DAFA

On Friday June 13 at 6pm a free concert will be performed at David Anthony Fine Art as part of the 7th Annual Taos Opera Institute Festival.

Each year in June, the Taos Opera Institute (TOI) conducts a highly intensive program for the serious singer at the Taos Ski Valley. Singers from around the country audition to participate in TOI, which is designed to bridge the gap between academia and opera apprenticeships. Graduates are prepared for various careers in opera.

Enjoy an intimate setting inside the beautifully adorned art gallery that is known as DAFA. “Last year TOI performed briefly at DAFA and it was a wonderful experience for me” says David Mapes, owner of DAFA, “The acoustics were surprisingly great”. “I am honored that our gallery was chosen as a regular venue this year,” adds Mapes.

The Quartet will perform from 6 – 7pm and refreshments will be served. Performing will be Anthony Moreno, Rainelle Krause, Denise Wernley and Joseph Lopez. While the event is free, The Taos Opera Institute, a non-profit organization will be accepting donations for their programs. For more information on the Taos Opera Institute, please visit their website at taosoi.org.

RECEPTION: 6pm – 7pm, Friday, June 13
LOCATION: David Anthony Fine Art
132 Kit Carson Road, Taos, NM

The Exhibit

The experiment that is DAFA’s Spring Experiment is a re-mix of creativity and chaos, and identity and history. Opening May 31, 2014, two Taos artists explore the patterns of space and time, pushing perceptual boundaries with painting, collage, photography and computer visualizations. J. Matthew Thomas and Seamus Mills use the usual, the debris, and the discarded of our lives to push our creative sights toward emergent perspectives.

For J. Matt Thomas the exploration is of the “gray zone’ between chaos and order. Thomas says, “I translate the re-organization of chaos in my work, bringing a sense of order and presentation.”

Please join us to become a part of this creative re-mix in patterns and process which is the DAFA Spring Experiment.
EXHIBITION: May 31 – June 29, 2014
RECEPTION: 4pm – 6pm, Saturday, May 31
LOCATION: David Anthony Fine Art
132 Kit Carson Road, Taos, NM

J Matthew Thomas

J Matthew Thomas became highly trained in constantly re-organizing himself to his environment – treating chaos with a calm sense of order and presentation. Mr. Thomas is a trained architect, and brings this play between architecture and construction into his work. Having studied at Kansas State University and then at Columbia University, his canvases seep with a three-dimensional sense of his architectural work. His process of creating is additive and subtractive, not unlike the practice of architecture and construction. He uses tools and techniques of the architect and builder. He uses existing patterns of things construed as dirty, wasted and non-confirming to “create a piece of work that transcends chaos into a visual rhythm of texture, pattern and material.” The patterns and geometries reflect a diversity of cultural nuances – drawing from historical references, sacred geometry to his own inspired patterning.

Mr. Thomas experiments with pattern and decoration concepts to embody the “remix” ideology of the derivative nature of creativity. Distinct boundaries that are tidy and clean do not exist, but a layered and interwoven set of patterns that conflict with reality or that are reality is at the core. Together something new emerges, a new order from which we can view our identities. He says, “my art is constructed to delineate an order to the mash-up of paper and paint, and these lines become my mask reflecting any number of moods, personalities, and cultural references.”

Seamus Mills

Seamus Mills works are an experiment in re-visioning the normal and the unseen with patterns to form new perceptions. Steeped in history and story, Mr. Mills brings unseen stories of day-to-day into print. His own remarkable histories between Virginia and New Mexico give him context across time and culture that become central themes in his work.

A prolific photographer, Mr. Mills came to his photographic process after a broken hand forced him out of woodworking and wood-carving as a medium. His process includes re-crafting his photographs to create a series of perspectives, insights and histories to his subject. He says, “historical changes in perspective pop up in my work. As I walk around I see something odd or small, and I blow it up as a central figure. That piece becomes the story. It is not what people first notice, but what they don’t notice that becomes my central focus.”

44th annual showing is second to be held at David Anthony Fine Art

David Anthony Fine Art, Taos presents an exhibition of John Farnsworth Kachina paintings on view from September 1, 2013 through September 30, 2013. An opening reception will be held on September 6, 2013. This exhibition is the 44th annual showing of the paintings, although the exhibitions have taken place in different locations throughout the years and includes forty, 6 in. x 6 in. or 9 in. x 12 in. works of art.

John Farnsworth was born in Williams, Arizona and grew up in Northern Arizona, in the shadow of the Navajo and Hopi Reservations. At the age of nine, he visited Taos, his mother’s birthplace and realized he would be an artist. He studied independently, and painted while working at jobs that included managing a small private museum and Indian shop, working as a trader on the Navajo Reservation, and as Preparator at the Museum of Northern Arizona, under Kachina expert and author Barton Wright.

In 1967, he began camping and traveling among the Navajo and Pueblos and at every opportunity, sketching, painting, and attending ceremonials. The Kachina dolls from which his paintings are usually derived are part of collections of the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, the Heard Museum in Phoenix, the International Folk Art Museum in Santa Fe, or the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos. Some are from private collections, including his own.

Farnsworth has been captivated by Kachina images for their intrigue, mystery, and power. He believes they are alive, primordial and sophisticated; that they speak of other worlds are are carriers of messages, prayers and bringers of rain and life; and that they are of the earth and of the sky and of the air and of the water that flows through every thing.

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David Anthony Fine Art (DAFA), located at 132 Kit Carson Road, Taos, New Mexico, was founded by long-time Taos furniture maker David Mapes in 2011. Each year, the gallery hosts the DAFA Photography Invitational showcasing photographers from throughout the world. The mission of DAFA is to exhibit the work of accomplished fine artists and exceptional crafts people in a setting that is welcoming and accessible to all.

Looking for Mr. Stieglitz

by Steve Zeifman

Modern art meets the Harlem renaissance at 291 Fifth Avenue where Georgia O’Keeffe, who is looking for Mr. Stieglitz, encounters the unexpected. Set in 1916 in New York City, O’Keeffe meets Hodge Kirnon, originally from the West Indies and now weary from many years of navigating the “American Dream.” Georgia finds much in common with this stranger as she deals with her own insecurities about being an artist and a woman in a man’s world.