PRACTICE // PORTAL
natalie voelker and chelsea wrightson
aziza murray, mb ramos,
WINDOWS INTO THE FUTURE
Practice // Portal featuring aziza murray, mb ramos, natalie voelker and chelsea wrightson
Practice // Portal is a group exhibition showcasing a selection of Harwood Studio Artists, past and present, with installations that investigate memory, explore elemental nature, and offer meditation.
aziza murray home
Originally from Washington, DC, Aziza Murray has proudly called Albuquerque, NM home for thirteen years. In 2015 she graduated with an MFA in photography from the University of New Mexico. Since then, Aziza has worked in the film industry in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, piquing her interest in cinematography and the industry as a whole.
Aziza’s work stems from a desire for permanence. At a young age she experienced tragic loss, and it was through creating that she learned to process emotions and events. The materiality of photography is the catalyst that has, and continues to enable Aziza in her recording of important people and life experiences, from growing up biracial in a racially polarized city, suffering additional losses in young adulthood, traveling far from home, or finding refuge in beautiful objects and still moments. She has shown her work in DC, Albuquerque, Austin, TX and Portland, OR.
A long time ago I asked my mom whether she had ever considered moving back to her tiny hometown of Salisbury, Maryland to raise my sister and me. I believe her answer was,“hell no.”Her reasons all made sense to me: too small and provincial, too racist, not enough art and culture. When she and my dad returned from a few years of living in Europe, they settled in Washington, DC where my sister and I were eventually born. Despite her reasons for leaving, my mom, sister and I always enjoyed our drives back to the Eastern Shore to visit family. I usually dj’ed and sat in the front seat on the way there and on the way back my sister and I switched places. All three of us appreciated the rural scenery going by. Part of me was excited to arrive, anticipating fun times with my cousins and the typical shenanigans of our family. Another part of me felt like I could keep going, looking out the window at the landscape forever. Mom would sometimes reminisce about her childhood as she gazed over the steering wheel, recalling the time her older brother accidentally smashed an ice cream cone into the freshly washed window of the family car, or when she got to ride a horse named Sam that her family was keeping for a friend over the summer. She seemed to have resolved any complicated feelings she had for Salisbury a long time ago. She was content to go back for a visit, appreciating the landscape and landmarks of her youth.
Recently I was asked to consider what“Home”means to me. I don’t remember when DC stopped feeling like home, or maybe like a jumpsuit that I had outgrown, feeling tight and uncomfortable.Years ago, before Alzheimer’s robbed me of my mother, I told her if she didn’t live in DC I probably wouldn’t go back. She said that made her sad, but she loved that I had found community in New Mexico, always singing the praises of my friends she had the pleasure to meet, and the beauty of the landscape. It was strange to feel so at home here while half of my heart was back in DC, being held by my mom. After her passing last year, I have had many moments of feeling untethered, metaphorically unmoored and unattached to any place. Home isn’t just a physical location, a busy city, a mountainous desert, or an open sky. Sometimes home is a community, sometimes a person. My video essay is a love letter to my mother, and moments with her on the road, in between places, but when I felt home.
mb ramos knit two together
MB Ramos is a multidisciplinary artist based in Albuquerque, NM whose practice includes painting, sculpture, and metalworking with foundations in traditional craft trades.
Fine silver, copper, steel, plaster, wood, wax, legacy items, fossil, bone, stone, salt.
Knitting, a life long practice, becomes both method and metaphor: one continuous thread of precious metal transformed into protective structures through accumulated crossings, mirroring how memory and consciousness operate through repetitive gesture. Stitch by stitch. KnitTwoTogether houses wearable objects (amulets) that function as intimate vehicles for inherited knowledge and sites of connection.
The circular nature of knitting speaks to cyclical rhythms—how we return again and again to the same territories, each time with a slightly different understanding. Our experience revisits us: not linear, not concluding, but spiraling through time, accumulating meaning with each revolution, forming a network of connection to our past, present and future.
The work operates at a scale between geological time and human time, where material and process are a meditation on corporeal histories of survival, displacement, and resilience. Crossing oceans, finding shore, and making home.
MB Ramos, KnitTwoTogether, installation 2025, Page 10 top image and Page 11 image by Aziza Murray & Harwood Art Center, All
Page 10 bottom image by Jay Renteria
Page 12: Natalie Voelker, Animal, 12”x12”, oil on yupo mounted on panel. Page 14: Natalie Voelker, Wolves, oil on yupo, size variable
Images by Aziza Murray & Harwood Art Center, All Rights Reserved
natalie voelker wolves
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 found within the 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, NM.
wolves.
self-defense. instinct.
fairytales are real? oh. I didn’t know. beneath skin
blood slick fur gnashing teeth yellow eyes.’
the past is with. on. under. in.
blood slick fur. teeth. yellow eyes.
. . (how did you survive?) like this. like this.
chelsea wrightson
Chelsea Wrightson is an Albuquerque, NM based artist and mother whose practice includes painting, drawing, sculpture and ceramics. Wrightson creates compositions that combine imagery from her vivid dreams and meditations. Her work moves towards symmetry and balance yet she celebrates imperfection because she sees it as a portal; without it, she would have no cause to continue dreaming. Putting a contemporary perspective on transcendentalism, Wrightson is inspired by artists Emma Kunz, Hilma af Klint and Agnes Pelton. Wrightson has exhibited nationally in Albuquerque, Taos, NM, Seattle, WA and New York, NY.
In recent bodies of work she explores expansion through experience – in body, emotions, mind, and soul. At the most microscopic level humans are atoms comprised mostly of empty space. Like a new star bursting forth with energy in the vast universe, she creates portals to fill empty spaces with abundant joy, gratitude, care and connection.
Page 17: Chelsea Wrightson, we are born out of bliss, we return to bliss (prayer to the north), 2025, mica clay, oil, gouache, plaster of Paris, single-use plastics, lime paint, amethyst, 41.5 x 17.5 inches: framed. Page 18: Chelsea Wrightson, installation 2025; Page 19: Chelsea Wrightson, an evening prayer to theWest, 2025, mica clay, plaster of Paris, oil, pastel, stained wood frame.
Images by Aziza Murray & Harwood Art Center, All Rights Reserved
Recently I was peeling potatoes and I stumbled into a flow of thought about how miraculous it was to be standing there with lungs made for breath, heart for blood, holding nourishment grown on this watery planet among billions of stars, made up just the way I am. Upon re-entry into my surroundings the world around me glittered like mica. Peeling potatoes was a portal, moving me from the mundane to the miraculous by a small shift in perspective.
For one year I have written down my dreams and patterns began to emerge. In these linked dreams I am an architect, I am building something or looking to fix broken things in houses or in my environment. I’m fixing and healing both physically and spiritually, using water and fire, earth and air. I have intentionally used the building materials clay plaster, plaster of Paris and lime paint in these artworks to connect to my dream state. I have embedded these wall sculptures with meaningful gems formed by the planet to remind us of how the earth uses its voice. I have embedded single-use plastics as well to remind us of the messages we are leaving behind long after we’ve said our last words.
What are we collectively dreaming right now? How does your creative expression heal you?
Windows into the Future by Shared.Futures
curated by Marisol Meyer-Driovínto
Shared.Futures is an ArtScience collaborative, bringing together local scientists and artists to co-create work that imagines possible futures based in ongoing scientific research. This collaborative was formed in 2022 under an NSF- funded grant called the Intermountain West Transformation Network (Award # 2115169), which supports the growth of the Shared.Futures program, participants, and its organizers. The 2022 inaugural event held at the Explora Children’s Science Museum marked the beginning of a collaborative effort towards bringing to life an annual exhibition of interactive ArtScience with Explora partners. Since its inception, the program has evolved into an annual spring fellowship program that mentors five pairs of Artists and Scientists teams through a four-to-fivemonth workshop. During this transformative experience, participants are guided to collaborate and learn across disciplinary boundaries, fostering the creation of work that envisions pathways toward more sustainable and resilient futures.
This exhibition showcases the final work that has emerged from the Shared. Futures program (2022-2025) and celebrates the hard work from the organizing team who work diligently from behind the scenes to bring each event to life. Each piece in this collection can be seen as its own window looking into the future, giving us glimpses of possible pathways moving forward through an ArtScience lens. Alongside this, the exhibit presents a documentary series of interviews which present the process behind the work created by the participating teams. Then a time capsule for each year is carefully curated to showcase the program’s growth and key milestones that brought each event to life. Ultimately, this exhibition is a celebration of the program’s growth from a simple idea of collaborating across art and science to an annual program that builds intentional capacity for collaborating across disciplinary boundaries and imagining solutions towards our collective future.
current organizers
Yolanda C. Lin (Co-founder and lead organizer on the project charter for the IWTN grant)
Marisol Meyer-Driovínto (Co-Founder since 2021)
Tybur Casuse-Driovínto (Co-Founder since 2021)
Lisa Hurst (Since 2023)
Ashley Apodaca (Since 2023)
artscience team partipants (2022-2025)
Malcom King (yaudi.xyz), Abby Granath, Lisa Hurst, Anjali Mulchandani, Arelis Haskamp, Melinda Morgan, Sonia Luévano, Naomi Delay, Ria Mukerji, Mandolin J. Rain Song, Brittany Sedillo (Beedallo), Asmita Kaphle, Eleonora Endreva, Catherine Peshek, Celine Gordan, Jeng Hann (Chong), Daquiri Zozoya, Manuel Peralta II (Mongo Many), Rebecca Elise Cook, Taylor Lillian Busch, Rosalba Breazeale, Jessica Begay, Viola Arduini, Anjali Mulchandani, Rachel Bordeleau, Cameron Reed, Hannah Taylor, Rebecca Gustine, Lea Anderson, Jack Ivey, Jess Lanham, Paige Tunby, Rachel Popowcer, Lizbeth Olivarez, Bailey Constas, Adrianna Fragozo, Amanda Dannáe Romero, Miles Kelsey, Ayemurs, Cassidy Tawse- Garcia, Julianna Massa, Eva Stricker, Virginia Baich and Eresey Alcanar-Velasquez.
about the curator
Marisol Meyer-Driovínto is a co-founder of the Shared.Futures program and has been an organizer and lead designer on the project each year since its conception in 2021. Marisol holds a master’s degree in Community and Regional Planning (2022-2025) and a bachelor’s in architecture and design from the University of New Mexico (2015-2019). She is a mixedmedia artist from northern New Mexico, with a studio at the Harwood Art Center, currently working in various mediums including mural painting, ink illustration and watercolor. Marisol is a trainee under the Museum Research Traineeship at UNM (2024-July 2025), where she has had the opportunity to develop her skills in interdisciplinary collaboration and museum collection curation. During her graduate assistantship with the Intermountain West Transformation Network (2022-2024), she had the privilege of presenting her research findings on the Shared.Futures program at the American Geophysical Union Conference, which earned her an outstanding student presentation award in 2023. Marisol designed the Shared.Futures butterfly logo alongside the organizing team as a symbol of hope and resilience that emerges through the intersections of art and science collaboration. She infuses this passion for fostering community resilience through collaboration into her work as an interdisciplinary researcher, planner and artist. This is Marisol’s first opportunity to curate a show at the Harwood Art Center, and she is excited to showcase and celebrate the growth of the Shared.Futures program, its participants, and organizers.
Windows into the Future, Installation, 2025, Images by Aziza Murray and Harwood Art Center, All
Page 27: Marisol in her studio
Harwood Art Center is dedicated to providing exhibition, audience expansion and professional development opportunities to working artists. 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of Harwood’s historic campus. We are commemorating the occasion with a year of public programming that reflects on a century of creative expression and imagines new futures. For more information visit: harwoodartcenter.org
JAN
JANUARY 16 - FEBRUARY 22
Between Dust & Stars: The Artists of ArtStreet, ABQ Health Care for the Homeless Harwood Art Center and ArtStreet of Albuquerque Health Care for the Homeless co-present Between Dust & Stars: Echoes of the High Desert, a collection of works by the artists of ArtStreet featuring surrealist landscapes and imagery honoring the past, the present and the future. This marks the 28th anniversary of this annual exhibition partnership.
Reception: Saturday, February 1 | 4:30 - 6:30pm
MAR
MARCH
6 - APRIL 12
ENCOMPASS: A Multi-Generational Art Event
An annual celebration that is both a reflection of and an offering to our community, Encompass features Open Studios, art making activities, installations by student artists, and five invitational exhibitions, including Echoes & Dreams with commissioned installations by Celine Gordon, Sofie Hecht, Mariah Rosales, Phoenix Savage, Jessica Zekus and What is Yours is Not Yours by Elton Burgest and Lisa Co.
Reception: Saturday, April 12 | 4:30 - 7:30pm
APR
APRIL 24 - MAY 31
Poetry in Place: Placemaking and Poetry in Albuquerque
This exhibit is equal parts celebration, preservation and commemoration of a critical moment in time for the literary and spoken word community in New Mexico. It presents a diverse spectrum of artifacts and experiences, honoring the history between the spoken word community and Harwood.
Reception: Saturday, April 26 | 4:30 - 6:30pm
JUN
JUNE 12 - JULY 26
SURFACE: Emerging Artists of New Mexico
SURFACE: Emerging Artists of New Mexico is the annual juried exhibition, endowed awards and professional development program presented by Harwood Art Center, to support the creative and professional growth of emerging artists and to expand their visibility and viability in our community.
Inga Hendrickson: Surface 2024 Solo Exhibition Award Winner
Reception + Artist Talk + Awards: Saturday, June 21 | 4:30 - 6:30pm
Harwood offers four annual recurring exhibition programs:
1 ENCOMPASS a Multi-Generational Art Event
2 SURFACE Emerging Artists of New Mexico
3 RESIDENCY for Art & Social Justice
4 12x12 Annual Fundraiser; all proceeds support our free community arts education, outreach and professional development
AUG
Practice // Portal
AUGUST
7 - SEPTEMBER 13
A group exhibition featuring five Harwood Studio Artists — Aziza Murray, Reyes Padilla, MB Ramos, Natalie Voelker and Chelsea Wrightson — whose work is inspired by memory, offers meditation, and moves towards the future.
Shared.Futures: A Compendium of ArtScience Collaboration
Shared.Futures is a four-month workshop where artist and scientist pairs co-create an ArtScience piece which communicates a scientific possibility through an artistic lens. This exhibition highlights work from 2021 to 2024.
Reception + Artist Talks: Saturday, August 23 | 4:30 - 6:30pm
SEPT
Artist in Residence
SEPTEMBER 25 - NOVEMBER 1
Harwood’s Artist in Residence Program supports artists working at the intersections of creative expression and social justice. The year long residency includes a private studio at Harwood, artist and material honoraria, project support and public exhibitions.
Jocelyn Salaz: Encountering Masculinity
2025 Resident artist Jocelyn Salaz explores masculinity through the lens of the performative theory of gender.
Reception + Artist Talk: Saturday, October 18 | 4:30 - 6:30pm
DEC
DECEMBER
5 - 13
12x12: Harwood’s Annual Fundraising Exhibitions 12x12, 6x6 and The Shop at Harwood feature original work by established, emerging and youth artists from New Mexico. This event includes ~200 works that remain anonymous until sold, for the flat rates of $144 (12”x12”) or $36 (6”x6”). The Shop highlights the intersections of art, design and daily living with works by notable New Mexico artists.
Exhibition Reception: Friday, December 5 | 5:30pm - 7:30pm 12x12 Online Store Opens: Saturday, December 6 | 6:00pm
Image Credits: (Left, Top to Bottom): Elton Burgest, Spiral (2022); Between Dust & Stars: the artists of ArtStreet installation 2025, Image by Aziza Murray; Shared.Futures Organizers, Shared.Futures Weavings I; Inga Hendrickson, Bundled Set, Image by Aziza Murray; (Center): Jessica Zekus, We all need prayers; (Right, Top to Bottom): Jocelyn Salaz, Remedio (side 1); Chelsea Wrightson, Quantum Vision #25; For the Love of Poetry ABQ, Sister Outsider—Dominique Christina and Denice Frohman — nationally renowned female poets will be part of a night of poetry at the Harwood Art Center, The Shop Image Credit: Zahra Marwan, handprinted T-shirt
Shop at Harwood is a
for a
Shop: harwoodstore.square.site
The
boutique gallery currently representing the following artists
calendar year: Catherine Alleva, Loren Aragon, Ereesa, Stephanie Baness, Carrie Botto, Jenn Carrillo, Cheryl Dietz, Celine Gordon, Leigh Oviatt and Emily Silva
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.
