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City Focus Taos Getting Stronger and More Diverse With small-town by DOTTIE INDYKE Taos is a rather special but quirky place," says contemporary-art dealer Stephen Parks. For more than a century, since painter Bert Geer Phillips stopped in town to fix a wagon wheel and never left, the landscape and high-desert light have drawn artists from both coasts. The rugged Western hamlet of 6,000 people, nestled at the feet of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, is home to around 175 galleries and more than 900 artists. The setting, with its isolation from big-city distractions, the mystique of nearby Taos Pueblo, and an iconoclastic spirit, has proved to stimulate creativity. According to Parks, an observer of the local scene for more than 30 years, the town's reputation as an art center has been advanced by resident luminaries such as Agnes Martin and Ken Price, as well as by an influx of young artists and the increasingly important role of the Harwood Museum of Art at the University of New Mexico. Housed in an 88-year-old Pueblo and Spanish Revival building near the Taos central plaza, the Harwood contains seven galleries featuring important New Mexico painters, such as Marsden Hartley and Edward Corbett; Spanish Colonial works; and space for rotating exhibitions. "We've been adding about 100 pieces a year, many of them gifts, with a focus on presenting, collecting, and preserving Taos art," says director Charles Lovell, who joined the Harwood after six years as director of the University Art Gallery at New Mexico State University. Since he took the helm, three years ago, the museum has taken a greater interest in contemporary art and strengthened its program, exhibiting works by Jasper Johns and Francesco Clemente, in addition to a show of 17 local, contemporary artists juried by Douglas Dreishpoon, senior curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. The Harwood is in the process of organizing a traveling exhibition of paintings by Richard Diebenkorn, a graduate student at the University of New Mexico in the 1950s, scheduled to open in 2006. The centerpiece of the Harwood is the octagonal-shaped Agnes Martin Gallery, which was constructed to accommodate the artist's gift of seven large paintings made between 1993 and 1994. ot unlike the Mend Collection's Rothko Chapel, in Houston, this meditative room, with bright yellow seats designed by Donald Judd, is a destination for thousands of visitors each year. This summer the museum is presenting 1960s-era cityscapes and landscapes by Wayne Thiebaud; oil-on-copper portraits of taosenos by local painter Jack Smith; and "Fractions," a 1995-2000 series of collages by Larry Bell, a Taos fixture for three decades. On view in late August are painterly abstractions by Taos Modem Lily Fenichel and "Solar Bums," an exhibition of paintings that explore the motion of the sun, by Charles Ross, Contemporary art also packs the galleries, where summer visitors are greeted with small-town intimacy and big-city sophistication. "I like to think that a number of collectors make the trip to Taos just to see what our artists are up to," says Joni Ticked, co-owner of Parks Gallery. This summer the gallery, which recently relocated to a 200-year-old adobe on Bent Street, is featuring wood sculpture and furniture by Jim Wagner, whose vivid, expressionistic paintings have earned him recognition as a father of "Santa Fe style," the distinctive mode of art and architecture associated with the region. Wagner's playful, functional, carved musical instruments blend botanical designs and other figurative elements. Also on view are works by Erin Currier, who, inspired by a recent trip to South America, assembles political posters, product packaging, and paper trash into large-scale portraits. Dottie Indyke is the Santa Fe correspondent of ARTnews. SUMMER 2004/ARTNEWS |
