Posted September 16, 2022: North Fourth Art Center is where I work…and have for twenty + years. It’s been a fascinating ride and it’s not over yet. As many of you know, for most of our existence we were an arts education and creation center, primarily serving adults with developmental disabilities. We also hosted Global DanceFest and Buen Viaje Dance Company for a number of years and provided a home base for community theater. Then Covid happened along.

Now we are a different North Fourth, albeit with some essential similarities. The education component continues as a mix of classes with our long-time art students and teachers, and with new community classes in a variety genres, among them clay, figure drawing and sculpture, and painting.

N4th Theater is still involved with the Albuquerque theater community, but is also partnering with local theater artists to produce emerging talent and enhance our support for artists working in the film world. There’s more good news—Buen Viaje Dance Company is back, right now in serious rehearsal for a pre-Christmas production!

The big news of the moment is with our gallery programs however. N4th Gallery has been joined by a younger sibling down the hall, Gallery X, which is smaller but ever so artful. On Friday night, September 2nd, we introduced the double act, with an exhibit called Art Stories: It’s Personal, in both galleries.

N4th Gallery is brimming over with Sterling Van Deren Coke’s inventive photographs and Joe Forrest Sackett’s intriguing sculptures.

The photographs, capturing real people at their most vulnerable or contemplative, and facsimiles thereof in the oddest of postures and places, emerge from Coke’s watchful eye—an artist always looking for the out-of-the-ordinary moments and objects in our lives.

The sculptures, imbued with force and humor, compel us to consider these times and our social inclinations; they encapsulate Sackett’s sometimes cynical view of politics and wry eye for life in contemporary America. His work is forceful and whimsical at the same time—an unusual juxtaposition.

Gallery X is another story. Since the space is smaller and does not serve dual purposes, X can simply be for art…and the stories it tells. For this inaugural show, we decided to focus on the idea of how art tells stories—more images, fewer words. Staff and invited friends brought work they are proud of—work that is professional in quality…personal in nature…worthy of a story or two. It was a fine experience from all of those perspectives. We have a few of Monica’s famous family’s famous pots. We have a range of paintings, collages, and photographs from several of our family members and friends, including the brightest of works in alcohol inks, and the most mysterious and confounding and impenetrable pen and ink drawings created during Bob Robie’s post-brain surgery rehabilitation. We have a forest painting from the Kearny family matriarch and a forest photograph from me.

The opening didn’t feel typical—it was more like an art party. The food was better than average, catered by Charcuterie & More; there was a friendly drinks bar; and Glen Salas, singer/songwriter, sharing musical stories at pleasant intervals. People stopped by—and stayed—and stayed—and looked at art and talked and looked at art and ate and talked some more. We were thrilled.