Desert Dreamer by Suzanne Wallace Mears at Pippin Contemporary

Desert Dreamer, Suzanne Wallace Mears, SOLD

Emotional Expressions in Color opens this July as a powerful display of emotive energy, from meditative abstraction to whimsical realism. Suzanne Wallace Mears is the only sculptor in the exhibition of four artists; her work plays an important role in breaking the show’s two dimensional boundary with a striking display of sculptural luminosity. Stephanie Page‘s soothing yet vivid color palette, Liz Barber‘s joyous abstraction and Elizabeth Hahn‘s vibrant patterns are each physically embodied in Mears’ tabletop vessels and totems, which are infused with the spirited personality of the Oklahoma City artist.

“My totems are flamboyant, whimsically named and conjure up pure fun,” says Mears, who approaches her work in an abstract manner but with a specific theme and color palette in mind. Each piece takes on its own eccentric persona from the artist’s imbued energy, from the whimsical “Alligator Swag” and “Awesome Frank” to the mystical “Desert Dreamer” and “Spirit Memories.” Below are some of the artist’s personal contemplations on her latest work.

“Rain Dance represents how it feels to play out in the pouring rain, while Little Reef Knight is that little elusive reef fish peering out from a hiding place in the coral. The Vegetarian with rust, green and a topknot of handout plasma cut steel seems like it could be a culinary delight. Alligator Swag is a cocky alligator dressed up for a night in the glades, and Amber Waves is about the wheat fields and blue skies, lazy days and easy thoughts.”


Mears cuts flat sheets of glass and layers them to fire flat in her kiln, incorporating embellishments such as copper, wire and dichroic glass into their shapes. Multiple firings at anywhere from 1200 to 1500 degrees are often required for the artist’s desired effect, with pieces remaining in the kiln for days at a time. “It’s a delightful, challenging dance,” says Mears of her process.

Vibrant, luminous color is the driving force of inspiration for Mears and is the common thread that connects the four artists represented in Emotional Expressions in Color. Learn more about the exhibition here, which opens Friday, July 7th from 5-7pm. Browse Mears’ full inventory on her artist page of our website.

Suzanne Wallace Mears Pippin Contemporary Artist

See Exhibition Catalogue.

Aleta Pippin in her studioMeeting in the Middle. This is the title of Aleta Pippin and Greg Reiche’s first collaborative piece, which now hangs in a corporate office building in Houston, Texas. Spanning over 12 feet long and reaching over 3 feet high, this monumental work merges Aleta’s acrylic and resin abstract panels with Greg’s kinetic glass and steel grids. Aleta and Greg have been showing their work alongside each other at Pippin Contemporary for three years, but the idea to create a piece together didn’t transpire until about six months ago.

Greg Reiche assembling sculptureA group of attorney’s in Houston, who have collected 26 of Aleta’s paintings so far, contacted Aleta last November to request a very large piece for their conference room.

“I wanted to give them something extraordinary,” said Aleta. “I felt that individual panels was the way to go, but it seemed that making three or five individual painted panels simply wasn’t as dramatic as it could be.”

Then something clicked, and that’s where Greg came in.

“I have to admit, I was surprised when Aleta asked if I would like to collaborate on this piece,” explains Greg. “I have great admiration for her work and was quite flattered by the request, but was also a bit skeptical at first as to whether it would work well.”

They decided early on that Aleta would create the painting first, and Greg would respond. Aleta painted five panels with acrylic paint and a resin surface. The piece then went to Greg’s studio, where he worked from her color palette. The piece was completed within two months…and the results were nothing short of spectacular.

Golds, blues, purples and subtle reds in Aleta’s panels blend together among interesting textures, and the resin finish adds a luminosity to the piece that lends itself well to the effects of Greg’s iridized glass tiles. The tiles perfectly pick up the gold and purple hues, and the three dimensionality of the steel grid adds a dynamic contrast to the surface of the piece. Just as in his own sculptures, Greg uses brass wire to attach each glass tile to the steel, adding another texture and glint of gold to the overall composition.

Meeting in the Middle, Pippin-Reiche Collaboration

Meeting in the Middle (3), Pippin Reiche collaboration

Meeting in the Middle, video of Pippin-Reiche collaboration

Meeting in the Middle, Pippin Reiche Collaboration

Although unsure at first, Greg was amazed at the outcome.

“In the end, I think it worked beautifully,” says Greg. “The combination of her luminous, organic paintings with the linear grid structure and iridized surfaces of my glass work, worked surprisingly well. I love the way the diverse mediums play so well off each other and the incredible depth of color and luminosity of the entire piece.”

Aleta concedes. “I’m thrilled that Greg agreed to do this. Personally, I’m so excited about how beautifully it turned out and it is such a unique piece that I can see it becoming an important part of Greg’s and my work. It gives each of us the opportunity to reach a market that we weren’t as able to access on our own.”

Soliloquy - Pippin-Reiche Collaboration

Soliloquy, Pippin-Reiche Collaboration, 54 x 47 x 3″, $13,500

The artists were so enthusiastic that they immediately started a second collaborative piece, Soliloquy, to hang in the gallery. This work is a bit smaller in size, 54 x 47”, but creates a similar impact with glass and steel grids moving along both sides of a vertical acrylic/resin panel, which glows with purple hues and tangible texture.

“All in all, I would say it was a fantastic match and I can see the potential for some amazing collaborations in the future as we work together to push the boundaries even further.” (Greg Reiche)

Are you interested in a collaborative piece by Aleta and Greg for your home or office? Call the gallery at 505-795-7476 or email pippincontemporary@gmail.com to discuss and personalize a dynamic piece of original art.

Art openings, summer days, artists studios, and more…enjoy this week in photos and follow us on Instagram @PippinContemporary for more Pippin Pics.

The Art and Soul of Color at Pippin Contemporary

Santa Fe’s Summer of Color is off to a great start! The Art and Soul of Color opened last Friday evening at the gallery with a great reception for Suzanne Wallace Mears and Stephanie Paige. Come experience this ethereal exhibition of light and color through July 1st.

Pippin Contemporary courtyard

The view from our front porch on a beautiful Santa Fe summer day.

Michael Ethridge studio

Michael Monroe Ethridge’s art studio in Naples, Florida. Michael has been busy in this creative space preparing for his show, The Art of Emotion, opening next weekend! Don’t miss the reception on July 3rd, 5-7pm, and see Michael paint in front of the gallery for the duration of the exhibit.

A public sculpture dedication, new paintings, and excitement for our upcoming show this month..Check out our week in photos and follow us on Instagram for more Pippin Pics @PippinContemporary.

Aleta Pippin art at Pippin Contemporary

Aleta Pippin brought in several new paintings from her studio that we hung in the gallery. This piece is called Celebrate Color, a 60″ x 36″ oil/canvas. Come visit the gallery to see Aleta’s other new pieces!

Greg Reiche Public Sculpture

We spent Earth Day in Los Alamos for the grand opening of the new Nature Center where Greg Reiche’s sculpture was dedicated. The rain runoff from the roof cascades onto the stone, then goes into a reservoir that waters surrounding plants, while kinetic glass above it changes with light and air movement. A stunning sculpture and a beautiful Earth Day dedication ceremony. Watch this video of Greg sharing his inspiration for the piece.

Greg Reiche Blog

Greg Reiche’s Los Alamos sculpture was a site-specific commission, something that Greg does often for private and public clients. As part of our Contemporary Collector blog series, we talked to Greg about creating site-specific sculpture and how the commission process works. Read about it here.

Desert Rain by Cody Hooper at Pippin Contemporary

We love Cody Hooper’s artistic depiction of the “Desert Rain” we had this week. We’ve been sharing some paintings on Instagram from our artists that aren’t always hanging in the gallery or not yet added to the website..follow us @PippinContemporary for more “first look” opportunities.

Pippin Contemporary in Santa Fe New Mexico

We’re ready for Santa Fe summer – less than three weeks until our first show and then the Summer of Color begins! We’re extending our hours on Friday evenings and preparing for summer exhibitions, so check our events page for a full exhibition schedule.

This week at the gallery we’ve been rearranging sculpture, sending art to Australia, visiting local artist studios, and more. Check out our week in photos and follow us on Instagram @PippinContemporary for more behind-the-scenes gallery photos and previews of new work.

Tony Griffith Gallery Photo at Pippin Contemporary

A family visiting from Australia stopped to take a closer look at Tony Griffith’s resin paintings. They fell in love with the beautiful orange diptych and we sent it to Sydney! View more of Tony’s work.

Aleta Pippin's Santa Fe Studio

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” – Pablo Picasso.
We paid a visit to the place where inspiration finds Aleta Pippin hard at work on a daily basis. Vibrant color and energetic paint splatters means new work is coming soon! Learn more about her Santa Fe studio space.

Pippin Contemporary at 200 Canyon Road

A sunny spring day inspired us to do some rearranging in our courtyard. Troy Pillow’s Re-Emergence moves with the wind in front of the gallery. More work from Troy is coming soon!

Detail of Allegro by Michael Monroe Ethridge at Pippin Contemporary

Did you know that Saturday, April 11th was Slow Art Day? Museum and gallery visitors around the world were encouraged to slow down and take a longer look at an intriguing work of art. After taking a closer look at Michael Monroe Ethridge’s Allegrowe noticed vivid color and texture we’d never seen before.

Pose by Troy Pillow in a Collector's Home

“We both fell in love with the clean lines of the sculpture, but when we got home we struggled with where we would place it to showcase it’s beauty. I think we found the perfect place, as you can see…”
Remember the sale of Troy Pillow’s Pose in the last edition of Pippin Pics? It has made two Colorado collectors very happy and looks beautiful in their home. If you have photos of Pippin Contemporary art displayed in your home or office, we’d love to see them! Send us your Pippin Pics at pippincontemporary@gmail.com.

by Alan Bamberger, ArtBusiness.com – The purpose of following list is to help increase the overall understanding of collectors (and anyone who buys art) about how the art world works, how art is viewed in terms of value, how to approach and interact with galleries and others who sell art, how to optimize transactions involving art, and most importantly, to clarify that there are many reasons to own original art other than simply financial ones. The better you comprehend the art world’s ways, the more rewarding your collecting experience will be.

***

Misconception: Art gallery owners live lives of unlimited fun and partying, and hardly ever work.

Reality: People are often attracted to the art world based on fantasies like these, experiencing only the pristine calm and refinement of gallery settings or festive art parties and show openings when in fact, selling art is a business like any other, and in many ways, a more difficult business than most. Why? Because selling a commodity that serves no practical purpose, has no quantifiable tangible value, and that no one really needs in order to survive is challenging to say the least. Owning art has numerous benefits, of course, but they’re not necessarily obvious or easy to explain.

Read more…

Riverbank acrylic/canvas 48x48" $5900

Riverbank
acrylic/canvas
48×48″
$5900

(by Eve Tolpa for the Santa Fean magazine, April/May 2014, reprinted with permission of Bruce Adams)

 

Canyonroad

It’s Finally Here – Our Move to Canyon Road

Pippin Contemporary On Canyon RoadHere at Pippin Contemporary, we are ecstatic to announce our move to Canyon Road! We are working diligently to prepare for all the changes our new space will bring. Canyon Road is an internationally known art district; in fact what once began as a rural neighborhood of small farms has become an art Mecca. People travel from all over the world to see The Road’s first-class art offerings, and we are thrilled to soon be in the thick of it all.

The Evolution of The Road and Where We Fit in

The buildings that pepper Canyon Road were built in the Pueblo Revival style, designed to be compounds for multi-generational families, and the oldest of the structures were built as early as the 1750s. Our building has the warm welcoming appeal of a home with historic charm fit for displaying vibrant pieces of art. The uniquely southwestern architectural elements drew us in and we immediately envisioned art filling up the thick walls. We are thrilled to know the beautiful wooden floors will soon be filled with the footsteps of visitors from all walks of life seeking an experience that only Pippin Contemporary can offer.

Growing a Garden of Movement and Form

One of the things we’re most looking forward to is displaying our sculpture garden. It will be a stunningly bold contrast to the surrounding adobe. Our outdoor space will be filled with the progressive works of four brilliant sculptors: Greg Reiche, Nic Noblique, Jim LaPaso and Troy Pillow. From the intricacies of mechanics to the notion of aesthetic movement and emotion, each sculptor brings a niche take on sculpture as an art form.

You’re Invited to the Party of the Season

Our relocation party will not only be a celebration of where we’ve been and what lies ahead, but it will also be an evening featuring extraordinary art. You’ll have the opportunity to see the spirited abstracts of Eva Carter, the expressionistic and contemporary works of Jeff Schaller and much more. We are so looking forward to celebrating our relocation and second anniversary party with you on Friday, May 24, 2013 from 5-7:00PM at our new location on the corner of Canyon Road and Paseo de Peralta.

 

New location, three new sculptors

Whether they’re swirling paint across a canvas or traveling the world searching for inspiration, the artists of Pippin Contemporary are quite a vigorous bunch. Our latest move is a literal leap across town: we’re relocating our gallery to 200 Canyon Road in early May. The new space has more elbow room both inside and out, and we’re wasting no time in growing our stable to fill it. We’re proud to introduce four sculptors who share our passion for motion, and whose dynamic works will greet every visitor who strolls through our sculpture garden. Meet Nic Noblique, Greg Reiche and Troy Pillow:

 

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Nic Noblique

Nic Noblique may be in his 30s, but the Clyde, Texas sculptor is in the midst of his second successful career. By his early 20s, he’d already owned and operated skate and snowboarding retail shops across the country, placed in the first-ever X Games for snowboarding, and designed indoor and outdoor skate and snow parks and an innovative center point concave skateboard. When he left for the world of fine art, he set out on a mission that was just as radical.

“It’s not about making a political statement or regurgitating a bygone aesthetic or art movement,” he says. “My art is about form, lines and movement from the depths of my imagination that engage the environment in an organic way.”

Nic flattens heavy salvaged steel with tools he designed himself and twists them into elegant shapes that look like ramps for zero gravity skateboards. “I want my sculpture to play a visual trick, a balancing act, and contradict the very nature of the material I use to produce it,” he says.

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Greg Reiche

Greg Reiche grew up in Socorro, New Mexico and now lives in Santa Fe. He started selling handmade jewelry and furniture at 16 and ran his own tax business after college. Art kept calling him back, so he combined his business skills and his love of sculpture in an Albuquerque gallery venture. That’s where he met his wife, who applied for a job at the gallery. After 14 years of bouncing between mediums to pay the bills, Greg sold the gallery to focus on sculpture in 1997. The results have been quite literally monumental.

Greg has won public art commissions in New Mexico and beyond, building sculptures as tall as 35 feet that weigh thousands of pounds. Using stone, metal and glass, he constructs enormous wedges, arcs, circles and portals that interact with their surroundings in spectacular ways. A project he did for a ski resort in Colorado includes a gate that changes color with the temperature, shifting as the seasons change.

The sculptures on show at Pippin Contemporary’s new location won’t be quite as large, but they’ll incorporate the same elements as his monumental works. “Beautiful, timeless and elemental, these forms are basic building blocks of our collective visual language,” Greg says. “I am drawn to them for their deep, innate emotional resonance.”

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Troy Pillow

Seattle-based sculptor Troy Pillow has owned and operated his own sculpture studio since 1995. He studied architectural engineering at the University of Colorado, a background that’s easily traced in the graceful lines of his precisely balanced, often asymmetrical forms.

“I incorporate metals and glass into my sculptures—materials taken from the earth—and refine them into elegant curves, giving the feeling of movement in their static rest,” Troy says. The sculptor resolutely deconstructs and abstracts, creating objects with a powerful gestalt and a strong modernist aesthetic.

Many of Troy’s sculptures incorporate kinetic factors that move with every slight shift in the wind. “My pieces create a union of ease between modern design and nature, blending fluidly with their environment and the elements,” he says.

You can experience all of our artists’ work at our new location in early May, and follow every step of the move on our Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest accounts. Don’t blink! At Pippin Contemporary, things are always moving fast.

Pippin Contemporary Throws a Beautiful Feast

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When art lovers and foodies come together, you know it’s going to be a good party. Not that those two groups are mutually exclusive. At last Friday’s Edible Art Tour, hundreds of visitors feasted their eyes on our artists’ delicious palettes and entertained their palates with the colorful flavors of the Jambo Cafe. It was truly a delight for the senses.

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The Edible Art Tour (EAT) pairs 35 Santa Fe galleries and restaurants for a night of feasting and art watching. It’s the most popular event of ARTfeast weekend, a fundraiser for ARTsmart. The nonprofit gives local kids opportunities to connect with visual arts through donations of art supplies and education efforts. For this year’s EAT, we teamed up with acclaimed African eatery Jambo to offer a sweet taste of lamb stew and spicy shots of chai.

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While our visiting culinary artists from Jambo dished out the delicacies, Aleta chatted with visitors about art, food and everything in between.

Click here to see all of our pictures from the Edible Art Tour! For more news from Pippin Contemporary, check out our Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest feeds. If you missed this feast, we’ll make sure you know about the next one!