New Mexico Museum of Art

Alcove Show 12.2

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 02, 2012

MEDIA CONTACT


ALCOVE SHOWS 2012

ALCOVE SHOW 12.2

May 5, 2012 to June 10, 2012 at the New Mexico Museum of Art

(SANTA FE, NM  MAY 2, 2012)—Alcove 12.2, the second in a series of nine Alcove Shows highlighting artists working in New Mexico today, opens on Friday, May 4, 2012 at the New Mexico Museum of Art.  Each Alcove show will last five weeks and feature five New Mexico artists at various career stages. Over-all, forty-five artists working in all media will be on view until the cycle of exhibitions ends April 2013.

 The artists exhibiting in Alcove 12.2 are:  Robert Ellis, Steve Fitch, Harmony Hammond, August Muth and Terri Rolland. 

Recently celebrating his 90th birthday, Robert Ellis’ career as an artist spans some 60 years.  Ellis studied in Mexico City after serving in World War II and then received his MFA from the University of Southern California. After nearly a decade as curator of education at the Pasadena Museum, Ellis moved to New Mexico to teach at the University of New Mexico.  He was Faculty at the University of New Mexico for over 20 years and also served as director of the UNM University Art Museum and as director of the Harwood Museum in Taos.  Robert Ellis lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Ellis makes spare abstract work.  His works in Alcove 12.2 include a constructed painting made from oil and fence boards.  Using this construction as an inspiration Ellis has been making a series of small constructed panels using wood lath and oil paint as well as a series of large collages on canvas utilizing paper printed with wooden texture.

Photographer Steve Fitch received a Masters degree in Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico in 1978 and since that time has participated in a number of important photographic projects, published many books and taught at the Princeton University, the University of Colorado, Boulder. Fitch is currently faculty at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. Before moving to New Mexico, Fitch studied anthropology at the University of California Berkeley.  This early interest in anthropology is evident in his approach to his subject matter. Having spent decades documenting the American vernacular landscape, particularly in the Southwest and the high plains, Fitch collects images and sets up comparisons that highlight similarities and differences. 

 

Harmony Hammond lives and works in the village of Galisteo, New MexicoAn artist, writer and independent curator, Hammond was a pioneer of the feminist art movement. Alcove 12.2 will feature five paintings from a series entitled Cinch and Lace.  These highly textured, minimal oil paintings were completed this year. Hammond’s work is included in many public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Art Institute of Chicago; the New Mexico Museum of Art; and the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford. Hammond has also been awarded numerous fellowships including John Simon Guggenheim, Adolph and Esther Gottlieb, Joan Mitchell, Andrea Frank, Puffin, Rockefeller and Pollock-Krasner Foundations, Art Matters, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

August Muth was born in 1955 in Albuquerque, New Mexico and studied art and physics at the University of New Mexico. His love of both science and art inspired him in 1980 to study holography at the Museum of Holography in SoHo. Later, he established his own holographic studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he currently lives and works. August is an internationally exhibiting artist and pioneer in his field, for more than 25 years he has worked to expand the understanding of light as a medium.

Terri Rolland studied at the Tyler School of Art in Rome and received her BFA from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia.  Rolland spent the summer of 1990 camping alone in the Southwestern desert.  The stillness and stark beauty of the landscape had a profound impact on her and she moved to New Mexico full time the following year.  Working with a high level of skill, and drawing on her intuition and the light and landscape of New Mexico, Rolland makes playful abstract paintings. The paintings in Alcoves 12.2 are brightly colored and painted on a series of small wooden panels that are combined into larger compositions. Using an acrylic gouache and clay as a medium, her paintings are saturated with color and display a velvety flat surface. 

The Alcove Show format can be traced to founding of the New Mexico Museum of Art in 1917 as the Art Gallery of the Museum of New Mexico.  Small one-person exhibitions were held in the gallery alcoves through the 1950s with the express intent of promoting artists and work that was contemporary to the time. The shows were briefly resumed in the mid-1980s, and again in the early 1990s. Many of the artworks and artists who exhibited at those times form the historic core of the museum’s permanent collection.

Media Contacts:

Merry Scully

Curator of Special Projects 

505.476.5058

merry.scully@state.nm.us

 

Steve Cantrell

Public Relations Manager

505-476-1144

steve.cantrell@state.nm.us

 ###

The New Mexico Museum of Art, founded in 1917 as the Art Gallery of the Museum of New Mexico, is housed in a spectacular Pueblo Revival building designed by I. H. and William M. Rapp based on their New Mexico building at the Panama-California Exposition (1915). The museum's architecture inaugurated what has come to be known as "Santa Fe Style." For nearly 100 years, the Museum has celebrated the diversity of the visual arts and the legacy of New Mexico as a cultural crossroads by collecting and exhibiting work by leading artists from New Mexico and elsewhere. This tradition continues today with a wide-array of exhibitions with work from the world’s leading artists. The New Mexico Museum of Art brings the art of New Mexico to the world and the art of the world to New Mexico.

 The New Mexico Museum of Art is a division of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs.

 Information for the Public 

Location: Santa Fe’s Plaza at 107 West Palace Avenue.

Information:  505-476-5072 or visit www.nmartmuseum.org

Days/Times: Tuesday through Sunday, 10:00 A.M.-5:00 P.M.  Open Free on Fridays, 5:00-8:00 P.M. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day the Museum is open 7 days a week, including Mondays.

Admission: Adult single-museum admission is $6 for New Mexico residents, $9 for nonresidents; OR $15 for one-day pass to two museums of your choice (Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, Museum of International Folk Art, New Mexico Museum of Art, and Palace of the Governors/New Mexico History Museum) OR $20 four-day pass to the four museums listed above. Youth 16 and under, Foundation Members, and New Mexico Veterans with 50% or more disability always free

Sundays: New Mexico residents with ID are admitted free; Students with ID receive a $1 discount.

Wednesdays: New Mexico resident seniors (60+) with ID are free.

Field Trips There is no charge for educational groups attending the museum with their instructor and/or adult chaperones. Contact the Tours office by phone at (505) 476-1140 or (505) 476-1211 to arrange class/group visits to the Museum.

 



Back to Press Release List »