Adams State Art Faculty Invited Artists to Exhibit

ALAMOSA (January 14) – Adams State University Art Department faculty each chose an artist they admire, respect, and connect with, to exhibit in the Faculty Invites show. The exhibit is on display in the Cloyde Snook Gallery from January 19 through February 12. An opening reception will be held from 4 p.m. until 6 p.m. Tuesday, January 27. The event is free and open to the public.

The Faculty Invites artists include Esteban Bojorquez, Kathy Johnson Bowles, and Thomas Fernandez. Stacy Isenbarger, Yana Payusova, and Shane Weaver were also invited to exhibit. Johnson and Margaret Doell, Art Department chair and assistant vice president for Academic Affairs, were in the same class of American Council on Education Fellows in 2012-13. At that time, Johnson was director of the Longwood Center for the Visual Arts at Longwood University. She was recently appointed Vice President of Advancement at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC.

“As a fellow ‘Fellow’ holding an MFA in photography I connected with Johnson as an artist and admire her ability to balance challenging administrative positions with art-making,” Doell said. “I think her ability to combine photography in multi-media artworks that are highly conceptual but personal, and that reference art history while questioning social pressures are very contemporary.”
Johnson’s work comes from a series entitled ‘Confrontational Melancholy’. Intentionally uncomfortable for the viewer, the works are ridiculously silly, strangely sinister, and steeped in confrontational melancholy. These aren’t simplistic images with surfaces embellished with kitsch tchotchkes. They signal a metaphoric crack in a psychic foundation.

Visiting Taos, New Mexico, Dana Provence, professor of art, saw a Pop Surrealism show at the Greg Moon Gallery. Bojorquez’s artwork caught Provence’s eye and imagination.“It was a great show, but Esteban’s work was a stand out. His work represents a wide variety of media including assemblage, painting, sculpture, film, music and installation, ‘explorations of materials, techniques and the inherent ironies of life.’ He is a master of assemblage art and I believe the ASU and SLV communities will really enjoy experiencing his artwork.”

Roger Eriksen, professor of art said he and Fernandez went to grad school together at the University of Idaho. “He is primarily a painter and has a very free style about his work,” Eriksen said. Fernandez currently teaches drawing and color theory at the Arkansas State University, Beebe.