Axle Contemporary’s Local Coloring
Santa Fe has a lot of artists and writers, so when composing a local coloring book expo here, there’s a pretty big talent pool to choose from. Local Coloring, the latest exhibition by Axle Contemporary, is a community-based art project comprising original short stories by five New Mexico writers — Melody Sumner Carnahan, Jamie Figueroa, Nasario García, Joe Hayes, and Lily Hoang — that are wide-ranging in style and tone. Axle then invited artists to contribute drawings based on the stories. In addition to soliciting works from Santa Fe-based artists Alexandra Eldridge, Rita Bard, Crockett Bodelson, Erin Currier, Katherine Lee, and Axle’s own Matthew Chase-Daniel and Jerry Wellman, among others, the gallery opened it up to any New Mexican with a desire to create a drawing for the project. The result is a unique coloring book, published by Axle Contemporary Press, with 67 black-and-white drawings that you can fill in.
The exhibition of drawings from the book opens on Friday, Aug. 11, with a 5 p.m. reception in front of the New Mexican Museum of Art (107 W. Palace Ave.) where, not so coincidentally, the exhibition Lines of Thought: Drawing From Michelangelo to Now From the British Museum continues through Sept. 17. The museum hosts a free reading and book signing for Local Coloring on Sunday, Aug. 27, at 1 p.m. inside the courtyard. The book is available from Axle or online at www.axleart.com. Local Coloring is on exhibit through Sept. 3. Call 505-670-5854 or 505-670-7612 for more information and visit the Axle website for updates on the mobile gallery’s location, which changes regularly. — Michael Abatemarco