SCULPTURES
Gary Beals
Sally Hepler
Janet Lippincott

PAINTINGS
Martha Rea Baker
Elaine Holien
Julian Jackson
Ellen Koment
Janet Lippincott
Mary Long-Postal
Martha Mans
Kurt Meer
Daniel Phill
Vanita Smithey
Laurel Swab
Jinni Thomas
Kevin Tolman
Pauline Ziegen

COLLECTIONS
New Mexico Modernist Collection
Project Spaces Installations

Karan Ruhlen Gallery
225 Canyon Road
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505.820.0807
info@karanruhlen.com

2012 Exhibition Schedule

Janet Lippincott May 18th
Twenty Years of Monotypes

SANTA FE, NM.  The Monotype process dates back to the mid 1600s and is made by creating an image on a smooth non-absorbent matrix like a sheet of glass, then pressing a sheet of paper to the image to make the print. For this exhibition, Lippincott’s monotypes from 1983-2003 are the focus. 

Santa Fe printmaker Ron Pokrasso introduced Lippincott to the monotype process at Santa Fe Graphics Workshop in the early 80s, when Lippincott was in her mid 60s.  They worked together for twenty years with Janet’s last printing session in 2003.  "She approached the printing plate as if it were a painting," Pokrosso recalls. "She preferred heavy, thick inks, which were a challenge to print. When I'd make suggestions for alternative ways to work, she shrugged them off as too fussy, preferring to follow her own vision.

"Janet was truly fearless in her approach to materials," says Karan Ruhlen, who represented Lippincott during her lifetime and now represents her estate. “The chine collé monotypes of the 90’s are particularly good examples of her command of the medium in what might at first appear to be random or even chance compositions."

The sense of authority Lippincott conveys in a wide variety of media is the lasting impression one takes away from each of her exhibitions.

Concludes Karan Ruhlen, "Although Janet is no longer with us, her paintings are witness to her indomitable spirit as a survivor of World War II blitzkriegs, as a pioneer of abstraction in New Mexico, and as a woman who competed in a man's art world at the time. One senses her empowerment in everything she did."

“Janet was an artist to the core,” says Ruhlen. “Making art was like breathing—it was her way of talking and expressing emotions. She was always looking for fresh ways to communicate her viewpoints whether in two or three-dimensional media.

During her lengthy career, Lippincott received many awards, including the 2002 New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and the 2003 Arts Achievement Award from the New Mexico Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.

New Sculpture Garden
FEATURING: Sally Hepler, Gary Beals and Bret Price

SANTA FE, NM.  Newly renovated and expanded sculpture garden featuring the work of Gary Beals, Sally Hepler and new artist Bret Price.  Join us for the opening reception Friday, June 22, 2012.

In the early days of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso revolutionized the art of sculpture when he began creating his constructions fashioned by combining disparate objects and materials into one constructed piece of sculpture. Similarly, the work of Constantin Brâncu?i at the beginning of the century paved the way for later abstract sculpture. Brâncu?i distilled subjects down to their essences. These elegantly refined forms became synonymous with 20th century sculpture.

During the late 1950s and the 1960s abstract sculptors began experimenting with a wide array of new materials and different approaches to creating their work.

The artists featured in our new sculpture garden work in hand fabricated steel and bronze each in their own unique style. 

There are two elusive forces at work when experiencing a Sally Hepler sculpture: simplicity and complexity. The most common first reaction to the graceful flowing sculptures is an acknowledgement of the palpable skill and sheer tenacity required to pull it off—in fact, there are hundreds of hours of hand-fabrication that go into each piece. But it is the sublime experience of purity, flow and wonder of each piece that ultimately transcends the viewer to a threshold of effortless joy and Zen mindfulness.

Since 1979, Bret Price has been building heating chambers around large pieces of steel, applying concentrated, intense heat, then manipulating the material to create a sense of softness. When the heat is removed, these illusions of flexibility are frozen, and on one level, the sculpture becomes a documentation of those forces used in the process. “It is my intent that these sculptures communicate a sense of continuance, as if each piece is a single frame taken from a film, appearing to be at rest before moving on,” says Price. This method of making art offers a number of creative options for the artist. The variables of heat intensity, size and shape of the raw material produce a wide range of results. A degree of unpredictability is always present, which tends to tease ones curiosity and lend energy.

Lay of the Land (East Coast meets West Coast)
 FEATURING:  Michael Abrams (VT), Kurt Meer (TN), Stephen Pentak (NY), Peter Roux(MA) and Pauline Ziegen (NM)

SANTA FE, NM.  Artists are continually looking for new ways of perceiving, interpreting, and translating the reality of nature into the language of art. Karan Ruhlen Gallery will feature the work of formidable local landscape painter Pauline Zeigen with four accomplished East Coast landscape artists.  The common thread is their approach to the serenity of the land and sky. The renaissance technique sfumato - a term coined by Leonardo da Vinci to describe a process that softly blurs the edges of objects and color tones to give the illusion of depth which is prevalent in all their work.

Pauline Ziegen explores a modernist view of the landscape using ephemeral darkened tones reminiscent of American painter, George Inness She is also drawn to the perceptual elements and materials of Chinese and Japanese art.  “I love the way the artists convey the illusion of space using minimalist drawing techniques, and I find the gold leaf in Japanese folding screens both traditional and austerely modern,” she says.

Kurt Meer was profoundly affected by the theories of Whistler.  “I have adopted Whistler’s comparison of painting to music,” he says. “Color is like a keyboard where there is a root key or color harmony within which there are a variety of chords created by playing opposites against one another, such as warm and cool, saturated and unsaturated.”  Whistler found one means of expressing his theories in a series of works depicting the river Thames at night. For Meer, the Mississippi river is the inspiration. “I’ve come to know its subtleties, and while the rivers in my paintings are imaginary abstractions of water, sky and vegetation shapes, they undoubtedly go back to my memory of the Mississippi.”

Although nature forms the basis for Michael Abrams’ paintings they are a personalized vision in which he is revisiting landscape painting within the context of contemporary art. They exist entirely in the mental space of nostalgic recall emphasizing misty ambiance over earthly terrain.

New York artist Stephen Pentak’s  subject is the great outdoors. His method: a tried-and-true combination of oil paints, wood panel, large brushes and palette knives.  Pentak experimented with various styles and concepts before hitting upon abstract landscapes. He works from his mind’s eye, pulling from memory the landscapes he has seen. The creation and combination of color plays a major role in his work.

 Peter Roux works with imagery to create spaces that search for relevance with the viewer, not through
"site-specific" familiarity, but rather a sense of connection, memory, or direct experience. The filmed image
inspires me- how it formulates content through space, creating levels of meaning via duration, thef raming/editing
of image, movement. It can also "adjust" the detail a viewer explores through the blurring of subject,creating entirely
new aspects of form. The tension between these softened objects  and the hard border of a filmed frame is intriguing
to me, as is the ability to alter content with a simple cut or splice. I'm drawn to the physicality of the art object, the
surface quality, the weight, formal aspects of abstraction, the manipulation of a medium. I am searching for a new
interpretation of "landscape space"- one that is quieter, perhaps, and less direct, but one that holds for the viewer a
larger contemporary experience.

tentative schedule