Issuu

Inter•act

by mark weaver

Unfamiliar Intimacies by jessica marie gross

Bones and Soft Bellies:

Companions for the 6th Extinction by li ming chu

Harwood Art Center August 6 - September 12, 2026

Inter•act mark weaver

“What is important to me is engagement – touching, working, grappling, revealing. To put my hands and myself into the stuff of existence. To be not remote from things, not observing from a vantage point, but going into the substance of this miracle planet we are part of. My intent is not to say something about the world, but rather to get down into the fiber of it and look to uncover fundamentals and hidden elements. To follow intuition, to rouse perception. To listen for vibrations and wonder about them. To experience space and mass, texture and rhythm, in a direct physical way, with open-mindedness and curiosity. The images become records of time passages and meditations, ways to ponder mysteries, and to communicate without referencing words. I am drawn to the cloud-like shapes and grains swirling inside pieces of wood – the individual character of each piece of wood is revealed as it is worked, and becomes integral to the finished printed image. For this reason, I often use scavenged wood materials which exhibit varied and unique effects of time, usage, and deterioration. The finished pieces are hand-rubbed relief prints on kozo paper, which reflect the simple and direct process of handling and shaping the carving and printing materials.”

Page 3: Mark Weaver, resonance (2025)

Page 4: Mark Weaver, other planes of there, hand printed woodcut on kozo paper, (2025), (framed) Page 5: Top-Bottom: Mark Weaver, harmonics, 2024; Mark Weaver, wafer ash, 2023, photos by Aziza Murray & Harwood Art Center, 2026, All Rights Reserved

Aziza Murray, Home, digital video, 2025

about mark weaver Mark Weaver (b.1958 in Albuquerque, NM) studied block printing and graphic design in the 1970s at Washington University in St Louis MO, while earning a degree in architecture. He has continued working from his home studio in the intervening years, and has exhibited in galleries in New Mexico, California, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. He is also a working musician who plays tuba in a variety of ensembles. He loves music, reading, and NM mountain hiking. The images are relief prints of woodcuts: hand-rubbed impressions on kozo (mulberry) paper using oil based ink, typically carved from scavenged wood pieces.

Unfamiliar Intimacies jessica marie gross

“I was born within view of the Pacific Ocean and have felt connected to it all my life. I feel equally connected to the desert Southwest, with its wide-open vistas and resilient plants, and to the deciduous forests and rolling hills of the Northeast. These landscapes shaped my childhood, and my heart has always leaned tenderly toward the more-than-human world. I’m an artist with an education in science. I think about the ways humans have interacted with the more-than-human world throughout our evolutionary history. I’m interested in how those relationships shaped our cultural values, and how they continue to influence our behavior today. My work is autobiographical. I explore my own reactions and experiences and use them to connect with viewers. My research lately has focused on microplastics, which has led me to think about the ways plastics permeate ecosystems. While teaching a human genetics course earlier this year, I found myself thinking about the advent of agriculture, when we began selecting plants and animals with traits that benefited us. Several years ago, I viewed a collection of birdskins for the first time and still think about my emotional response to seeing fellow living beings transformed into objects of study. While these experiences may seem unrelated, they all reveal the same cultural tendency to see the more-than-human world as separate from ourselves and existing for our use. Ironically, it’s my scientific training that brings me back to the worldview I developed as a child: that all living beings share a common ancestor. We are all kin. My work creates opportunities for viewers to reconsider our relationships with other living beings and to imagine what it might feel like to recognize them not as distant others, but as the kin they have always been.” 15

about jessica marie gross Jessica is a conceptual artist and a scientist. Each of her practices offers a lens for understanding human behavior and the ways we construct ideas of place, identity, and belonging in relation to one another and to the living world. She holds a BFA in Studio Art and a PhD in Anthropology, and her work has been exhibited in galleries across the United States.

Bones and Soft Bellies:

Companions for the 6th Extinction li ming chu “Water, land, plants, animals, people- these spirits are crushed and consumed by settler colonial capitalism. Our air is thick with grief. How do we survive among this devastation? I don’t know. But the earth does. Nature teaches that an antidote lies in reciprocity, balance, dedication, and refusal to comply. Mushrooms compost nuclear waste in collective mycelium. Pods of orcas sink yachts. Insects metamorphose. I have been taught so much, by so many. These lessons- the protectiveness of a killdeer mother, the ferocity of grief, the silence of a hot spring, the slow devotion of carving, the inevitability of change- offer a path toward fulfillment. I pray through my actions, and I’m sustained by my relationships. These are the spirits that guide me. Some are soft, gentle, nurturing. Some are sharp, ferocious, skeletal. Most are both. If we are to live freely, if harmony is to be cultivated, we must be both- and more. We must be unapologetically everything.”

Page 23: Li Ming Chu, Protect The Village (Nurture and Deceive) Linocut Print, 18.75” x22.75”, 2025 Page 24: Installation photos by Aziza Murray & Harwood Art Center, All Rights Reserved Page 25: Li Ming Chu, I Swear, Linocut Print, 13.25” x17.25”, 2025

Page 26: Li Ming Chu, Encircle, Linocut Print, 10.25”x12.75”, 2025 Page 28: Installation photos by Aziza Murray & Harwood Art Center, All Rights Reserved Page 29: Li Ming Chu, Old Gods, Linocut Print, 22”x28.25”, 2026 Page 30: Li Ming Chu, , Linocut Print, 20” x16.5”, 2025

about li ming chu Li Ming’s practice flows from Taoist teachings, their relationship to the land, and dedication to the communities they’re a part of. As a trans, butch, neurodivergent, Asian abolitionist from the Appalachian foothills, Li’s love for the world is underscored with grief and rage. The radical love that they venerate in their artwork includes fierce protectiveness and a willingness to be uncomfortable. Mutual aid engagement and their work as Print Shop and Studio Coordinator at OffCenter Arts come from the same craving for connection that fuels their art practice. Art-making and community care allow them to embody the lessons that the land and its people constantly teach. Through various mediums, including printmaking, drawing, painting, and fiber art, Li Ming asks: how can we cultivate life in a world clouded by greed and death?

ABOUT HARWOOD ART CENTER HARWOOD ART CENTER’S GALLERIES is dedicated to providing exhibition, audience

expansion and professional development opportunities to artists working in any media and from diverse creative fields. Our gallery program is curated and managed by our Chief Programs Officer and Associate Directors of Opportunity and Engagement. Artists are invited to exhibit during three of our annual capstone events, Encompass, Residency for Art & Social Justice & 12x12, the rest of our exhibitions are awarded to individuals and groups through a competitive application process. Most of our applications are free to apply, any collected fees allocated to replenishing Harwood’s endowed cash awards for the program. Each featured exhibition is a supportive process, we work with the artists from concept development to installation in the galleries. For our 2021 exhibiting artists, we have developed a hybrid offering of both in person and virtual programming. For each exhibition we create comprehensive outreach and digital materials including exhibition catalogs, virtual galleries and artist talks to support the unique visions and voices of our gallery artists. Seeded in 1991, Harwood Art Center blooms the philosophy of our parent organization Escuela del Sol Montessori, with recognition that learning and expression offer the most resilient pathways to global citizenship, justice and peace. Harwood engages the arts as a catalyst for lifelong learning, cultural enrichment and social change, with programming for every age, background and income level. We believe that equitable access to the arts and opportunities for creative expression are integral to healthy individuals and thriving communities. In all of our work, we cultivate inclusive, reflective environments where everyone feels cared for. We nurture long-term, multi-faceted relationships with participants, building programs with and for diverse communities of Albuquerque. We integrate the arts with social justice, professional and economic growth, and education to cultivate a higher collective quality of life in New Mexico.

HARWOOD ART CENTER’S OFFICIAL GALLERY & EXHIBITION PHOTOGRAPHER

We are so thrilled to have an official Harwood Photographer for our galleries program this year! We are able to present the SURFACE Emerging Artists of NM Award and Microgrant of $250 to each of this year’s artists thanks to the Urban Enhancement Trust Fund, New Mexico Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and the McCune Foundation. Aziza Murray is a New Mexico based artist working primarily in photography. In 2015 she graduated with an MFA from the University of New Mexico where she also worked as a pictorial archiving fellow for the Center for Southwest Research. Since then, Aziza has worked in different capacities in the film industry in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, further piquing her interest in cinematography. Much of her work stems from a well of nostalgia for objects and moments, the materiality of photography, and her personal history—from experiencing tragic loss at an early age, to her multilayered experiences as a biracial person growing up in Washington, DC. She has shown her work in DC at Connersmith and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, in Albuquerque at the Harwood Art Center, the UNM Art Museum and the National Hispanic Cultural Center and, at MASS Gallery in Austin, TX. azizamurray.com

azizamurray@gmail.com

Many thanks to our genrous supporting partners: Albuquerque Art Business Association / ARTScrawl, Albuquerque Community Foundation, Downtown Neighborhood Association, McCune Charitable Foundation, New Mexico Arts and National Endowment for the Arts, City of Albuquerque Urban Enhancement Trust Fund, US Bank, and A Good Sign. Special thanks to Nusenda Foundation and Sandia Foundation for support of our Creative Roots program and to Fay Abrams and to Debi & Clint Dodge for support of our exhibiting and commission artists. As well as to Marion & Kathryn Crissey and Reggie Gammon for establishing our endowed awards for this program, and to Meghan Ferguson Mráz and Valerie Roybal for their unwavering support and constant inspiration – and for whom we named new annual awards in 2019. SURFACE would not be possible without our extraordinary local collaborators.

WWW.HARWOODARTCENTER.ORG · 505.242.6367 · 1114 7th NW, ALBUQUERQUE, NM 87102

Cover: Left - Right: Li Ming Chu, Jessica Marie Gross, Mark Weaver