The synchronicity of The Valley
A creative lockdown together
TAOS TRANSPLANT ARI MYERS said she was inspired by the science fiction classic Dune to name her gallery The Valley. Myers said it was the book she was reading as she conceptualized her gallery space the summer of 2020.
“There is a quote about the main character’s ability to see into the future, and how his power was sometimes hindered because of the splintering and fracturing of choices that could change the entire aspect of the future. He says, ‘If you are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley.’ To me it felt like a metaphor for 2020, a challenging year which changed the course of history. In the darkest of times, it is sometimes impossible to see past the negative and the obstacles in our path. But there is always something on the other side we can’t yet see.”
Tempo caught up with the busy gallery owner and asked a few questions about her new exhibition space and the artists she represents. Here are the highlights.
What brought you to Taos, what sustains you here?
I moved to Taos in August 2020, so I am a very recent transplant to the area. While my partner and I had been dreaming of coming here for some time, our move here was spurred by losing the job that made up most of my income at the beginning of the pandemic. I can’t overstate how everything just seemed to come together to make the move possible after that. After moving, it was a goal of mine to find a space to start my contemporary art gallery within a year, but I found the location for the gallery within the first month and couldn’t pass it up. The synchronicity of everything felt like the manifestation of how hard I’ve been working towards this for a long time. Having my gallery has always felt like the convergence point of my experience in curation and art advising, interest in design and styling, and love of creating spaces for people to gather.
There are dozens of galleries in Northern New Mexico. How do you hope to set your gallery apart from the rest?
I hope The Valley will be an example of a contemporary art gallery in a rural place that can add value to the arts community. It will also be in dialogue with the international/globalized contemporary art market and participate in art fairs collaborating with larger institutions in the future. I see The Valley introducing emerging artists from New Mexico to the contemporary art scene and bringing high quality exhibitions from early career artists from around the country to Taos. It’s this element of exchange that I think will set The Valley apart and make it a destination for folks seeking contemporary art in Taos.
Anything else you think is important for our readership?
I care about giving back to the true stewards of this land, the indigenous communities whose unceded ancestral territories we live on. I stand in solidarity with indigenous people’s movements and am committed to supporting indigenous-led solutions and organizations in our community and worldwide. I aim to evaluate my role in reconciliation with actions, not just words, that center the lived experiences of indigenous people. The Valley donates to Pueblo Action Alliance, and we will lend our support to other organizations in the future as well.
Our current exhibition, “Souvenir Garden,” is open March 6 - April 17, 2021. It is a solo exhibition of paintings by Sarah Esme Harrison, a Brooklynbased artist and Yale School of Art graduate. This exhibition presents a series of recent paintings which begin outside in Jamesport, Long Island – where she spent much of her childhood.
Harrison brings the observational paintings back to her studio to finish them, where she sees them as humanmade, rather than as a piece of the natural world as it appears while working outdoors. She often exaggerates this by building wedge-shaped supports for the painted panels, seeking to emphasize them further as fabricated mirrors of nature rather than the real thing, and to ask viewers to move around the paintings.
Drawing from the land for both
Ari Myers said she was inspired by the science fiction classic Dune to name her gallery The Valley, at 118 Camino de la Placita. Unit D, Taos. concept and material, Harrison’s paintings convey her awareness that our attempts to harness the beauty of the natural world are often extractive, violent, and jeopardize the environment. The pigments in her oil paint are harvested from the earth, as are the real-life versions of the jewels and metals she integrates into her compositions. In making her paintings Harrison grapples with creating images of nature in the era of climate change brought on by colonial capitalism.
The Valley, 118 Camino de la Placita, Unit D; hours Saturdays noon, open by appointment only because of ongoing COVID precautions. Visitors can reach out via email ari@ thevalleytaos.com, or on Instagram at @thevalleytaos, to book a time to see the show or request an exhibition list from the current show.
SINCE GRADUATING FROM TAOS High, Erin Eagleton’s path has been a dazzling multidisciplinary streak. He played guitar with the legendary rock band Cradle; his visual art graces the Harwood Museum’s collection; his ceramic sculpture showed alongside the works of Hank Saxe and Jim Wagner at Taos’ Up & Up Gallery; and all this alongside a busy career in New York and California working on films and television.
Audra Rodgers was born in Roswell and grew up in Hobbs, New Mexico.
She started out in school bands and choirs on flute, then quickly moved on to master all the brass — french horn, trumpet, trombone — and by the way she sings some too, as fans of the Cullen Winter Blues Band, Big Boombox and most recently the Damn in Taos Band thanks are to well the aware. modern She version landed of the famous artists’ “broken wagon wheel” — she was just passing through, and ran out of gas. Her original intention was to fill up the tank and keep moving. Luckily for Taos, she stayed.
Eagleton and Rodgers met and have been together since early 2017. They’ve traveled the country together and worked together, and now they are quarantining together in a spacious house at the end of a dirt road, where we visited them on a recent evening — appropriately masked and 6 feet apart.
The house is overflowing with creativity. A wall of shelves houses both of their latest work side by side, miniatures, his in color, hers in black and shadow. Another room holds a home recording studio. Between the two of them, they have the strings, drums and brass covered and they are happily exploring the technology to provide the rest, overdubbing their voices to provide a celestial choir.
In their year of lockdown, they have been gloriously productive. Both worked for Humble, a Taos company producing revolutionary natural deodorant and lip balm. When the small company got a massive order from a national retailer, they signed on to help step up production. Rodgers still works for Humble from her home computer. “I do all the safety research, I’m the resident nerd,” she laughs.
Eagleton has taken time off from the company to focus on art.
In addition to the stunning miniatures, they have two collaborations they are excited to share.
One is a film project called “Photo Op,” completed just before quarantine began. Eagleton and Rodgers both star in the short film, along with the film’s writer Steve Young (whose writing credits include The Simpsons and the Late Show with David Letterman, where he was also a frequent performer in the show’s skits). Up-and-coming Dixon star (and Taos High graduate) Makaela Vogel is also featured. The film was shot on location at Taos’ Rio Grande Gorge Bridge and Donabe Asian Kitchen. The comedic take on “the modern nightmare of losing control of your life by losing control of your phone” was directed by Dava Whisenant (“Bathtubs Over Broadway,” also starring Young), and was itself shot on an iPhone.
“It just shot in October 2020, it’s fresh,” said Eagleton. “I was already producing, and they asked us to both be in it. They put it together quickly and submitted to My RØDE Reel festival [the Australian short film competition that is now arguably the world’s largest, with 1,118 films submitted last year from 76 different countries]. It’s a little comedy about a guy trying to take a selfie, who gets approached by a stranger offering to help, and, well, you’ll have to see it — things quickly go off in a dark-comedic direction. It just played at the Santa Fe Film Festival and will run at the Fargo Film Festival March 18-28. We hope to show it at the TCA’s drive-in this summer.”
The second collaboration is music for an album benefiting the Tohono O’odham nation. “The Tohono O’odham people and their ancestors have lived in and around the Sonoran Desert in the Southwestern United States for thousands of years,” said
Rodgers. “They are known as a settled desert farming people. During the 1600s and 1700s, the O’odham resisted the Franciscan Catholicism of Spanish settlers, preserving much of their traditions and culture. In the 1800s, as more European settlers arrived in Arizona, the O’odham continued to resist. They signed no treaties, resisted Indian boarding schools (forced assimilation), Presbyterianism, Mormonism and continued resisting and reimagining Catholicism to their culture.
“For the Tohono O’odham people, the border wall is a literal affront to their natural resources and selfdetermination. Funds are needed to assist with bail for homeland protectors, and long-term legal support. By all means, do more research into the history, accomplishments and current challenges facing the Tohono O’odham people — and please consider donating to the Defend Tohono O’odham Land Bail Fund [link at end of article].”
The CD, the second volume dedicated to the Tohono O’odham, will be released later this year. “It’s our first collaboration,” Rodgers said. “I had chords and a chorus from a song I had written before, and we decided he would write words and I would write the music. We went in the studio and it became a cowrite. I want his vocals on it too. I really like the aesthetic of male and female octave things.”
They reluctantly set aside their musical perfectionism and played us a rough cut of the collaboration. The music was gorgeous, mesmerizing and unforgettable.
“She did all the producing, she was in there overdubbing for 12 hours,” said Eagleton.
For the present, they are both optimistic, simultaneously enjoying the quiet of lockdown and looking forward to the return of live music.
“I miss singing with the Damn Band at the Alley,” said Rodgers. “I started by chance, filling in for Mina Tank so she could have her birthday off, and then she decided to take a timeout. We did a few of the gigs together first, and it was such a pleasure to sing with her. She definitely left big shoes to fill.”
“We want to be there to give, when live music comes back,” said Eagleton. “Out of all my creative experiences, making paintings and putting them on the wall and seeing people see them, working on films and television and seeing people enjoy it — that’s all nice, but I’ve never experienced anything as satisfying as playing music in front of an audience.”
“We really miss live music,” said Rodgers. “At the same time, I think that quarantine has been a much-needed slow down, especially for introverts like us who really needed it. And I think at the end of it we’ll see a renaissance. That’s what’s happened in other places and times throughout history. I see it all around me. I look forward to seeing what the world looks like when we can gather in groups again.”
“Who can argue with that, when Americans especially take a long-overdue slow down?” said Eagleton. “I agree with Audra, there’ll be a renaissance. Sure, I can imagine some dystopian futures. But overall I think we’ll see another summer of love before we see a zombie apocalypse.”