Installation view, Site Santa Fe Award Recipients Exhibition 1995-1996 Gloria Graham, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Gloria is an artist whose work I deeply admire. She enjoys a ripe intimacy with her material that inheres in the work and extracts complete participation from the viewer. If you are attracted, as I am, to the four matrices she calls, respectively, ”quartz, rock salt, beryl and garnet,” you’ll discover the sense of pioneering in her art – the source of its vitality.

Graham is meticulous, clear-eyed and telescopic, qualities that combine to give her artwork oceanic impact. in this way, her productions mimic the landscape. “Carbon of carbon dioxide” is a span of five black panels whose streaky glow simulates ocean phosphorescence.

Next, I turned to her smaller red canvases colored with jewelers’ iron oxide rouge. Their micaceous quality calls to mind the cracked earth by Rio Puerco, a mosaic both brittle and fecund, transmuting constantly.

Ellen Berkovitch, “Site Santa Fe Postscript,” Journal North, December 21, 1995

Installation view, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Installation view, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Installation view, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Silvery Water and Starry Earth, 21”x 15”x 15”, wooden rocket nose cone mold with silicon wafer reflecting natural light. Private Collection

Works Shown;

Carbon of Carbon Dioxide (34” x 14’) wax, graphite, kaolin, linen on 5 wood panels. Private Collection

Sharing Its Electrons (34” x 8.5’) wax, graphite, kaolin, linen on 3 wooden panels. Private Collection

Quartz (34” x 34”) wax, graphite, kaolin over wood

Rock Salt (34” x 34”) wax, graphite, kaolin over wood

Beryl (34” x 34”) wax, graphite, kaolin over wood

Iron One (14” x 14”) wax, jewelers rouge, kaolin over wood. Albuquerque Museum

Iron Two (14’ x 14”) wax, jewelers rouge, kaolin over wood. Albuquerque Museum

Iron Three (14” x 14”) wax, jewelers rouge, kaolin over wood. Albuquerque Museum