Solo exhibition, Union Hall, 2019

This work draws on the visions of my grandmother: the recurring apparition of the Virgin Mary in the mulberry tree on our property and witnessing the mysterious mushroom-shaped cloud on July 16, 1945. Interpretations of these visions are interwoven with regional folklore through a series of sculptures, found objects, and text. In conversation, the artwork in the exhibition creates a non-linear, sensory narrative about relational identity at the intersection of the culture and landscape of Southern New Mexico.

Joshua Wheeler, author of Acid West and Assistant Professor of Creative Non-fiction at Louisianna State University, contributed a three-part essay to this project. Read Trinity of Gypsum here.

More information about the exhibition, including artist lecture audio, is available here. 

Artwork Info (top to bottom):

Blue Madonna

Altered and carved cottonwood stump, cast resin, paint

Hallelujah

Carved maple branch, cast resin, paint

Build Me a Temple

Hand-cut mirrored glass, lead-tin solder, wood, 2 million yr-old volcanic cinder boulder from Mesita, Colorado

Untitled (object collage)

Cast aluminum, lava rocks, mulberry branch, Robledo Mt. fossils, stained glass, pewter ingot, Alamogordo Glass (trinitite), petrified wood, arrows from Daniel Samaniego’s robin hood bullseye, pecans from Las Cruces, NM

Lazuli Pheasants

Carved maple branch, cast porcelain, paint

Desert Mirage

Piñon, New Mexico Cedar, cast resin, paint

Where I go to look for god

Mulberry stump and collected arrows