Opening Reception: Friday, January 6, 6 – 8pm
Exhibition Runs: January 6-26, 2017
Participating Artists: Dana Chodzko, Chris Collins, John Robert Craft, Nathan Eyring, Elizabeth Fritzsche,
D’Jean Jawrunner, Topaz Jones, Joel Kiser, Sarah Madigan, Candy Nartonis, Kenneth Peshlakai, George Salas,
Robin Speas, and Eleanor Trabaudo. Hot Iron is curated by Candy Nartonis.
The Iron Pour in Tucumcari has been drawing artists from across the US since 1999. The preparation is exacting, the
atmosphere exciting, and the final firing, melting, and pouring of liquid iron is intense, demanding and dramatic. Hot Iron
introduces Albuquerque to a broad sample of the art that is produced each year in this amazing New Mexico setting.
About the Tucumcari Iron Pour
The Iron Pour at Mesalands Community College in Tucumcari has been drawing artists from across the US since
1998. At the Pour, New Mexico artists have joined others from Alaska to New York and Georgia and from many
places in between. The preparation is exacting, the atmosphere exciting, and the final firing, melting, and pouring of
liquid iron is intense, demanding and dramatic. Hot Iron highlights the work done by Pour Master D’Jean Jawrunner,
her colleague Joel Kiser, along with work by selected Albuquerque and Santa Fe artists, and by Institute of American
Indian Arts students who have participated with Dana Chodzko. These artists include some whose career is dedicated
to sculpture and others who work mainly in other media but come to the Pour to explore an alternative way of making
art. The Mesalands Iron Pour is a major art event in New Mexico, perhaps better known outside the state than within
it. What connects the artists in this show is their yearly collaboration in breaking apart scrap iron and turning it into
white hot metal and then into the widest possible range of artistic expressions. These expressions range from abstract
pieces to Hispanic religious figures and from comic book characters to echoes of ancestral Puebloan objects. There
will be large installations as well as tiny pieces. There is humor as well as pathos in these works. The show will
introduce an Albuquerque audience to the Tucumcari Iron Pour and to a broad sample of the art that is produced each
year in this amazing New Mexico setting.
About Candy Nartonis
Candy Nartonis is the curator of Hot Iron. Her own artistic practice bridges the gap between abstract and altered
realism. Her work is included in portfolios such as Pocahontas meets Hello Kitty (with Native American artists); The
Art Connection Collection; The Boston Printmakers’ Translations (2006); The Boston Portfolio for the Southern
Graphics Council (2004); Varied Voices; EES Members Lighten Up; and States of the State: A Contemporary Survey
of American Printing. Her work is also included in Re-riding History: from the Southern Plains to the Matanzas Bay,
curated by Emily Arthur, Marwin Begaye and John Hitchcock.
Public collections owning Nartonis works include the Denver Art Museum; Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University;
Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Museum of Art, University of Maine; University of New Mexico Museum; Boston Public
Library Print Collection; US State Department, Washington, DC; Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Willamette University;
National Art Academy, Hangzhou, China and others. www.cnartonis.com
Curator Statement
“My goal as a curator is to bring the excitement of the Tucumcari Iron Pour to the attention of the
Albuquerque community. I have been attending the Iron Pour for four years. I have been impressed with the artists
who arrive there from all over the US. The generous spirit, the quality and variety of the work, and the teamwork
is amazing. We share cooking chores, gently melt the wax for the lost wax process, help one another with silica
investment layers, prepare the sand molds as teams, pitch in to carry heavy loads, break iron, pack coke for the
furnace, attend to the first firing, and finally work in the enormous heat to pour the liquid iron into one another’s
final molds.” – Candy Nartonis