John Phillip Abbott opens a solo show
John Phillip Abbott opens a solo show
John Abbott is an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing with UNM Department of Art. Abbott’s current exhibition, Wishing Like a Mountain, runs February 4—March 20, 2021, at Baronian Xippas in Brussels, as well as a piece in the 30th-anniversary exhibition, Back to the Future of Xippas in Punta del Este, Uruguay.
Abbott through his paintings explores the relationship between text and image, blurring the boundaries between both. Words or short sentences organize his compositions with a grid-like structure and function as images rather than mere concepts. Combining the use of acrylic brush and spray paint, stencils and masking tapes, prepared and raw canvases. Abbott constantly reinvents conventional ways of paintings and introduces unexpected shifts between his graphic intentions and process-related accidents.
Kaitlin Bryson Selected for 2026 Cohort for Monument Lab Re:Generation!
Congratulations to Kaitlin Bryson for being selected to take part in the 2026 cohort for Monument Lab Re:Generation! She received a $100,000 grant for her ongoing project, Bellow Forth. Bellow Forth is a community project focused on restoring soil health and environmental resiliency through storytelling and collaboration, community and ecosystem science, and social art practice in wildfire-impacted lands and communities in northern New Mexico.
Alum Highlight: Eric-Paul Riege Receives 2025 Trellis Art Fund Grant
Eric-Paul Riege, a Gallup-based Diné artist and recent UNM graduate, has been recognized as a 2025 Stepping Stone Grantee by the Trellis Art Fund. His multidisciplinary practice uses weaving as both process and philosophy, blending ancestral knowledge, spirituality, and contemporary art to create works that are living, mobile, and deeply connected to cultural memory.
Neon Forge: Expanding Immersive Art Through NASA-Funded VR Innovation
Congratulations to MFA graduate student Ella Pigg and undergraduate student Finn Ellis on the success of their project, Neon Forge.