Tag: 516 Arts

Students collaborate in art exhibition

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By Nick Stern, Managing Editor | Photos by Nick Stern

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CNM students were proud to be a part of 516 ARTS’ Heart of the City Art Exhibition on 516 Central Avenue SW, from February 1 at 6 p.m. until May 3 from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m., Art History major, Patricia Del Rio Jaen said.

Jaen said the same CNM art class that cre­ated the Signs of the Times mural was led by Instructor Larry Bob Phillips which the class also had an exhibit in the show, which was called Signs of Life.

Heart of the City con­sisted of a series of col­laborations, which all explored the city environ­ment through many differ­ent projects including art, urban planning, cultural and economic development, education, and community dialogue, said Executive Director of 516 ARTS, Suzanne Sbarge, who was also the project director of this collaboration.

There were thir­teen different organiza­tions involved with the collaboration, including CNM, and some of which were Ace Barbershop, Warehouse 508, and Amy Biehl High School, accord­ing to the program guide for the exhibition.

Jaen said the project CNM students had cre­ated was made up of over a dozen different signs that the students picked out, designed, and painted themselves.

Phillips’ class stuck to the traditional style of the Route 66 era sign painting that they had used for the mural they created down­town as part of the same Heart of the City collabora­tion called Signs of the Times, Jaen said.

“For the style, we tried to stick to the classic sign paint­ing style so everything is very crisp and it is very traditional,” she said.

Jaen said that it seems everyone had a great time as the art space was packed for most of the night, and that it is good that the school partners up with projects such as this for students to learn outside the classroom.

Jaen said she is very proud of the work that her class created and that CNM should be very proud of it as well.

Sbarge said the idea for Heart of the City came from a longing to exam­ine and analyze what was all around the people of Albuquerque, which could be interpreted differently by people, and making the focus of this project on Albuquerque culture and history based out of the Downtown area.

“The idea for Heart of the City emerged out of our desire to examine what is literally right outside our front doors,” she said.

CNM participation in the collaborations is very impres­sive because not only was their art next to other professional artists’ work but their Signs of the Times mural is also always going to be in public for the entire city of Albuquerque to look at, she said.

Jesse Philips, who has a bachelor’s in illustration, played a big part in designing both projects that CNM stu­dents worked on and he had a lot of fun doing it, he said.

Philips said he is good friends with Instructor Phillips and the two have worked on many projects together, he said.

Philips said he has always been inspired by the Route 66 era signage that has a big part in Albuquerque’s history and culture, who also believes that it is a lost art that has pretty much been replaced by canned signs that are a dime a dozen that require no skill to make, and he was happy to help pre­serve a little bit of the style.

“I think it is good that they are preserving stuff, like when hotels get torn down they keep the sign up because it is a symbol of our history,” he said.

Philips said he had a great time at the exhibition, as well as having a chance to work with the students of CNM on an outside project.

He had a lot of fun work­ing with them and was very impressed by their drive to get the project done.

Jaen said, the students had already gotten the credit for the class, yet they were still showing up every day to work on the project and in the end they had something much greater than a good grade to be proud of with this one of a kind project to work with 516 ARTS.

Neon sunset Class shines light on Duke City history

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By Nick Stern, Managing Editor | Photo by Nick Stern

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Not only has the city of Albuquerque commissioned Art Instructor, Larry Bob Phillips and his 1125 Art Practices class to create an original mural to capture the history of Albuquerque displayed right in the heart of Downtown, the class’s mural will also be featured in the “Heart of the City” art exhibit starting in February, Phillips said.

The Heart of the City exhibition’s opening recep­tion will take place Feb. 1 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. and will be located at 516 Central Ave. at 516 ARTS.

This show will feature lead artists, student appren­tices, public art projects and public programs focused on envisioning the future of Downtown Albuquerque, and partnered with thirteen Albuquerque organizations to examine the strengths, weaknesses and needs of the city’s urban core for this exhibition, according to 516arts.org.

For the project, the class decided to tackle a depiction of the Route 66 era “neon sunset,” which is near Century 14 Downtown, at the corner of First Street and Central Avenue, he said.

“For our location at First and Central we felt like it made a lot of sense to recog­nize and address this history of the neon sunset, western landscape, American Dream, car culture from the 50’s through the end of the cen­tury,” Phillips said.

The mural is called “Signs of the Times” and is a set of imagery that was devel­oped to pertain to the legacy of signage in Albuquerque, he said.

Students picked out dif­ferent signs from all around town that they thought were interesting and told some kind of story about Albuquerque, Phillips said.

Following that step they were tasked with creating a black and white line drawing of those signs which Local Designer, Jesse Philips col­laborated with the class to come up with a dynamic composition, in which all of the signs were conformed into a collaged landscape of Albuquerque’s most famous signage, Phillips said.

Signs are from well-known Albuquerque hot spots such as the Dog House, Octopus Car Wash, as well as many old hotel signs sprawled throughout Central Avenue.

Phillips said he was very interested in the art of sign and mural painting but he knew that lettering by hand involved techniques that were not normally taught by fine arts instructors, he said.

“There is a whole craft there that is almost like secret knowledge and is learned as a trade by profes­sionals, and it is not really what is in the purview of fine art instructors,” Phillips said.

When the class was commissioned by the city of Albuquerque to paint the mural, Phillips decided that quality instructions on how to do proper lettering was the greatest and most impor­tant thing that funds could go to, he said.

He got in touch with a sign instructor named Curtis Mott, who proved to be an invaluable asset to towards the project, Phillips said.

Mott taught them things that they never knew and they had quality instruc­tions in areas that they did not even know existed, Phillips said.

As teaching goes, Phillips said doing the mural was an incredible opportu­nity and even though there was a lot of responsibility as far as the quality expecta­tions went, there was no strict structure set around how they would get it done, Phillips said.

“As far as teaching, it was a dream come true because we had an expanded timeline. There was a lot of responsibility in terms of the quality of the final product, but there was no rigid struc­ture around how we would get there,” Phillips said.

Studio Arts Major and IT 1010 Instructor, Karina Guzzi said that she helped with the painting of the mural, and painted many of the different aspects seen in the mural such as some of the letter outlining, she said.

Guzzi said she had lots of fun working with her class on the project and is incred­ibly proud of the fine work that she got to be a part of in this project.

“It was a blast. It is really cool to drive or walk by and see that there is something that is public and visible that I helped create and that I was a part of,” Guzzi said.

Guzzi believes she was very privileged to be a part of Phillip’s Art Practices class and has gotten more out of it than she could have hoped for including the mural and an art exhibit that the class is preparing for, she said.