I hope you all are having a good summer. The Roswell Museum’s renovation continues and has moved past some significant hurdles. The flooring in five of our galleries and the corridor on the building’s north side have been redone. We’ve now entered the final phase of the renovation: redesigning the lobby on our facility’s south side and the relocation of our museum store from the north side of the building to the south side adjacent to the lobby. In the meantime, our main entrance has temporarily relocated to our planetarium lobby near the intersection of N. Richardson Ave. and W. 11th St. This will remain the museum’s temporary entrance for the next several months until our renovation concludes.

I want to thank my colleague Cloe Medrano, Registrar at the Roswell Museum, for writing last month’s From the Vault column about an artwork by Wanda Gág. This month, I will focus on the art of Jane Abrams. We have a number of works by Abrams in the Roswell Museum’s collection, and we’ve borrowed a significant number of works by Abrams from the artist herself as well as a few other collections across New Mexico for the upcoming show "Jane Abrams: Fire on the Water." This exhibition showcases the artist’s painting, printmaking and sculpture from 1968 to 2022. Subject matter ranges from landscapes of her travels and around her home in Los Ranchos Village near Albuquerque to the landscapes of her mind and spirit. The literal and symbolic themes of fire and water recur over the course of more than 50 years of art-making.

Born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in 1940, Jane Abrams would go on to achieve undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menomonie in 1962 and 1967, respectively. She went back to school later and received a Master of Fine Arts degree at Indiana University in 1971. It was printmaking, predominantly intaglio, that Abrams focused on in her MFA program. Printmaking requires the usage of chemicals, which can take an irreversible toll on one’s health. The physical impacts of these chemicals led the artist to two areas that would ultimately transform her life and artistic practice. The first was ayurvedic medicine, which led her on a non-western healing journey through today.

The other direction of transformation was specific to the medium around which she centered her artistic practice. As Abrams explains in her 2021 book, "Searching for Beyul," produced by New Concept Gallery in Santa Fe, “I was awarded the generous Roswell, New Mexico Artist Residency … . I soon discovered that even working in the new space and outside, the acid fumes and solvents were continuing to cause physical problems … . The generous patron of the Roswell Grant (Donald B. Anderson) got wind of the problems I was having and immediately encouraged me to order a year’s worth of traditional oil paint, canvas stretchers and brushes … . I found I could work safely without harsh chemicals, and the most liberating of all was that my work was not restricted to the size and shape of paper. This began my life as a painter.”

In "Searching for Beyul," Abrams wrote, “The familiar fields, desert, acequias and rivers near my home have readily provided a rich source for my paintings. Over the years, I have also, through travel, found inspiration in my sensory wanderings around the globe. I have walked in the ancient ruins and jungles of Mexico and Central America, cloud forests in Guatemala, along rivers in India and in the mountainous regions of Thailand and China.” These gorgeous landscapes lead us on journeys to a multitude of destinations. “I have continued to enjoy how landscape painting is as much a revelation of the facets of the mind, as it is an exploration of the wonders of the natural world,” Abrams wrote.

Jane Abrams was a 1985–86 Roswell Artist-in-Residence and broke barriers as the first woman to be a tenure-track professor in the art department of the University of New Mexico, where she taught from 1971–93. The Roswell Museum’s exhibition "Jane Abrams: Fire on the Water" is a celebration of the artist’s 50 plus years of art-making, exploration, reinvention and impact on younger generations.

The artist will give a gallery talk at the Roswell Museum on Friday, starting at 5:30 p.m., followed by a reception. The gallery talk and reception are free and open to the public. After, there will be a dinner in the artist’s honor at the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art. No reservations are required for the dinner. There is, however, a small fee. For more information about the artist, visit janeabramsstudio.com.

For more information about the Roswell Museum, visit roswellmuseum.org.