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In the College of Fine Arts, we foster critical thinking about the evolving history of human expression. We share lessons learned as well as explore new questions through our creative and scholarly activities. Our students, who participate in these endeavors, eventually leave us to pursue careers as artists, scholars and teachers as well as to search for the personal rewards provided by meaningful involvement in the arts. |
| and they left without me, 1998 Lithograph with chine colle (left) relief intaglio (right), 24x36 by Lynne Allen | In so doing, these individuals join the group we respectfully refer to as our alumni. |
| We are interested in our alumni and, in particular, their artistic achievements. Receiving updates keeps us informed and provides opportunities to share success stories with others.
This newsletter features several graduates of programs in the College of Fine Arts. Collectively, they are impressive. While representing various artistic disciplines and UNM eras, each is creative and inventive, committed to the arts, interested in helping others to make meaningful connections with the arts, and willing to do these things anywhere (including such distant places as Ecuador, Russia, South Africa and Germany). I certainly enjoyed learning more about these individuals and trust you will as well! Dean Tom Dodson |
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Lynne Allen
Lithography Teacher and Artist
“Tamarind was my starting point,” explains Lynne Allen, who spent seven years at the Institute, first as student, then as master printer and education director. “I gained expertise at Tamarind, but unfortunately master printers are seen as technicians in the art world. I’ve had to prove myself as an artist.”
Allen (MFA ‘86) now pursues her career as an artist while she teaches. A Rutgers University professor since 1989, she serves as undergraduate director of the university’s Mason Gross School of the Arts. She is also associate director of The Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, a non-profit professional print workshop which publishes and markets prints.
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| Summoned, 1993. Intaglio, 24x36, by Lynne Allen |
“Both undergraduate and graduate students may intern at the center for credit,” explains Allen. “They work side-by-side with the artist, master printer and master papermaker, becoming involved in the life of the workshop.”
The center also awards fellowships to artists on the state, national and international levels. Another project, in collaboration with the relief agency CARE, works to develop papermaking as a cottage industry for indigenous peoples living in rural Ecuador. “This project uses natural resources and helps rural families generate much-needed income. There are some 60 projects worldwide, many foundation-funded, to help people set up a studio, make paper and market various products.” Allen is involved in planning a conference in Ecuador to share learning experiences from these projects in self-sufficiency.
Allen lectures on her artwork and on American printmaking at a global level; she finds the university setting helps with networking. The keynote speaker a recent printmakers’ conference in South Africa, Allen was invited by conference organizers Dominic Thorburn and Stephen Inggs, both former Tamarind students. Among the audience of printmakers was Tamarind alumnus Mark Attwood who has a shop in Johannesburg.
“What we should be concerned with as artists is content, not just techniques, ”espouses Allen. “I showed slides of work being done in the U.S. and spoke about what artists are making prints about–including prints from Tamarind. Printmaking is a tool like painting is a tool. What makes an artist is content, not technique. Technique should not be paramount to the idea, but be balanced.”
The South African printmakers are newly organized, explains Allen, and the primary topic was the market. “They are training artists but they cannot survive without corporate sponsorship or other jobs in South Africa; there is no budget for curators to buy artwork there.”
Allen has had a global perspective for some time. She taught art in Norway and the Netherlands before attending Tamarind and has since lectured and given printmaking workshops throughout the U.S. and in many countries, including Israel, Poland, Estonia, Slovenia and Sweden. In 1987, she was sent to Russia for Tamarind’s 25th anniversary; building on that she became the first visual artist selected as a Fulbright Scholar to the former Soviet Union in 1990.
When not traveling or teaching, Allen works in a home studio shared with her Russian husband, Sergei. Each creates artists books and is involved in printmaking and papermaking.
“I never want to give up making my own work and showing it. And that is because of the strong force of many who believed in me,” states Allen. “Garo Antreasian was my graduate thesis advisor. He was a tough task master. He would get me so mad, I would just have to show him. Through the interaction, I learned if I work hard and continue, I can reach any height. I’m still working on it.”
“I also feel fortunate to have been taught by John Sommers,” credits Allen. It was UNM Art Professor Sommers who encouraged Allen, then a student in his printmaking course in Canada, to attend Tamarind.
"Besides learning lithography at Tamarind, I learned managerial skills and collaboration -- not just among artist and printer, but among colleagues in the front office and the back studio," says Allen. "Clinton Adams was a wonderful mentor and taught me many things, including how to write and to not take myself so seriously. They were good lessons."
Lessons learned from her teachers is translated to Allen's students. "Art school is to push you to think, states Allen. "Students have to know who they are so they can produce good art. You can't fool anybody."
Alicia Perea
Dancer and Teacher
| Frida Kahlo visited the Volga this summer. Alicia Perea performed her dynamic one-woman show, "Frida, a dance drama," as part of a cultural exchange festival in Russia. The original work includes text and speaking which added to the challenge and necessitated an interpreter. And assuming the audience had no knowledge of Frida, Perea gave a pre-show introduction to the Mexican artist's life and work.
"Frida was a huge success. The wonderful reception was really amazing and made up for the nerve-wracking week of rehearsals," says Perea (BFA ‘81, MA ‘93). "The show is visually and technically rich and complex with projected slides and lots of props. And it is truly a home-grown piece." UNM alumnus John Lassiter (BAFA '88) designed the lights and engineered the projection component of the performance. Costumes were designed and built by David Velasquez, a long-time UNM faculty member now deceased. |
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| The score was composed and recorded by Daniel Paul Davis, composer for many Theatre and Dance department productions and husband of Theatre Professor Susan Pearson-Davis. And the busy stage tech in Russia? | Alicia Perea |
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Perea's husband, Jose Garcia, a UNM art studio alumnus (BAFA '82). Perea also taught improvisation and Flamenco dance at the Third International Festival of Dance and Movement on the Volga. And after the 10-day festival held in Yaroslavl, Perea and Garcia traveled three hours south to Moscow and later to St. Petersburg, to meet and develop relationships with dancers for possible future collaboration. "I look forward to developing more work in Russia," says Perea. |
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Teaching and performing have been central to Perea's life since she danced and choreographed "extravaganzas" for her sisters and neighborhood children as a child. Her formal dance studies began in ballet, and the Albuquerque native continued that study with Professor Judy Bennahum when she came to UNM. Then she discovered modern dance taught by Bill Evans and Lee Connor, improv with Jennifer Predock-Linnell and Flamenco taught by Eva Encinias-Sandoval. "I burned my toe shoes and went barefoot, except my Flamenco shoes," reports Perea.
After graduation in 1981, Perea performed in New York for several years when then Dance Program head Lee Connor asked her to return to Albuquerque. She joined Danzantes, a contemporary dance collective nominally led by Connor. "He was the artistic director, but all members choreographed and performed and taught," explains Perea. "I taught part-time at UNM and as an artist-in-residence funded by New Mexico Arts Division. I performed with Danzantes and in Eva's company, Ritmo Flamenco." |
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Perea, herself, became artistic director position of Danzantes upon Connor's death in 1987. "It was a transition; we had a regular season at the KIMO Theater. I was doing solo work and company work with the Bill Evans Dance Company and with Nora Reynolds and Dancers." Awarded a NEA Fellowship in choreography in 1990, Perea found "the financial freedom to create work." She has been traveling with "Frida" since, nationally and internationally. When UNM Dance Program established a graduate program, Perea was in the right place. "It was hard work to get my MA, but I got support from the department and different grants. It was a very supportive atmosphere." Receiving her MA in dance choreography and performance in 1993, Perea taught another year at UNM. Now in Los Angeles, Perea and Garcia are in the world of film and video. Jose, a writer and director, has been experimenting with film and video since they arrived. Perea's choreography is seen in the film, "RetroGenesis," which showed at the Taos Film Festival in 1997. And she received another NEA grant, this time for a two-year fellowship. She is an active member of Dance Resource Center of Los Angeles and was chosen for the International Arts Programming Network as well as the Western States Arts Federation Touring Roster. The next project is moving "Frida" from stage to video, and choreographing a video with ballad singer Lisa Flores. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," Perea laughs. |
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Maurice Sanchez
Lithographer
"Fine art lithography has provided me with world experiences and let me meet and work with great artists in creating their work," says Maurice Sanchez. Owner of the successful Derriere L'Etoile Studios in New York City, Maurice has been making fine art prints for more than 30 years. Over the years, he has worked with Jim Dine, Susan Rothenberg, Claus Oldenburg, Eric Fischl, James Rosenquist and Elizabeth Murray, among many others.
Sanchez's first brush with lithography was as a Valley High School student in Albuquerque. He recalls Frank Walker, Albuquerque Public School art director, making prints on an old press there. Later, as a UNM undergraduate planning on a painting major, Sanchez had a locker in the basement of the old Art building. "I heard the thumping of the lithographic rollers and I would look in, but it was Dean Adams that made me take lithography class," says Sanchez, referring to Clinton Adams, former art professor and College of Fine Arts dean. Seems Sanchez was only taking painting studio classes and wasn't likely to graduate without some course diversification.
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| Maurice Sanchez (left) in his Manhattan atelier, Derriere L'Etoile Studios |
Others at UNM helped Sanchez on his way. He recalls John Tatchl who taught art studio in the mid-'60s. "He was a tough teacher, European-trained, from Vienna," says Sanchez. "Through the years, I appreciate him more and more, and hear his voice louder and louder."
Raymond Jonson was "very receptive and talkative." Fellow art student Mickey McConnell, now UNM undergraduate art advisor and teacher, is "a Renaissance man that I have great respect for." And again, it was Clinton Adams who gave Sanchez a push by suggesting a fellowship at Tamarind Institute, then located in Los Angeles.
Sanchez accepted the fellowship and worked at Tamarind for more than two years. It was the '60s and the draft deferment for education was an added benefit for Sanchez. He also made connections at the training program which brought people from around the country.
Returning to UNM as an assistant for a semester, Sanchez then finished his studies at the Art Institute of San Francisco. He taught at the Emily Carr School of Art in Vancouver, Canada for two years, then moved to New York to work with James Rosenquist. Their steady work was supplied by London-based Petersburg Press, run by Paul Cornwall-Jones; Sanchez later spent a year working for the press in London.
In 1976, Sanchez had a big year. He married Jackie, traveled across the United States, and decided to buy a press and go freelance. "I started with jobs for Brooke-Alexander Editions. In time, I moved out of the loft into a bigger space," says Sanchez.
His business' name, Derriere L'Etoile Studios, is a hybrid of the French translation of a cosmic black hole and a reference to a collaborative printmaker supporting the artist -- "behind the star."
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College of Fine Arts finearts@unm.edu |
Second Page of Fall 1998 Newsletter |
