In February, 2019, as part of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts’ Art for New Understanding: Native Perspectives, 1950’s to Now exhibition, artist Steven Yazzie led a group of artists in a MoCNA/Axle Contemporary art-making workshop, using his custom-built Drawing and Driving recumbent tricycle/studio-vehicle. Participants included IAIA art students and local artists invited by Santa Fe’s Axle Contemporary.  

The goal was to to engage and connect both students and the Santa Fe art community with the exhibition and Yazzie's art practice. Under Yazzie’s direction, each artist draws or paints while driving the vehicle, adding a performative and community-based element to Yazzie’s project. After the artworks were completed by the group, The vehicle was installed in the exhibition during its run at MoCNA.

Axle Contemporary and Yazzie have now taken the project a step further by inviting more local artists to draw and drive for the project this week.  The collection of resulting small drawings and paintings will be the exhibited in the Axle Contemporary mobile exhibition space from July 26 through Aug 18, 2019. After the opening in the Santa Fe Railyard, the mobile gallery will locate around Santa Fe during the run of the exhibition. Axle Contemporary will be located at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts' Allan Houser Art Park during Indian Market week, from August 14 – 18.

Artists include: Gregory Ballenger, Rita Bard, Jeff Benham, Heidi Brandow, Nani Chacon, Aquila Chase-Daniel, Matthew Chase-Daniel, David Sloan, Nina Elder, Andrew Fearnside, Jason Garcia, Nicola Heindl, Chaz John*, Shakti Kroopkin, Ian Kuali’i, Stephanie Lenchard-Warren, Nina Mastrangelo, Eliza Naranjo Morse, Timothy Nero, Rose Simpson, Robyn Tsinnajinnie, Andrea Isabel Vargas, Erika Wanenmacher, Marion Claire Wasserman, Jerry Wellman, Steven J. Yazzie, and Susan York.

Join us for a discussion at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts:
Drawing and Driving: Axle Contemporary in Conversation with Steven Yazzie

Saturday, August 17th, 10:30–11:30 am |IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts | Allan Houser Art Park | 108 Cathedral Pl, Santa Fe, NM

Matthew Chase-Daniel from Axle Contemporary will interview artist Steven Yazzie about his Drawing and Driving performances and project and exhibition organized by Axle.The conversation will include a discussion on the development of this body of work, Yazzie’s customized recumbent drawing and driving vehicle, and his project with local artists and IAIA art students.

Yazzie describes the project: "Drawing and Driving was conceived while on an artist residency at the famed Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2006. The experimental project became a way for me to redefine my relationship to landscape by essentially drawing what I was seeing, while simultaneously attempting to control a descending gravity powered vehicle.  The drawing vehicle became a simulated version of how I often experience the outdoors (from a perspective of a moving vehicle), which touches on the notion of technology and the speed of a contemporary life.  While there are references to absurdist movements of the past, the act of drawing and driving ultimately became a true point of contact between the natural world and the man-made one; the drawings could in a sense be created by both myself and the moving ground below me."

* Chaz John work courtesy of Ellsworth Gallery