A collaborative exploration of land-based art in New Mexico

SITEWORKS
Summer/Fall 2009

Individual, site-specific projects by Anne Cooper, Bill Gilbert, Steve Peters and Jaune Quick-To-See Smith will take place at several locations in the Albuquerque area. Organized by Kathleen Shields Contemporary Art Projects, the projects address relationships of urban and rural, built and natural environments, technology and land use, actual and virtual, art and non-art. It is intended that through the artists’ works and own experiences of place, aspects of our community will be introduced, revealed, or presented in a new perspective.

ANNE COOPER

Los Poblanos Fields Open Space (Anderson Field)

Anne Cooper’s Anitya, which means “impermanence” in Sanskrit, will be installed the city’s Los Poblanos Fields Open Space (www.cabq.gov/openspace/farmlands)—138 acres of agricultural land which Cooper helped preserve in 1994-97. The work will be comprised of 81 bowls made from terracotta-colored clay harvested from her land near Chama, New Mexico. Placed in a 9-by-9-foot grid, the raw clay bowls will contain seed balls which over the course of the seasons it is intended that winter wheat, rye, oats, corn, and bean plants will sprout. The bowls will eventually dissolve, returning to and leaving red stains in the earth. Cooper will present documentation of the process of Anitya at 516 ARTS’ Second Site, from harvesting of the clay to the dissolution of the bowls and the growth cycles of the crops. She will also conduct “artist walks” at Anderson Field during the course of the work’s installation there.

BILL GILBERT

Matter of Fact: Walk to Work

With Matter of Fact: Walk to Work, Bill Gilbert continues his long-time interest in creating art based on the high desert environment by walking from his home in the Galisteo Basin to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque along a path that parallels the commute to work he has made for the past 20 years. Following as straight a line as the topography and legalities allow, Matter of Fact is an exploration of place that mediates between an abstract representation of the land through maps and a direct, physical experience of walking across the planet's surface. Gilbert’s tools are his legs, voice, and backpack, and his translation of the experience for viewers, installed at 516 ARTS’ Second Site, uses digital technologies (a digital recorder, GPS unit, and computer) to create a dialogue between the physical and virtual definitions of place.

STEVE PETERS

Rio Grande Nature Center's Visitor Center

Composer/sound artist Steve Peters will create a site-specific sound installation in the observation room of the Rio Grande Nature Center's visitor center (www.rgnc.org). The work will combine live and pre-recorded environmental sounds from the Rio Grande bosque—such as those of birds, insects, flowing water, sounds from beneath the pond’s surface, and amplifications of the interior resonance of trees, plants, and other natural objects—with electronically processed sound and interwoven voices of writers, poets and other artists. Peters will also give an on-site talk about the work and guide visitors on silent listening walks through the park.

For more information about Steve Peters visit his steve-peters.blogspot.com

JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH

Jaune Quick-To-See Smith uses traditional Native American cultural iconography, recognizable commercial icons and contemporary art methods to address tribal politics, human rights, spirituality and the environment with a sense of humor. Through her installation of signs in strategic locations throughout Corrales, the small agricultural village in which she lives, we will learn about the displacement of wildlife by development in her community and its environs.