Potato

an Axle Contemporary project

 

We provide potatoes, carving tools, some printing inks made from delicious colorful spices, and paper.  Participants carve potatoes and make block prints. We hang the prints in our mobile gallery and then cut up the potato blocks and add them to our pot of soup.  Make a block print and share in the soup.

 

 

 

A selection of the prints is displayed at the Santa Fe Community Gallery in the 'Longer Table' exhibition. Exhibition continues through Jan 16, 2020

 

 

What:
We roll up in our Axle Contemporary mobile artspace, and set up inside and out with tables, a hand-washing setup, potatoes, carving tools, paper and our custom blended edible inks made from colorful foods such as turmeric, beet juice, spirulina, and chile. Participants carve the potato like one would for a woodblock. Then they make several prints using our inks. One of each artist’s work is hung in the mobile artspace, and additional prints can be taken home. As each potato block is finished being used, we chop it up and add it to a boiling pot of potato soup. Soup is served to all people present. The entire activity is provided for free.
 
Why:
It’s an engaged experience, a physically embodied creative process that reaches out to people in unexpected ways. Our aim is to enhance playfulness, ease tensions, connect people with their neighbors at the table, and spark conversation and connection. This is important in today’s world. . The juxtaposition of the humble potato and act of art-making also breaks down barriers between high culture and human culture, and increases  people’s engagement in thinking and reflection in all parts of their lives.
 
The fleet, flexible, and mobile nature of our Axle Contemporary artspace breaks with the traditional physical and social space of the art gallery. It enhances a creative adaptable approach. POTATO encourages improvisation in art making. The playful act of carving potato blocks and printing with food-inks (playing with your food) is not “self-conscious” and encourages improvised art making for all. Improvisation works best when a defined set of parameters are laid out, and creators can explore creative and tangential thinking. POTATO provides a structure and allows the participants to freely improvise.

E Pluribus Unum:New Mexico Southeast

an Axle Contemporary project

 

Western Heritage Museum, Hobbs

August 22 – November 3, 2019

 

Roswell Museum & Art Center

November 16 –  April 22, 2020

 

Artesia, 510 Gallery

(Artesia portion only)

opens August, 24, 2019

 

The portraits from our 2018 E Pluribus Unum project will exhibited in museum exhibitions this year.

 

E Pluribus Unum is Axle’s free mobile photo portrait studio. People sit for a portrait while holding a small personally significant object. Prints are distributed to the participants and wheat-pasted to the exterior of the studio-gallery. For each project, an image is created by overlaying all the portraits to create one face that includes equal portions of all the participants. Each project is published in its entirety as a book.

 

In October 2018, we spent the month on the road to create E Pluribus Unum: New Mexico Southeast in Roswell, Lovinton, Hobbs, Alamogordo, Tularosa, Carrizozo, Ruidoso, Mescalero, Artesia, Carlsbad, Portales, and Clovis.

 

Compound Visions

multiple exposures

composites

juxtapositions

 

Reception: Friday October 18, 5-8 pm
Santa Fe Railyard, Farmers Market Shade Structure

Exhibition: October 15- 20
visit axleart.com for times and locations

 

Alex Traube
Joan Zalenski
Audrey Derrell
Ahjo Sipowitcz
Kim Richardson
Meridel Rubenstein
Meggan Gould
Delilah Montoya
Lia Moldovan
Zoe Zimmerman
Anne Staveley
Jackie Mathey
William Clift

 

 

A group exhibition of photographic compositions that take advantage of multiple shots to make one piece.  In the past, this was largely double-exposures, but now can be made using digital composing techniques: two images side-by side, a grid of images, different photos merged in Photoshop to create a seamless composition, and more, photographic compositions using two or more images where the result is greater in meaning or aesthetics than the sum of the parts.

Also in Santa Fe during this week are these other photographic events

CENTER: Review Santa Fe Photo Festival
The Review Santa Fe Photo Festival, is a weekend conference and festival for photographers. Hosting over 1,000 one-on-one portfolio reviews with up to 50 curators, editors, publishers and international festival directors whom each year come to Santa Fe to view the photographic vanguard.

As part of CENTER's festival this year, 8 large banners with photographic works addressing issues of climate change will be hung on the shade structure by the Farmers Market in the Santa Fe Railyard, Part of the Railyard Art Project. October 15-18

CENTER: Portfolio Walk
Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Pavilion 1607 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, NM 87501
A unique expo/exhibition style format displaying the work of 100 photographers from Center's photo festival with a lively evening of discussions between artists and attendees. The Portfolio Walk-Through provides collectors and photo lovers with an opportunity to discover new work and to connect with talented practitioners from all over the world. Fri., October 18, 6-8pm

Free Film USA
Departing New York City at the beginning of August and returning in the middle of November, the FREE FILM team will travel by road with converted mobile darkroom Airstream trailer to 18 cities across the country to distribute and process rolls of 35mm black and white film for free to anyone interested in participating in the project. Given a due date and the prompt phrase ‘red white and blue,’ participating photographers will have the opportunity to shoot their roll as an expression of what that means to them — the words, the phrase, the place, the dream, the reality.
In the Santa Fe Railyard near the Farmer's Market: October 14-18


CENTER + CURRENTS: A Collaborative Exhibition
826 Canyon Road. Opening reception on Sat., October 20, from 6-9 pm. On view through November 29, 2019.

A Contemporary Look at Childhood in New Mexico
ASMP/NM Members
Edition One Gallery, 728 Canyon Road, Santa Fe.
The exhibition is focused on the experience of growing up in New Mexico, and is reflectiveof our state's own unique combination of cultural, physical, and historical characteristics. Evalyn Bemis, Tony Bonanno, Mark Berndt, Clay Ellis, Cable Hoover, Lisa Kantor, Richard Khanlian, Sabra LaVann, Douglas Magnus, Gabriella Marks, Gail Odom, Peter Ogilvie, Irene Owsley, Jane Phillips, Daniel Quat, Ward Russell, Steven St. John, Sally Thomson, and Don Usner.


CENTER: Photographer Presentations
The 2019 Award and Grant Winners present their projects on historical stereotypes, maternal mortality, and other critical issues; moderated by UNM Art Museum's Mary Statzer. Sat. Oct 19, 1-5:30, Drury Hotel.


Center: Photograhic Book Fair
Publishers include Aint-Bad, Chronicle Books, Gnomic Books, and Radius Books, amongst others. Scheduled signings throughout the day. Sun. Oct 20, 10-5. Axle Contemporary Press will be here with our ten photo books published over the past nine years. Matthew Chase-Daniel and Jerry Wellman will sign our newest publication, E Pluribus Unum: New Mexico Southeast, and Matthew and Julie-Chase-Daniel will sign copies of The Blue Fold: Explorations at Loggerhead Key Dry Tortugas National Park, the fruit of their 2017 arts residency on a remote island in the Gulf of Mexico. Check schedule here:

CENTER: Scholar Presentation
John Jacob presents on Diane Arbus: A Box of Ten Photographs. Sun. Oct 20, 11am. Drury Hotel.

 

image by Ahjo K. Sipowicz