Tag Archives: nmsu university art gallery

The University Art Gallery at New Mexico State University is hosting a community art project with artist John Garret for the production of three very distinct quilts that will be constructed.

The work will take place from May 24 – July 14 in the gallery at 1390 East University Avenue. The building will be open from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

Members of the community are invited to participate in the process by contributing fabric from their clothing, household fabrics, even old dishtowels or curtains and sewing scraps. All materials, colors and designs are welcome and the fabric can be from any time period.

“Participants will use their distinct styles and fashions to help construct the quilts and bring the visual narrative of Las Cruces to a wide audience through the completion of this communal work in the UAG,” said Marisa Sage, director of the gallery. “What do you have in your closet that you never dared to part with, but is no longer wearable, for whatever reason? Bring it out, donate it to Community Quilt, and have it represent you in perpetuity.”

The event will run during the UAG’s ‘Here & Now’ regional juried exhibition May 24-July 14 and at the Las Cruces Museum of Art May 11-June 21. ‘Here and Now’ includes works created by artists living and working within a 150 mile of Las Cruces.

Paintings, prints, photographs, video, ceramics and sculpture highlight the diverse approaches to creative expression found in Southern New Mexico and West Texas.

The gallery will host a joint opening reception for both shows from 5-8 p.m. on Friday, June 1. There will be a free shuttle going back and forth between the museum and the UAG from 5-7:30 p.m.

Artist John Garrett will host a community day from 10 a.m.- 4 p.m. Saturday, June 9 at the University Art Gallery with a special design workshop for kids from 1-2 p.m. He also will host another community day at the Las Cruces Museum of Art during the farmers market from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Bring your fabric.

Garrett’s community day will be in conjunction with the new 10-10 Arts Hop series. Through the 10-10 Arts Hop, the UAG is partnering with local participating galleries and arts organizations from 10 a.m.-10 p.m. for 12 hours of art in Las Cruces every second Saturday to promote art viewing and activities in greater Las Cruces.

Author: Jasmine Woodul – NMSU

The title may sound like a new kind of health drink, but “Cranbrook Ceramics +/- 25 Years” is a nationally recognized traveling art exhibit featuring ceramics designed to quench the soul.

The show, which made its debut at the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts in March, is making its second appearance fromThursday, July 28, through Thursday, Aug. 25, at the University Art Gallery at New Mexico State University, with a public closing reception and a welcome back mixer on Thursday, Aug. 25.

The exhibit showcases the work of 24 students who graduated from Cranbrook Academy of Art and studied under artists Tony Hepburn and Anders Ruhwald. Each is recognized for making significant contributions to the field of art, ceramics and education.

“We decided to show this exhibition to support a curatorial project by Jessika Edgar, assistant professor of ceramics, who coordinated this exhibition with her classmate Drew Ippoliti,” said Marisa Sage, director of NMSU’s University Art Gallery, a part of the College of Arts and Sciences. “Jessica has built a very strong ceramics program on the campus of NMSU and we thought an exhibition coordinated by one of our professors who attended Cranbook Academy would benefit our students and community.”

Cranbrook Academy of Art is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading graduate schools. It has also been home to many of the world’s most renowned artists and designers, including ceramic artists like Maija Grotell, Toshiko Takaezu, Howard Kottler, Richard DeVore, Jun Kaneko and Annabeth Rosen.

Positioned as an incubator for critical and philosophical exploration, Hepburn made Cranbrook a unique collective, leading students toward a path to self-understanding, community dialog and comprehension of the singularity of the art world they inhabited.

The exhibition aims to examine the trajectory of artists who graduated under the guidance of Hepburn and Ruhwald.

“Cranbrook is a research institution that leads students to question the boundaries of the working in clay with the utilization of new technologies, practices and theoretical discipline,” Sage said. “We are proud to host this exhibit.”

The 24 participating artists include Jan Abrams, Inkyo Back, Ariel Brice, Josh Clark, Lindsey Dezman, Abby Donovan, Jessika Edgar, Devin Farrand, Jon Geiger, Brian Giniewski, Shannon Goff, Tony Hepburn, Ariel Herwitz, Richard Hesketh, Drew Ippoliti, Tom Lauerman, Jackie Laurita, Akemi Maegawa, YunWook Mun, Thomas Muller, Mia Mulvey, Elaine Ng, Anders Ruhwald and Susan York.
The “Cranbrook Ceramics +/- 25 Years” exhibit travels to Arizona next where it will run from Sept.1 through Dec. 15.

The NMSU University Art Gallery is located in D.W. Williams Hall, at the intersection of University Avenue and Solano Drive. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Designated gallery parking is available, and general parking on the NMSU campus is free on weekends and after 4:30 p.m. on weekdays. For more information or to arrange a group visit, please visit the gallery website at http://uag.nmsu.edu/, or contact the UAG Administrator Jasmine Woodul directly 575-646-2545 or artglry@nmsu.edu

Author:  Jasmine Woodul – NMSU

The University Art Gallery at New Mexico State University will receive a $15,000 Art Works award from The National Endowment for the Arts for their interdisciplinary exhibition, “GEOMAGIC: Art, Science and the Zuhl Collection.”

“Viewers will see both actual fossil remains and an artists’ interpretations of these fossils,” said Jeffrey Brown, associate dean for research in the College of Arts and Sciences. “This collaborative project will bring together the best artistic and scientific practices in the College of Arts and Sciences.”

The gallery was selected from more than 1,700 applicants to receive funding as part of an $82 million grant from the NEA to fund local arts projects and partnerships nationwide.

In the exhibition premiering this fall, curators Marisa Sage, director of the gallery, and Tiffany Santos, director of the Zuhl Collection at NMSU, will showcase contemporary art alongside natural specimens from the Zuhl Collection, such as fossils and minerals.

“This is the only project awarded in New Mexico in the Visual Arts discipline/field,” Sage said. “Tiffany Santos and I have curated ‘GEOMAGIC’ to draw parallels between artistic practice as seen in an artist’s studio, and scientific processes as witnessed in laboratories and excavation.

“By juxtaposing natural specimens from the Zuhl Collection alongside select works by 10 internationally recognized artists, we hope to show our community and region that collaborations between the arts and sciences can yield new knowledge, outcomes and perspectives.”

The Zuhl collection consists of about 1,800 pieces of petrified wood as well as other fossils and minerals donated to NMSU by Herb and Joan Zuhl, who retired to Las Cruces after spending 30 years collecting and selling petrified wood as a business. The pieces range in age from 30 million to 200 million years old, some weighing as much as 2,500 pounds.

“The arts are all around us, enhancing our lives in ways both subtle and obvious, expected and unexpected,” said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. “Supporting projects like the one from the University Art Gallery at NMSU offers more opportunities to engage in the arts every day.”

The NEA Art Works category supports the creation and presentation of both new and existing work, as well as lifelong learning and public engagement with the arts.

“GEOMAGIC” and its educational programming are intended to reach the science, contemporary art and educational communities at regional and national levels, Sage explained. Public programs for the exhibition will include a panel, bi-weekly lectures by scientists and artists, a student exhibition and educational workshops.

NMSU geography professor Jack Wright sees the collection as an important bridge between science and art.

“The pieces encourage us to cast aside concrete ideas about geo-reality,” Wright explained. “The artists in this show invite us to see what lies beneath, to slice below the surface and delve into the environmental and spiritual challenges all around us. For the natural environment to survive, we must create generations of artist-scholars such as these; a tribe of environmental expressionists equally at home in a lab and a studio.”

Featured artists will include Christine Gray, Jason Middlebrook, Megan Harrison, Amy Brener, Laura Moriarty, Katie Paterson, Emily Nachison, Christine Nguyen, Andrew Yang and Ryan Thompson. Each artist within their practice utilizes various mediums that resemble, echo and mimic the geological to explore our ever-evolving scientific and technological landscape.

To join the Twitter conversation about this announcement, use #NEASpring16. For more information on projects included in the NEA grant announcement, go to www.arts.gov.

If approved by voters in November, $22.5 million is planned for a new visual arts facility to replace D.W. Williams Hall, a 78-year-old former gymnasium that currently houses NMSU’s Department of Art and the University Art Gallery. The funding is part of General Obligation Bond C for higher education projects. No tax increases are associated with these bonds.

Author: Dana Beasley – NMSU