'Healing' touch: Gallery with a Cause showcasing 360 meditative works

Art can provoke, inspire and uplift.

Open at the New Mexico Cancer Center, “The Art of Healing” at Gallery with a Cause showcases 360 meditative works predominantly by artists impacted by life-changing illness. Most of the 18 artists are exhibiting at the gallery for the first time. Forty percent of each sale is tax-deductible and earmarked for the New Mexico Cancer Center Foundation to support patients’ nonmedical needs while they are in treatment.

Placitas artist Tamara Harder created stoneware bouquets of hearts and flowers.

“It is the idea of talismans,” she said, “something you look at that makes you feel good.”

“I like working with clay; I like the way it takes texture. I love playing with color. I can stamp it; I can print with it. I use Indian block print stamps. I use twigs, pieces of plants. The flowers are done with a stencil. I also use cookie cutters.”

The show marks Harder’s debut in the gallery. She is largely self-taught.

“I like to just get a book and go,” she said. “I have my own kiln; I do my own firing.”

Originally from California, Harder has lived in New Mexico for 25 years.

Los Angeles transplant Marcelle Bowman discovered a new style when she moved to Albuquerque just before the pandemic in 2019. Her piece “Love Language” consists of rocks embedded in reclaimed wood.

“When the world stopped moving, I have anxiety,” she said. “We would go on hikes and I would arrange (rocks) on the floor.

“I think I was upside-down, what with living in L.A. and an acting career. I would photograph them and destroy them. It’s kind of like the Buddhist monks and sand art. It’s making something and being able to let it go.”

When she posted the photos on the internet, the responses flooded her inbox. People wanted to buy them.

“They were feeling the grounding in such crazy times,” Bowman said. “They’re very sculptural; they’re fixed on the wood.

“I carve into the wood and make little beds so the rock fits in.”

“I think rocks connect with most people,” she continued. “They find them grounding or soothing or peaceful.”

Bowman gathers her stones outside of the city and past Cuba — and sometimes beyond, she said.

“Last year, I was able to take a trip to Maine and I collected eight pounds.”

'Healing' touch: Gallery with a Cause showcasing 360 meditative works

Albuquerque’s Allison Jones Hunt turned to art to cope with genetic disabilities. She has endured three major hip surgeries.

“I couldn’t go out and play like other kids, so I turned to art,” she said. “Art is very healing.”

Jones Hunt painted “Rainstorm in Abiquiú 2” during a residency at Santa Fe’s Jen Tough Gallery.

“I was very inspired by the energy of storms in northern New Mexico and how it really fractures,” she said. “With painting, we can capture more than one moment at a time — the shafts of light and the storms in New Mexico. It changes the colors; it changes the air.”

Jones Hunt began as a realist painter until she grew weary of trying to reproduce perfection. Today, she refers to herself as an abstract landscape painter.

At Portland, Oregon’s Reed College, she focused on printmaking and illustration. But when the pandemic landed, she needed an escape.

“Abstract painting came to me kind of like a mental health practice,” she said. “In some ways, it seems more honest. To release that perfection of realism was very powerful.”