Axle Contemporary
a mobile artspace based in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Random Inspirations
Week Seven
SURFACE
Craig Anderson
Blue Leaf, Blue House, Working Surface
Photograph, 13" x 19”
Paint, marker, pen and pencil, with objects on cardboard.
June 2020
From the artist
Working on my laptop at studio table. Read the eblast regarding Random/Surface. Looked to the right of the laptop and took this image.
About the Artist
After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Painting from Hamline University in Minnesota, and a trip to NYC, Anderson began his arts career working as an exhibitions preparator at the Minneapolis Art Institute, then joined the exhibitions team at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. He traveled to New Mexico in February 1971, en route to LA where he worked for prominent contemporary artists in Venice Beach.
He earned a Masters Degree in Painting, Video and Installation from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Straight out of graduate school he taught painting, design and video production at Southwest Texas University and also video production at ACTV, in Austin, TX.
He held a teaching position in studio arts at the Institute for American Indian Arts for seven years, also serving as the 2-D Department Head and then began working at SITE Santa Fe.
He was the Head of Exhibitions Administration at SITE Santa Fe for seven years while Louis Grachos was SITE's Director and Curator. Anderson then went on to be the Director of Exhibits Central for the Museums of New Mexico, Department of Cultural Affairs and subsequently became the Assistant Director for Exhibitions and Collections at the Miami Art Museum. In 2010 he returned to Santa Fe to become Executive Director and Curator at The Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe (CCA).
His years of exhibition work at SITE Santa Fe, honed his focus for contemporary curatorial projects for New Mexico artists. At CCA, he presented exhibitions as diverse as Keep Adding's WREKAGE, 100 New Mexico Women Artists and Meow Wolf’s huge and immersive installation “The Due Return”.
Anderson has been a passionate advocate for contemporary arts and culture in New Mexico, but in 2014, he curated “Suspicious Privacy” a photographic and video driven installation by California artist Sol Hill, in an empty Wynnwood warehouse during Art Basel Miami.
Also in 2014, TREND Magazine, published Anderson’s comprehensive interview with Louis Grachos, former Director/Curator at SITE Santa Fe, (1996-2003), then Director of The Contemporary Austin at the time of the interview.
Anderson currently works independently as a mentor to artists, an arts advisor and consultant and as a curator of contemporary projects and exhibitions. He has appeared on panels sponsored by New Mexico Lawyers for the Arts and he writes and edits essays extensively.
He made curatorial and logistic arrangements to bring David Rudolph’s “Big TV” sculpture from LA to Santa Fe and negotiated it’s placement in the Railyard on Paseo de Peralta. He conducted a number of interviews with arts and cultural figures in the Big TV and also arranged musical performances.
Anderson has consistently maintained a studio practice centered on photography, drawing and painting.
From our juror, Jordan Eddy
In a note accompanying this image, the artist recounts taking this snapshot of their desk moments after receiving Axle’s call for artworks. It was a fittingly surface-level approach to the Surface theme that yielded exciting results. Here, pixilation becomes a painterly effect. Studio ephemera, scribbles, splatters and shadows appear, at first glance, as abstract forms on a patterned field. My eye flicks between compositional elements for an instant before I fully comprehend my aerial perspective and the dimensionality of the objects. The piece reminds me of Paul Sarkisian’s photorealist “collage” paintings. It also evokes the nervous, cluttered reality of quarantine.
Week Six
EROS
Janet Russek
Realize Your Fantasy as a Sex God
from the SPAM series
2017
22 x 33”
Archival Inkjet Print
From the artist
Spam
Realize Your Fantasy as a Sex God! How Will You Satisfy Her? ! Be Hard All Night!
These subject lines from Spam would appear in my email on a daily basis.
This image, Realize Your Fantasy as a Sex God, is from my series SPAM that started with my objection to the unending focus on male and female sexuality in Spam, advertising and pornography. Realize Your Fantasy As A Sex God while “tongue in cheek” furthers the myth that one needs to be a “sex god”. The idea of love is replaced by performance.
While these messages are absurd they are also annoying, demeaning, and violating. Spam is degrading to everyone, obsessed as it is with male and female enhancement and erectile issues. It sells snake oil for anxiety, depression, and weight loss, by preying on our doubts and low self-esteem. Are we good enough; are our partners good enough?
Deleting these messages every morning, I began to wonder: Is spam created by the same human race that is capable of making art? That has authored great works of painting and sculpture celebrating the body, the spirit, and the divine? While art serves as a record of epic human stories, spam exemplifies, the anti-intellectualism and the crass consumerism of today’s society. Art elevates us; Spam debases. Each is an eidos, a symbol of a culture’s formal content.
About the Artist
Janet Russek is a photographer and private photography dealer.
Her current work addresses contrasting high and low culture through the use of words and images. This project pairs photographs of classical sculpture and painting with phrases from Spam emails, and historical images that she pairs with words from the Me Too and Not One More movements. The work was exhibited at the Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2018 and traveled to the Windgate Art and Design Gallery at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, in 2020.
In 2013 Radius Books published, The Tenuous Stem, a retrospective of Russek’s work chronicling a 20-year project using still life as a metaphor for the life cycle. Janet Russek has collaborated with David Scheinbaum on three projects and publications, Ghost Ranch: Land of Light, Photographs by David Scheinbaum and Janet Russek, Balcony Press, 1997, the accompanying exhibition traveled through the Museum of New Mexico; Images in the Heavens, Patterns on the Earth: The I Ching, The Museum of New Mexico Press, 2005 which won the American Association of Museums award for design in 2005. Their latest collaboration and publication was a project photographing on the Lower East Side of New York, Remnants, Photographs by Janet Russek and David Scheinbaum, Radius Books, 2017.
She is currently working on two projects: one focusing on water and drought in the Southwest by photographing an old wheelbarrow in the landscape from an empty rusted interior to a rain and snow filled interior symbolic of the changes of season’s and the on-going drought in much of the west. The other project takes us back to her work in museums, this time capturing people “embedded” in works of art where the viewer is merging with the painting.
With her husband, David Scheinbaum, she operates Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd., private fine art photography dealers and consultants in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Scheinbaum & Russek exclusively represent the estates of Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, and the Eliot Porter Estate.
Russek has exhibited internationally, and is represented in numerous museum collections.
From our juror, Stuart Ashman
Although many of the images elicited the Eros theme effectively, #11 “Realize Your Fantasy as a Sex God” was the most personally compelling in the group. The combination of the familiar classical painting “Nymphs and Satyr” by Bouguereau, along with language commonly seen in advertisements for sex enhancing drugs, makes a contemporary statement about sexuality particularly relevant message for our times.
Week Five
WATCHING
Michael Ellis
Shut Out
12" x 16"
digital photograph
From the artist
I was watching my daughter play in the mud outside, and I was struck by the melancholy of a child under quarantine. The scratches in our back door (from three very eager dogs) created a kind of gauze over her silhouette, and it seemed to me the perfect metaphor for a child lost in her own world of play even as she has been shut off from the outside world.
Michael Ellis is a multimedia artist whose practice includes sculpture, drawing, painting, installation, graphic and digital art. His expressionistic work deals with memory, trauma, and their effects on the construction of identity.
Ellis has shown his work throughout central and northern New Mexico. Selected venues include The Orpheum Community Hub, fourteenfifteen gallery, William Platz Gallery, the Jean Cocteau Theater gallery, and the National Hispanic Cultural Center. His work can be seen at www.michaelellisart.com. He can be found on Instagram at @michael_ellis_art
From our juror, Larry Bob Phillips
The materiality of the image was puzzling to me at first. I thought I was looking at a watercolor on some fiber-laced surface, but the artist's text prompted me to see this image as a photo of a child playing on the other side of a door that had been scratched up by dogs. Attention-loving dogs scratching up a glass door seems like a perfect metaphor for the uncountable impulsive emotionally charged digital gestures that obscure our basic reality and better nature right now. This image feels like I sometimes feel now when I pull back and try to see through the scrim of impetuosity and perceive something like a self-involved child reaching with one beautiful, sun-lit hand toward a mysterious vessel to find out what's in it and how it works.
Week Four
MESSAGE
Scott W. Parker
RUIN OF 3 MYSTICS
12 X 12 inches
linoleum block print
From our juror, Rose Eason
The dozens of entries received this round were all very interesting. In delving into them, I found that in interpreting the word “message” artists took two general approaches, either sending a message through their work or exploring what it means to send a message in their work. I was especially drawn to the latter, finding those explorations especially apropos of the transformative moment we are living right now.
Ultimately, my choice is Ruin of 3 Mystics.
I appreciate the piece as a skilled linoleum block print, and I appreciate the choice of medium as it relates to the idea of “message.” The history and practice of print-making is revolutionary, intertwined with the development of mass communication, democratization of knowledge, and socio-political movements.
The choice of medium contrasts with the choice of subject, however. Not only is the payphone an outmoded, obsolete, and—by today’s standards—ancient technology, rendering it irrelevant to the modern world, it is also unlike print-making as a form of one-on-one, personal and intimate communication.
The tension between form and content in Ruin of 3 Mystics prompted me to reflect on the internet as a parallel to the printing press. Smart phones and social media have reshaped the ways we interact with each other, with information and with the world in this century. With the tap of a button we can now send a message to hundreds, thousands, millions of people near and far. But what has been lost in the process? Are we really talking to each other any more?
And that line of thought brought me back to the movement currently taking hold of the country. While certainly fueled by social media, it is not taking place online. It is taking place in the streets and in community. Protestors are spreading their message through words and action. Sometimes it takes getting back to the basics to make progress and move forward.
From the artist
A son of the american west, scott w parker has been making images in drawing, painting and linoleum block prints with this worldview his whole life. The story starts born and raised in Denver, receiving formal training and a bfa from the school of the art institute of Chicago, starting his career there before 10 years later embarking on a 2 year journey to paint all of the national parks, arriving in New York City for a 5 year visit and then moving back west where he happily continues making images of the world around him to live in Santa Fe. Currently he is working on a new series that he is quite excited about. Scott's work has seen its way into some notable private, corporate and museum collections. http://scottwparkerstudio.storenvy.com www.scottwparker.com
scottwparkerstudio.storenvy.com
www.scottwparker.com
Week Three
DARKNESS
Greta Young
Random Darkness
75 x 51 inches , gesso and oil on canvas
from the artist
In light of these times the word "darkness" holds a special resonance. I am thankful to contribute.
Born in Boston, Greta Young is a Santa Fe artist who studied at the California College of the Arts in Oakland California. There she started experimenting with mixed media on cardboard. She now focuses on combining drawing with painting, using black and white gesso, oil paint and oil stick on canvas.
Her work was selected by the Menil Collection curator Toby Kamps for an 8 person exhibit, “Art on the Edge” at the New Mexico Museum of Art in 2013. Her work was included in the “Atomic Surplus” exhibit at the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, and she was the featured artist in the “Atomic Surplus” review in ARTnews, 2014. Her works have been seen in numerous exhibitions across the country.
gretayoung.com
From our juror, Andrea Hanley
The overall graphic quality and overlapping of both tone and color in this painting is effective. While darkness is the partial or total absence of light, the connections between the negative spaces in the piece are compelling. And now more than ever, black is beautiful.
Week Two
COEXISTENCE
Danielle Rae Miller
King Snakes with Yerba Mansa
ink on vellum, 100" x 36"
In this drawing I chose plants, insects, birds, and reptiles that are either indigenous to the Middle Rio Grande Valley, or invasive species that arrived with colonization. For me, it is beautiful because of its resilience. It is also a problematic space, actually and symbolically. Is it possible for us to unbraid all this? I wish to be present to and acknowledge the coexistence of all of it, to begin the work of listening more deeply and taking stronger action to repair the damage of our invasions.
Danielle Rae Miller lives on Tewa land near the bosque in Albuquerque New Mexico. She has her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and MFA from the University of New Mexico. Her work has been described as “beautifully drawn, tightly composed, gently phantasmagoric”.
From our juror, Jared Antonio-Justo Trujillo
I chose this piece for a few reasons.
One, being that’s it’s beautifully done
And original.
It has a nice balance and composition to it.
The way the artist captures Life and death and the way they coexist is lovely.
All the elements seem to dance in unison , making it in my opinion a strong piece.
But I suck at articulating my words. So here’s some thing that fits perfectly with this piece.
RANDOM INSPIRATIONS
Week One
DIRECT
Jazmyn Crosby
Simultaneity Device
from The DIY Machines series
The DIY Machines verbally directs viewers through the building process of electrical DIY machines. Using copper wire and an assortment of trash, these devices conjure imaginings. This series examines objects in a state of disuse. It utilizes the disembodied femme voice and mimics YouTube How To Guides (borrowing the language of ASMR, new age conspiracy channels, etc.). This work questions function and use. It fortifies broken items and tenderly identifies with them, granting them new potential.
Born and raised in New Mexico, Jazmyn Crosby is currently living in Philadelphia where she is pursuing her MFA at the Tyler School of Art. She received a BFA from the University of New Mexico in addition to attending the Glasgow school of Art in Scotland and The Academy of Art Architecture and Design in the Czech Republic. She has worked as an educator and a event facilitator with STEAM initiatives in New Mexico, she plays music under the name Glitter Vomit, and she is a founding member of the Graft gallery/collective.
From our juror, Karina Hean
I was looking at how a work creatively explores permutations of the word DIRECT...this work/series approaches DIRECT by balancing clever and tender notes and results in an experience of indirectly pondering the notion DIRECT, which I am partial to as it opens up the mind to consider mysterious purpose.
Wilderness Acts 2018
Art-in-Nature
Cannupa Hanska Luger & Ian Kuali’i
Frederick Spaulding
Dana Chodzko
Munson Hunt
Rick Yoshimoto & Chrissie Orr
Susan Bruneni
Susannah Abbey
Paula Castillo
Brian Fleetwood
Gina Telcocci
Kathleen McCloud
with The Santa Fe Botanical Garden's
Leonora Curtin Wetland Preserve
September 1 – 23 in Axle
All of September and October at the wetlands preserve
Opening for both shows: at the wetlands preserve, Saturday, Sept.1 , 1- 4 pm
 BouquetFrederick Spaulding |  AnemopsisBrian Fleetwood |
|---|---|
 AnemopsisBrian Fleetwood |  Susannah AbbeyMigrations: A Query |
 Susannah AbbeyMigrations: A Query |  Kathleen McCloudLeave it to Beavers |
 Kathleen McCloudLeave it to Beavers |  Tethered 2018Site Specific Land Acknowledgement, Healing Action and Indigenous Seed Dispersal, Cannupa Hanska Luger in Collaboration with Ian Kuali'i. |
 Tethered 2018Site Specific Land Acknowledgement, Healing Action and Indigenous Seed Dispersal, Cannupa Hanska Luger in Collaboration with Ian Kuali'i. |  Tethered 2018Site Specific Land Acknowledgement, Healing Action and Indigenous Seed Dispersal, Cannupa Hanska Luger in Collaboration with Ian Kuali'i. Image credit: Dylan McLaughlin |
 Tethered 2018Site Specific Land Acknowledgement, Healing Action and Indigenous Seed Dispersal, Cannupa Hanska Luger in Collaboration with Ian Kuali'i. Image credit: Dylan McLaughlin |  Tethered 2018Site Specific Land Acknowledgement, Healing Action and Indigenous Seed Dispersal, Cannupa Hanska Luger in Collaboration with Ian Kuali'i. Image credit: Dylan McLaughlin |
 Tethered 2018artists on site, June, 2018 |  Tethered 2018unfired clay and seed offerings |
 UP/ROOTEDRick Yoshimoto and Chrissie Orr |  UP/ROOTEDRick Yoshimoto and Chrissie Orr |
 UP/ROOTEDRick Yoshimoto and Chrissie Orr |  UP/ROOTEDRick Yoshimoto at work |
 Lovers and FriendsDana Chodzko |  Lovers and FriendsDana Chodzko |
 Lovers and FriendsDana Chodzko |  Lovers and FriendsDana Chodzko |
 MudmaGina Telcocci |  MudmaGina Telcocci |
 MudmaGina Telcocci |  MudmaGina Telcocci |
 MudmaGina Telcocci |  Reclamation (small) 1, 2 & 3Munson Hunt |
 Reclamation (small) 1, 2 & 3Munson Hunt |
This pair of exhibitions explores the relationship between art and nature, creates awareness of our local natural resources, and promotes wetland and ecological conservation. The artists will create ephemeral sculptural artworks using natural materials in sites in the Leonora Curtin Wetland Preserve in La Cienega. Works will be on view at the preserve throughout the months of September and October. A companion exhibition of related works by the same artists will open in the Axle Contemporary mobile gallery on September 1 and continue through September 23. This is the third iteration of the Wilderness Acts Biennial, which began in 2014. Works in this exhibition include a small shelter constructed from "invasive" saplings, a day-long performance ritual of seed distribution, and beavers sculpted from mud.
The Santa Fe Botanical Garden's Leonora Curtin Wetland Preserve is a 35-acre nature preserve and home to a rare natural cienega (marsh) and hosts a bountiful diversity of plants and wildlife.
presented by Axle Contemporary and the Santa Fe Botanical Garden
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DIRECTIONS: The preserve is located on the I-25 West Frontage Road south of Santa Fe. From I-25 take Exit 271 for “La Cienega” and turn right onto West Frontage Road heading north. The parking lot entrance is 1½ miles north after turning onto West Frontage Road. From New Mexico State Road 599 (NM-599), turn south onto West Frontage Road heading toward the Downs at Santa Fe Race Track. The parking lot entrance is two miles south of the Downs at Santa Fe Race Track.