By Truett Jackson
Staff Reporter
Stefan Jennings Batista had always been entranced by images of the American West growing up as a Catholic kid in South Florida. By the time he had made his way to New Mexico, he had already established himself as an artist, and was eager to utilize the vast canvas of the Southwest in his own compositions.
“A lot of these images are a product of my fascination with landscape photography from the 1800’s that was very much inspired by Romantic-era American painting, and that movement in art kind of co-opted faith and magic in order to legitimize ownership of the land,” says Batista of his photography installation, ‘Tiny Ocean’.
Though he does not consider himself a religious person nowadays, Batista’s lifelong fascination with the ritual and mystery of his upbringing in the church are immediately apparent in his works.
“That sort of shaped how I saw imagery and symbolism visually, and I spent my whole childhood thinking I was going to be an artist, so that experience kind of informed how I look at painting… how images feel important and feel special, and how I read them. Looking back, I think that background set in motion the way I read pictures and then construct them.”
Batista considered himself to be a science-minded kid, and the fusions of art, science and religion are conspicuous in his creations.
“I wanted to go into the sciences and have art be on the side, and eventually that switched for me,” he said. “I’ve been interested, for a long time, in this fine line between how faith is this desire for understanding and purpose, and in a similar sense, I think that science works in the same way.”
Eventually, Batista found that he had a love of being expressive and was adept at creating images. “I went into art. When I started thinking critically about artmaking, especially in a theory and fine art context, I realized that both science and my background in Catholicism were kind of making their way into the pictures that I enjoy making, and I was calling upon symbolism in the works that I was making, and I couldn’t really escape that. I think now, making art, I get to explore that past, and those desires for information, for knowledge, for purpose, for meaning. And it all comes back to the sublime — this desire for placing myself relative to the infinite.”
Batista’s artistic trek led him to study out East before making his journey to the West. “I went to a college in South Florida called the Ringling College of Art and Design. That school is heavily commercial in terms of its education. You get an art history background, you get theory, but the fundamentals and the output is primarily geared toward commercial audiences. So, I had a background in fashion, product photography, as well as fine art/conceptual art. When I left there, I’d pretty much dedicated myself to a commercial direction, and I worked on that for the next six years until I went to graduate school.”
He worked professionally in commercial photo studios, which took him to New York and Miami. “I ended up having a love/hate relationship with it, because the commercial world can be kind of nasty, but on the other hand, it’s a living.”
Batista found himself with a deep love photography, which first brought him to New Mexico. He said he went back to grad school because he wanted to spend time making art and liked the idea of teaching.
“I really found value in the deep art of photography, and its plethora of utilities. I ended up applying to graduate school in New Mexico, and I came from Florida to UNM. I spent three years there in the graduate program and got a graduate degree in Art Studio, with a focus in photography.”
His studies at UNM led him to realize that he had found a path for his passion and career goals to occupy the same space. “I realized the utility of photography as a commercial tool, and so I was like, I can make art, but I can also have a career and make a living.”
This path took him back East, before once again becoming entrapped by the Land of Enchantment.
“After I graduated, I spent a couple semesters teaching at a college in Southeast Tennessee called the University of the South, in Sewanee. After my time was done there, I came back to New Mexico,” he said, “when I moved back, I applied for teaching positions and I landed a job here at CNM, which I’ve loved ever since. I’ve continued to develop a commercial practice here in photography, illustration, design, and I’m also lucky enough to also get to teach that.”
Asked what guidance he would have for prospective students who are interested in learning more about art at CNM, Batista says that in seeking knowledge of art one can have various ways to approach it, depending on whether their curiosity is based on becoming a professional, creating art for art’s sake, as a stress-release tool, therapy, a side-hustle, or something else.
“I think it depends on what people have proclivities to. That being said, I always encourage people, if they’re trying to get into art, don’t do something you hate, but I always encourage people to get out of their comfort zone.” He said he likes to see people to try something they’re afraid of, something they would have liked to have given a chance. To push themselves to go beyond their own expectations.
In the Art department at CNM, the reasons for students seeking this kind of instruction in art are myriad, whether they are for gaining a deeper understanding of their current field of study, as a requirement for their major, or just to learn and have fun.
“I’m a communications person, I wanna know about photography so I can apply that in my career,” he said, noting many of the various programs CNM offers.
“How can I use these different modes of working to say something, right? And maybe from there, someone can say, OK, I really don’t like working with texture, I don’t like 3D, but I really do like drawing, or love installation, or photography’s something I want to learn more about.”
In addition to hopeful pro– photographers, it is not at all uncommon for Batista to have students from the medical field in his classes. “We’re offering a 2nd-level photography class as of this past year. Myself and the other photo instructor here, Angelika Rinnhofer, whose work is here, switch off teaching,” he said, pointing to the stunningly opulent, mesmerizing work of his colleague in KC building that currently he shares the installation space with.
“Some of my best students every year are from the medical fields,” he told us, “It’s nice because it balances, again going back to our earlier conversation, this very informed, technical, scientific approach to their careers…they get to use that in learning the camera, but then they get to be creative, artistic, emotional.” He said. “I would assume that it probably creates this wonderful balance for them. So, if for any other reason, maybe it’s just nice to get outside of yourself.”
When asked where the best starting point for people wanting to expand their horizons and explore art and its place in their lives, Batista tells us that CNM is an ideal setting.
“It’s nice that it’s accessible for people that maybe either aren’t able to or are unsure if they should invest in this really expensive, university-track kind of approach to gaining an education in something. I have students that are really young, or much older that the traditional college student that are all able to access this stuff, course by course, semester by semester, on their own terms. And do it without this sort of burden. And they get to use it for therapy, for fun, for an escape. Or hey, I’m gonna use this in my career, and I don’t have to put myself into debt. I appreciate that. I try to keep that in mind when I teach to students with a diversity of needs and perspectives.”
On what Batista would like folks to take away from ‘Tiny Ocean’, he says that it all comes back to faith, science, and the unknown.
“We find ourselves with these systems of science, of faith, whatever… to try to define and articulate and grasp the unknown. And then when we have it, we feel empty, and we need to look into another abyss to feel something. To me, a lot of these images are like that precipice. Of seeing something that maybe represents wanting more and knowing something… that feeling, what does it look like? That’s when I start to borrow these symbols from how I’ve experienced that precipice in my life.”
With all the answers apparently readily available at the fingertips of humanity, Batista says that it is now more important than ever to hold on to our sense of mystery and wonder.
“There’s this human need to know things. And then, the more you know, I think, the more empty we feel. We need more, want to know more, to understand more. But at the same time, especially right now, we’re living in a time where it feels like we can just go find the answer to something anywhere. Like there’s no more mystery left. That’s why we’re pushing so hard to go to these new horizons. I think that’s always been human nature, and so I think at the very top of all these images, for me at least, is a self-reflection of that human nature to desire the unknown, to desire mystery. But at the same time, to try to kill it. There’s a duality there that I find really fascinating and beautiful, but it’s also tragic.”
The installations ‘Tiny Ocean, by Stefan Jennings Batista, and ‘Menschenkunde, Felsenfest, Seelensucht’, by Angelika Rinnhofer are currently on display in the state-of-the-art gallery in KC building on CNM’s main campus. Contact sbatista1@cnm.edu or call 505-224-3000 for more information.
