Exhibition Runs: April 25 – June 2, 2022
Reception & Artist Talks: Saturday May 14,  4:30pm – 6:30pm 

Harwood Art Center and Escuela del Sol Montessori are pleased to present Encompass, a unique all ages art celebration that takes place annually. This year Encompass features three gallery exhibitions, hands-on art making projects, live music, food trucks, and activities for all ages. Encompass is both a reflection of and an offering to our community. In 2022 our theme is (re)conceive: works of reclamation and highlights artists that deconstruct and reconstruct notions of social order – particularly investigating norms of domesticity, building spaces of comfort, and redefining what, and who, is home.

Artist Talks

We invite you to join us for an exhibition reception and artist talks at Harwood Art Center by Toni Gentilli and Robyn A. Frank on Saturday, May 14, 2022 with artist talks starting at 4:30pm. This event is free and open to all ages. For more information visit www.harwoodartcenter.org. Masks are optional and encouraged indoors.

Public Gallery Hours

This exhibition is installed in our galleries and is open to view by the public on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 10am-2pm. Masks are optional and encouraged indoors.

Relationship is an activity

Relationship is an activity is a collection of work that explores relationship-making as a moment-to-moment activity — the energetic and synergetic interchange between people and things that produce experience. Or that sense of self is a creative exchange of context and nuance, thus not flat but fluid, shapeable. 

Using an evolving symbolic visual language, these ideas are transposed using formal compositional elements. Some works are composed of multiple panels, or groups, such that the relationship between the panels is required to experience the piece wholly. 

A five-panel reconfigurable work will be rehung throughout the exhibition to explore how the piece collectively, and each panel therein, changes in its shifted position. Some works draw aesthetic reference to quilts. Quilting is used as a metaphor for relationship and collectivity as individual shapes reflect and repeat into larger patterns. Relationship is an activity is an invitation of quiet conversation, one of our own authorship.

About Robyn

Robyn A. Frank (she/ they) grew up in Tampa, Florida and moved to Brooklyn, New York to study printmaking at Pratt Institute. As a professional fine-art fabricator, Frank created paintings and prints for world-renowned artists. Now, as a full-time studio artist living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, they make paintings, prints, and art objects for galleries, retail, and wholesale clients. Her art practice explores relationships, change, and our sense-of-self through color and shape.

www.robynafrank.com

Artist Statement

My work is a practice that celebrates change; defining change as the cyclical duality of creation and loss. Conceptually, my work assumes that our sense of self is developed in relationship to our material surroundings and to society’s narratives and constructs. Given that, our capacity to change is relational and a shared responsibility to one another. Exploring these philosophical ideas visually, compositions use color and shape allegorically. 

Shapes repeat as a conceptual device: as the instructive role of context, as the innate duality of all things, or as the passage of time. In their relationship, we experience the subtlety of change.

Color is a conceptual symbol of transience, of transition. Using color theory, hues change in relationship to one another. Color connects the viewer to a sense of place using a palette inspired by New Mexico’s Big Sky and the geological and ecological formations of the Rio Grande Basin.

Exhibition Catalog