Two Days in New Mexico

A gesture of gratitude

Grier Cooper and I have always serendipitously greeted each other with a hand gesture that is at the same time an exclamation point and a mirror. This gesture has been persistent in our 30+ years of friendship and means a great deal to the both of us. When I asked her to assist me for an opening I was having in New Mexico, I could hear the hand going up over the phone, "of course" was the answer.

After flying in Thursday night, we decided to check out the Petroglyph National Monument the following morning. The national monument, which stretches 17 miles along Albuquerque's West Mesa, is a volcanic basalt escarpment that dominates the city's western horizon and is the largest petroglyph site in North America.

Seeing the rock carvings of varying symbols drawn across the landscape 400 to 700 years ago was humbling. I tried to imagine how they happened upon this escarpment and whether they were on their way to a village, whether they were traveling east to west, or if there were encampments and water close by. What I really wanted to know is how long the drawings took to make, as my muscles were still soar from having spent the previous week chiseling Alabaster.

Friday afternoon, we took a tour of Tamarind Institute. This incredible lithography workshop was created in 1960 as a division of the University of New Mexico. It began as Tamarind Lithography Workshop, a California non-profit corporation founded by June Wayne on Tamarind Avenue in Los Angeles in 1960.

I have always wanted to visit Tamarind and see their facilities in person, with the thought of creating an edition or two with them in the back of my mind. It was an absolute delight to meet their Director, Diana Gaston who was a wealth of knowledge and inspiration.

Gallery director Marissa Fassano graciously pulled some prints for us to view made by Fredrick Hammersley, Billy Al Bengston, Timothy Cummings, Jordan Ann Craig and Jim Dine. Curator Ben Schoenburg gave us a tour of the facilities, leading us through a glorious maze of presses, flat files, plates and stones. The smell of the inks brought me back to my stone lithography days with Glenn Brill at San Francisco State University.

Highlights from their collection on display included Matthew Shilian’s sculptural paper constructions and in their gallery, “All My Relations” an exhibition of 20 prints Jaune Quick-To-See-Smith made in residence at Tamarind from 1980 thru 2022. 

I was delighted to be exhibiting with Kim Largey from Maine, and Carl Smith from New Mexico in "Trio v2" at The Richard Levy Gallery. All three bodies of work investigated landscape, form, and transformation through careful observation of the natural world.  "Trio v2" will be running until April 4th. 

Feel free to take a virtual tour of the exhibition here.

From the press release:

Trio v2 celebrates three new artistic voices exploring the boundaries between representation and abstraction.

Julie Green presents new works from her series Landscapes of the Imagination. The series comprises vibrant collages made of hand-painted gouache papers mounted to wood panel. The layered abstract landscapes are inspired by Green’s excursions to national parks and later created in the artist’s studio. The artist is based in Altadena, CA.

Kim Largey uses the classic floral still life as a departure point for abstraction. Her acrylic paintings use gesture, composition, and color to explore how forms persist, transform, and destabilize over time. Working from both real flowers and imagined forms, the artist allows shapes to emerge, recede, and reassert themselves. Largey is based in Biddeford, ME.

Carl Smith creates small abstract paintings that conjure both spiritual and terrestrial forces. His compositions feature delicate networks of radiating forms and web-like geometries that are formed by incised lines. Drawing from time spent in the deserts of California and New Mexico, his work merges cosmic imagery with desert forms, particularly the cactus motif, which serves as a metaphor for the conduit between earth and sky. Smith lives and works in Santa Fe, NM.

Exhibition Dates: February 25 – April 4, 2026
Reception: First Friday, March 6, 6–8 pm
Gallery Hours: Thursday–Saturday, 11 am–4 pm or by appointment
Location: 514 Central Avenue SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102
Contact: 505.766.9888, info@levygallery.com, www.levygallery.com @levygallery

Sunday, we drove up to Santa Fe to take a look at Stephen Parise's Big Happy Gallery. Off the beaten and well worn path of the historic Canyon Road and Railyard Arts Districts, Big Happy was tucked into a string of repurposed office buildings. Its unpretentious nature immediately drew me in. We were treated to a preview of Shelby Salmon's exhibition "Alchemy of Tenderness", a cacophony of delicately painted emotions that filled the room with an explosion of light and air.

After we stopped for a lovely lunch at El Farolito, we headed over to the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts which is dedicated to collecting and showcasing works of art by contemporary Indigenous artists and is considered the only museum in the United States to do so. 

Two incredible shows were up: "Paper Trails: Unfolding Indigenous Narratives" which explored interconnected themes of resistance and survival in the face of colonization and the joyful "Offers from My Heart", an exhibition featuring new work by multimedia artist and poet Stella Nall “Bisháakinnesh” (Rode Buffalo). 

It was a quick trip but one I wont soon forget. I look forward to coming back to the New Mexico to spend more time with the people I have been getting to know and appreciate, as well as to spend more time in with the landscape that draws me in. 

Julie Green

March 22, 2026