Sensory explosion: New Mexico Arts Imaginative Collective showcases art visitors can touch, hear, smell

A news story about a colorblind student inspired a New Mexico arts collective to create a show viewers can touch, hear and even smell.

The New Mexico Arts Imaginative Collective is exhibiting “Doorways to Imaginations: A Multisensory Approach to Art” at the Orpheum Community Hub from Friday, Oct. 4, through Nov. 1.

“We have every sense but taste, so we’re going to ask them not to taste the art,” said project coordinator Karen Cunningham with a laugh.

Sensory explosion: New Mexico Arts Imaginative Collective showcases art visitors can touch, hear, smell

An eclectic mix of sculpture, photography, film and textiles, the show offers an immersive experience of the senses. Giant puppets, live music and film visuals from Albuquerque Drum Jam and the OffCenter Community Arts Project will embellish the opening and closing events.

First, the group called for entrants to create art involving at least two senses.

“Hands On” by Cunningham and Bill Beck resembles a giant set of pipes.

“It’s a sculpture of pan pipes,” said Cunningham, a former piano teacher, composer and filmmaker. “There’s a keyboard hidden inside. You wave your hand over the bamboo pipes and it makes a pipe sound.

“We just cut (the bamboo) in incremental sizes,” she continued. “I made the hands from tin. It’s done chromatically.”

Anne Cole’s sculpture “The Last American” is based on her original fable about a Native horseman searching for the survivors of a devastating volcano. The materials consist of the leftover marble from the Washington Monument, Cunningham said.

Sculptor Nova DeNise created “Deer Woman,” the protector of women and children. The artwork is a relief sculpture of recycled materials.

“Lillith” by Caroline LeBlanc combines the artist’s feminist-Jungian interest in mythology with a drum and rattle created during her studies of Native American spirituality. A turtle shell filled with dried beans tops the hand-painted drum.

Martha Anderson’s “Touching Space” consists of a series of mixed-media cylinders in various shapes.

The 11 artists also produced three films and two photographs.