Paula Wilson has been selected by the UNM Department of Art as the 2021 Frederick Hammersley Visiting Artist. The artist residency honors the late Hammersley, an abstract artist, and former UNM teacher.
Paula Wilson is in residency at UNM for the Spring semester. She is giving a free public lecture discussing her process, influences, and experiences, and studio tour on Thursday, April 29, at 5:30 p.m. on Zoom.
Paula Wilson received an MFA from Columbia and a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis, MO. Wilson is a mixed-media artist who studies and sources imagery from different cultures, geographies, and times to develop a unified, visual language of her own. Wilson frequently combines printmaking, painting, sculpture, and video into her projects. Wilson works by collaging multiple forms of visual language together: ancient motifs, tropes from Western art history, and identifiers of her home in the New Mexico High Desert. Wilson has repurposed visuals associated with Greek myths, Impressionist paintings, and styles derived from the decorative and domestic arts.
“In my light-filled studio on the UNM campus, I have been using unfinished past projects to build new pictures from the old. I have visited with MFA students and been impressed with their high levels of skill, thought, and sensitivity.” Said Wilson. “After a year of lockdown, it reminds me how good it feels to be around art and people making art! I am grateful to Frederick Hammersley, both his art and life and the legacy of one artist helping another. ”
Wilson’s most recent solo exhibitions were Entangled at 516 ARTS Contemporary Museum, Albuquerque, NM (2019), The Light Becomes You at Denny Dimin Gallery (2018), Spread Wild: Pleasures of the Yucca at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY (2018), and FLOORED at Williamson | Knight, Portland, OR (2018).
Established in 2017, the Frederick Hammersley Artist Residency honors Hammersley’s legacy and influence as a painter, printmaker, conceptual thinker and broadens awareness of his life and work. The program invites prominent contemporary painters from around the world to come live and work in Albuquerque.
Funding for this program is made possible by the Albuquerque Community Foundation and the Frederick Hammersley Foundation. Through this program, visiting artists are provided with housing, a studio near the UNM Department of Art graduate students, and conduct studio visits with the Fine Arts Graduate candidates, hold workshops, a public lecture, and an open studio event.
