Jan 26 Sunday
You Are a Star In My Sky is a group exhibition of colleagues, friends, and students of Jennifer Ling Datchuk. This clay community bridges Datchuk's Texas and Arizona lives and explores themes of global migrations, ritual, identity, and personal narratives to help build a bigger and inclusive world.
Featured artists: Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Daniel Monclova, Jorge Hernandez Chacon, Kim Le, Ryan Takaba, Tammie Rubin, and Xitlalic Ortega Perez.
Start the Year with Collage! VGPL’s Winter Art Exhibit: Helen Becker
Helen Becker’s beautiful collage art is guaranteed to chase away the winter blues. Her exhibit will be on the walls of VGPL from January 2 through February. A 2023 winner of the National Collage Society’s annual exhibit award, Becker describes her work as “collage-painting. “I have always felt when collaging that I am painting with a multitude of textured and patterned papers and other materials such as fabric, string, or foil.” She uses a blending, collage technique with tissue paper, often applying colorful, fluid acrylic paints on rice paper, tearing or cutting materials to glue to a surface. “When glue is applied to tissue paper of any color it becomes translucent, allowing color to partly show through.”
Both her collage paintings and charcoal-and-white artwork cater reflect herinterest in shading and shadows. In her study of the effect of light on objectsand surfaces, Becker read classic texts on light including those from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as current now as when they were written, she says. Because of this interest, her work concentrates on still lifes. “The background of still lifes is important because it presents the shadows cast by the object,” she says. “Shadows help in defining form; without shadows, objects appear flat.” For many of her recent still-life collages, Becker uses the inside of security envelopes, which have various patterns (she has identified 35) used to shield the envelope’s contents.
A native of Ohio, Becker and her husband moved west after college, in search of wide-open spaces, settling first in Moab (where she was a founding board member of Gallery Moab and helped direct the Plein Air Moab Competition) before moving to New Mexico two and half years ago.
This year, Becker will take part in the 40th Annual Juried Exhibit at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. Her art resides in collections across the United States.
Over these four weeks we will spend time with the three sections of your spine (lumbar, thoracic and cervical) and the muscles and fascia that connect, support and mobilize your spine. I will guide you through gentle, slow, Hanna Somatic movements that will help you decrease chronic tension, movement limitation and pain in these areas with the intention to increase your quality of movement, ease and coordination.
This class series is open to new and returning Hanna Somatics students, in person and online. Class recordings will be shared for 7 days with all registered students. I encourage students to join for the full series but drop-in is also an option.
Hanna Somatics is a neuromuscular release technique that puts you in the driver's seat to reset the levels of tension and ease in your body. Once your muscles learn a new pattern of ease your body may experience a decrease in joint pain, alignment pain, limitations in range of movement and much more. Hanna Somatics classes are verbally guided to increase the somatic benefit of the movements and will be taught in reclined positions on the floor.
Two poets well versed in blues & folk traditions will perform poems and songs. Both are previous poet laureates (Albuquerque & Oklahoma), one a long-time blues radio show host and the other a performing song writer.
Jan 27 Monday
Jan 28 Tuesday