Taos Fall Arts Festival makes history with a virtual exhibition
THE TAOS FALL ARTS FESTIVAL is ramping up and making Taos history with their Spring 2021 virtual exhibition. Two hundred pieces of art developed by over a hundred Taos artists are on offer in the first exhibit of its kind in Taos.
Taos artist Norlynne Coar is the show’s organizer. She said the concept for this virtual exhibition came from the adventures she’s had in her art career.
“Magpie gallery has shown some of my work for the last few years,” Coar said. “In 2019 I had a show there entitled ‘Palimpsest,’ and WilderNightingale gallery shows a few pieces of my clay sculpture. Margaret Nes, Gretchen Ewert and I were slated to have a show, ‘Into the Light,’ at the Stables Gallery in April 2020. When that was canceled because of COVID I did research and discovered a way to create a virtual exhibition of the intended show — ‘Into the Light’ — which I had just taken down.”
Coar said pandemic challenges of 2021 were the ultimate catalyst for the exhibit.
“Over the last year, the art market has been challenging for Taos artists. We wanted to kickstart the year, encourage artists and remind everyone that the Taos Fall Arts Festival is looking forward to being a live festival again this year, Sept. 24-Oct. 3, 2021. The response to the artist’s call for submissions to the Spring 2021 Virtual Exhibition was rather astounding. Over 100 artists submitted work – paintings, photographs, graphics, ceramics, sculpture and jewelry, around 200 pieces of work.”
She said the virtual exhibition “allows people to direct virtual feet through the galleries,” they can just follow the run of a guided tour, or click through the guide points themselves. “It allows an inordinate amount of control. Every image in the exhibit is clickable to show an expanded image and all the details, medium, size, price, inspiration, website – whatever info the artist submitted. It was quite challenging to figure out a way to make the art salable from this site that is not set up for sales.”
The exhibit has no theme and was not selected by a jury. “It represents a broad spectrum of art ranging from the abstract to the representational, from photography to crafts and jewelry. The “walk-through” virtual exhibition has a “guided tour” whereby viewers can go from view point to view point, or they can direct the virtual feet through the galleries as they choose. The art images are all clickable to show larger images and all the various details.”
Since 1979, Coar has been a recurring resident of Taos. She said as “an artist, curious by nature, I’ve led an itinerant, gypsy kind of life, responding to urges to paint somewhere or learn something new. But Taos keeps drawing me back.”
The artist has collaborated with several art consultants and design firms. Her commissioned work is featured in hotels, airports and resorts. She also worked in the film industry.
“When I decided I wanted to make films, I returned to school to study filmmaking and worked with Kodak’s motion picture division in Hollywood where I also made some films of my own (one was about surfing – one of my passions) and a couple demo films for Kodak. But life is unpredictable, and when the film industry succumbed to
An image by photographer Barry Norris. digital technology and the production/ post-production business collapsed in concert with the financial collapse, that life for me blew up.”
Coar then alternated several years of living in Portugal, France, Italy, Spain and California. She said the move helped recreate her art career, “this time in a less commercial way.”
She moved back to Taos in the fall of 2017, and “began helping at the Taos Fall Arts Festival. Thereafter I became a volunteer board member and assumed the responsibility of marketing and advertising. A year later I took on the graphics production. 2020 was a sleeper year for the Taos Fall Arts Festival. However, in 2020 we promoted the 2020-2021 poster artist, Jonathan Warm Day Coming, and along with that I created a video portrait of him and his work.”
For information about the exhibition visit taosfallarts.com/2021/03/01/ taos-fall-arts-festival-spring-2021-virtual-exhibition/
Use this link to the preview video: youtu.be/9CsczJAM0Q4.