Just as Chatter boasts a Coffee Curator and a Poet Wrangler, we approach visual art with equal parts irreverence and intent. The Department of Temporary Objects is our unofficial agency for wall-based phenomena, operating out of the Muñoz Waxman Gallery at the CCA and Chatter’s home venue at 912 3rd St in Albuquerque. We don’t so much exhibit as allow things to occur: brief, vivid interventions that lean large, strange, and spatially ambitious. Over the years, we’ve been lucky to collaborate with a range of artists and curators, including our recent and fruitful Tia x Chatter partnership with the Tia Collection. The Department picks up where that effort left off, with a renewed interest in the unlikely, the oversized, and the beautifully temporary.
Current Exhibition: Unquiet Figures
Things From 912 3rd St. We Had to See Again
Curated by David Cudney
This exhibition brings back three unforgettable voices from Chatter’s walls at 912 3rd Street. Their past solo shows hit with unusual force: emotionally, visually, spatially. And we couldn’t resist assembling them again at full volume here. These are not quiet works. And definitely not small. Think of this not as a retrospective, but as reunion: bold-scale pieces that lingered in our minds, now gathered under one roof for a second round.
About the Artists:
Juliana Coles, award winning artist, received her MFA from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco. Her work has been shown internationally including multiple museums. Coles developed and teaches an active meditation process which accesses archetypal signs and symbols from the unconscious for transformation and healing that is used by therapists, teachers, and professionals around the world. Her works have been featured in over 20 books including the self-published “Ghost Pirate; the Legend of Juana La Loca,” illuminating grief and loss. Coles is a 2016 artist resident at Green Olive Arts in Morocco and in 2017 was accepted into Otis’ Inaugural Residency program. In 2017 after teaching a workshop in Portugal Coles walked the Caminho Portugues to receive her Compostela in Santiago. Coles is a 2017 and 2018 Clark Hulings Foundation Fellow. In 2018 the artist presented her works at the StARTup Fair LA, spoke on two panels and was listed by Dale Youngman in Cartwheel Art as one of the top ten artists at the fair. In 2019 Coles was a featured artist on Artsy Shark, created original works for the television series, “Roswell,” and locally presented the lecture, “30 Years of Sketchbooks.” Currently the artist is at work on a traveling exhibition that combines historical research with mixed media portraits to present “Pirate Queens; Piracy is a Feminist Act.” Coles is represented by Keep Contemporary in Santa Fe.
Rocky Norton is a multidisciplinary artist based in New Mexico whose work spans painting, photography, sculpture, furniture design, and large-scale exterior installations. Originally drawn to visual storytelling through photographing the skateboarding scene, Norton’s creative practice expanded following a profound personal transformation in his late 30s. He is known for his vivid, interpretive canvases that blend impressionist and modernist influences, as well as for his imaginative use of repurposed materials in both furniture and landscape design. Norton’s work often incorporates metaphor, spirituality, and deeply personal symbolism, including a recurring scribble motif titled Petition the Warden. Whether painting murals, crafting functional art from reclaimed wood and steel, or camouflaging furniture into desert vistas, Norton’s practice is rooted in moment-catching and intuitive expression.
A Helene Wurlitzer Foundation fellow and international BP Portrait Award exhibitor, Natalie Voelker creates paintings, drawings, murals, and art installations that investigate complexity and transcendence in the seemingly ordinary. Her painting, “Davetta,” has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London as well as the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh and the Ulster Museum in Belfast, Ireland. Her work has been featured in multiple publications including the anthology, BARED, and the French-English magazine, VolUp. Voelker has produced commissioned works for the Harwood Art Center, 508 Mural Festival, the City of Albuquerque, and various private collections – both nationally and abroad. She has a BFA from the University of Wisconsin and currently lives and works in Albuquerque.
The Tia x Chatter Mural Project presents murals by contemporary women BIPOC artists who activate space and community. The current mural on view is Apache, Dine’, Pueblo Frequencies, created by Farmington-born Dine’ artist and telecommunications attorney Darrah Blackwater.
Past Exhibitions:
Tia x Chatter: The Space Between Two Movements
Tia x Chatter | Native Identity: Reflection in the Figure
Tia x Chatter Mural Project: Generous
Tia x Chatter | Illumination: A Collective Vision of Contemporary Photography
Tia x Chatter | Wild NM: A Vivarium Satellite Show
Tia x Chatter: Field of Vision
Tia x Chatter: I Say With My Full Essence
Tia x Chatter: The B/W Show
Tia x Chatter: Bless This Land