The spring exhibit at the Placitas Community Library in March will feature Colores de México. The exhibit will feature figurative, magical and mystical works by Jade Leyva, Armando Adrián López and Enrique Flores. The artists offer narratives that are both unique to the artists’ Mexican roots and universal in their appeal.
Originally from Mexico City, Jade Leyva has called Placitas her home since 2006. According to the artist, her ethereal works express multiculturalism, unity and environmental consciousness. The annual Santa Fe Contemporary Hispanic Market (CHM) awarded Leyva Best in the Oil/Acrylic Painting Category in 2017, 2019 and 2022 and Best of Show in 2021. Leyva has participated in countless exhibitions locally, nationally, and internationally, and her work has been collected by people around the globe.
Armando Adrián-López, a Tarascan (Purepecha) Indian from the Mexican village of Santa Maria in Michoacan now lives in Abiquiu. Without formal training, he credits the hours he spent as a child watching his grandfather, a master craftsman, weave baskets and dolls employing traditional tools and working methods handed down through generations. Adriàn-López aspires to make creations with the same magical qualities, employing his own mixture of egg tempura with a technique he has developed over the last 15 years. His sculptures are made of natural materials including cornhusks, river willow, native grasses, ceramic clay and 24-karat gold leaf, most of which he grows organically and gathers on the farm in northern New Mexico where he settled in 1994. He has exhibited in New Mexico and throughout the U.S.
Enrique Flores was born in San Pablo Huitzo, a community in the Mixtec region of the state of Oaxaca and continues to reside in Mexico. Both as a painter and as a graphic artist he employs different media to capture daily life, always using the image of a woman as a symbol of the importance of women in the development of cultures. Other recurring themes are the harvest, birds, and constellations. An early member of the Rufino Tamayo Art Workshop, in 1995 he founded the Taller de Grafica Enrique Fores in San Pablo Huitzo where he teaches, produces his own prints, and works as a master printmaker with a growing group of artists including Jade Leyva. He has participated in many group and individual exhibitions in Mexico and abroad and his work appears in a number of significant international art collections.
The exhibit will be in the Gracie Community room of the library from March 16-April 17. The library’s hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Sunday 1 – 4 p.m.
Leyva and Adrián-López will be at a reception for the artists on Friday, April 5 from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. Work from the exhibition will be on sale with a portion of the sale price benefiting the library.