I have been asked by Regina Chavez, Director of Creative Albuquerque, www.creativeabq.org/, to speak to her Arts Management class for arts majors at the University of New Mexico on November 15th. This is great; 1. I love to talk to young people; 2. I have the perspective of a 30+ year career; and 3. Young people need to hear what a career in the arts consists of namely: perseverance, perfecting your trade through a professional studio practice, a healthy stamina, luck, developing relationships, innovation, the need to do it and learning to live frugally. In today’s world these are traits for all professions but even more so for people pursuing the arts. Let’s begin…

A ‘conversation’ was held at my studio sponsored by Creative Albuquerque www.creativeabq.org/ on November 10. This group meets to discuss a topic and that afternoon they wanted to chat with David (my husband) and me about our experience at the Artist Residency in Finland this past summer and also about our travels and my residencies in general. Boy did we have a lot of sharing to do.

The email announcement is below:

Creative Conversations: Round the World with Marietta Leis and David Vogel is next Thursday, November 10 at 5:00p, at Marietta’s beautiful studio. Over cocktail hour, the dynamic duo will share stories and images from a recent artist residency in Finland’s Arctic Circle, as well as other travels.

On Sunday October 16^th members of the Contemporary Art Society of New Mexico (CAS) paid a visit to my studio in the Nob hill area of Albuquerque, NM. The Contemporary Art Society of New Mexico was founded in 1988 as a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting New Mexico’s contemporary visual arts community. Their goals are to increase interest, understanding and involvement in contemporary art by encouraging individual collecting, by sponsoring educational activities and by supporting New Mexico’s artists and art institutions, www.casofnm.org/

My studio assistant, Joni Tobin, and I prepared for their visit by doing some long overdue straightening up. Seems like we’ve been doing office chores playing catch up ever since my return from Finland. So this was a welcomed opportunity to put the studio into order. I was really happy to host this group of art devotees and show them my work and studio. I wanted this be a discussion or conversation rather than me lecturing but best made plans …..They were such a rapt audience and I love to talk about my work so we were off and running pretty quick.

My GREEN exhibit was still up on the walls of my studio so I began by describing that exhibition to them; the paradoxical theme of scarcity and abundance and the multimedia elements of sculptures, paintings, photos and videos. I was especially gratified to get their positive comments regarding the videos, as this is a new medium for me but a very enthusiastic endeavor.
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