Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & 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.

THE HEARD MUSEUM'S MARIA & MODERNISM EXHIBITION EXPLORES HOW MARIA MARTINEZ REINVENTED AND REINVIGORATED PUEBLO POTTERY MAKING, BOLDLY TRANSFORMING THE ART FORM.

STEPHEN MARDER ESTABLISHED ORZO STUDIOS, TO EDUCATE STUDENTS ON THE BOUNDLESS POSSIBILITIES OF CLAY.

CONNECTING TO THE HUMAN SOUL, SCULPTOR NATALIE PLASENCIA BRINGS SPIRITUALITY TO LIFE.

FACED WITH UNLIMITED POSSIBILITIES, BOOK ARTIST GENE EPSTEIN TRANSFORMS DISCARDED BOOKS.

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES MARIA AND MODERNISM >> Faith Perez: The Maria and Modernism exhibit at the Heard Museum in Phoenix brings new light to Maria Martinez's role in American Modernism through her celebrated pottery.

So, to start I wanted to know, why do you consider Maria a modernist?

>> Roshii Montano: Her artwork, specifically works in Blackware and Black-on-black, are just incredibly innovative and experimental and modern.

Her lustrous pottery is really a reflection of the period, and that's why I would consider her an American Modernist.

>> Faith Perez: How does this exhibit challenge traditional narratives about American Indian artists and their contributions to major art movements?

>> Roshii Montano: Native American artists in American Modernism and other Western artistic movements, they haven't been considered in the art historical cannon or, um, in museum studies, prominently just because there are stereotypes related to Native American art.

And this exhibition, and among other significant exhibitions happening within this lens, challenges the visitor to think about Maria Martinez in a different perspective that gives context to the changing social and cultural environment in the United States, and frames Maria as a cultural innovator and an artist of that movement, who was making the same um, artistic challenges as any other American Artist during that period.

>> Faith Perez: So how does the exhibit draw parallels between Maria's pottery designs and other elements of Modernist designs, like such as architecture and industrial design?

So, kind of getting more into like, the inspiration behind Maria's work.

>> Roshii Montano: So we have um, examples of Streamline Design, Art Deco design.

Thinking about these architectural motifs that Maria was experiencing and looking at during her travels to Chicago, New York, San Diego.

It's very apparent that those aspects of art and architecture and culture are expressed in her vessels themselves.

>> Faith Perez: What's your favorite piece?

>> Roshii Montano: I was always so taken by uh, Maria's collaborations with her son, Popovi.

They have accomplished a gunmetal finish that is unlike anything that I've ever seen before.

And their work in firing and thinking about how to create a specific finish, like the gunmetal on the jar, which is just like, it's almost like a mirrored surface.

And I think that range of, work between Maria and her son is just really incredible.

>> Faith Perez: How did those collaborative dynamics with you know, her husband and her family and her community, contribute to the evolution of the pottery?

>> Roshii: Yeah.

I would say that it's um, their Tewa values.

Maria, while she's definitely considered the focus of the exhibition, we acknowledge all of the collaborative effort it takes to create a vessel.

When it comes to getting clay from the earth and processing it um, and then Maria working in collaboration with her husband and her family, uh, Popovi, Adam, Santana, those members of her family are essential to the process.

It really does take a community to um, create.

And I don't think some of those aspects are acknowledged when talking about Maria and her artwork just because, because, I think that there's this mentality in Western Art that it's all about the individual.

And so with Maria, family was and is incredibly important.

It's really important to us that uh, we acknowledge Maria's practice within American Modernism, um, acknowledge her as an incredible businesswoman.

Um, but that doesn't mean that her values as a Tewa woman wasn't important to her.

And to really reflect on the vast legacy of her work just as Maria.

HANDS ON DISCOVERY Stephen Marder: When I had clay in my hands, it just felt right.

It felt like there was a good connection with the vocabulary of that material.

I've always done drawing and painting, printmaking, but I think that when I worked with clay, a material that records motion, and every movement that you make, it had more possibilities.

I was in the sixth grade.

This teacher had a potter's wheel in the classroom.

I started staying after school trying to make pottery on the potter's wheel.

And he looked at these weird, ugly pieces that I was making and said to me, you need to know about Peter Voulkos.

By the time I was 17 years old, 18 years old, I stumble across this advertisement.

It says Peter Voulkos, new work, Chicago Perimeter Gallery.

I realized that this guy that Robert Davis had told me about and suggested that I look up was still alive and making work.

I think one day I just sort of gathered the nerve and called information on the telephone in Oakland, California.

I asked for his number.

They gave it to me, and I called him just sort of out of the blue.

I think he probably thought it was entertaining and thought it was kind of a curious phone call to get in the middle of the afternoon.

That's how I got my sort of internship apprenticeship at the Callas Voulkos studio.

I started this studio in my garage, at my home studio.

I got enough students to the point where we were a little pressed for space, so I leased a small building that's a few doors down from where we are now.

This is the third building.

And so, Orzo Studios existed almost five years now.

The idea behind it was to have a studio in a facility where artists could work that was outside of a university environment that had the same access and the same information.

Clay is a very expensive habit.

You're moving around heavy stuff that doesn't have much value itself per pound, so you almost pay in shipping what the, the material itself is worth.

To me, that's an expensive footprint.

There's a cost not just to yourself, but to others and the environment.

I think people are becoming more conscious of that.

People are moving back toward natural occurring clays and beginning to look again at all of the positive attributes those materials have, rather than looking at the impurities and the quirks that it may have as a negative thing.

I'm actively looking for local, natural occurring supplies of clay.

There is a lot of usable material here.

This clay was dug up by a friend of mine.

This came from Currituck.

And these are samples that are fairly typical that you would fire in a kiln that would measure the different properties of the clay, shrinkage, slumping, maybe later on we would put some glaze on these.

This clay here came out of the ground here in Portsmouth.

It still has all the impurities.

You could see veins of iron.

There's tree roots in it.

All kinds of stuff.

This is naturally occurring material and I'll melt this down in water, run it through a screen, and make similar tiles with this material to test its properties.

The consistency in the regularity of the results that come out of electric and gas kilns are very attractive to students and it makes them feel very comforted and warm.

But after you do that type of work for a while, you get a bit thirsty for the others.

That's wood firing.

These pieces have no glaze applied to them.

All of the glass and the patina and the shininess and the roughness, that's all been deposited on the piece from the firing.

Wood ash got into a really high temperature and then melted down and become glass and permanent on the piece.

When people started going in the direction of fossil fuels, just like most other things that are newly invented, it's viewed as a shortcut or a quicker, cheaper way to get to the same place.

But every ceramic technique that people use, glazes, clay, surface and color, are to emulate wood firing, to copy or make facsimile of a look or a finish or a technique that was done with wood firing.

Having done this for so long, the planning aspect and the preparation happens very easily for me.

So, I can conceive of work and execute that plan pretty much as I pictured it.

But that doesn't really do anything for me personally as an artist.

I often abandon plans and procedures.

I will have an idea and a basis to start something because I guess you always need an excuse to start something.

But once the project is engaged and I start working with the clay, tangents, something I may have seen in the news that day, some person that I saw walking down the sidewalk, I try not to ignore it.

I try to at least look at it and pursue it a little to see if it can add a dimension to the work that I hadn't seen in the beginning.

I try not to let the, the firing and the clay formulation and the glaze formulation and all the procedures and the techniques block that fundamental creativity and flexibility.

I've been doing this since I was 11 years old.

What I think keeps me in it is sort of the knowledge of what I don't know that how much is out there that I haven't seen yet or haven't tried.

There is so many possibilities with temperature, types of clay, where you get the clay from, that changes the variables and what you're doing and there's an infinite number of approaches.

Despite its long history, there's still so much that is new that has not been tried and that, that is amazing.

A lot of the other mediums seem to be closing and funneling in.

In clay, just, it continues to expand.

SOUL SEARCHING The inspiration can be overwhelming sometimes.

I don't know if that makes any sense.

Sometimes I could be so overwhelmed by a desire to create something that it's like I need to take a break.

I need it to settle in.

I go for a session of wing foiling.

I come back home and and I, and I can think clearer.

It almost like cleanses me.

You know, any bad negative feeling?

The wing foiling just breaks it apart.

My name is Natalie Plasencia, and I'm a sculptor.

It happens to me every time.

Whether it's a drawing, whether it's clay, whether it's bronze.

It's like I'm faced with a soul.

And I have to acknowledge the fact that I'm attempting to do this.

It really, truly is.

I feel like an interaction between the medium and myself, and it blows my mind every time.

Every time I see that moment when the spirit is in that person.

It's almost like I've been waiting for you and you've been waiting for me.

The most basic human desire, I think, is to make a connection.

We're social beings, so it happens.

I just have to be patient.

Sometimes it doesn't happen for months.

Fully dedicating all my efforts and my mind to my art, I really started taking myself seriously in 2013, which is when I left social work and I started going into my art.

I always try to lasso my ideas and concepts back to the idea of what is the viewer getting from this.

And so, my figures will have some anguish, some sadness.

But the idea is the hope that you need to have to be able to get you through that hardship, whether it's human rights, whether it's domestic violence, whether it's immigration, we're all in that journey.

Right now, I'm currently working on a piece that has a female figure and a boat and a sail, so it's very exciting.

It also is site specific.

She's going to be very powerful.

We have a combination of bronze, possibly aluminum, some stainless steel.

There's definitely going to be decorative concrete on the floor, some possible brass in the concrete.

And so, she's going to be leading the way.

That's her job, with very feminine power, but power.

I still can't get to where I want her hands.

So, the hands are going to have a lot to say.

My deepest desire is to treat others with dignity.

And so, I try to go that same route with my art pieces, whereas I want the viewer to feel compelled to sit with it, even if it's a difficult subject matter.

But also, I want the child to be able to relate to the dog like Tobaco in a tender way.

Every piece gets me so excited.

I think I'm like a little kid all over again because it's like all these wonderful things are going to happen and I get to watch it.

OLD BOOK, NEW LOOK Gene Epstein has been altering books for nearly 20 years, cutting through the pages, and folding them into unique shapes and designs.

"My method of working is I don't preplan anything.

I try to ask myself a question, what would happen if I tried thus and so, what would happen if I folded the books in a certain way, if I made a cut and made two folds in the book."

She says she first began altering books when a friend offered her and several others some old books a local library no longer needed.

They found new life for those books as art.

"The group of us met every month, and we still do, this is like 17, 18 years later, we still meet every month and do something with books and make art out of them."

Epstein has created pieces that hang on walls as well as sculptures and works you page through.

"Mostly when I'm doing an altered book these days, I'm using a knife.

Mm hmm.

And sometimes I use a straight edge or a ruler, and often I use a bone folder to make the creases.

But often I just use my hands for that.

So those are my main tools.

Knife is the main tool, and I go through a lot of blades.

While this rendering of Mother Earth is intentional, many of her carvings are spontaneous.

She's currently working on a series using travel books with colorful photo spreads.

"I cut out parts of the pictures and then layer down to other pictures and other pictures in the book and get a palette of color coming through and use the shapes that are in the in the pictures themselves as a starting point.

The daughter of two artists, Epstein received her master's in Fine Arts from Kent State University.

She's has worked in a variety of mediums throughout her life and in addition to altering books into works of art she also creates art books.

"The difference between book art and other forms of visual art is that you have the ability to make a sequence of things.

It's not just something that you either look at on a wall necessarily, although it could be or walk around it.

It's something that you experience in time.

There's an element of time in it as you if it's got pages that you turn, you're turning pages and getting an experience over, over a period of time."

As a member of another group, Art Books Cleveland, Epstein says she develops new ideas, often around a theme the group explores together.

"And people think artists are - they can do anything they want.

They have this expansive list of possibilities.

But when you have an unlimited amount of possibilities, it's very hard to do anything.

You know, where do I start?

So, having a focus like, like a topic to work toward is really helpful."

Her book art includes different ABC books, including one about books, weaving in some of her background in binding, which she also does professionally.

"I came across some wood veneer in a I think it was a furniture store we were in or a hardware store.

I think it was a furniture store.

And I thought, wow, you could make book pages out of this.

So that was the impetus for that.

And then I thought, well, I'll just put the letter, you know, cut out the big letter and then do something related to books or paper.

As for each letter.

Each of the letters has its own little explanation of- And in bookbinding, when you have the gold letters on the spine that's done with gold foil and the hot stamp press."

Whether creating new books or designing something new from old books, she compares her process to music improvisation (as she also plays jazz).

"I get surprised all the time.

and that's the fun of it.

I think if there weren't those surprises, if it were, you know, I'm going to do a book, and this is what it's going to look like at the end.

And then I just go and do the steps that I would get bored real quick with that and I would lose interest."

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Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & 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.