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SPRING 2004
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GREETINGS! WE CFA ALUMNI NUMBER IN THE THOUSANDS,
and are spread throughout the world, most living near art centers. Some perform, create and teach; others collect, exhibit, review or attend—all threads in the rich tapestry of art.
We alumni are sharing space in this beautifully redesigned CFA newsletter to reach the broadest membership (not just the hundreds on our Alumni Chapter list). The insert pages include highlights of alumni.
Our alma mater is bustling! Dean James Moy has infused the school with an exciting vitality. Every department is bursting with renewed enthusiasm. However, the Alumni Chapter has been uncharacteristically quiet, other than a New York City reception and December’s “Breakfast for the Arts.” Why? Because we need your help.
The College of Fine Arts Alumni Chapter is the oldest alumni group at UNM. Our proud history includes providing scholarships to deserving students, showcasing graduates and community artists, and maintaining links between the school and graduates. The governing board, responsible for planning events and raising funds, needs members with enthusiasm, energy and a little time! Some alumni would like to see Studio Safari reinvented, and preliminary faculty member discussions indicate a willingness to open their studios to a behind-the-scenes tour. How about a Homecoming open house to show off the arts and the College? Or a Halloween costume gala, an active students-alumni mentoring program, marketing and tax-savvy workshops, plus additional scholarships? And we still want a nifty Web site for current communications.
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How can you help? Supporting the Scholarship Fund is essential! Please make regular, generous donations to the Scholarship Fund. Donors, unless remaining anonymous, will be listed in this newsletter. Also, please remember the CFA when you plan your estate.
For those outside New Mexico, please consider hosting an alumni reception in your area. New Mexicans, please serve on the board, work on events, provide publicity, etc. Reflect on what the CFA means to you and how you can give back.
How can you reach us?
CFA Development Officer Andrea Bromberg will hear you: telephone: (505) 277-7320; e-mail: afolk@unm.edu; mail: UNM College of Fine Arts, MSC04 2570, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque NM 87131-0001. Want to go to the top? Contact the dean: jimmoy@unm.edu. I welcome your questions, suggestions and offers: 292-5368, lwienecke@comcast.net, Lynnie Wienecke, 12921 Eagle Dancer Trail NE, Albuquerque, NM 87112. Let’s hear from you now!
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| Lynnie Wienicke, president, CFA Alumni Chapter |
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IT'S 1956. YOU'RE BEHIND THE WHEEL OF YOUR
used car heading west on Route 66 out of Oklahoma City to Los Angeles. The landscape, the billboards, the signage, the filling stations where you have to stop frequently, and the light as you head down those unbroken stretches of road leave indelible impressions. And if you are Ed Ruscha (pronounced roo-shay), the 19-year-old driver of that car on his way to Chouinard Art Institute, many of those impressions will re-emerge in different formats over the next 45 years of your highly successful career.
Now part of major museum collections across the United States and Europe, Ruscha’s work was first linked to the pop movement of the ’60s because of his uncluttered depictions of America’s—specifically southern California’s—sterile consumer culture.
But like Jasper Johns, whose prints he admired, Ruscha was not interested only in the irony of borrowing imagery from everyday items for fine art; his subjects always floated in an ambiguous space that forced the viewer to reconsider their meaning.
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| Ace of Hearts by Ed Ruscha |
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Ruscha’s early love of typography and graphic art informed his experimentation in printmaking and made him an innovative master of the medium. His use of words as images and subject matter inspired a generation of conceptualists. His sense of humor and love of experimentation have led him to use such unconventional printing “inks” as cherry juice, spinach, gunpowder and Pepto-Bismol®.
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Light, whether beaming down on the roads he created in a series of fantasy intersections of San Francisco and Los Angeles streets, or as lush emanations from his single word or phrase paintings, is an important part of Ruscha’s aesthetic and removes everyday items from banality. While not specifically religious in intent, Ruscha does concede that his sense of illumination has been somewhat inspired by his Roman Catholic upbringing.
The single item, whether a word, a ship or, in the case of The Stacked Deck, an image for the Ace of Hearts playing card, allows Ruscha to call attention to the multiple connotations of visual images, and to the visual strength of those images when removed from their expected contexts.
In style, his Ace is similar to a series of prints he made at Tamarind in 1986, one of which is reproduced on the cover of Tamarind: 40 Years. References to the Sacred Heart and to medical textbooks are certainly part of his Ace, but his use of an airbrush over an ink drawing turns the isolated, disembodied heart with its red halo into a shape-shifting icon, neither Catholic nor anatomical.
Ruscha was one of 45 artists invited by Tamarind to make images for cards in The Stacked Deck. The artists were encouraged to use color, and the format was restricted to maintain the proportions of an actual deck of playing cards.
From Dec. 1 to 19, 2003, the original drawings were on view in the Tamarind Gallery and posted on Tamarind’s Web site for on-line bidding. High bidders celebrated their winnings at a closing reception on the night of the 19th.
The drawings were reproduced as decks of cards, which are still available from Tamarind for $25 per deck, and have proven very popular. For purchase information, please call (505) 277-3901 or visit http://tamarind.unm.edu on the Web, where you can also view the cards. Proceeds benefit Tamarind’s on-line catalogue raisonné project.
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