Harwood Art Center and Escuela del Sol Montessori are pleased to present 7th & Mountain: Exploring 100 Years of Learning Through History, Art, and Civic Engagement. This special project was made possible by a grant from the Library of Congress Teaching With Primary Sources Western Region, administered by Metropolitan State University of Denver.
Harwood Art Center developed an arts-based framework that incorporates a holistic approach to arts integration and public engagement by inviting professional artists to create artworks inspired by the archival and primary sources identified or uncovered through research into collections held by Escuela del Sol Montessori + Harwood Art Center, Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, City of Albuquerque, State of New Mexico, and the Library of Congress.
Harwood enlisted three longtime local collaborating artists – Lynnette Haozous, Zahra Marwan, and Sofie Hecht – to lead workshops sharing their work and process with Escuela del Sol Montessori Elementary and Jr. High students. The students were invited to create their own work in response to archival and primary sources.
The project will culminate with a public exhibition in Harwood’s Galleries featuring the works of the professional and student artists, alongside a selection of the primary Library of Congress and other archival materials.
Escuela Senior El and Jr. High students worked with Sofie Hecht, a documentary photographer born in Brooklyn, NY. Her work focuses on queer community, particularly collaborative portraiture. She said, “My photography has always been a path to build relationships and advocate for the communities I am a part of. This means my work looks backwards as much as it does forward, using relational and empathetic storytelling to critically examine the historical narratives in which we find ourselves and build a new archive along the way.”
Sofie introduced her practice around documenting community through photography, and invited kids to brainstorm around what makes a community. She then invited them to build a model of their ideal community neighborhood with recycled materials. Students started building their neighborhood in art class with Escuela art teacher Ms. Christy. Their neighborhood includes restaurants, chickens, and many places to play. For her second visit students were asked to to bring in photos of family and homeor images that represented community to them. Sophie taught the group how to create cyanotypes with their photos. The process helped students reflect on community, and how the past informs our current social environment.
Junior El West had the pleasure of working with Lynnette Haozous, a member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe (Chiricahua Apache),who is also part Diné, and part Taos Pueblo. Haozous is a multi-media artist, who grew up on all three of her tribal nations, learning a unique blend of Indigenous perspectives, intersectionalities, traditions, and experiences. Lynette was interested in the yearbooks from the Harwood Girls School, and invited students to recreate yearbook images to use as source material for a mural. Students and teachers did their best to recreate four Harwood images and chose one to paint. Lynette showed the students how to project their photograph onto a large piece of canvas and trace over the image with graphite. The students transferred their recreated photograph to the canvas, and then spent their following to art classes painting their mural with an acrylic palette of red, brown, yellow turquoise and black. Old year book photos, recreated photos and images of the students at work were collaged around the border to finish their large scale piece.
Junior El East explored themes of immigration and erasure in history with Zahra Marwan, a traditional artist known for her watercolor and ink illustrations and poetic storytelling. Zahra creates work that reflects her cultural roots in Kuwait, as well as her life now in New Mexico. Zhara shared her immigration story by reading students her original book, “Where the Butterflies Fill the Sky,” pointing out images she’d drawn from childhood memories in Kuwait and New Mexico. She invited students to think of a time when they felt really happy, to write about it and then to draw illustrations of that time on postcards. As they continued their work on their postcards in Art Class students decided to draw some “Future Memories” as they imagined what they might like to do some day. Research into Middle Eastern immigrants in New Mexico revealed a wave of Lebanese immigrants who became shopkeepers in Belen, Pecos, Las Vegas, Peñasco, and Santo Domingo, including the parents of real estate developer Dale J. Bellamah (born Abdul Hamid Bellamah) whose namesake street crosses through the Wells Park neighborhood. As they continued their work on their postcards in Art Class students decided to draw some Future Memories (things that they haven’t done yet) and Students loved learning about the corner groceries of Wells Park, and the many immigrants who set up shops across the state, and built a “storefront” of their own where they would “sell” their postcards. They named their store F-East-emories: in honor of the memories, the future memories, and their classroom name (Jr. El. East). When Zahra heard about this development in the student work she said, “It sounds like a feast of memories!”
Both the artists’ work and the student work will be on view as part of Harwood’s Encompass exhibition and community celebration, a unique multi-generational art event that takes place annually in the Harwood Art Center. This year’s theme is Rituals of Practice & Memory. Featuring five invitational exhibitions, open studios, hands-on art-making projects, live music, food, and activities for all ages, Encompass is both a reflection of and an offering to our community.
A free community celebration will be held on Saturday, April 11, from 4:30-7:30 p.m. at Harwood Art Center. This event will include open studios, food, music, the debut of our latest Artist Made Series Design by Denise Weaver Ross, and the following free art-making activities and experiences for our community: Face painting with Escuela Del Sol Montessori, flower crown making with Jacklyn Le, live portraits, screen printing by 111 T-Shirt Lab and more!
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