The SE-OC Right Brain Gallery is a new gallery located in the showroom of the former Garcia Toyota car dealership, giving it a spacious and less cluttered feeling than other galleries. The focus of this gallery is on art created from optics technology and precision metal working techniques that form the foundation of its parent company, Sandia Electro-Optics Corporation.
Currently the gallery is showcasing the talents of a variety of artists who demonstrate their right brain talents with the technologies of solar energy, fiber optics, lasers, glass, photography or metal. Featured artists include Pea Garvanian, Jeff Laird, Tom Spross, Flo Stein, Marian Berg, Robert Crespin, Cindy and Joe McDonnell and Tom Roche.
Two of the artists were present during my visit to the gallery. Jeff Laird, who has been photographing the painted over graffiti of urban American for nearly thirty years, has created a series of mysterious, whimsical forms from commonplace manufactured metals such as perforated and diamond plate steel and aluminum using computer aided design drawing and water jet cutting he calls The Perforated Triangles. This striking, memorable, and enjoyable series consists of colorful systematic components of fanciful, irregular forms which are designed to be hung from the ceiling, on the wall, or bolted together to display on the floor or in the landscape.
I also had the pleasure of talking with Paula “Pea” Garvanian who creates solar-powered art lamps for outdoors from castoff and discard material; hence the name “Leftovers” as her business name. In Pea’s words, “I use repeated patterns, layers, light, and reflection to maximize the energetic and thematic felling each lamp evokes, resulting in a piece of art where the whole far exceeds the sum of its parts.” The SE-OC Right Brain Gallery gets my vote for the Albuquerque art gallery with the most intelligent design.
In addition to the gallery, Sandia Electro received the franchising rights to offer Engineering for Kids programs in New Mexico in September 2013. The hands-on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) curriculum was developed by a Virginia-based company to teach lessons in a fun, engaging way to kids from ages 4-14 who participate in after school classes, special camps and parties. Joyce and her husband Michael Cumbo have leased a 2,200 square foot space at the American Square Shopping Center to manage the program’s launch in Albuquerque this past November. In the long term, the Cumbos hope to set up about half a dozen similar learning centers around the state.
SE-OC Right Brain Gallery is located at 3100 Menaul Blvd. NE, Albuquerque, NM 87107, 505.816.0214, www.se-oc-rightbraingallery.com. The gallery is open Tuesday - Saturday, 11AM - 5PM or by appointment.
