Funding for Colores was provided in part by New Mexico PBS, Great Southwestern Arts and Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation.

New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

And viewers like you.

Sculptor Karen Yank reflects on her mentor Agnes Martin, and how her abstract works invite viewers to slow down, look closely, and reconnect with what truly matters.

Deep time.

See Dragons of Nevada blends art and science to uncover the story of prehistoric giants that swam Nevada's ancient ocean 250 million years ago.

[Upbeat music] It's all ahead on Colores!

Abstracting emotion.

>> Faith: So Karen, thank you so much for joining us today on Colores to talk about your work and your exhibition, Abstracting Nature.

First, I want to know how were you drawn to sculpture?

>> Yank: I grew up in Wisconsin and my dad was a sculptor.

And so I grew up kind of in the arts.

And, he did a lot of metalworking.

So when I was a little child, I'd play in his studio, and, it was very magical and kind of mysterious, all these pieces and parts of metal.

And so I think in metal, my mark making is with a grinder or with a welder, and it's not with a paintbrush or a pencil.

>> Faith: You've spoken about Agnes Martin's influence on your work.

So what about her practice or philosophy continues to guide you today?

>> Yank: Well, I was fortunate to meet Agnes at a really young age.

I hadn't formalized my, mature work yet, and so I was kind of an open canvas for her, and she could see that.

And she liked my work.

She responded to my work and often she would give me prompts to, like, ask your mind, what is really, truly important for you to be doing in the world?

What is your message?

What matters?

And I think what I'm trying to do is even push the boundaries a little further and have absolutely pure emotional content.

[Orchestral music] And so mine are, you know, monochromatic for the most part, to really pare it down to pure emotion, I'm taking out color to really kind of challenge the viewer and say, wow.

And from from my experience watching people in the exhibition, they seem to be connecting with some of this emotional content that I'm trying to embed into these pieces.

>> Faith: In Abstracting Nature, how do you approach translating natural forms into geometric abstractions?

>> Yank: Well, I feel like the matrix is, another thing that Agnes and I talked about a lot is, you know, why she chose the six by six matrix that she worked in most of her adult life.

And so she really was all about that elusive surface and drawing the viewer into it.

And I kind of feel the same way.

And so I have a piece in the show that's called, acceptance.

So I'm breaking that square with the circle.

And I think the circle expands the matrix.

And then it helps with the metal work, because metal tends to be more object orientated and it has weight, it feels more like a sculpture, no matter if it's on the wall or not.

And so, a circle helps to expand it and open it.

And so I feel like the people can enter in.

I also love the circle just because of all of its, reference to what is natural in the world or in life cycles, time with, you know, a clock, the, planet itself that we live on that nurtures us and we take care of it.

And when I first came to New Mexico, I saw the horizon here.

That just changed my world, really, because I came from Wisconsin, where you don't get a lot of horizon.

You see a lot of rolling hills and trees and, and so here you see these wide open vistas and, and it moves something or it moves something in me at a young age.

And I started to really feel that global sense of that we're all on this planet together, and I'm trying to capture a feeling that I had my own emotion that is very happy and excited and energetic.

And so in the stainless bands, you see that very excited patterning.

And then in the opposite bands where it's darker, if you go up to it, there's a lot going on and it's it's just a little softer.

And so what I was trying to say is that when you have an emotion and you're trying to absorb that feeling, it varies, it changes.

And so I'm trying to capture that feeling.

[Orchestral music] >> Faith: The View was a very interesting piece too, what was the inspiration behind that one, and how does it interact with the landscape around it?

>> Yank: Yeah, the view is a really fun piece.

This one happens to have a circle in kind of a pedestal, and then it has a square cut out of it, and that square is The View.

So you're, I'm letting people that would purchase the piece pick what they think is important enough to, you know, signify the view.

It might be a flower, it might not it might be their front door.

You know, it just depends on the person.

When you first see my work, when you're coming down the hall to the show, it's very bold because it is monochromatic.

And so you see the the boldness of the pieces.

But you you're missing the whole picture if that's all you see.

So, you have to go up and spend time with the surfaces and get up close.

My work is oozing emotion, and every single surface you can see my hand in it you can see that I never do anything fast.

Every corner, every edge, everything has been tended to.

>> Faith: Why is it important for you to highlight the quieter moments in life, like you did in your piece yesterday and tomorrow?

>> Yank: When you're a young person in the world, you you live from one exciting moment to the next because everything's new and different.

But as you've aged, you start to settle into things and you really, really, feel their depth.

And so these quiet moments get overlooked.

And if we're hectic and our life is hectic and the news is polluting our brains, we miss these moments.

We just step right over them.

So, I think to highlight those and try to bring people back in.

In our society today, I think that work like mine is so important because it's giving people a break.

It's giving them an emotional break from all of the stress of our world.

>> Faith: So how has your understanding of abstraction evolved over the years from your early influences to now?

>> Yank: I always knew, like, emotion was my thing.

I felt that it was very important.

So then I had to kind of get away from representational because that drives the, the viewer too much.

And so I kept hearing it down.

Now, I would probably have a large circle on the wall, and I might say that's a self-portrait of me, but it'll just be my most intimate, you know, emotions in that matrix.

So I really just kept on this, train, so to speak, of paring down, paring down, eliminating anything that I didn't feel was essential.

That's the single most thing I can give to a young artist is telling them, you know, you have to really take the time to decide what it is you really have to say in the world.

You don't have to be a visual artist.

You don't have to even be a creative person.

It could just be your own life.

What you know to help you, to guide you on what you want to use with this one gift you have so, so it's a really good tool for for mental health, even, you know, to clear your mind and just really always remember at the core of yourself what's important and what you value.

You know, and good times and bad times will come and go.

The Ichthyosaur.

>> Wolfe: The Nevada museum of Art is the only accredited art museum in the state of Nevada.

And we also have a really unique focus.

We have a research center that's dedicated to art and environment.

A few years ago, we saw a major article in the New York Times about this huge ichthyosaur skull that had been excavated in the desert of Nevada.

And we soon realized the paleontologist behind that was Doctor Martin Sander from Bonn, Germany.

These special fossil finds from Nevada often get taken out of Nevada and housed elsewhere at museums in California and Utah, and we wanted to find a way to bring those back, bring them close to their point of origin, and to create an entire exhibition and an experience around this animal we know as the ichthyosaur.

>> Sander: What is an ichthyosaur?

The name means simply the fish lizard.

[Upbeat orchestral music] The ichthyosaurs of the Jurassic look very familiar to us.

They looked like a modified dolphin, but the ones from Nevada, from the Triassic period, is something that has evolved before in a group called Mosasaurus.

So it's really kind of a sea monster design.

It's a fierce head and then a very long body with four fins.

[Upbeat orchestral music] It's a long, thin snout, and there is an enormous eye that is nine inches in diameter.

So like this, a large eye will indicate one of two things or two things together, either high visual acuity or low light conditions.

For low light, you can do two things.

You can either be active at night or you can go deep into the ocean.

These giant eyes evolve very early on, and then they remain the hallmark of ichthyosaur evolution to the end of when they died out about 90 million years ago.

>> Wolfe: Doctor Martin Sander is a paleontologist who has been working here in Nevada for over 30 years.

He continues to return to Nevada because Nevada truly is one of the globe's epicenters for research when it comes to ichthyosaur fossils and paleontology.

>> Nik: Martin Sander has found 80% of all the icky fossils in Nevada over the period of the last 30 years.

>> Wolfe: In August of 2024, we convened a group of journalists and paired them with Doctor Martin Sander for a trip out to the Augusta mountains.

You really can't fathom the scale of the desert and the location where these fossils are found, until you see it in person.

>> Sander: From my personal experience, I have fun asking the people, do you know where the Augusta mountains are?

The Augusta mountains are a smal and extremely remote mountain range of Nevada, and to visualize the remoteness, basically, it's two hours east of Lovelock, two hours south of Winnemucca, and then it's three hours north west of Austin and three hours north east of Fallon.

If you look around, none of the mountains here is quite as rugged as this one.

The good news is that it gives us the steep slopes that will provide us with the fossils.

If we want to find fossils, we don't want to have grass growing on them.

We want to see the bare rock or the bare dirt.

The bad news is that we have to climb it or fly.

[Helicopter propellars spinning] [Upbeat music] Today we are in the far reaches.

Near the end of Favor canyon in the Augusta mountains.

And we are at an altitude of nearly 6000ft.

In a ichthyosaur quarry, the fossil that is largely taken out from here is a big ichthyosaur nicknamed Marten One.

For each of these fossils, of course, we keep a field log plus a photo album.

So you see how heavy these blocks are.

>> Probably like this, right?

>> Sander: Does it give you a fit?

I think it must be something like that.

>> Push it further.

>> Sander: Right.

Yeah, I think that's, looks pretty good.

Okay, so we'll leave it like this.

We left part of this in the field, which we knew, but we didn't know about that bone.

And sometimes it's really hard to see these bones because it was so dark.

And because some they're very black in the rock.

And when they're weather, then they become, their color becomes much more obvious.

We have some ribs that we had for sort of reflect the discovery situation.

>> Nik: I think one of the most important parts of the process of doing deep time was trekking out to the desert with Martin and his scientists, to the site where the specimens are still in the rock, and then spending the day there and coming back with a little tiny rock, and then coming back the 3.5 hours down the mountains again to the base camp.

So this is really skin in the game.

And I think it's not convenient.

It's inconvenient.

But that really gives you almost like a physical, appreciation for what you're actually dealing with.

[Uplifting music] >> Sander: These fossils from the Nevada desert became evermore important.

And then eventually, the idea grew that we should display them to the public and in particular to the people of Nevada.

And this then came to pass and the cooperation between the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles and the Nevada museum of Art.

[Magical music] >> Wolfe: Deep Time Sea Dragons of Nevada is a major exhibition in our 10,000ft' of galleries.

When we started putting this exhibition together, we knew that it had to be something special because it was going to be in an art museum.

And so we invited Nik Hafermaas to collaborate on the design so that it would take us beyond a traditional natural history museum exhibition.

>> Nik: I grew up in Germany's probably most boring city called Kassel which would turn every five years into Germany's most exciting city because its home of Documenta is one of the biggest international art fairs, contemporary art, big installations and it would transform the whole place for 100 days.

And for me as a child, it was so fascinating because, of course, you know, from this perspective everything is much bigger and you don't ask why something is.

You just take it and then you're just fascinated in wonderment.

Recreating this kind of wonderment and fascination.

That's my driver for designing exhibitions.

I'm most interested in how the digital finds its way into the physical, and how the physical finds its way back into the digital and trying to find, capture the essence of the digital and bring it back into the space and make it tangible.

And to somehow relate to our human scale and our human sophistication as people who have so many different senses at the same time.

That's something that I'm really passionate about.

>> Wolfe: We titled the exhibition Deep Time because we are asking our visitors to look back in time 250 million years.

This was a time when Nevada was completely submerged beneath the waters of an ancient ocean.

Deep Time Sea Dragons of Nevada is an exploration on scale, I would say it's an exploration of physical scale.

And for me, even more importantly, as in the title, it's an exploration of time scale in relationship to our own time scale as human beings.

We're talking about 250 million years.

So for me to imagine a thousand years, a 10,000 years, 100,000 years, a million years, 10 million years, and so on and so on.

It is so abstract.

We're so caught up in our daily lives and our very narrow view of the world, that we sometimes miss the big picture.

And Deep Time is about the big picture, >> Sander: Deep Time Sea Dragons of Nevada looks at these fossils from both a scientific and an art perspective.

We have historical organization of the ichthyosaur finds, starting with the oldest finds by miners and by the King survey in the 1860s.

And then we have three big bays, the first one being the work of John C Merriam and Annie Alexander in the Humboldt Range, mainly in a 1905 expedition.

Then we have the 50s and 60s work at Berlin Ichthyosaurs State Park by Charles Camp as the second bay, and then the third bay, is the work of my team in the Augusta mountains since 1991.

[Curious music] The whole process of ichthyosaur collection is embodied by this place here.

Berlin Ichthyosaur State Park.

Charles Camp, professor of vertebrate paleontology, came to this place on a tip by a lady from Fallon on reporting ichthyosaurs, and then he spent probably about six field seasons out of this place here, excavating ichthyosaur fossils.

[Curious music] We are here at the fossil shelter at Berlin Ichthyosaur State Park, and its general purpose is to preserve some of the ichthyosaur fossils in place.

We have ichthyosaur bones in the ground.

The most recent analysis found that we're probably looking at seven skeletons.

So we have ribs here.

I mean, there is a rib cage here and there also some ribs here.

The upper arm bones of these ichthyosaurs are just very short and stout.

This here is the shoulder girdle.

So here basically what we have here.

So then this is one of the upper arm bones.

This is the other upper arm bone.

Why is this place important?

Because when Camp started here in the 1950s then he recognized these are very large.

And that was the first glimpse where it became really clear, Triassic ichthyosaurs are much bigger than the Jurassic ones.

Nevada is sort of my second home, because I've never tallied up how many weeks or months in the end, I have spent out in the Agusta mountains in our camp, and I've also learned to love the people of Nevada.

And I'm super happy now that the first time, really, the people on a large scale get to see what is found in this state.

[Curious music] >> Wolfe: When you encounter this exhibition, you'll not only encounter original fossils, spectacular fossils that have never been seen before, but you might turn the corner and encounter a historical painting, and then you might see a large scale digital immersive installation by a contemporary artist that really brings these animals to life.

[Soft guitar playing] >> Walker: Such joy to be here today and what an effort to put all this together.

I am David Walker, I'm the CEO of the Nevada Museum of Art, and we expect a huge turnout from the region, but also from around the globe for this exhibition.

>> Wolfe: There's absolutely something for everyone in this exhibition, whether you're a lover of geology, whether you have an interest in paleontology, whether you love art and history.

But I think what's also fascinating is that we really delve into the popularity of the ichthyosaur in our collective imaginations.

>> Sander: If you ask me, what is the most favorite part for this exhibition, for me personally, is I get to see a reunion of the fossils that I've collected over the 30 years in one place.

>> Wolfe: Nevada has an amazing community of very active paleontologists, as well as museums that are dedicated to telling all of these different stories related to the ichthyosaur.

However, I think this is really the first major exhibition that brings all of those voices together.

So we've been fortunate to work with partners across museums in different fields to really celebrate this beloved state fossil that we all know as the ichthyosaur.

The award winning arts and culture series Colores is now available on the PBS app, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and at nmpbs.org.

From classic episodes to brand new shows, Colores is everywhere.

Watch now on your favorite NMPBS platforms Funding for Colores was provided in part by New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts and Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation.

New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

And viewers like you.