Envelopes and Pink Suits

Caldera Gallery hand-delivers art to your Valentine, or whomever

The trio of artists over at Caldera Gallery consistently opens my mind— by way of my prejudices —to the possibilities in art.

Tuesday, January 31,2012
Art Reviews

A Night at the Museum

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s abstract landscapes

Meaghen Brown

In September 1987—frustrated by lengthy negotiations over the preservation of a 17-mile cluster of remarkably conscientious Native American rock paintings on the site of a potential housing development—a wealthy landowner started up his forklift, removed a petroglyph-marked boulder, loaded it into the back of his pickup truck and dumped it onto the Albuquerque courthouse steps—spitting in the face of 7,000 years of spiritual history.

Wednesday, January 25,2012
Art Reviews

Free, Found and Cheap

Pleasure as the profound and foremost purpose of art

Matthew Irwin

I began building a list of places to buy inexpensive, original artworks.

Tuesday, January 17,2012
Art Reviews

The Body, Undone

Matthew Chase-Daniel’s new book lets viewers see what they will

Jackson Larson

The human body contains infinite configurations, compositions and possibilities for reframing and re-examination. In photographer Matthew Chase-Daniel’s new book Body, it becomes the canvas for organically abstracted and dizzyingly decontextualized images, leaving us anxious for reference points.

Tuesday, January 10,2012
Art Reviews

Donne with Solo Work

Jordan West on working alone and the horror of consumerism

Matthew Irwin

Local artist Jordan West reminded me of the John Donne poem containing “No man is an island” on my visit last week to West’s Second Street studio. We’d been talking about the difference between working in isolation and in a group.

Wednesday, January 4,2012
Art Reviews

Final Pilgrimage

A last visit to Leonard Knight’s 30-year endeavor on the Salton Sea

Matthew Irwin

The outsider artist closest to my heart is Leonard Knight. Formerly a mechanic in the US armed services with no artistic training or experience, Knight has spent the last 30 years or so building and maintaining a 150-foot-tall installation in Niland, Calif., on the banks of the Salton Sea. He calls it Salvation Mountain; you may recognize it from the films Into the Wild and Bombay Beach.

Wednesday, December 21,2011
Art Reviews

Do It Together

Making your own fun with Santa Fe Complex

Matthew Irwin

Media Hive organizer Jason Goodyear says that, though the first three or four Hives will alternate between open and facilitated sessions, he hopes for the monthly get-togethers to sustain themselves. Each month, a performance follows the workshop, pulling from that very event or the previous ones.

Wednesday, December 14,2011
Art Reviews

Art Medicine

How we meet artistic vision with daily necessity

Matthew Irwin

I envision a world in which we make no distinction between the arts and, let’s say, business or politics, the unifying factors being a sense of imagination and a desire for connection.

Wednesday, December 7,2011
Art Reviews

The Roadsign More Traveled

Axle Contemporary haiku project collected in book

Matthew Irwin

Haiku puts images out there—everyday images—juxtaposes them, makes a joke or cuts an image in an unsuspected way. Then we, the viewers, decide what, if anything, the poem means.

Wednesday, November 30,2011
Art Reviews

School of Imagination

New Mexico and the Black Mountain College experiment

Matthew Irwin

This story bursts at the margins with names all connected to the great and short-lived experiment in arts education known as Black Mountain College.