‘Picnic’ to aid farmers’ market

Turning a picnic basket into a sculptured, one-of-a-kind art dress was a natural for recycled-materials artist Nancy Judd, who created the artwork for a unique collaboration at Patina Gallery. The exhibition, which opens today, features donated pieces from 15 artists. The artworks will be auctioned Aug. 19 to benefit The Nature Conservancy and Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Institute.

Judd gathered her materials at the Conservancy’s Santa Fe Canyon preserve, located just a few miles from the downtown area. “Since I create fashion sculptures from trash, turning the basket into a garment was a natural choice for me,” Judd said. “My inspiration came from all the time I spent at the Conservancy’s Cascade Head Preserve in Oregon as a child. That’s where I developed my appreciation for nature.”

Ivan Barnett, owner of Patina Gallery, curated the exhibit. Each artist, inspired by nature and New Mexico’s landscapes, created an original work of art from a picnic basket provided by The Nature Conservancy.

“There’s no financial gain to the gallery,” Barnett said in a telephone interview. We’ve been working on it for a year. The first thing we decided was that the artists all needed to be from New Mexico and from the Santa Fe area as much as possible. The auction itself will be Aug. 19, but we’re putting the show up so people can see the pieces — they’ll all be auctioned off — and can get themselves invited to the auction if they want to participate.”

“This is a natural partnership,” Bob Ross, president of the board for the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Institute, said in a written statement. “The Farmers’ Market provides a venue to sell goods grown and made by local farmers and producers while the Conservancy works to protect the land and water they rely on. Our missions are aligned.”

The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization in the United States and around the world. It works with public and private partners to ensure that lands and waters are protected for future generations. The conservancy has habitat-protection efforts in all 50 states. In New Mexico, it is known for work in San Juan River restoration, the protection of High Plains Prairie Chicken breeding grounds, a unique “Canine Conservation Corps” that uses dogs in the Jemez Mountains forests sniffing out rare salamander habitat, and forest watershed protection.

Patina Gallery, established in 1999, features hand-crafted works of designer jewelry, wood, clay, fiber and sculpture. Co-owners Allison and Ivan Barnett love nature and draw inspiration from it. The organic is essential to their aesthetic and many of the materials used by artists they represent are natural.

“This exhibit is a creative crossroads between art, food and nature,” Barnett said in a written statement. “It was exciting to see the artists embrace this creative challenge. Some visited places where The Nature Conservancy works such as local preserves, farms and the mountains to find their inspiration.”

Judd creates couture recycled fashion designs from trash. Her fashion sculptures stimulate conversation, action and education about sustainable living. Judd is a renowned Santa Fe artist and educator.

Judd said in a written blog that her inspiration was Opal Whiteley, a legendary nature diarist in her home state of Oregon.

“The inspiration for this piece I knew had to come from nature, but I was not clear exactly what that would be until, one morning, I awoke thinking about Opal Whiteley,” she wrote. “As a teenager, I had read “The Story of Opal,” the diary of a young girl living a hard life in logging camps amongst the forests of western Oregon. I remember being very inspired by her vision of, and conversations with, the spirits of the natural world. Creating a fairy that personified the spirit of the land seemed like a perfect fit for this project.

Judd added in a telephone interview that she shops weekly at the Farmers’ Market, and considers her participation in this show an homage to the farmers and the foods and produce available there.

“In addition to the picnic basket, I used a vintage dress given to me by a friend; plants that I collected at the Conservancy’s Santa Fe Canyon Preserve, and dried flowers from the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market,” she said. “The branches are from different types of willows; the seeds on the wings are from a box elder; the necklace is made from juniper berries; the pods on the dress are clematis; the foliage around the neck is juniper mistletoe, and the petals on the picnic basket are dried peonies, marigolds and roses from the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market.”

Judd didn’t know the chartreuse foliage around the neckline was mistletoe until someone from the conservancy identified it.

“After a bit of research, I realized that it is a perfect fit for this garment,” she said. “Mistletoe is a parasitic plant, deriving nutrients from its host. It is reported to have ‘a disproportionately pervasive influence over its community.’ It can kill its host through invasion, but is also said to have a positive effect on biodiversity, providing high quality food and habitat for a broad range of animals in forests and woodlands worldwide.

“Humans, like mistletoe, are often invasive and destructive, but our actions can also be beneficial, as seen by inspiring organizations such as the Nature Conservancy and the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market,” said Judd.

Santa Fe’s Geoffrey Gorman is known for his found-object sculptures, bringing life to materials that might otherwise turn up in a garage sale or in a landfill. He finds his art supplies at the Habitat for Humanity Re:Store and from fans. He brings together sticks, rusted screws and other metal scrap, washers, bicycle parts, bailing wire, discarded artist canvas and an array of other strange parts to build his own ‘wilderness area’ of curious animal life.

“They gave us each a picnic basket and at the time I’d been kind of in this raven and crow mind-place, so I hung it on the wall, and the ravens started putting all the sticks and twigs and picnic utensils to make a nest,” Gorman said in a telephone interview..

“Last winter I went through a pretty severe illness and a lot of people in the arts community really reached out to me,” he continued. “I’m about 95 percent recovered. I decided that (joining) benefits would be the best way for me to give back. The Nature Conservancy is right down my alley, obviously. This was the best way to give back and it was a lot of fun besides.”

Artist Cliff Richter is best-known for pictures of trees, so his connection with nature is obvious. He was a little bit aghast at the plastic blue gingham lining of the picnic basket. “I use a lot of T-shirts, old T-shirts, that catch the paint; it’s my way of being more environmentally responsible,” he said in a telephone interview. “Anyway, I replaced the lining with an accumulation of those old paint cloths. And then I’m sort of known for my tree paintings, especially aspen. So I added a small little watercolor painting of an idyllic place to have a picnic.

“My work is so much about nature, this was an obvious event for me to participate in. I was honored to be asked,” Richter added.

Several of the artists are appearing with permission from their home galleries. Artists in the “Picnic for the Earth” show include Maude Andrade of Patina Gallery; Laurie Archer, Verve Gallery; Joe Bova; Kevin Box, Selby Fleetwood Gallery; Jan Brooks and Lane Coulter; Matthew Chase-Daniel, Axle Art Gallery; Devendra Contractor; Gorman, Jane Sauer Gallery; Melinda K. Hall, Meyer East Gallery; Judd; Yuki Murata, Victoria Price Gallery; Peter Ogilvie, William Siegel Gallery; Richter, Chariscuro Gallery; Gail Rieke and Sialia Rieke, and Holly Roberts, Zane Bennett Gallery.