¡Colores!; 302; Betty Busby, Richard Hogan, Health Seekers

Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: The Nellita E. Walker Fund KNME-TV Endowment Fund The Great Southwestern Arts & ...and Viewers Like You >>THIS TIME, ON COLORES! EXPERIMENTING WITH TEXTURES, FABRICS, DYEING AND WEAVING, ALBUQUERQUE FIBER ARTIST BETTY BUSBY MAKES STUNNING WORKS OF ART THAT GO BEYOND TRADITIONAL QUILT MAKING. >>The branching of trees is the same as the branching of vessels in a circulatory system. It's the same as a river branching off. Those repeated patterns in nature are something I revisit again and again. >>SINCE THE 1970'S RICHARD HOGAN HAS BEEN ONE OF ALBUQUERQUE'S MOST CELEBRATED PAINTERS. HE SEES HIS PAINTINGS AS OBJECTS AND USES LINE AND COLOR TO BUILD SPATIAL TENSION. >>In a certain sense my work is very simple, it's visual and I want people to look

at it without preconception, without looking for a narrative. >>IN THE EARLY 1900'S, ALBUQUERQUE BECAME A DESTINATION AND A SYMBOL OF HOPE FOR MANY WHO WERE SUFFERING TUBERCULOSIS. "HEALTH SEEKERS" CAME SEEKING A CURE IN THE HIGH DESERT. >>There was no known cure at the time. Streptomycin wasn't discovered until the 1940's and in the meantime, climate was thought to be very therapeutic, someplace that was dry, sunny, and a high altitude where the air was considered to be pure and New Mexico had that in abundance. IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES! >>FIBER ARTIST BETTY BUSBY GOES FAR BEYOND TRADITION [silent quote at beginning:

My approach shifted away from the restrictions on your silk. You put a little dot of alcohol on top of it, before it dries, and you repeat, and with time, you will get some amazing effects. It's fascinating, the amount of manipulation that you can do with fabric and that's one of the continued attractions for me as there is something new around every corner. I like this kind of experimentation. You can get a piece like this. frequently, will start out

with a background piece and put things on the top and rearrange them. One of my habits that I do all the time is I will put a work in progressup on the wall, step back and look at it, and look at it with fresh eyes in the morning. That way, you can see things that need to be changed and I'll change them. So you can add more interesting lines on there. I grew up wanting to be

an artist and it's somethingthat's really a compulsion and you really feel that you need to do it and you have to fight to do it sometimes. I grew up near Pennsylvania, quilt country, the Amish quilts when I was a teenager, going to the county fairs, and I still think that they're absolutely magnificent- their color, their composition, the amount of work that went into them, they're hand worked, but they're not overworked. Their utilitarian form is perfectly suited to the artistry that goes

I started here many years ago. This is a bed quilt made out of cotton squares that I dyed myself, simple geometric pattern. I had a breakthrough in about 2008 when we were redoing the yard. I cut a tree out of weed barrier material and painted it in India Ink. This is a breakthrough for many reasons- the first is the use of non-woven material, I'm also introducing transparency here, there's many layers of sheer fabric on top of each other and I'm coming back to the fractal patterns that are found so much in nature with the branching and branching, you will see that repeated in my work to thisday. The branching of trees is the same as the branching of vessels in the circulatory system; it'sthe same as a river branching off. Those repeated patterns in nature are

something I revisit again and again. The thing that I really enjoy about using microscopic images as an inspiration is that there really aren't any rules. There isn't any up and down. Beyond a certain magnification there's no color even.All the images we see are artificially colored, so I don't feel that I have to make a thing the color that it's supposed to be; there isn't any supposed to be. I've made several pieces that are called Primordium, which is a branching tip of a plant root where it's growing. They kind of look like the way the plant cells go, they kind of don't, but that's where the basic inspiration came from.

There are many reasons that I work on a new form or branch out in a new direction and most of it is built on old directions. I see a piece and I think - What if I did that to it or what if I incorporated this other material or what if I did it backwards, what if I made the parts that are light in this piece dark and make the dark pieces light? So, they're always changing, but they're always built on something before. You make something and you build on it, and I see threads going through much ofmy work - I have the fractal patterns, I have the repetition, but it's always changing because I'm always incorporating new things and new techniques and colorways. I may get a new material that I just can't not use. All of that gets incorporated. I've been making a living

as an artist since the 1970's. I graduated from school, things and sold them. I kind of feel like a shark. You know if a shark stops swimming, it dies and I feel like if I stop making something, I'm going to sink to the bottom and just not be anymore. To me, my fundamental identity is somebody that makes things. To me, art is very fundamental to actually being human. If you look back into the past, you don't see car parts, you see cave paintings. They have been I think that a fundamental need for people is to express themselves through art and also have art in their lives and learn to appreciate it. Art says we'rehuman. Creating beauty

and creating a means of self-expression, I think, is vital to us. >>ALBUQUERQUE PAINTER RICHARD HOGAN IS INTERESTED IN THE INITIAL IMPULSE OF MARKING THE CANVAS. >>I sometimes think of myself as a realist, but only in the sense that I'm interested in the realityof the painting as an actual object. I want the canvas and the paint and the reality of this thing to be very important. I think in terms of space and color is an element that activates the space. I can feel the way the space moves on the canvas

in my body. The light, the color, the vastness of the landscape of New Mexico is a big part of why I'm here. I hope it's in my work. In a certain sense, my work is very simple. It's visual at it without preconception, without looking for a narrative or something to hold on to, but just to open up to it visually.

To use a soft focus, see the whole thing and let it come to you, and to feel it, In the mid-1970's, I became very confused about what I was I considered derivative, I couldn't find my own voice or my own vision. I started thinking of sculpture, which is something I always wanted to do. The first, actual piece of sculpture I made consisted of six foot, aluminum rods that I twisted into simple forms and leaned against a wall. One day, I took three

of themand leaned them against a canvas, a blank canvas on my painting wall and the shadows formed coloredlines, I was getting light sources from multiple angles. It just suddenly hit and I wanted to paint lines. I think epiphany is the right word. I just suddenly saw a place to start. I realized it was mine, it wouldn't look My interest was always justthat first impulse. What I realized when I saw the shadows of the lines on canvas was that I could make paintings that were just that simple.

The 1970's were an interesting time in Albuquerque. For me, there was a small group of artists that were very important to me. There was an awareness, on our part, that we were doing something different than had happened in Albuquerque before. That kind of exchange with other artists is really important. It's why the major cities tend to be the art centers, but I think New Mexico is an amazing place. The culture itself is critical in that it's unusual in this country to have a place where 1000 years of civilization is present. New Mexico is like that, I don't know of any place else in the United

States like that and the landscape itself is a constant reminder of time also in that it's a landscape that shows the bones of all of the processes that have occurred over millions of years. The way things that look in New Mexico light, the intensity of it, the way it effects space. In my work there are also bits and pieces of every place I've been. Maybe particular colors or effects of light. Things from my childhood, I loved being up in trees, my friends and I spent our free time up in trees and out in the woods. in the tree and looking out through the forest and just loving the light that's flickering. The way I would look at it is a kind of soft focus where I would see this

whole thing with all of this energy going on. I think that experience is part of why my paintings are like they are. What I'm given to do is to put color and line on canvas and hope that that makes people understand something about how beautiful I find the world, the universe. It specifically comes out of being herein New Mexico, but I've found every place I've ever been to be beautiful. To me, it's the essence of things and the reason that I make paintings is to show people, and hopefully to make them

understand, as I do, how >>ADVERTISED AS "HEART OF THE WELL COUNTRY" MANY FLOCKED TO ALBUQUERQUE TO FIND A CURE FOR TUBERCULOSIS. >>Why was Albuquerque such a destination for health seekers? tuberculosis was the leading cause of death in the United States and there was no known cure at the time.

Streptomycin was not discovered until the 1940's and, in the meantime, climate was thought to be very therapeutic. Some place that was dry, sunny, and had a high altitude, where the air was consideredto be purer, and New Mexico had that in abundance. Health seekers began to arrive on the train and, initially, there were no services for them. They stayed in tents, they stayed in rooming houses. There was no treatment, although I understand that doses of whiskey were very popular. One health seeker by the name of Reverend Cooper, he was a Presbyterian minister, was absolutely shocked over these conditions and he was instrumental in starting one

sanatoriums. In 1902, the Sisters of Charity established St. Joseph and it was immediately filled. Other sanatoriums followed - Southwestern Presbyterian in 1908, Albuquerque in 1909, The Methodist Deaconess in 1912 were some of the larger sanatoriums and this quickly became of people were employed, providing services for health seekers, working in the sanatoriums. After the sanatoriums were established, there were numerous boarding houses that catered to the tubercular. There were health homes, there were just simply individual families that would establish tent cottages in their backyards and rent them

out to health seekers. The type of treatment that was considered therapeutic really drove the architecture of this era because the treatment consisted of a lot of fresh air, a lot of sunshine. Tuberculosis was a very serious disease and so if somebody was diagnosed with it, and they were lucky enough to be able to afford treatment in a sanatorium, they were going to be subjected to an average of nine months of very rigid requirements concerning when they got out, when they rested, how much they ate, and in order to keep patients engaged, sanatoriums made a concerted efforts to keep themhappy. A positive attitude was considered

absolutely critical to the cure and so, as part of the treatment, sanatoriums offered parties, they celebrated holidays, they had clubs. In 1914, three men from the Methodist Deaconess sanatorium started a newsletter called the Kill-Gloom Gazette. The purpose of this was to keep health seekers informed about the latest treatment, but also keep them amused by stories and poems. >Nancy, could you talk the sanatorium emergence in culture impacted the infrastructure of Albuquerque as we see it today? >This movement brought an incredible amount of talent to Albuquerque. People who

came to chase the cure, and many of them recovered, stayed to make contributions to their adopted city and so did theirrelatives. I compiled a list of some of these people, which included politicians, artists, writers,journalists, and realtors. For example the founders of what today is called New Mexico Magazine wasstarted by a couple of health seekers to Albuquerque. The name Lovelace, you might recognize, and Lassiter, they were two health seekers that came out here and in 1922, they recovered sufficiently and founded the Lovelace clinic. In 1910, Carrie Wooster, a young woman, came to Albuquerque, seriously ill with tuberculosis, her mother was with her, and she was joined by her fiance, Clyde

Tingley. In 1911, they married, Carrie recovered, and Clyde went on to become heavily involved in New Mexico politics, serving two terms as governor and effectively as mayor of Albuquerque. Carrie became a community activist in her own right. She and her husband worked to establish the Carrie Tingley Hospital for Crippled Children, which is now a part of the UNM system. >What is the significance of tuberculosis in Albuquerque today? >I think tuberculosis today has a tremendous historic significance in the fact that several of our major hospitals arose out of sanatoriums. I think there are important things to learn from this era since there was no known cure, the belief was that if you took care of somebody, if they ate right, if they got

fresh air, if they rested, had a positive attitude, they could throw off the disease. Many of them did and I think that's something