With the Grain

This exhibition explores the dialogue between artists and their materials at play in the work of modern and contemporary Hispanic carvers in Northern New Mexico at the intersection of materials, form, practice, and place.  It traces the relationship between wood carvers in Northern New Mexico and the distinctive way in which the aesthetics of their work was, and continues to be, informed by a relationship with their material and through a privileging of the natural qualities of the wood they worked with. This practice often allows the natural forms of unfinished pieces of wood to guide the composition of their piece, thus fostering a dialogue between artist and material that informed the finished product.