Albuquerque Museum Announces “Abstracting Nature”
Albuquerque Museum announces Abstracting Nature, an exhibition foregrounding the works of 10 artists, past and contemporary, whose enduring relationships with the land have played a vital role in their creative practices. The exhibition will be on view June 21 through October 12, 2025. Featured artists are Marietta Patricia Leis; Joanna Keane Lopez; Lydia Madrid; Agnes Martin; Yoshiko Shimano; Judy Tuwaletstiwa; Joan Weissman; Emmi Whitehorse; Karen Yank; and Richard Diebenkorn.
While these artists express a profound appreciation for nature, particularly the landscapes of New Mexico, each one focuses on capturing the deeper meanings behind what they observe rather than simply its external appearance. Guided by observation, research, and intuition, these artists have honed their visions using specifically chosen materials—glass, clay, steel, graphite, ink, silk, and natural pigments. The earthly mediums become vessels for memory and meaning, weaving together threads of heritage, culture, and personal journey in a quiet dialogue between hand and land.
“So many of us who live in New Mexico, and even those who only pass through, know the unsurpassed beauty of our state. But what’s special about the artists included in this exhibition is that they’re able to capture those split-second impressions in both glass and steel, weave them into cloth, and bake them into adobe—presenting what are ultimately very surprising yet familiar shapes. They’re able to make what is normally so fragile and fleeting into something permanent, and to capture exactly what so many of us appreciate about this place,” said Assistant Curator of Art William Gassaway.
In the works presented, the artists use the lens of abstraction to explore the deep stories and personal connections they share with the environment. Through their sculptures, weavings, prints, and paintings, they encourage us to reflect, reconnect, and nurture even greater connections with the places that support and inspire us. Spanning more than seventy years of creative exploration, Abstracting Nature invites all who have felt a sense of peace or belonging in New Mexico’s vast yet intimate landscapes to see them in new and imaginative ways.
“Albuquerque Museum continues to present exhibitions like this one that are not only visually striking but also deeply meaningful,” said Mayor Tim Keller. “It’s a powerful reminder of how art can open minds, spark reflection, and remind us of the beauty all around us.”
Sampling of works:
Joan Weissman’s needlepoint tapestry Pyramids (1999) has subtle irregularities in geometric forms and naturally dyed fibers that highlight organic qualities and connect the work to nature on a physical level. Weissman worked with a weaving studio located in Pakistan’s Hunza Valley, first starting with a gouache study to act as a guide for the artisans’ embroidery process. She welcomes the qualities the weavers bring to the work. In addition, as a member of GoodWeave International, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending child labor in the rug industry, Weissman ensures her work supports ethical practices and empowers local communities.
Joanna Keane Lopez’s Ghost Spell (2023) is a meditation on her great-grandfather’s home in Lópezville. Located on the ancestral Piro land of Socorro, New Mexico, Lópezville was originally known as Chamisal and was acquired via a land grant in 1815. Since that time, it has been home to multiple generations of Lopez’s family. Over time, the land became largely abandoned, and its adobe buildings—including the artist’s great-grandfather’s house—fell into disrepair. Adobe, formed from the earth and constantly in a state of change, becomes a living connection between a community and the landscape that surrounds it.
Agnes Martin lived much of her life between the quiet deserts of New Mexico and the busy energy of the New York art world. Her Untitled #6 (1980) is one of the artist’s hallmark works, which are most often square in format, typically six feet by six feet, offering a perfectly balanced frame for contemplation. Recognizable by their carefully ordered parallel lines and bars of luminous pastels, Martin's signature approach incorporates lightly penciled grids with thin layers of gesso, creating a sense of both order and subtle, hand-made character. Rather than depict the external world, Martin’s paintings serve as visual equivalents of emotional or spiritual states—calm, contentment, happiness, and love. In this sense, her paintings are less about what one sees and more about what one feels.
Judy Tuwaletstiwa collaborates with fire in Divination (2001), transforming grains of sand into mesmerizing forms, each piece embodying the delicate balance between fragility and strength. The glass elements, spheres, cubes, and organic textures, capture the tension between transparency and opacity, clarity and distortion, and the complexities of perception. Embedded in a bed of soft sand, their arrangement evokes a meditation on transformation and the ever-shifting balance between the known and the unknown.
Exhibition Programs:
Saturday, June 21 at 2 p.m.
Opening Conversation: Abstracting Nature
Free event - Artists Judy Tuwaletstiwa, Joanna Keane Lopez, and Joan Weissman will speak about how they work with the traditional materials of glass, adobe, and textile in innovative ways to create expressions of history, place, and belonging.
Sunday, July 13 at 3 p.m.
Talk - Lessons in Abstraction: Karen Yank and Agnes Martin
Free event - Sculptor Karen Yank shares insights from her relationship with artist and mentor Agnes Martin, reflecting on their shared practices of meditation, a deep love for the land, and a devotion to expressing emotion through abstraction.
This exhibition is made possible in part by the Chicago Woodman Foundation, the City of Albuquerque’s Department of Arts & Culture, and the Albuquerque Museum Foundation.