My first interview as arts editor for the Sun was with Connie Rohde-Stanchfield, director of The C Gallery in Los Alamos, and it has informed every one of my interviews since. What surprised me most about Connie was how effortless it was for her to talk about art, especially the most abstract media, with a flowing simplicity.
That same effortlessness is displayed in her artwork, which will be shared for the first time at her gallery in the exhibit “BREAK-OUT,” through the end of February.
“I put most of my energy into curating, teaching, and producing events,” she said, “but when I got this collection going, I thought, ‘I should show this.’”
Rohde-Stanchfield works in intuitive drawing, often called process drawing. She said the style comes from an internal reference rather than a physical subject.
“So instead of looking at a tree and drawing it, I have something going on inside, and I am going to convey it with marks,” she said. “It’s all inner work.”
Creating pieces in this way is not new in the art world, but every artist approaches it in his or her own way. The point is to be free from the analytical mind when creating.
“One piece is a self-portrait under water,” she said. “I didn’t know I was going to do a self-portrait when I did it.”
“BREAK-OUT” includes some of Rohde-Stanchfield’s art from as long ago as a decade, but much of it has been created recently. One piece, she explained, was drawn intuitively on a piece of paper, but then she blew it up onto a large canvas, redrawing it several times before getting it right.
“It’s hard to copy an intuitive drawing because it is coming out of you spontaneously, not quickly, but spontaneously,” she said. “So I do this drawing over and over, over a few days, and through that I distilled the essence of my being into five lines.”
Not everyone who looks at the drawing might notice that it’s a visual representation of the artist within five lines, but that is part of the fun, she explained.
“I could show that to someone and they would say, ‘Oh, I like the lines,’ or, ‘Oh, that is Zen.’” She said. “But it’s different, because it’s the story of my life.
“It’s like music,” she continued. “If you were going to play eight bars of music that completely represented Joe Payne, what would that sound like? If I were to play eight bars that represent Connie Rohde, what would that sound like? I’m extremely interested in distillation, where you are pairing something down to, not a sound bite, but a visual bite.”
Rohde-Stanchfield’s intuitive art will be hanging proudly in The C Gallery, but it won’t be alone. Her visual art will be joined by the 3-dimensional art of two other artists: Albert McCurdy and Becky Robins Cornelius.
McCurdy is a sculptor, whose work will take the floor of the gallery. The series was actually created as a dialogue to Rohde-Stanchfield’s centerpiece for the show, “Letting Go.” Robins Cornelius was a student of Rohde-Stanchfield’s years ago. After recently reconnecting, Rohde-Stanchfield invited Cornelius to share her elegant jewelry designs on the gallery’s pedestals for the show.
“I think there is something liberating when we don’t really follow in the steps of a particular genre,” Rohde-Stanchfield said. “When you are making art that is so completely individual or personal, you have nothing else to measure against.
“When you look at it, it either resonates with you or it doesn’t,” she said. “What I’m trying to do is make an authentic mark, a mark that is authentically Connie Rohde.”
Arts Editor Joe Payne is authentically impressed. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 16-23, 2014.
