Primal beginnings: New Mexico Museum of Art exhibit explores the language of line in work

Jun. 18—Artists have used lines to divide, weave and outline compositions since humans created the first cave art.

Line is one of our first and most enduring languages. We use it to organize our world: the horizon, a road, the power grid, a crosswalk. We use it to form shapes that express ideas: a diagram, the letter A, a musical score. Our ancestors made marks on rock, and we spray-paint tags on buildings.

Yet sometimes a line is not of something or about something, but just itself. Opening at the New Mexico Museum of Art on Saturday, July 6, "Line by Line" explores the language of line in work by more than 70 artists working from the 1920s to today.

The exhibition highlights work by some of the 20th century's most acclaimed artists, including Berenice Abbott, Carl Andre, Harry Callahan, Sol LeWitt, Robert Motherwell, Frank Stella, Eric Tillinghast, Richard Tuttle and Brett Weston. It also prominently features New Mexico artists such as Harmony Hammond, Garo Antreasian, Frederick Hammersley, William Metcalf, Edward Ranney, Ramona Sakiestewa and Sam Scott, among others.

"I wanted to look at a very basic device for art making," said curator Katherine Ware. "I really was so taken by the way line is used.

"From a single line to grids, swirls and prints, the idea is to look at it as a subject itself," she added. "I'm very interested in that primal act of line: From a child, the first time she holds a pencil, to ancient lines on rock."

The show incorporates photography, weaving, painting, prints and sculpture.

Albuquerque's Frederick Hammersley explored the use of computers in creating lines.

In 1968, he moved to Albuquerque to teach at the University of New Mexico, where he was introduced to Art1, one of the earliest programs for making art using a computer. From late 1968 to early 1970, he made hundreds of computer-generated drawings.

Over the course of a year, he gave up painting and dedicated himself to making punch cards for the UNM's IBM mainframe, which produced drawings with no visible evidence of human intervention.

Influenced by Piet Mondrian, best known for his abstract paintings made from squares and rectangles, Hammersley experimented with primary colors and forms.

Also Albuquerque-based, Richard Hogan's work has been exhibited throughout the Southwest.

His work, with its distinctive use of line and color form, seems minimal and meditative, as well as energized and expressive. Hogan says, "My work is informed by the beauty of the New Mexico landscape; the intense light and color; the sweep of space."

He created "Bosque #5" in pastel on paper, featuring multicolored lines across a plain background.

"It appears almost as a lost language, almost like hieroglyphics," Ware said. "They're all inspired by his interest in petroglyphs and pictographs. You could think of these as brush in the bosque. People have to bring their own experience to this line."

The golden field in Sam Scott's "Sanctus I" is interrupted by a black angle in the horizon line. The Santa Fe painter is known for his monumental abstract oil paintings. "Sanctus" is an ancient Christian hymn of adoration.

"To me, it's arguably about the glory of this place," Ware said.

Johnnie Winona Ross' "San Solomon Seeps 05" was inspired by the landscape of northern New Mexico, where he has lived and worked for the last 20 years.

The strong, alternating horizontals in Ross' painting allude to geologic stratigraphy, the layers of the earth that are starkly visible in many parts of the New Mexico landscape. Ross echoes the slow formation of the natural layers in the lengthy and meticulous process.

"The layers of the earth are visible in a landscape with a trickle of water," Ware said.

Originally from the East Coast, Celia Rumsey moved to Santa Fe in 1975, where she was an active participant in the creative life of the city as an artist and philanthropist. Her work was largely autobiographical in nature, dealing with issues of chronic illness and food.

Rumsey's "Monoprint #104" could be an aerial view of a landscape or even a ribcage. The elevated perspective starkly reveals the patterned lines of rivers and fields, of arroyos and roads.

Tim Jag's "Drawing Construction #15" revels in geometric patterns. The graphite is so thick that it sheds, Ware said.

"He's not trying to make it in the precision of a machine," she added.

Using a crude straight edge and a heavy graphite pencil, he maps out repetitive lines on paper, retaining many smudges and imperfections and inviting viewers to absorb themselves in the rhythm.

This optical drawing series stems from a deep interest in the early work of artist Frank Stella. Stella was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.

These artists "want to push the viewer to participate," Ware said.