Watch: Jami Porter Lara Exhibits at
The National Museum for
Women in the Arts
Alumni Spotlight
Jami Porter Lara discusses the importance of the arts, her time at UNM, and how she uses a 2000-year-old ceramic process to connect the past and present in Border Crossing
As part of UNM’s Land Arts of the America West program, Jami Porter Lara’s travels took her to a remote stretch of the US/Mexico border where she discovered ancient potsherds intermingling with recent traveler’s discarded plastic water bottles.
This juxtaposition of artifacts ultimately led her to conceptualize Border Crossing, a fantastic recontextualization of the ubiquitous modern vessel that is far from a “recycling awareness project,” and which is currently on exhibition at The National Museum of Women in the Arts.
“By pulling the plastic bottle away from the profane and towards what we perceive to be beautiful or natural or sacred, I hope that human beings can find some forgiveness for ourselves and the things that we make, and seeks to provide a space to contemplate both an ethical beauty as well as an ethics of beauty in the face of human need,” says Porter Lara, who was also recently featured on the NMPBS program ¡COLORES!.
The exhibition runs through May 24th in the nation’s capital.
UNM Artists Take the Spotlight in Southwest Contemporary Vol. 12: Obsession
Southwest Contemporary Vol. 12: Obsession features some incredible work from several of the amazing people who comprise the Art Department. Current second-year MFA students Luka Berkley and Justine Kablack, recent MFA graduate Taylor Engel, and instructor Jessamyn Lovell all have work featured in this most recent issue of Southwest Contemporary.
Spotlight on Art Studio & Art History Faculty: Featured Exhibitions
Art History Professor Ray Hernández-Durán was recently featured in two articles and interviewed by the Latin American and Iberian Institute. UNM News published “UNM Professors Create Exhibition, First-Ever Scholarship of Local Chicano Artists’ Work” by Anna Padilla, highlighting an exhibition curated by Hernández-Durán and Dr. Irene Vásquez. The show, now on view at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, features six talented New Mexican Chicano artists whose work has been historically underrepresented in academic scholarship.
Art Faculty: Awards, Residencies & Revisited Projects
Distinguished Professor Jim Stone is an exhibiting artist who uses photography. His photographs have been published in three monographs and exhibited internationally; they are represented in the permanent collections of over 30 major museums and public archives.