POP FORMS
Jason Garcia / Okuu Pín (Santa Clara/tewa)
A new solo show for mixed media artist Jason Garcia is now open at Hecho a Mano.
SANTA FE, NM
Now open at Hecho a Mano in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is Songs For My Muse, a new solo show for Santa Clara/tewa artist Jason Garcia (Okuu Pín).
Garcia, who works in many different mediums— from Native Santa Clara clay and mineral-pigment paint to serigraphs and mixed media—will be showing a variety of new work, much of it featuring his famous pop-culture references imbued with themes from throughout Native American history and culture.
“[Garcia] does what great artists have been doing since the beginning of time: he carefully examines and interprets life around him and then shares those uniquely personal observations with the rest of the world,” the gallery says in a statement announcing
the show. “In Songs For My Muse, Hecho a Mano exhibits Garcia’s drawing and printmaking works in a visually rich mix of Pueblo history and contemporary life. Works in the exhibition include pieces inspired by Garcia’s recent National Parks Arts Foundation (NPAF) artist-in-residence experience at Chaco Culture National Historical Park in Northern New Mexico.”
Garcia, who comes from a prominent line of Santa Clara potters, says Chaco plays an important role in his new works. “I use the ancestral past to influence my work today,” Garcia says. “When you visit Chaco, it’s hard to get a sense of the people who lived there. My works based on this experience put the humanity back into what appears to be an empty village.”
New works in the show include the serigraph print To Conquer a Collossus—tewa TALES OF SUSPENSE!, which calls back to classic comic books and early men’s adventure magazines, and Khapo Buffalo Maidens, a serigraph that shows two figures dressed in traditional clothing. Garcia’s works often invoke the past with the present and in Khapo Buffalo Maidens he does this by presenting the traditional outfits near a TV antenna on the horizon. In the mixed media work Chaco Astronomers, Garcia shows two figures, one dressed with extravagant ceremonial regalia, as they point at the stars in a dark sky.
Songs For My Muse continues at Hecho a Mano in Santa Fe through April 19.
Hecho a Mano Through April 19, 2020 830 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501 (505) 916-1341, www.hechoamano.org