Global Update
Dear Friends and Patrons:
Welcome to my updated art website. Many of you have encouraged me to add new content to the site in recent years to stay current with my developments.
I deeply appreciate your enduring support and your comments in response to what you find here from time to time. Please email me your thoughts and suggestions at: mauerkunst@yahoo.com
Since my inaugural posting in 2005, during the nearly ten years I spent working and painting in New York City (1999-2008), a lot has happened. If you visit my Photo section here you will find visual evidence to that effect.
In virtually all of my artistic pursuits, I have attempted to combine my creative development with active engagement in public discussion and expression of contemporary social issues. Following are highlights of my recent efforts along these lines.
MALDEF and the Diego Rivera Foundation
Throughout 2006, I was the featured artist of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), one of the nation's leading Latino-focused civil rights organizations. My original work entitled The Border Crossing was accordingly featured at major fund raising and public leadership awards events hosted by MALDEF throughout the year in cities including Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Antonio, Chicago, and Washington, DC. The featured work speaks to the challenges and opportunities facing Latino immigrants in contemporary American society.
Later in 2006, I played a large role in co-organizing and co-hosting an important international conference of mural artists in Mexico City in collaboration with the Diego Rivera Foundation, the University of Houston-based Arte Publico Press, the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, and the Los Angeles Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC). The gathering concerned itself with practitioner mutual support and network building, as well as collective opportunities to advance global social justice on issues like immigration and human rights through public mural art projects. The international conference was a major success and I am grateful to all who were involved as partners and participants.
Romare Bearden Foundation
During 2005-2008, I was privileged to be invited to serve on the Romare Bearden Foundation board of directors. I am the only non-African American to have been appointed to this important body, which is charged to preserve the art and legacy of the great 20th century African American collage painter Romare Bearden. Bearden, one of the great sons of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and its aftermath through the 1960s, is one of my favorite artists and someone who has greatly influenced my own work. The Foundation's many important activities during my tenure on its board included: institutionalizing a well-attended annual gala series in honor of Bearden and contemporary arts practitioners and patrons; supporting a well-received national tour of Bearden's works in partnership with the Washington, DC-based National Gallery of Art; and sponsoring an important symposium on Bearden's robust influence on contemporary art forms in collaboration with Chicago-based Columbia College. The Columbia College symposium has recently resulted in an important new publication edited by Ruth Fine of the National Gallery of Art and Jacqueline Francis of the California College of the Arts. The book, entitled Romare Bearden, American Modernist Studies in the History of Art (Vol. 71), was published in 2010 by Yale University Press.
Featured Art in Various National Publications
During 2007, my art began being featured on covers and promotional materials of various professional philanthropy publications and reports, including products of The California Endowment (California's leading private health funding institution), the Diversity in Philanthropy Project (a coalition of some 50 leading foundation trustees and senior nonprofit executives committed to increasing inclusivity in professional grant making), and the National Civic League (the nation's oldest good government organization). Report and magazine covers (and collateral materials) on which my art was featured included Growing Philanthropy to Build Healthy Multicultural Communities, Shaping the Future of Philanthropy and the National Civic Review.
Move Back to California
In 2008, my wife Claudia and I relocated back to California, where I was born and where we have lived on and off for much of the last twenty plus years since we met. It was a big change after nearly a decade spent living in New York City. Instead of moving back to Los Angeles, where I was raised, or the San Francisco Bay Area, where I completed most of my higher education studies, we decided to simplify, moving to a small town on the California Central Coast called Creston, located almost exactly between the state's two largest population centers.
In Creston, we bought a wonderful ten acre ranch which we have since populated with a plethora of interesting physical projects (a plant and vegetable nursery, a chicken coop, and two tee-pees), as well as several new animal friends: three dogs, two stray cats, seven chickens of various breeds, two Barbados Black Belly sheep, and five Nubian goats. My new surroundings have deeply impacted my artistic content, as I think you will see throughout this site by cross-comparing my relevant Photo section contents with my latest works featured in the site's Gallery section.
Folk Treasures of Mexico: The Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection
During 2009, I had the honor to be invited to help publish and facilitate the national and Mexican release tour for Folk Treasures of Mexico: The Nelson A. Rockefeller Collection, with Ann Rockefeller Roberts (Rockefeller's daughter and the book's sponsoring patron). The book catalogs some 200 pages of high quality commentary and photographs of a collection that Nelson Rockefeller began to assemble in the 1930s when he became close friends with leading Mexican artists of that era, including Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, Miguel Covarrubias, and Roberto Montenegro. When Rockefeller died in 1979, his collection of Mexican Folk artifacts numbered nearly 3,000 pieces.
A 1990 catalog of the Rockefeller Collection was produced by prestigious arts publication distribution house Harry N. Abrams, but by the close of the 20th century the book had gone out of print. At Ann's behest during an event we both attended at Christie's in New York City in 2003, we began to plot the re-publication in both English and Spanish of this important collection volume with an update on developments in the Mexican folk art field since the Abrams catalog was released almost a decade and half prior.
Our collaborators in this effort included: Dr. Marion Oettinger (Executive Director Emeritus of the San Antonio Museum of Art, which houses the lion's share of the Rockefeller Collection), Dr. Guadalupe Rivera Marin (daughter of the late great Mexican muralist Diego Rivera) and Dr. Nicolas Kanellos (Founder and Director of the University of Houston's Arte Publico Press, which ultimately published the reissued volume in both English and Spanish text versions).
The resulting 2010 publication re-release and update (co-published in Spanish with Mexico City-based Artes de Mexico) comprehensively covers Nelson A. Rockefeller's extensive Mexican Folk Art collection, considered by most experts to be the most impressive in the world. Well attended book tour events occurred during 2010 in Houston, Mexico City, New York City, San Antonio, and San Francisco.
Gallery of Graphic Arts
One of the most important artistic developments for me in recent years was Gallery of Graphic Arts (GOGA) owner Jim Horton's invitation in early 2009 to join a newly established stable of GOGA artists, called the GOGA Group. The GOGA Group consists of ten well known, mostly New York-based artists who have been among GOGA's best selling producers over the past decade. It now comprises GOGA's principal cohort of featured artists.
For more information on the GOGA Group and my contributions to it so far, please click here; and see also my latest GOGA Group show statement and works.
Studios on the Park
In addition to my affiliation with GOGA in 2009, I was invited almost simultaneously to join an important, newly-established regional arts center in Paso Robles, CA called Studios on the Park (SOTP). Studios consists of some twenty leading artists in various media who live and work on the California Central Coast.
Through this affiliation, I helped to establish SOTP's increasingly recognized community outreach and engagement work through a series of public mural projects that I led involving local youth and their families. Over the past three years, I have led five such projects involving hundreds of community residents in collaboration with the local Police Department, the YMCA and the regional office of the Anti-Defamation League. Several of these murals have been recognized by city leaders and three have been placed for temporary or permanent installation at the City of Paso Robles' Main Library and City Hall.
As a result of this work, in mid-2010, I was asked -- and I agreed -- to join the Studios on the Park board of directors.
For more information on SOTP, go to: http://www.studiosonthepark.org
For more detailed information on the various mural projects referenced above, please go to: http://mauerkunst.com/photos.
Most recently, my efforts have culminated in the formalization of a teen and young adult group at Studios on the Park called Artists Re-Imagining Color (ARC). ARC is ably led by: Kyler Olson, Beth Reninger, Sara Langguth, Jacob Ryan Scotti, Amanda Mills, Mae Bradley, and Patrick Keating.
Current, Planned & Recent Activities
April-May 2012: Will lead Studios on the Park teen and youth oriented activities related to the third annual Paso Robles Festival of the Arts, including tee shirt design workshops and a community mural project.
February-March 2012: Initiated a two-month series of teen artist dialogs with Paso Robles, CA-based Studios on the Park masters, entitled EXPLORING THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY: TEENS IN DIALOG WITH STUDIOS MASTERS.
January 2012: Mounted a one-month special showing at Studios on the Park in Paso Robles, CA. The show, entitled Traumstadt (German for "Dream City") features child-like imagery and color to reflect on issues and insights presented in mid-life.
Also curated the Studios on the Park Teen Art Group show, entitled "Trippy Room" based on New York "Trip Hop" music and imagery.
November 2011: Commenced Teen Art Group Installation Project in collaboration with select Paso Robles youth artists and Studios on the Park.
July 2011: Appointed by the Women's Foundation of California to serve a three year term as a member of its Board of Directors (the only male presently serving on this important statewide leadership body).
- 2011 Gallery of Graphic Arts, New York, NY (two-person show: Mexican Legacies, with Luis F. Mijangos)
- 2010-2011 Studios on the Park, Paso Robles, CA (public mural project: Community, Peace & Security)
- 2010 Gallery of Graphic Arts, New York, NY (second GOGA Group show and Holiday group show)
- 2010 Gallery of Graphic Arts, New York, NY (two-person show: Contrasts in Form and Color, with Moshgan Rezania)
- 2010 Studios on the Park, Paso Robles, CA (Dog Days of Summer and Holiday group shows)
- 2010 Festival of the Arts, Studios on the Park, Paso Robles, CA (public mural project: Imagine the Possibilities!)
- 2009 Gallery of Graphic Arts, New York, NY (first GOGA Group solo show: Saving the Wishing Well)
- 2009 Festival of the Arts, Studios on the Park, Paso Robles, CA (public mural project: Paint the River, Follow the Dream)
- 2006 Gallery of Graphic Arts, New York, NY (solo show: It’s Possible the Heart Can Regenerate Itself)
- 2004 Gallery of Graphic Arts, New York, NY (group shows: Small Works and Water Towers)
- 2003 ABC-Kunstservice, Berlin, Germany (group show of German and U.S. artists)
- 2003 Gallery of Graphic Arts, New York, NY (solo show: The Color & Texture of Dreams)
- 2002 Anarte Gallery, San Antonio, TX (group show)