The boxy, bright inside of the C Gallery in Los Alamos was already beginning to buzz with the energy of an art opening when owner and currently showing artist Connie Rohde took a break from preparing for the event to chat with the Sun about her show, Plastic Paper. Cheap Brushes. Obsession., which showcases her gesture drawings and the sculpture of Albert McCurdy.
The exhibit is only the second time Rohde has showcased her own work at the gallery. The “C” stands for contemporary, so her space is a safe haven for abstract and contemporary art, and her current show encapsulates the spirit of what she tries to do with the little gallery on Los Alamos’ Bell Street.
“This collection, in the year and a half that I made this, I would say expressed a time in my life with growing confidence and resolve,” she said. “I’ve done work when I’ve been full of angst and fearful, and it shows, but this is not that kind of work.”
The title of the show reveals the primary materials Rohde used to create the abstract expression drawings. The translucent, plastic paper used is displayed in Plexiglas, so the works seem to float in midair. Colorful strokes flit about each space, some standing alone, and others complemented by other marks.
The use of cheap brushes is an intentional choice. Rohde wants to see the bristle marks in her swooshing colorful bands, but for what reason?
“I am fascinated by marks,” she said. “I like marks; I like bubbles, lines; I like light marks, I like dark. It’s interesting to me that it gets dark at the beginning, then fades out, and then when you get to the endpoint, it’s like a period or punctuation, and I get these beautiful marks.”
Many of her pieces were one-off creations that took less than a few minutes to create, she explained, but others were different. Some marks revealed more to her, pulling more out of her and adding extra layers.
Other colors, pencil marks, and even some gold leaf made their way into these pieces, which were less spontaneous outburst and more meditative, Rohde explained. One piece, which uses white colored pencils and gold leaf among a black ring, reflects this process.
“I just think creating circles is a worthy exercise meditatively speaking, muscularly speaking, so there’s something about making a circle that’s integrating,” she said. “I feel whole when I do it.
“Unless they’re crappy,” she added, “then I know my mind is somewhere else.”
Being candid about leaving work on the cutting room floor, Rohde explained that even as a gallery owner, showing her own work is something she puts a tremendous amount of effort and worry into. Sometimes a mark missed, while others brought more out of her, and sharing these marks is a revealing endeavor, she said.
“I think that marks are a picture of us at the moment we make the mark,” she said. “It’s a little something of me every time I make the mark. What I’m trying to do is just stop, stop thinking, and let go.”
She also has to let go of the meaning each piece holds when it hangs on the walls, as every viewer brings something different to the abstract scribbles. Most of the pieces are titled to herd viewers in the right direction, but even then, someone may see something completely different than what she is aware of in the piece, Rohde explained.
Being present at the gallery with her show most of the time is a privilege most exhibiting artists don’t enjoy, so she does have a chance to impress her take on the work onto viewers, but hearing what others have to say about her work is part of the adventure as well, Rohde said.
“I like making meaning from something, and I understand that I am a single person making meaning in my universe, in my world,” she said. “But then someone else, who’s not living inside my head, has the same kind of response, and it’s like, ‘Really, that’s what you thought?’ And that is so deeply gratifying, because it makes me feel connected.”
Arts Editor Joe Payne also lives in his own little universe. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 30 – Aug 6, 2015.
