RioBravoFineArt® Gallery Truth or Consequences, New Mexico
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April 06th, 2014

4/6/2014

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Susan A Christie
"Singularity, A Retrospective 1988 to 2014" 
February - March 2014
by Jon Carver, THE Magazine April 2014 

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THE PLAY OF LIGHT ON WATER REPRESENTS THE MEETING OF TWO INVISIBLE elemental entities. Science, time and again, uses the movements of the most essential of liquids as a metaphor for light, while the brilliant, elusive beauty of H2O’s transparent, formless reflectivity is best grasped through means of illumination. Water captures and holds light (and heat) in ways that no other substance on earth does. Water is the main vehicle for our bodies. Fully fluid from birth to death, we deny our lack of solidity every bit as much as we pretend that we are rational rather than emotional creatures. Associated naturally with the conjoined psychic seas of creativity, procreativity, sexuality, and madness, water is the birthplace of the goddess of love, just as our mother’s inland ocean of embryonic fluid is for mere mortals. Water is our ontology and our destiny, evolutionarily, empirically, and metaphysically. Who and what we are, how we live, where we come from, where we’re going, how we’ll get there, and how we’ll feel, well over two-thirds of the answer is almost always water. 

Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, located between the Elephant Butte Lake recreation area and the still-getting-off-the-ground Spaceport, having recently received a new grant from the state, is heating up as the premier gotta-get-there destination in the region, if not (yet) the world, for geothermal hydrotherapy. In other words, if maxing the relaxing of your hot springs satisfaction is the goal (tape it to your mirror) you got no excuses. Naturally superhot, boasting an incredible range of soothing and beneficial minerals, having no vile sulphuric odor, and having been used for ceremonial chillaxation continuously by natives of the continent for millennia, these springs are as therapeutically redemptive as a journey to the underworld and back, minus the stress. 

If high is your style, stay perhaps at the lovely Sierra Grande Lodge and Spa, built in 1929, listed on the national historic register, and fully restored in 2006. Recently purchased by Ted Turner, the place is steeped in blissful peace and tranquility with large indoor, outdoor, and in-room pools of sumptuous steam and sparkle. The staff is attentive and the architecture ennobles. The hotel brochure states synchronistically that the ancient ones of the region referred to the springs as the “place of truth” long before the early fifties media stunt when Hot Springs reclaimed and renamed itself after the game show (pre-Bob Barker) in exchange for hosting a program broadcast. Truth is in the water. 

Truth for Susan Christie is liquid, too, in a good way. Her career retrospective at the bedrock gallery of T or C, Rio Bravo Fine Art (originally artist-founded by Joe Waldrum and generously kept afloat after his death by Eduardo Alicea who inherited and directs the gallery), flows seamlessly into her recent collaborative dialogue with glass artist Deborah Klezmer. The two artists’ works share surprising organic qualities of color, form, reflection, and construction, and their exhibition together is enlightening. Christie’s artistic career involves a decades-long obsession with Asian brush painting pursued with numerous Japanese and Chinese teachers here in the United States, and ultimately in China, too. The best work in the show comes out of her incorporation of the knowledge of this tradition. All painting involves the skillful control of liquidity, though as anyone who has painted for a time knows, control is the wrong word here. Collaboration not only between artists, but also between the artist and her materials, is the key. 

Finding the space where the inks, paints, papers, words, or whatever can do what they want while also somehow doing what you want them to do is the meditation. 

Christie’s black-and-white light on water running down rocks pieces, made through aleatoric procedures similar to those employed by Santa Fe–based artist Zachariah Rieke succeed. Cascade is especially brilliant at balancing abstract mark making with suggestive landscape depiction, a là Chinese ink painting traditions while producing a stunning work of contemporary art. But her most recent works on paper in the Pentimento series demonstrate a new freedom and confidence. They harmonize elegantly with Klezmer’s liquid-lace glass bowls. These colorful abstractions can also be read as bright zips of sunlight spinning atop a deep horizonless watery surface. 

The morning sun flashes ten million times atop each ever-so-slightly reverberating rise of clear water. Ten million suns slip into a white-hot dance of instant, erratic liquidity upon contact with the warm, transparent surface. Smoothly, swiftly enter their current. Swoop, turn, spiral, and disappear into that vast inner part of yourself. Sink your soul into the liquid center of the planet and empty out your head among the stars. These slippery, white-hot, undulating highlights on the glass surface of the water are your open invitation; an invitation people have accepted since humankind began to flow. —Jon Carver, THE Magazine April 2014 

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    The Artist Reviews posted
    have  been written and published following solo Exhibitions. 


    The authors are all recognized writers covering the New Mexico Art Scene.

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Eduardo Alicea, Owner - Director      H. Joe Waldrum, Founder in 1998
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Open Wednesday – Sunday
Noon – 5 p.m.
And by Appointment
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RioBravoFineArt® Gallery 
110 Broadway Street,
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Truth or Consequences, 
NM 87901
Phone: 1.575.894.0572 


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  • HOME
    • ABOUT RBFA
    • Gallery Calendar 2023
    • Rererence Index Gallery Calendar 2022
    • GALLERY GIFT SHOP
  • CURRENT EXHIBITION PREVIEW
    • Nolan Winkler REVISITED +
    • Darlene Olivia McElroy & Paul White >
      • More About The Artists
  • WORKS FROM H. JOE WALDRUM TRUST
    • Exhibition Preview
    • Paintings Linocuts And Etchings
    • Polaroids
    • About Joe
  • GALLERY ARTISTS INDEX
    • Roy van der Aa
    • Martye Allen >
      • Martye Allen Profile
    • Wiz Allred >
      • About Wiz Allred
    • Dave Barnett >
      • Dave Barnett Resume'
    • Delmas Howe >
      • Delmas Howe Resume' And More
    • Sandy Hopper
    • Noël Hudson >
      • Noel Hudson Resume'
    • Katharine Kreisher
    • Julia Masaoka
    • Tyler Mason
    • Darlene Olivia McElroy >
      • About Darlene Olivia McElroy
    • Donna Monroe
    • Gregory Montreuil
    • Graham Murtough
    • Deborah Mushock
    • Leo Neufeld
    • Susan Noreen
    • Ricky Padilla
    • Miguel Pino
    • William Bertrum Sharp
    • Joel Smith >
      • Joel Smith Resume'
    • Rebecca Speakes
    • Nolan Winkler >
      • Nolan Winkler Resume'
  • RECENT PAST EXHIBITIONS
    • LANA DURA/Minna White >
      • Art and Legacy of the Navajo-Churro Sheep
      • About Felt
    • Leo Neufeld Exhibition
    • Jeanne Rundell & Nolan Winkler
    • Roy van der Aa 2022 Exhibition
    • Noël Hudson
    • Suzanne Pointon
    • Julia Masaoka Exhibition
    • In A Small Way
    • Tyler Mason Exhibition
    • Mannequin Mayhem >
      • Mannequin Mayham Artists Index
    • Nolan Winkler Blooms Exhibition
    • Susan A. Christie From The Studio Exhibition
    • Sandy Hopper Interweaving
    • Delmas Howe Guys and Canyons
    • Santa Fe Community College Show
    • Tondo Rotondo
    • Rebecca Speakes
    • ​Gregory Grafwallner Exhibition
    • Wendy Tremayne Exhibition
    • Martye Allen Exhibition 2021
    • 2021/22 GALLERY ARTISTS' SHOW
    • Donna Monroe Retrospective >
      • Curator Statement
    • Graham Murtough
  • AVAILABLE COLLECTIONS
    • From The Winkler Collection
  • PURCHASE INQUIRIES
  • BLOG/EXHIBITION/ REVIEWS
  • ARTIST SUBMISSIONS
  • LINKS WE LIKE