3 Questions with ABQ abstract artist Alex Ponca Stock

By Sara Atencio-Gonzales, The Paper – Artist Alex Ponca Stock explores the beauty of being alive and what death can teach us in Particle and the Wave: Oracles and Symbols for Living and Dying, her solo exhibition at Richard Levy Gallery in Downtown Albuquerque. The show features eight abstract works combining painting and beadwork, drawing from her Osage background as well as ideas ranging from ancient knowledge to modern science and technology. On view through Oct. 17, the exhibition uses color, numbers and symbols to examine life, death and the ways people make meaning of both. The Paper asked Ponca Stock three questions about the ideas and symbolism behind her work.

Particle and the Wave: Oracles and Symbols for Living and Dying explores some big ideas through art. What inspired this body of work, and what does the title mean to you? 

As I get older, especially, I find the experience of being human to be full of a startling amount of awe and beauty. Learning to see and sit with things (which I think is maybe all that being a painter is) creates so many opportunities, moments where you just think, “That is astoundingly beautiful.” I cry all the time because of it, just looking at bugs or the land or my dog or a person’s reaction to a situation they are faced with and they show grace or vulnerability or kindness or courage. … Looking at history… I have had a lot of death in my life, too, and I don’t think that appreciation for life is separate from a good relationship with death. Maybe you can really love life without knowing death, but in my experience, a kindness toward and respect for death – working with that fear – has been a key to trusting and understanding how beautiful life is and what we can do with it.

This is all stuff everyone already knows or that has already been said. But when you go through really hard or wonderful things, these human truths strike home pretty powerfully. I think that’s what I’m always working through in my art and very pointedly in this body of work: awe in the face of life, the appreciation that comes from that and what death teaches us. How we use archetypes/symbols and all kinds of knowledge or wisdom traditions to get there, or keep going. 

Symbols and imagery seem to play an important role in this exhibition. Are there particular symbols that you return to in your work, and what draws you to them? 

Numbers are important for me. I don’t usually exhibit the digits or symbols for the numbers overtly but there are number systems in all the pieces. For example, if there are segmented color fields or shapes or symbols, the number of those specific gestures is always considered and purposeful and usually symmetrical or balanced somehow in the picture plane. Even down to the amount of beads I string and stitch – I’m counting and infusing number magic (for lack of a better word) in there. That is the most foundational symbolism that I find myself going back to, and again, it’s not even meant to be forefront in the read of the work per se. The more overt symbols I use are all drawn from my background as an Osage person and a contemporary American and the symbols we are all surrounded by from birth. 

What do you hope people think about, feel or carry with them after spending time with this exhibition? 

I’ve been trying not to hope too much, because I don’t think I’m really in charge of what the viewer sees or doesn’t see, in the end. I am an animist and I believe that everything in the world has a life or spirit of its own. I understand that I am responsible for materializing these colors and compositions and ideas in this context of this gallery and time. But deep down, and honestly, I think these objects have their own messages for people that I’m not part of. I might get some of the messages, too, and I did while I was making them. I feel, maybe, they have messages that aren’t for me, they’re for other people. I guess I hope people get those messages that are meant for them, that even I don’t know, or maybe I do know and we can share in knowing. And as far as that goes, what they let me know: it feels they’re just trying to teach me what I mentioned before, “Don’t be afraid to die. Don’t be afraid to be still and look and live.”

Particle and the Wave: Oracles and Symbols for Living and Dying is on view through Oct. 17 at Richard Levy Gallery (514 Central Ave. SW). The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, with a reception for the exhibition from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2.