Becky Holtzman, Embrace, 2008, found wood, papier mache, acrylic, monofilament

The Dowser Married the Alchemist
June 19 – July 19, 2009
Closing Reception Friday, July 17, 5-8pm

Artists Becky Holtzman and David Ondrik have long collaborated behind the scenes – Ondrik has shot photographs along the Rio Grande bosque while Holtzman collects downed branches and twigs for her sculptural work. Walking and talking together, within the framework of art-making, has led to an ongoing discussion about the many contradictions implicit in humans’ relationship to nature: helping nature repair versus leaving it alone, what it means to capture and/or mimic nature, and the benefits and costs of both managed and uncontrolled wildness. While these conversations have informed the creation of their individual work, the two artists have not previously worked together to explore their ideas. The Dowser Married the Alchemist, opening in June at SCA, is their collaborative exploration of land as a catalyst for human intimacy.

For more information about Becky Holtzman visit www.beckytomato.com

For more information about David Ondrik visit www.artisdead.net

Sculpture as Analogy to Landscape
September 18 – October 25, 2009
Reception Friday, September 18, 5-8pm



Molly Wakeman, Realspace VII (detail), 2008, aluminum

Sculpture’s relation to landscape has primarily been two fold: traditionally ON the land, as figure on ground, or OF the land as Site and Earth works. This group of sculpture aspires to be AS the land. Resisting the tactics of 1970’s artists who relied on displacement to bring the land inside, these artists seek the phenomenological common ground between constructed and natural environments. In these works the formal kinship of object to subject ranges from the mimetic to pure evocation, yet each presents an experiential opportunity to the beholder. Focused on the terrain rather than the map, these works assert the physical navigations necessary for the perception of sculptural objects as equal to the acts performed to locate oneself in the world. Each work is an anchor, a unique spot where the traveler pauses to ponder his or her place in the territory.

Altered sound, shifting light, and reformed composition are cues to being present in space and time. Establishing indexical equivalency of this sort flirts with simulation, but only if the intent is to confuse the truth. Here, these events are as real as the referent. SCA Gallery is an enormous space. The ceiling is high and beams of sun penetrate from above. Empty, it is not unlike a desert canyon. It is a place that can hold the sky, fog, forest, rain, pond, rock, and field. You will not find these things, but more appropriately things that act or feel like them. Each artist presents a different mode of analogy. Through line, mass, orientation, movement, texture, sound or process one can travel the path from here to there, and back.

Curator/Artist Steve Barry has assembled a group of sculptural works that aspire to be as the land, focusing on physical sensation as the shared language of both sculpture and the natural world. Artists include: Ellen Babcock, Steve Barry, Richard Beckman, Sheri Crider, Nina Dubois, Eloise Guanlao, Jeanette Hart-Mann, Ryan Henel, Kenji Kondo, Jeff Krueger, Debbie Long, Mayumi Nishida & Matt Tuttle, Mary Tsiongas and Molly Wakeman.

For more information about SCA Contemporary visit www.scacontemporary.com

SCA Contemporary Art
524 Haines NW
Albuquerque, NM 87102
t. 505-228-3749