Ellsworth Gallery
215 E Palace Ave, Santa Fe, NM 87501

Opening: Saturday April 10 – 10am-6pm – Artist in Attendance 3-6pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, April 17
Closing: Saturday, May 15

Songs of Tempestuous Rising and Falling is an embodiment of the monsters that we live among that shape our landscapes. It’s a mediation on our relationships to place, to violence, to harmony, and disharmony. Frequencies embedded into land leave an impression. In exploring the existing resonance of place as well as resonance imposed, this work offers moments to reflect on the consequence of technological and extractive projects. This exhibition of work by Dylan McLaughlin provides a space of reverence and reflection. A translation of phenomena we can experience directly.

Dylan McLaughlin is a sound/video artist currently working in forms of resilience to and deconstruction of tensions in relation to violence embedded inland. Looking to sites of extraction, his work explores sonic forms of witness and implication. In his multi-media installation, interactive, and performative works, McLaughlin looks to engage the poetics and politics of landscape formation and human effect. These works respond to place, using materials that speak from landscapes, incorporating technology that activates or provides a container from which to experience. He is born of the Diné (Navajo) people. McLaughlin received his BFA in New Media Art from the Institute of American Indian Arts and is currently completing his MFA in Art and Ecology at the University of New Mexico.

“An Evening at John Sommers … / with /” Minerva Cuevas
Minerva Cuevas is a conceptual artist, based in Mexico City, whose research-based creative practice spans film, performance, installation, mural painting, and technology. Using the language of branding, advertising, and commerce, Cuevas illuminates issues caused by neoliberal policymaking including the exploitation of natural resources and food production, as well as climate change. She blends appropriation, humor, and hyperbole in the creation of unconventional projects that are always in deep conversations with the place and the people of the community in which her work will be developed and exhibited.

“An Evening at John Sommers … / with /”… is a monthly online student-led academic lecture series hosted at the John Sommers Gallery. Lecture Series that is co-convened by Lara Goldman and Elizabeth Shores, PhD student in art history at UNM and UNM MFA alum respectively. Lara and Elizabeth are co-curators of the upcoming exhibition “Minerva Cuevas: consonance//dissidence” that will open at the Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at the University of Texas-El Paso in January 2022. This lecture series is free and open to the public click here to join Zoom.

For more information contact: sommersgallery@unm.edu

ENSEMBLE VERTEBRAE (France)
Olivia Abreu, Flutes | Camille Emaille, percussion | Anna Paolina Hasslacher, piano

Ensemble Vertebræ seeks to transcend boundaries with a multi-disciplinary artistic exchange based on the broad cultural backgrounds of its members, coming from different countries of Europe and Latin America. Founded in 2009 by the flautist Olivia Abreu and the pianist Anna Paolina Hasslacher, Ensemble Vertebræ presents chamber works for various formations. Its creative process is based on searching, premiering and furthering contemporary innovative repertoire in musical performances, projects in collaboration with other artistic disciplines, didactic concerts for children and young people, lectures and pedagogical workshops, as well as working closely with composers for novel pieces. Original projects of musical and pedagogical value have been presented in different countries of Europe and America, and in various contexts and festivals, such as the Cervantino International Festival (Guanajuato, Mexico) in 2015, “Music from the Americas Concert Series” from the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, USA) in 2017, the 28th Contemporary music Festival in Santiago, Chile in 2018, and the 2018-2019 IGNM season in Zurich and Basel, one of the most important international organisations for the promotion of contemporary music. As a result of the constant collaboration of Ensemble Vertebræ with the composers, the participation of the ensemble in the recording of “Son et Sens”, CD with music by Iradj Sahbaï, stands out.

Pregúntale que si conoció a Guadalupe Terreros (2017) / Rodrigo Valdez Hermoso (Mexcio, 1978)
La herencia de Matilde Arcángel (2017) | Juan José Barcénas (Mexico, 1982)
Action painting (2017) | José Luis Hurtado (Mexico, 1975)
Relectura (2017) | David Hernández Ramos (Mexico, 1975)
…sin una sola yerba para detener el aire (2017) | Víctor Ibarra (1978)

The sixth talk of this Spring’s series with Ethnographic Poets Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, Ather Zia, and Adrie Kusserow over Zoom Thursday, April 22 from 2:00-4:00 pm.

Preregistration for this talk is requested at the following link:

Concert Music credit is available for this event.

Talk Description:

In celebration of National Poetry Month, this workshop will feature poetry readings and hands-on writing exercises from three nationally known poet-ethnographers. Workshop participants grapple with the intersections of poetry, ethnography, and how sustained immersion into other cultural worlds informs our work as scholars and artists. No prior experience in poetry or ethnography is required.

Bios

Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, a U.S. Fulbright Scholar Ambassador, is a Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia. She’s authored five books addressing intersections between language education and the literary, visual and performing arts including one book of poems, Imperfect Tense, and her newest book, Enlivening Instruction with Drama and Improv.   Supported by grants and prizes from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright, and the Beckman Award for Professors Who Inspire, her work narrates the heartache, headache, and joy of teaching and learning language. She lives in Athens, GA with her husband and two children, and their rescue dog, Bagel.

Adrie Kusserow is a cultural anthropologist and poet, teaching in the department of sociology/anthropology at St. Michael’s College in Vermont. She has two books of poetry (Hunting Down the Monk and REFUGE) both published by BOA Editions, Ltd as part of their American Poets Continuum Series. She lives in Underhill, Vermont on the land she grew up on.

Ather Zia, Ph.D., is a political anthropologist, poet, short fiction writer, and columnist. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Gender Studies program at the University of Northern Colorado Greeley. Ather is the author of Resisting Disappearances: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir (June 2019) which won the 2020 Gloria Anzaldua Honorable Mention award, 2021 Public Anthropologist Award and Advocate of the Year Award 2021. She has been featured in the Femilist 2021, a list of 100 women from the Global South working on critical issues. She is the co-editor of Can You Hear Kashmiri Women Speak (Women Unlimited 2020),  Resisting Occupation in Kashmir (Upenn 2018) and A Desolation called Peace (Harper Collins, May 2019). She has published a poetry collection “The Frame” (1999) and another collection is forthcoming. In 2013 Ather’s ethnographic poetry on Kashmir has won an award from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. She is the founder-editor of Kashmir Lit and is the co-founder of Critical Kashmir Studies Collective, an interdisciplinary network of scholars working on the Kashmir region. 

Any questions may be directed to slarteaga@unm.edu or Dr. Jacobsen at kmj23@unm.edu .

In 2014, Danielle Brown, Ph.D. left her tenure-track position at Syracuse University
to start her company, My People Tell Stories. Her first project, East of Flatbush,
North of Love: An Ethnography of Home, was not only an ode to her cultural
heritage, but also a reaction to academic narratives about Black, Indigenous,
People of Color. In this talk, Dr. Brown discusses her reasons for leaving academia
and writing East of Flatbush, North of Love, her push against narratives that
suggest Black, Indigenous, People of Color cannot be objective when telling their
stories, and the importance of disseminating information about Black, Indigenous,
People of Color in ways that go beyond traditional academic texts.

Register to attend

Founder & CEO of My People Tell Stories, Danielle Brown is an artist,
scholar, and entrepreneur. Brown earned a doctorate in Music from
New York University with a concentration in ethnomusicology and
specialization in the music of Latin America and the Caribbean. She
is a former Assistant Professor of Music History and Cultures at
Syracuse University, and has lectured at various colleges and
universities. She has worked with elementary, middle, and high
school students, and is certified in the Kodály method. In addition,
Brown is an active vocalist, cuatro player, and composer. She is the
author of the music-centered ethnographic memoir, East of Flatbush,
North of Love: An Ethnography of Home, and the East of Flatbush,
North of Love: Teacher Guidebook. Brown is a 2018 NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Folk/Traditional
Arts, and is a Visiting Lecturer at Stanford University for Winter Quarter 2021.

2021 FREDERICK HAMMERSLEY VISITING ARTIST TALK/STUDIO TOUR WITH PAULA WILSON
Thursday, April 29th, 5:30 – 7 pm, Zoom

Click here to join Zoom 

Paula Wilson has been selected by the UNM Department of Art as the 2021 Frederick Hammersley Visiting Artist. The artist residency honors the late Hammersley, an abstract artist, and former UNM teacher.

Paula Wilson is in residency at UNM for the Spring semester. She is giving a free public lecture discussing her process, influences, and experiences, and studio tour on Thursday, April 29, at 5:30 p.m. on Zoom.

Paula Wilson received an MFA from Columbia and a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis, MO. Wilson is a mixed-media artist who studies and sources imagery from different cultures, geographies, and times to develop a unified, visual language of her own. Wilson frequently combines printmaking, painting, sculpture, and video into her projects. Wilson works by collaging multiple forms of visual language together: ancient motifs, tropes from Western art history, and identifiers of her home in the New Mexico High Desert. Wilson has repurposed visuals associated with Greek myths, Impressionist paintings, and styles derived from the decorative and domestic arts.

“In my light-filled studio on the UNM campus, I have been using unfinished past projects to build new pictures from the old. I have visited with MFA students and been impressed with their high levels of skill, thought, and sensitivity.” Said Wilson. “After a year of lockdown, it reminds me how good it feels to be around art and people making art! I am grateful to Frederick Hammersley, both his art and life and the legacy of one artist helping another. ”

Wilson’s most recent solo exhibitions were Entangled at 516 ARTS Contemporary Museum, Albuquerque, NM (2019), The Light Becomes You at Denny Dimin Gallery (2018), Spread Wild: Pleasures of the Yucca at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY (2018), and FLOORED at Williamson | Knight, Portland, OR (2018).

Established in 2017, the Frederick Hammersley Artist Residency honors Hammersley’s legacy and influence as a painter, printmaker, conceptual thinker and broadens awareness of his life and work. The program invites prominent contemporary painters from around the world to come live and work in Albuquerque.

Funding for this program is made possible by the Albuquerque Community Foundation and the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. Through this program, visiting artists are provided with housing, a studio near the UNM Department of Art graduate students, and conduct studio visits with the Fine Arts Graduate candidates, hold workshops, a public lecture, and an open studio event.