Erika Wanenmacher

Last updated
Erika Wanenmacher
Born1955
Nationality German-American
Education1973-76 Kansas City Art Institute. 1976-77 Feminist Studio Workshop, Los Angeles, CA
Known formixed media, sculpture, installation
AwardsKindle Project Award
Website http://www.erikawanenmacher.com/

Erika Wanenmacher (born 1955) is a sculptor and installation artist from Santa Fe, New Mexico, a self-described "maker of things." She has said, "I believe objects that are made with intent carry resonance that can shift energy, power, and beliefs. They're about magic and changing consciousness." [1] [2] Wanenmacher's work has been shown nationally and internationally. Her sculptures incorporate many materials and techniques including forged steel, carved and painted wood, cast aluminum, and large-scale installations. She is represented in Los Angeles, CA by Blythe Projects. [3]

Contents

Artwork

The major themes in Wanenmacher's handmade sculptures and installation include the conflicts between nature and culture; U.S. atomic history, and magic and witchcraft. [4] The art critic Michael Abatemarco has written that Wanenmacher's work reveals the medicinal and metaphysical properties of plants and the relationship between the botanical realm and human beings and other animals. [5] Several of her works have addressed the legacy of atomic weapons, including the human radiation experiments during the Cold War. [6] Her installation, "The Science Club, The Boy's Room, Now, Forever, Then, Part 1", examines the relationship between U.S. atomic history and culture, to critique the progress of science, and the adverse effects of the pursuits of nuclear physics. She has used surplus objects from Los Alamos National Laboratory, obtained through Ed Grothus' The Black Hole surplus company.

Notable exhibits

Selected solo exhibitions

Selected group exhibitions

Notable collections

Related Research Articles

Marco Brambilla

Marco Brambilla is an Italian-born Canadian film director and video artist.

Emmi Whitehorse American painter

Emmi Whitehorse is a Native American painter and printmaker. She was born in Crownpoint, New Mexico and is a member of the Navajo Nation. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico and grew up on the open land northeast of Gallup, New Mexico in a family where only the Navajo Language was spoken.

Georgia OKeeffe Museum Art Museum and Historic Property in New Mexico, USA

The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum is dedicated to the artistic legacy of Georgia O'Keeffe, her life, American modernism, and public engagement. It opened on July 17, 1997, eleven years after the artist's death. It comprises multiple sites in two locations: Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Abiquiu, New Mexico. In addition to the founding Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, the O'Keeffe includes: the Library and Archive within its research center at the historic A.M. Bergere house; the Education Annex for youth and public programming; Georgia O'Keeffe's historic Abiquiu Home and Studio; the O'Keeffe Welcome Center in Abiquiu; and Museum Stores in both Santa Fe and Abiquiu. Georgia O'Keeffe's additional home at the Ghost Ranch property is also part of the O'Keeffe Museum's assets, but is not open to the public.

Inka Essenhigh American painter

Inka Essenhigh is an American painter based in New York City. Throughout her career, Essenhigh has had solo exhibitions at galleries such as Deitch Projects, Mary Boone Gallery, 303 Gallery, Stefan Stux Gallery, and Jacob Lewis Gallery in New York, Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo, and Il Capricorno in Venice.

Ed Moses was an American artist based in Los Angeles and a central figure of postwar West Coast art.

Dario Robleto

Dario Robleto is an American transdisciplinary artist, researcher, writer, teacher and “citizen-scientist”. His research-driven practice results in intricately handcrafted objects that reflect his exploration of music, popular culture, science, war, and American history.

Peter Sarkisian is an American video and multimedia artist who lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Teri Greeves is a Native American beadwork artist, living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is enrolled in the Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma.

John Connell was an American artist. His works included sculpture, painting, drawing, and writing.

Gloria Graham

Gloria Graham is an American artist based in New Mexico. Her work includes sculpture, painting, and photography.

Robert Kushner

Robert Kushner(; born 1949, Pasadena, CA) is an American contemporary painter who is known especially for his involvement in Pattern and Decoration. He has been called "a founder" of that artistic movement. In addition to painting, Kushner creates installations in a variety of mediums, from large-scale public mosaics to delicate paintings on antique book pages.

Florence Miller Pierce was an American artist best known for her innovative resin relief paintings. Her work has often been linked with monochrome painting and minimalism.

Polly Apfelbaum

Polly E. Apfelbaum is an American contemporary visual artist, who is primarily known for her colorful drawings, sculptures, and fabric floor pieces, which she refers to as "fallen paintings". She currently lives and works in New York City, New York.

Mala Breuer was an American Abstract Expressionist. Her work is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Ciel Bergman

Cheryl Marie Bowers, known as Ciel Bergman, was an American painter of Swedish origin. Her work, considered post-modern, has a focus on the environment as well as feminine consciousness.

Constance DeJong (visual artist)

Constance DeJong is a visual artist who works in the margin between sculpture and painting/drawing. Her predominate medium is metal with light as a dominant factor. She is currently working in New Mexico and is a Professor of Sculpture at the University of New Mexico. DeJong received a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Art Fellowship in 1982. In 2003, she had a retrospective at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History. That same year, Constance DeJong: Metal was published and released by University of New Mexico Press. Her work has been described by American art critic Dave Hickey as "work worth seeing and thinking about under any circumstances".

Eric Tillinghast American contemporary artist

Eric Tillinghast is an American contemporary artist based in Los Angeles, CA. He has worked with water as a sculptural material since 1994. After attending art school in Sweden, Tillinghast began his art career in California where he created charcoal drawings. These drawings became increasingly minimal and geometric. The carefully developed detail seen in these earliest works carries over to the precision and attention to detail seen in his metal works. His works can be found in the permanent collections of the Albright-Knox Gallery, the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Wisconsin, the Museum of Fine Art in Santa Fe, Portland State University, and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona.

Valeska Soares is a Brooklyn-based Brazilian sculptor and installation artist.

Erika Blumenfeld

Erika Blumenfeld is an American transdisciplinary artist, writer, and researcher whose practice is driven by the wonder of natural phenomena, humanity’s relationship with the natural world, and the intersections between art, science, nature, and culture. Blumenfeld’s artistic inquiries trace and archive the evidence and stories of connection across the cosmos. Blumenfeld is a Guggenheim Fellow, a Smithsonian Fellow, a Creative Capital Awardee and has exhibited her work widely in museums and galleries nationally and internationally since 1994. Since the early 2000s, Blumenfeld has been an artist-in-residence at laboratories, observatories and in extreme environments, collaborating with scientists and research institutions, such as NASA, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the South African National Antarctic Program and the McDonald Observatory. Blumenfeld’s art practice is described as non-traditional and research-based, where the artist has explored many fields and disciplines, including astronomy, geology, planetary science, ecology, environmental conservation, and cultural heritage. Blumenfeld’s research and inquiry have resulted in interdisciplinary artworks in multiple mediums, including interactive 3D computer graphics and 3D modeling, digital media, photography, video art, painting, drawing, sculpture, and writing, which the artist views as the artifacts of her artistic process.

Ted Larsen (1964) is an American contemporary sculptor living and working in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He makes primarily small scale sculptures repurposed from painted salvaged steel.

References

  1. "Erika Wanenmacher." Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine Linda Durham Contemporary Art. Accessed 11 April 2011.
  2. "Makers Muse: Erika Wanenmacher". kindleproject.org. Kindle Project. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  3. Metz, Hillary. "Blythe Projects: Going NO+MAD". installationmag.com. Installation Magazine. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  4. Albright-Knox Art Gallery. "Erika Wanenmacher: Of the Beasts". Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  5. Abatemarco, Michael (November 7, 2014). "The village witch: Artist Erika Wanenmacher's web of interconnections". The Santa Fe New Mexican. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  6. "Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art Announces Fall Exhibitions". artdaily.com. Art Daily. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  7. "Works of : Erika Wanenmacher". Searchable Art Museum. New Mexico Museum of Art. Retrieved 8 December 2015.