ATTRACTIVE OPPOSITES.

Byline: DOUGLAS FAIRFIELD

Two artists whose work and working methods are wildly different are currently featured at Linda Durham Contemporary Art: Erika Wanenmacher and Lucy Maki. Needless to say, the idea wasn't to create a two-person exhibit but simply to present two separate mind-sets and distinct visions.

Wanenmacher's work is the more eclectic -- if not all over the map. But then, that's the source of her art: the land. To be specific, the arroyos, ditches, acequias, and vacant lots that she frequents looking for materials and inspiration. Ditch Witch, the lighthearted title of her exhibition, displays new work generated from stuff that has been discarded in such places. Some call her medium found objects; others call it trash. Regardless, Wanenmacher has a sharp eye for spotting this and that as precious fodder for her work.

"I am a thrifter, as I say in the [wall] narrative; I can't help it, I'm a hunter-gatherer. It's in my blood," Wanenmacher said. "This batch of stuff started because of the area where I walk my dog. I walk along an acequia that cuts through an old trash pile from a school and hospital." Wanenmacher's inclination to survey the land may have come from her beachcombing days growing up on the shores of Lake Erie.

Interspersed with Wanenmacher's work (there are 10 pieces, all from this year, including an entire wall of assorted "spells") is a handwritten dialogue on glass that tells of the artist's journey -- the story of how she locates her various art components, her encounters with others, and occasional comments about her dog, Kevin, and life's peculiarities. Asked if she keeps a diary or a running log during her outdoor excursions, Wanenmacher replied, "Not a log of what I pick up, but I do carry a notebook to write down ideas for the narrative story and ideas for my spells. Sometimes I sit on the side of the ditch and write notes."

A common component in Wanenmacher's work, both in her

sculptural constructs and paintings, is the use of little eyes (presumably purchased at Hobby Lobby or some such place). Sometimes the eyes make sense, as in her figurative work for Kevin and Snow Erika and Raven, but in other cases the eyes appear as mysterious, omnipotent manifestations in the skies of her paintings, as in Ravens & Hawk and Flying Geese. The disembodied eyes are kind of creepy, but they do play a significant role. "The eyes for me are a symbol of presence, of perception, of paying attention," she said.

Perhaps the most interesting piece is Ant Hill Erika. It consists of a small figure standing before a large anthill. The figure is covered in sand, as if it is an extension of the anthill. The textural quality of granular sand crystals covering the body is unsettling, especially given our aversion to insects crawling on the skin. But Wanenmacher's piece was inspired by other things. "In the wall narrative, I talk about the Navajo mythologies of the Ant Peoples who, after repeated punishment by the gods, get kicked up levels of the earth until they get to this level, where peoples are sorted out by size and shape and language and given attributes and detriments. Ants were made very small, but they were given great strength, able to carry many times their weight. I consider ants a powerful ally -- for example, when one is bearing the burden of being a fallible human."

Wanenmacher's wall of "spells" contains an assortment of oddments assembled in various ways -- primarily disposed booze bottles filled with charms made of other discarded items. Are they instilled with power? "The objects that I pick up carry a resonance of where they came from, who had them, and how they were used," she said. "The Sufi word baraka describes it well. It refers to meaning transferred by proximity or love or the flow of grace."

So is Wanenmacher a practicing witch? "Not by chance [but] by realization," she said. "I realized quite a while back that the sculptures I made were basically spells. When one makes a spell, intent comes first, directing the energies. [ETH] If the intent was very clear about what I wanted people to think about in my [work], that is by definition magic: the art of changing consciousness at will. Hence the spells. I tend to think of myself as a culture witch, as my sculpture is my magical practice."

Painterly Architectonics -- the title of Maki's show -- sounds oxymoronic. But the result of her decades-long investigations into combining a loose, expressive painting style with a more calculated construct proves successful.

Situated in the foyer and main gallery, Maki's pieces -- all from

2009 -- look alike at first glance. They all contain constructed wood components with a tactile painted surface. In fact, one immediately senses a determined aesthetic in which each piece seems like a variation on a central theme. To an extent that's true, but time spent with the work reveals nuances in texture, color, and other formal components that give individual pieces a marked character. Maki refers to her work as "geometric abstraction" and acknowledges that process is an overriding facet to her work. She has a "process way of working," she stated in an e-mail exchange from her studio in Albuquerque. "I feel like I'm always running an experiment, so I don't know how it is going to turn out. [But] I like the challenge of being in unknown territory and the element of surprise."

What's not surprising is the source of her inspiration. "In graduate school, I did my dissertation on Russian artist [Kazimir] Malevich and was especially inspired by his writings on nonobjectivity in painting," Maki said. "However, at that time, I was thinking more in terms of constructions, with appendages rather than architecture." She also points to early 20th-century Russian Constructivism as informing her body of work.

"[My] work has become more architectural recently as it has become more pared down," she states. "In Painterly Architectonics it especially hit me that they are all based on a diagram of a cube. I felt I was working with a blueprint of sorts that alluded to a volumetric space yet retained its flatness."

This may be seen in Shifting Latitude, a 7-foot-tall painted construct on canvas and wood that incorporates framework positioned at particular angles at the top and bottom, alluding to depth perception. This is enhanced by the adjoining panels, painted in orange, gold, and black, that reference plate tectonics. But the overall piece is essentially flat, which is conveyed that much more by Maki's gestural painting style, which makes the viewer aware of surface quality.

Maki does not seal her work in the thick glaze of varnish that

seems to be favored by many painters of nonrepresentational art.

Her pieces are not necessarily pristine but rather show the nicks and

marks of the artist's handcrafted art; that makes it more personal and

visually stimulating.

Asked if she built things as a child, Maki said, "I did construct some things, really all kinds of art forms, as a kid; but my favorite thing was painting and doing very, very large -- like 6 foot in scale -- pastel drawings and filling a 10-foot wall. That was really exciting!"

A grouping of smaller works by Maki adorns one wall in the main gallery and might be seen as concept pieces for larger work. "Originally, the small pieces started out as a kind of sketchbook for large pieces, but the transition never worked for me," she said. Although the smaller work may not have the presence of her large-scale pieces, each has a discrete visual voice that draws you in for a private dialogue.

Maki and Wanenmacher definitely march to different drummers. And Durham has chosen to present these unlike sensibilities in an unlikely pairing that suits the innovative agenda of one of Santa Fe's long-standing contemporary gallerists.

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Erika Wanenmacher: Ditch Witch and Lucy Maki: Painterly Architectonics

Exhibits through June 13

Linda Durham Contemporary Art, 1101 Paseo d