Axle Contemporary
a mobile artspace based in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Current Exhibition
Rick Phelps
Post Fiesta Wares
an installation at Axle
Exhibition continues through May 28
Scheduled Locations and Times (more on other days, see homepage)
April 28
Espanola Library 1–4 PM (with hands-on project with Kemely Gomez)
May 5
New Mexico School for the Arts (NMSA students only)
NM Museum of Art Santa Fe Plaza 5–7pm
May 6
Earthcare Community Swap, 6600 Valentine Way 12-3pm
Lena Street Fist Saturday-- 3:30 - 6 pm
May 7
Museum of International Folk Art, Museum Hill Plaza 11–4
May 13
Santa Fe Public Schools Community Day 10am–2pm
May 14
Family Morning-Museum of International Folk Art, Museum Hill Plaza 11–4 (Family program at MOIFA with hands-on activity in MoIFA atrium)
May 16
Embudo Valley Library (Dixon) - Afterschool Program 2-5
May 20
La Farge Branch Library 11-3
May 25
National Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, 5-7pm
May 27
Southside Branch Library 11–1 (with hands-on project with Kemely Gomez)
visit our homepage for daily location updates
Axle Contemporary is pleased to present Rick Phelps’ Post Fiesta Wares, an installation inside Axle’s mobile artspace.
This exhibition is in conjunction with The Museum of International Folk Arts’ exhibition La Cartonería Mexicana: The Mexican Art of Paper and Paste, currently on display through November 3, 2024. Axle will be traveling to schools and community events around Santa Fe and beyond with MoIFA bilingual educator Kemely Gomez, engaging people with artmaking and learning opportunities. Visit Axle’s website for upcoming location information.
Phelps approach to art making is unpretentious, and both practical and wildly imaginative. As quoted in The New York Times: ''Farm people were resourceful, but we didn't call making things 'art' ''
He has exhibited and sold his artwork in art galleries, museums, and the World Financial Center, as well as in churches, bars, hair salons, nightclubs, restaurants, candy stores, and bathrooms.
He has a lifelong commitment to making work from materials-at-hand and the cast-off detritus of our out-of-balance society of consumption. He recycles paper, artistic conventions, and his self-proclaimed neuroses in an effort to order and reassemble his world.
All of Phelps' work is made of recycled papers, from hymnals, encyclopedias, menus, beer cartons, magazines, food labels, security envelope liners or junk mail, ephemera re-pulped and repurposed into dynamic sculptures.
His papier-maché and papier-collé sculptures draw on the traditional Mexican arts of Cartoneria and Piñata, but incorporate an ever-changing array of materials, references, and characters, drawing on Pop, Punk, Folk, Funk and other vernacular traditions.
His work is represented in Santa Fe by Pasqual’s Gallery, in Truchas by Eight Million Gods, and in Madrid by Calliope.
Generously funded by Sheila and Kirk Ellis and the Museum of New Mexico Foundation Education Fund
