Torrance County artist-in-residence sends work to Washington, D.C.

Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, whose park headquarters are in Mountainair, put out a call in February to artists who specialize in painting on canvas to apply for a two week artist-in-residence program.

Karen Dressler Argeanas of Moriarty was selected for the program. Because the park residences were not available in September as planned, Friends of Salinas Pueblo Missions rented a room for two weeks for Argeanas at The Shaffer Hotel in Mountainair.

As an artist-in-residence, Argeanas created two original pieces of art for the park, and interacted with park visitors. The first part, creating only two paintings, would prove impossible for the artist, who had a different vision.

She scheduled a series of “Hike With the Artist” days at each of the three pueblo mission sites that comprise the National Monument; Abó, Quarai, and Gran Quivira. In addition to the hikes and discussions on her artistic process, she gave the participants an opportunity to sketch what they saw, if they wanted, providing the necessary materials.

Argeanas also visited and sketched each site multiple times during her two week residency. She could be found mornings, afternoons, and evenings, sometimes outside regular park hours (a privilege extended to artists-in-residence), photographing and sketching various angles of the ruins under differing light and weather conditions.

Required to produce only two paintings for Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, a park with three sites, Argeanas struggled. She felt strongly that each site should be equally represented and that each deserved its own canvas. She stood firm in the idea that she needed to paint a polyptych consisting of four related paintings rather than three, since four is a sacred number in many indigenous cultures—and the Monument story is a story of indigenous people as much as it is a story of Spanish missions.

Her proposal of creating four paintings rather than two was chosen above other artist’s submissions by a jury selected by the National Monument. Once the paintings are complete and hanging for public view visitors will be able to see the number four represented in several ways in Argeanas’ polyptych.

Each painting will represent one of the four cardinal directions; four times of the day, morning, mid-day, evening and nighttime; and four key historic periods of human habitation in the Estancia Valley.

The series of paintings, establishing a sense of place, begin with a sunrise over the salt lakes east of Willard, significant geographical features that were used by humans since time immemorial and end with a night scene at Gran Quivira, representing its current designation as a “Dark Sky Park.”

Quarai and Abó, the second and third paintings, tell the story of the people who inhabited those sacred places since about 900AD. Argeanas has a year to complete her project. When finished, the polyptych will hang within the National Monument.

Before she began painting the polyptych, the artist painted an additional piece, separate from the aforementioned four, to be hung far outside of New Mexico. The Department of the Interior, the agency that oversees The National Park Service, created an initiative several decades ago called “Art in the Office.” It is designed to bring the National Parks and Monuments to the people who work in the building in Washington, D.C. as a way of connecting them, on a daily basis, to the national treasures that they are charged with protecting.

Jason Jurgena, Museum Registrar and Office of the Secretary Art Collection Manager at the U.S Department of the Interior Museum reaches out to all of the National Parks and National Monuments who have an Artist-in-residence program.

By the time Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument announced its artist search for for the 2021 residence program, Jurgena’s office had already selected New Mexico’s small, but significant, monument Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, as one of this year’s representing parks.

The acrylic on canvas painting depicts Abó and is titled, “Protectors of the Sacred.” It reminds the viewer that the pueblo mission site is unique and sacred to many cultures and that we all, The Department of the Interior, The National Park Service, Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, it’s rangers and volunteers, “Friends of Salinas Pueblo Missions,” and visitors in the park have a role in protecting it and its story. “Protectors of the Sacred” will be the focus of a public reception being held at La Galería @ The Shaffer on Dec. 11 from 4 to 7 p.m., before ownership of the painting is transferred to the Department of the Interior.

The public is invited to the gallery, which is located in The Shaffer Hotel in Mountainair, to celebrate the artist and the painting before it begins its road trip. The four paintings in the polyptych will be available for public view at a later date.

Argeanas lives in Moriarty with her husband, Mike, and is a permanent artist at La Galería @ The Shaffer in Mountainair.