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