Gallery News : Oct - Nov, 2022

The New Mexico Cancer Center Foundation is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its fundraising Gallery With A Cause with an exhibition.

The show features 380 pieces, including mixed-media, paintings, photography, wood, metal, glass, prints and watercolor. The show runs through Nov. 18.

“All the works have either won awards from us or are bestsellers,” said Regina Held, curator and gallery director.

Forty percent of the proceeds go to the New Mexico Cancer Center Foundation. The organization raises funds for patients’ nonmedical needs, such as utility bills, child care, food and housing.

This year marks Placitas landscape painter Reid Bandeen’s third show at the gallery. The largely-self taught artist began painting in middle school. Recently retired from a career as a hydrologist, he juggled painting workshops and mentorships while he was still working.

“I’ve always been very active in the outdoors and interested in a lot of outdoor sports – mountain climbing, rock climbing and paragliding. I was drawn to the views all around us.”

He turned to painting to capture the beauty of the landscapes he saw.

Originally from Michigan, Bandeen attended graduate school in Arizona and moved to New Mexico 30 years ago as the result of “career shuffles between my wife and I.”

“I’m always looking and studying,” he said. “After pursuing this long enough, you’re always painting in your mind. It’s really a feeling I’m after; a certain location or a combination of light and color.”

He often begins with a field study or sketching. He uses a viewfinder that filters out color to expose values.

“It’s a constant iterative process,” he said, “what you want to emphasize, what you want to subordinate, the color scheme, the harmony, the edges.”

“Lavender Dawn,” one of 18 of his paintings in the show, emerged from his front yard.

“We get a nice view of Mt. Taylor,” Bandeen said. “That predawn light is just magical. I’m looking west at the reflection of the clouds.

“As the light is bearing down, you get these nice purples and oranges.”

Corrales photographer Dennis Chamberlain captured his own color rainbow in “Sandias Watermelon Mountain.”

Chamberlain is the son of a life-long Eastman Kodak employee in Rochester, New York. His father gave him his first medium format hand-me-down camera when he was 7 years old.

Later, the younger Chamberlain worked at Kodak’s Dallas Processing Lab while he was in college, gaining an uncensored view into some of life’s most private moments as recorded on Kodachrome film. He was always a storyteller, explaining the harshness of reality collided with his imagination. His father developed the famous Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination, forever linked with conspiracy theorists.

But Chamberlain didn’t become interested in the field until the advent of digital photography in 2000.

“I really caught fire in the year 2000,” he said. “When digital came around, to be able to create something with my mind … it was the kind of thing that resonated with my creativity.”

He read books and attended workshops, but remains mostly self-taught.

Chamberlain shot “Sandias Watermelon Mountain” at sundown in 2010-11.

“I take lots of photographs of the Sandias,” he said. “The mountain changes all through the day depending on the season and how the light settles.”

He took the photograph in northern Corrales without manipulating the image.

Chamberlain also makes “creative assemblies” from his own photographs on a computer screen.

“I assemble them into pieces of imagination,” he said.

Chamberlain is the president of Corrales Arts Center, past president of the Corrales Bosque Gallery, and past president of the Professional Photographers Association of New Mexico. He has been the Professional Photographers Association of New Mexico Photographer of the Year, and won a bronze, silver, platinum and diamond medalist in PPA’s International Photographic Competition during the past eight years, including 2016 when he was one of eleven photographers worldwide to earn a diamond medal in the Master Artist Category.

Chamberlain also shows his work at Weems Gallery, at Madrid’s Belle of the West Gallery and at the Range Gallery in Bernalillo.

P.K. Williams wanted to major in art, but decided she needed a more solid job and turned to teaching. In 2012, she got the chance to pursue her art full time. The mixed-media artist lives in Placitas.

Williams’ “Peace on the Bosque” is an abstracted landscape in ink and watercolor, sealed in epoxy resin.

“I love going for walks along the Bosque,” she said. “The cranes are absolutely fascinating.”

Williams says she is inspired by the landscape, but feels no need to duplicate it.

“I think nature did it well enough,” she said. “It gives you the feel of that place.”

Pouring the epoxy resin over the piece gives it its sheen.

“It’s like a bar top,” she said. “It’s that shiny protection. It makes it like a little jewel. It brings out all the details. It’s not fun to do, but I love the results, so I suffer through it.”

This marks Williams’ third show at Gallery with a Cause. She also exhibits her work in Placitas and at the New Mexico Art League.