of dried and pressed four-leaf clovers.

“She dried and pressed each one and she had that same hopeful head every time she went to this purse,” he said. It was as if you could reach out and feel the hope this woman must have had.

The idea that a discarded object can be redeemed by the hand of an artist and then can lift the heart, proof that there’s hope. Imagine what it must feel like to be picked up and redeemed. It might just inspire a piece of wood to imagine that it is once again a bird.

Joel Mores Lage’s work can be seen at
Taos Art Plaza
Pueblo Allegre Mall

Michael Forbes

More to wood than wood

Don’t be fooled by the seemingly simple material of wood. Yes, its beauty is readily apparent when it is sanded and polished. The warmth of the material, the grain and depth of the wood’s finish is matched by no other material. As long as trees grow, humans will be using them to make things.

But a chunk of wood is more than just its material and strength. It implies the years it spent as a growing tree with millions of chemical interactions going on every instant of its life as a tree – processing sunlight and creating oxygen. Wood is a symbol of wind because the wind blows through its branches. Wood also is a symbol of heat or fuel because after wood has been cut, it is turned into lumber, made into something, or it is burned, which gives off energy.

For sculptor Michael Forbes, wood is more than just a material he has made things with for the last 25 years. It even means more than the implied elements of wind and fire. For Forbes, wood represents a continuance of his journey to mastery – even if he would probably seem embarrassed if you used the word “master” and “Michael Forbes” in the same sentence.

Forbes has a wonderful studio in El Prado. There are workbenches and tools and there is lots and lots of wood waiting to be turned into something. It’s what you smell when you come inside.

In a studio of this kind, you can apologize about dust, but you know if there were no dust there wouldn’t be the kind of creative work space it is.

“I feel blessed with this space. I’ve lived in taos 12 years now. I’ve lived in Santa Fe previously, and have also lived in Australia. I’m originally from Toronto,” Forbes explained.

“I’ve been a furniture maker for the last 25 years and I just recently started sculpture. In 2006 I won a prize in the annual Fall arts Taos Open. I won a ribbon and that was very encouraging and I’ve been doing it since. I still make my furniture, however,” he said.

And what was the motivation to start sculpting?

“I didn’t want to make chairs for a living anymore. At first, I thought I would work in stone. I thought I’d go and take a workshop so I could learn how to think in three dimensions. After all, furniture is three dimensions, but generally, people keep furniture up against a wall. With a sculpture, you relate to it in 360 degrees. But as I was planning, I was sitting here thinking that I have all these tools and this wood. Wood was what I should be working in, so I went to the library and read books. I became obsessed with sculpture,” he said.

But business has been off because of the deep recession.

“I haven’t sold much lately because of all that going on. Maybe it was the wrong time to switch careers,” he said and laughed, then added, “It doesn’t matter. I can’t help it. I’ll be sculpting no matter what.”

This week, Forbes said he began to work on some contemporary pieces. The lines are clean and the arrangements of wood grains and textures creates a pleasing combination.

“I’ve gotten very excited again. It took me 25 years to become a furniture maker. I imagine mastering sculpting might take just as long,” he noted, mentioning he learned woodworking in a very rarified atmosphere – an Ashram in India.

“Sculpture has made me feel rejuvenated,” he said, smiling.

“I’m surprised anyone has interest. It’s pleasantly surprising when anyone wants to buy one of my pieces. I’m sort of taken aback,” he confessed.

When talking about his plans for the future, Forbes gets excited thinking about the possibilities. He doesn’t seem to have any issues with trying something – at least once.

“If I were going to collaborate I would like for it to be a big mural relief carving, to really stretch myself.”

“I’d also like to open up my studio to an apprentice. I’ve been asked to teach woodworking through the university, but I think that atmosphere is too formal for me. I’d prefer to teach right here,” he said, opening up his arms, taking in all the waiting blanks of wood, the figures in progress and other projects he’s working on.

It would be quite an opportunity to get to work with such beautiful materials, excellent tools, and the master woodworker in the bargain.

“I’m not the kind of woodworker who goes to the forest and chews down his own tree,” he declared with a little laugh. “I’ll use any tool as long as it works. Removing stuff shouldn’t take that long.”

He acknowledges that he does have a tendency to make things harder for himself than they really are.

“I do things backwards. I see now why people do clay, or additive sculpture. I’m trying to teach myself how to look at things in a different way. It’s substractive. Once you remove something you can’t glue it back on if taking it away was a mistake. It took me a year to do an ear,” he said. “Maybe I’m making things hard for himself but I would never describe it that way when I’m in the flow.”

Where you can see Michael Forbes work:
Michael McCormick Gallery
106c Paseo del Pueblo Norte
(575) 758-1372
http://www.mccormickgallery.com

Matthew Gonzales

What happens when you stop running from art?

On the north end of Blueberry Hill road there’s a small, log-cabin-style house that looks out over a spectacular view of Taos mountain and watches over the Upper Ranchitos Valley.

The little studio belonging to Matthew Gonzales is crammed with pieces in progress. Even his computer screen is covered with a piece of art work. A framed drawing covers the front of the wide-screen monitor. After being questioned, Gonsales said he couldn’t remember the last time he had it on.

There is art everywhere. Clay sculptures in various degrees of completeness line the shelves. Cast pieces, with their colored patinas, line other shelves.

One project he’s working on is a representation of the muses. Another is a life-sized bust of Barack Obama, a commission that may end up going through several versions before the final work is done.

Gonzales said he learned early on that to become truly good at sculpture and the human form he needed to completely submerse himself in the processes of his chosen medium.

Born in Embudo and raised in Questa, Gonzales took the classical approach to becoming an artist, where one serves under a master and learns the most basic and rudimentary skills of his profession before being allowed to move on.

“I put myself through college at the Colorado Institute of Art. When I was growing up, a lot of kids thought their only choice is the military. I actually was going to go that route with the Marines, then I got a few scholarships, when helped tremendously. Art was what I really want to pursue. I used to come down to Taos to talk to the established artists and ask their opinion about how to set about being one. They all told me to go to art school and make art every day.”

At first, he thought he was going to be a landscape painter, but drawing the figure really caught on for him in college. He graduated at top of his class in fashion illustration and did that for quite a while, he said.

“I caught some of the last of the really great teachers who taught you how to draw figures, sketch, anatomy,” he explained, “not dreaming up art concepts and writing grants.”

Paintings of human anatomy are just the beginning. Sculpture, working in the third dimension of space is the equivalent of making hundreds, maybe even thousands of drawings that intersect the field of vision that makes it exist in three-dimensional space. Making a lump of clay look like something is one thing, but then imparting it with a sense of life not possible in two dimensions is part of the magic every sculptor yearns for.

And then, taking that sculptural piece of clay through the process of casting and finishing is a whole part of the process often overlooked by the casual observer.

The success of a piece, Gonzales said, often will rest on how skillful the casting is.

Early on in his professional art career, Gonzales said he realized it was going to take full emersion to become really good at the work.

After a life changing experience, he moved to Santa Fe and got a job at a foundry talked to lots of artists.

“I went about the business of finding out how the work is done and see how other people handle problems

He learned how to cast his own pieces, doing every part of the process from conception to applying the acid baths that give bronze sculpture its finish.

Now, he lets someone else cast his work, but it’s been hard. He admits to being somewhat of a control freak but also knows that he can only do so much and eventually he’d have to let go. It’s hard to turn over the process to someone else but he needs to make art, he said, not spend time casting.

“It’s really tough. But when it comes down to it I have to make that choice of whether I get to create or get tied down in the tedious work of casting,” he said.

He gets his pieces cast now at Art Castings up in Loveland, Colo.

“Many of the people working there have been working for the company for 20 years. I trust them. The more I get into the business the more important it is for me to be sculptor than it is for me to do everything,” he said.

Besides the tremendous body of work he already can claim, he is on the board of the Contemporary Spanish Market in Santa Fe and he has found he just can’t help being a bit of an art activist as well.

When he lived in Santa Fe, he explained that his drawing group was able to raise a fair amount of money to buy art paper for children in the schools there.

“I turned our drawing show into a fundraiser’s largest contributor. The organization was able to deliver two pallets of drawing paper for 18 elementary schools in Santa Fe.

For Gonzales, art is almost like a higher calling. If he not making something he said he gets anxious and jittery

“I feel I almost don’t have a choice. I could have been an engineer, and even when I was illustrating, it was fun at the beginning but it got old after a while.

Being a sculptor was something that was a result from a life-changing injury. This was during the time he lived in the Bolder, Colo., area.

I really liked Boulder. It is a wonderful place, but I burnt out doing illustration so I started working in a hardware store, moved up the ladder made so-so money, but I had made more as an illustrator. I quit the hardware job and started working in a job that involved working with explosives. I got into a serious car accident – a head-on collision. I thank God I was driving a Saab. I ended up with a closed head injury that put me out of commission for several months had amnesia,” he recounted

He forgot everything, he explained and when he was going to a cognitive therapist, she suggested he take up sculpture.

“The therapist said, ‘you’re an artist — you have a sculptor’s brain,’ but hadn’t really done much in the way of sculpting before. She sent him home with an assignment to sculpt something and I got hooked. I guess I must have cashed in eight of my nine lives.,” he said. Had I been driving any other car I would have died so I decided I would use my second chance and stop running from art.

“I live to create. From boyhood on, I was always scribbling. By second grade, I was sent to the principal’s office for drawing nude sketches of my teacher while she was at the chalkboard. It was her movement that fascinated me. When we are alive, we are never standing still. I draw every day of my life. Drawing is the beginning of all art. The beauty of the human form awes me. I cannot imagine a more perfect design,” he said.

His love of the figure is movingly expressed in his work, which harnesses light and shadow in powerful compositions. With neither a back nor front, his work is meant to be enjoyed from all angles, as he says, “to expose the harmonies of form that reveal the body’s perfect design.”

Where can you see the work of Matthew Gonzales?

Wilder Nightingale Fine Art
119-A Kit Carson Road
575-758-3255
http://www.wnightingale.com/

and on the artist’s web site:
http://www.gonzalesart.com

Pamela Pereyra

Sometimes it is the smallest things in our lives that exert the greatest pull.

And instead of feeling like we are being drawn into a helpless orbit, we know we’re in for the ride of our lives.

One of the biggest life-changers disguised as a small things, are babies. These miniature humans exert an extraordinary pull on parental units and before you know it, everything we do, say, eat and sleep is part of the lumbering journey that is parenthood.

Jeweler Pamela Pereyra knows it is the smaller things that have exerted the biggest pull in her life – no question.

“When I was pregnant with my first child, [Illyana – call in to check selling of this name], that I knew I had to come up with a jewelry line where I didn’t have to use a bunch of chemicals to make it,” she said. That was the impetus of clean design coupled with intriguing, yet simple forms.

Now, a handful of years later, her second child, Kosmo Micah, dozed in a sling as twilight came on while we visited in the deepening light.

He was fussy, “probably teething,” Pereyra said.

Over the adobe wall, lambs tottered and baby turkeys peeped and scratched in the lengthening shadows as Pereyra gently shifted her weight from one foot to the other, rocking Kosmo back to sleep.

Pereyra and her husband, teacher and musician Jason Weisfeld, live in the idyllic Lower Ranchitos neighborhood. Last year they completed a small studio, separate from their adobe home. A trail of hand-cast stepping stones lead to its door and inside is the world of art, music and jewelry. Before getting down to business, we enjoyed the setting sun, the cooling breeze and a little neighborly visit.

The new studio, which she shares with another jeweler, is a trapazoidal with a little loft area where Weisfeld has a drum kit set up.

This is her third studio. The third time is the charm, as they say.

“The first studio I had was a friends space. It was perfect because it was a woodworker’s studio in Los Colonias. There was electricity but no running water,” she said. Her next studio was nearby, rented from her neighbor, metal artist Pozzi Franzetti.

“With the new studio I am committed now to grow in my jewelry making,” she admitted.

And committed is an appropriate word to use when talking about Pereyra’s dedication to making her art business work. She’s developing her online presence and is in the middle of revamping her web site, but also offers work through a popular creative shop site called www.etsy.com.

“Working primarily in sterling silver with flourishes of gold and gemstones, I hand fabricate my pieces so they are unique works of art. I am influenced by the ideas that less is more and that the each of my pieces has enough space to breathe. In my latest body of work, circles play the lead role. The infinite combinations one shape can render guides this theme. My work is modern, sculptural and minimalist,” she said.

“Something else new is stacked, dimensional line that features the layered petals of the lotus flower. It’s something pretty different. When people visit Taos they look for traditional jewelry and that’s not mine. My work is modern. But it does seems to be a fit for people looking for something different. Jewelry is so personal it really has to click,” she said.

“I find inspiration through working with metals, stones, and the excitement of fire. It doesn’t surprise me that I have gone back to my roots through this creative process. I come from Bolivia, where the land and people share a long rich history with metals and stones and the earth’s cycles that created us all. “

Her work is unique, so it’s no surprise she has names the line “Única Fine Jewelry.” People have described it as almost punk or industrial, almost ethnic, but it has its own peculiar qualities far from the usual stereotypes of those kinds of personal adornments. The lines are almost sophisticated, sexy and minimal.

This is the second year Pereyra has been asked to participate in the annual Taos Invites Taos show during the Fall Arts.

“There’s a lot of prestige associated with being part of the show,” she said.

“I enjoy making intriguing pieces that please the eye. My jewelry has been described as elegant, sexy, cool, modern, tribal and as unique delicate sculptures.”

“Beauty inspires beauty,” she said, looking down into the face of her sleeping child. And in this light, with the golden sun going down, you think you could stay in this orbit, forever.

Locations where you can see Pereyra’s work:

FX-18, 103 Bent Street Taos, 575-758-8590
Harwood Museum Gift Shop, 238 Ledoux Street, Taos 575-758-9826

Body, Santa Fe
Mariposa Gallery, Albuquerque

Pereyra’s work online:
www.unicajewelry.com
www.unicajewelry.etsy.com

Gretchen Ewert: Spaces not filled

The last time I had made the trip to Hondo to see Gretchen Ewert in her studio was back in 1989 when I interviewed her for Tempo. Although I had been on that Hondo road a few times in the last few years, it was a pleasure to make my way up the muddy goat path to the house she shared with her sister, another artist, Abigail Winston.

Her e-mail, along with a few basic directions, said, “The house is a low adobe with a couple of trees in front and some rather funky out buildings sort of behind.”

Uh huh. That ought to stand out from the rest of the neighbor hood, I thought to myself, but there it was, just like she had described in the e-mail, and before long I was remembering what a wonderful spot this was. After warm hugs and greeting from these two creative sisters, Ewert and I retired to her studio with mugs of strong, French-press coffee, fresh scones and two decades to catch up on.

So much has changed in the intervening time. Five presidents have served in the White House. But in many ways we are much like the women who visited all those years ago — the time chock-filled with creative processes and the making of art for Ewert.

Although filling time with art is something she does willingly, allowing space to remain empty is something she says she is most interested in.

“I have a solitary Buddhist and a not-so-solitary yoga practice. It’s seems one feeds off the other. With art, I’m trying to deal with spaces that are not necessarily empty — but not filled. As a culture we feel we think we have to fill things. I’m addressing the idea of spaces that are not filled and not immediately complex,” Ewert explained.

“For example, the mountain is very insistent and present when it is in the scene, but this view,” she said, indicating the one outside her studio windows, “there’s more of a sense of emptiness. Sometimes, I like to look at something and take my time with it.

It’s a slower process, not like it is when there’s a lot of complexity com ing toward you, like the television screen where every corner is filled with information.”

And the art?

Depends on which work you’d like to talk about — her ceramics, botani cals or paintings that are deceptively simple and tissue-like textures painted with more strong coffee. Space is at a premium for Ewert who hides her musical library and print resources behind straw blinds in an attempt to control the clay dust, which she says is “pervasive.”

Ewert says that music is as important for the creation of her work as any of the other materials needed to create a piece. Her tastes are eclectic and thoughtful and very hip. From ambient electronic to jazz and blues, Ewert acknowledges how important music is for a sense of presence — like space opened, yet delineated, a painting of a world filled with color and movement, or one where layered and textured squares are arrayed on a grid — a visual and intentional reference to legendary modern-art-minimalist Agnes Martin.

“Sometimes I’ll listen to multi-lay ered composers like Jim Fox or Steve Reich,” she said.

And multi-layered is ne way one could describe her work, no matter which kind.

“I like being able to see layers of color coming through,” she explained.

She talked about her ceramic pieces.

“At some point, I didn’t want to really glaze. I studied it and passed the course, but I really wanted to paint on clay and deal with it that way and you weren’t supposed to paint on clay. Everything was supposed to be done in the kiln.”

“My original training was in print making, so and took the idea of lay ering as if I’m doing an etching and working with valleys and grooves.

There’s some fired on color, but mostly it’s all done with paint — layers and layers of paint you can see down into,” Ewert said.

She started teaching this technique at Santa Fe Clay 15 years ago and she’s still doing it and she said she was surprised that people continue to want to learn it.

“There is the sense that glazing is toxic. Though there’s some aspect of toxicity to this technique, there is not nearly as much as there is with oil base,” she said.

When asked why her clay pieces borrow so heavily from Egyptian imagery, she laughed and said, “The Egyptian stuff is kind of like dino saurs, everyone likes it. I like it and have always felt drawn to it. I like all the animal symbolism and the cul ture so loved life they wanted to take it with them when they died. It’s rich and marvelous that they did that,” she said.

Rich, multi-layered and marvel ous — like the many-faceted work of Gretchen Ewert.

“I’m addressing the idea of spaces that are not filled and not immediately complex,” Ewert says.

Ewert’s work can be seen at J Fine Art

221 Paseo del Pueblo Norte

■ (575) 737-0716

■ www.jfineartgallery. com

The last time I had made the trip to Hondo to see Gretchen Ewert in her studio was back in 1989 when I interviewed her for Tempo. Although I had been on that Hondo road a few times in the last few years, it was a pleasure to make my way up the muddy goat path to the house she shared with her sister, another artist, Abigail Winston.

Her e-mail, along with a few basic directions, said, “The house is a low adobe with a couple of trees in front and some rather funky out buildings sort of behind.”

Uh huh. That ought to stand out from the rest of the neighbor hood, I thought to myself, but there it was, just like she had described in the e-mail, and before long I was remembering what a wonderful spot this was. After warm hugs and greeting from these two creative sisters, Ewert and I retired to her studio with mugs of strong, French-press coffee, fresh scones and two decades to catch up on.

So much has changed in the intervening time. Five presidents have served in the White House. But in many ways we are much like the women who visited all those years ago — the time chock-filled with creative processes and the making of art for Ewert.

Although filling time with art is something she does willingly, allowing space to remain empty is something she says she is most interested in.

Mary Ann Warner: The Core of Gratitude

Mary Ann Warner’s studio is at the end of a little road in El Prado. Her house is separate from her studio, which sits even closer to a recently decorated composanto. The silk flowers flutter in the spring wind and ribbons stream from crosses and wreathes like prayer flags.

Inside, you’re immediately presented with the space of a hard working artist who applies herself in so many different styles and forms of expression it’s hard to get a fix on her right away. Some things you can see right away – her obvious affection for rich and vibrant reds, her keen interest in Japanese and Native American art and cultures – some of her interests are concealed under layers.

But like every seed has all of the layers it needs to grow, at its kernel, there is an essence that nearly glows with potent and creative energy.

As large as the studio space is, it’s a tight fit because of the sheer amount of work in-progress. Even as tight as it is, one gets the sense that this is just a small representation of Warner’s total creative energy.

On the wall and easel are landscapes that practically haul you by the arm to come and taste the life teams from inside.

Ramona Montaño: All is color

After a while, you got used to seeing Ramona Montaño’s Honda Civic parked way down the lane, down at the little green barn where the private road peters out. Turns out she was actually doing a landscape painting, “plein air,” sort of, from the comfort of her car. It didn’t matter that it was only about 20 degrees and the snow was crusty and hard – difficult to walk on.

 “That’s a trick I learned from Ray Vinella. You slip your seat way back — as far as it will go and rig up a little easel over the steering wheel. Then you can rest your palette on the passenger seat.”

Who needs an artist’s taborette when you have a glove compartment filled with everything you’d need. A basic selection of colors, Cadmiums yellow and red, Titanium white, Cerulean and Ultramarine Blues, Thalo Green, umbers and ochres, both raw and burnt –linseed oil and some turpentine, a rag or two and a handful of brushes.

And this is how Montaño is able to paint her small, yet complete oil landscapes all year round.

David Hardy: Bridge to Somewhere

photos by Rick Romancito

Q: When is a door not a door? A: When it is ajar.

Oh how this childhood joke made us chortle with the giddy possibilities of the highs (and lows) a pun could take. But that was nothing compared to the vertigo produced by ideas like the serenity of eternity, the perfection of infinity or how one holistic model of the universe has more in common with nested Russian dolls than it does with the concept that a mathematical equation could express the Law of Everything.

So, when a door is ajar, it becomes a metaphor for the transition between seeking and knowing – that membrane between the known and the unknown – now and the potential of the future.

Artist David Hardy pieces are more like doors or bridges than sculptures or paintings. He folds meaning into the most mundane of shapes – the square and rectangle – and packs into their dimensions a terducken of meaning.

“The actuality of this 3n-dimensional consciousness could not be attained by studying physics with our three-dimensional consciousness. It might form a bridge or pier of some sort that moves us in a certain way but somewhere we have to leave thought behind, and come to this emptiness of this manifest thought altogether and of the conditioning of the non-manifest mind by seed of manifest thought.”

David Bohm in an interview with Renée Weber
The Holographic Paradigm and other Paradoxes, Exploring the Leading Edge of Science, edited by Ken Weber, New Science Library, Shambala Publications, Boulder Colo, 1982.

Ron Barsano: Soft-spoken painter with a big easel

To get to Ron Barsono’s studio you’d better have 4-wheel drive because of the high center to his private road. The easiest thing is for him to meet you at Herb’s parking lot.

That’s clearly the better of the two choices because of the climb, but it’s all worth it, because at the top sits Barsano’s studio. Adobe walls surround a vortex of quiet creativity up there. Quiet like Barsano. Quiet like the mountainside. Still, the walls are lined with paintings – some finished and many not – each with their own mysteries waiting to be coaxed from them.

There is a model’s dais furnished with comfortable chairs and chaises for lounging and posing. The northern exposure of the studio’s one large room yields even, mellow light throughout the day.

“Taos light is like no other, except maybe the south of France. I know of cases where someone has looked at a painting and could tell immediately that it was done — not just in New Mexico — but in Taos.

Barsano was born and raised in Chicago Ill., just a couple of blocks from Wrigley Field.

“When I was a kid,” he said, “an illustrator, a man named Frank, lived next door and I’d hang around and watch him work for hours. From there on that was it. It was just a matter of getting through Catholic grammar and high school. As soon as I was free, I headed for art school.”

After high school he started a five year intense fine art program studying drawing and painting under the European-taught masters William Mosby and Joseph Vanden Broucke at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. He received the Mosby Scholarship in 1966, graduated in 1967, spent two years in the Army. He moved to Taos in 1970.

“Shortly after I moved here I happened to see Ray Vinella drive by and it was just like when I met Frank. I wanted to hang out and paint with Ray all day.”