Museum Creating Sculpture Garden

BY MELISSA PAGLIA & DEAN CUSHMAN

ALBUQUERQUE MONTHLY

            Thirty "monumental sculptures" that for years sat in the Albuquerque Museum's    warehouse will again see the light of day with the opening of the new outdoor sculpture garden this fall.

            The garden, located between Old Town and the Museum, is part of an extensive landscape renovation that includes most of the museum's 4.7-acre site.

            "It is going to be an outdoor gallery," explains Ellen Landis, the museum's curator of art for the past 14 years.

            One of the artists whose work will be on display in the garden is Edward Haddaway, 40, who no longer has to supplement his income by teaching at Sandia Preparatory School. For the past eight years, he's been making and showing his painted steel sculptures full time.

His "A Tree of Mixed Metaphors" will be on display in the museum's new sculpture garden.

            Haddaway moved from Texas to Albuquerque in 1969 to attend the University of New Mexico. He earned his bachelor of fine arts degree in 1972.

            He says he gets most of his ideas for his artworks while sleeping. He transposes the imagery of his dreams into his art. Haddaway is influenced by Carl Jung, one of the fathers of psychology, who developed the theory of "the collective unconscious."

            "In this society, people tend to overvalue the utilitarian," says Haddaway. "I think artists value their dreams and what isn't necessarily concrete - the more ephemeral things in life."

            More of his work will be on exhibit in a show called "Singular Visions" in September in Santa Fe. His painted steel sculptures resemble tree shapes, plants and animals.

            His recently completed 15-foot sculpture, "An Improbable Plan for Enlightenment," has been shipped to the Shidoni Gallery at Tesuque, just north of Santa Fe.

            The Albuquerque Museum's garden, designed by New Mexico landscape architect Robert Johns and the museum's curator of exhibits, Robert Woltman, will showcase sculptures in different mediums and styles, "reflecting the diversity of art in New Mexico," says Landis.

            Sculptures range from the western artwork of William Moyers' bronze cowboy figure, "Wind and Rain," to Larry Bell's "The Cat," a sculpture with 38 huge glass panels. (The panels can be moved to form different figures, says Landis; hence the name, suggesting the nine lives of a cat).

            The exhibit will include works of fiberglass, steel, marble, limestone, granite, wood and mixed media. Artists include Dave Anderson, Jack Connell, Paul Cooper, Ron Cooper, Michael Davis, Lincoln Fox, Ed Haddaway, Linda Fleming and Una Hanbury.

            This past spring, contractors broke ground on what will eventually become an outdoor museum with benches for quiet, contemplative lunches, guided tours, performances and music. tours, performances and music.

            "It's a place that is meant to be used," says Landis, who earned a master’s degree in art history from New York University's prestigious Institute of Fine Arts.

            The garden is designed in grids, described by Johns as "a series of rooms" for the existing sculpture, native plants and shrubs and some simply open for visual relief or awaiting new work. Boulders will serve as seating. Landis says the museum began collecting large sculpture pieces about five years ago with the idea of the sculpture garden in mind.

            "The bond issues gave us money for art acquisition, but not for the actual garden," she says, adding that the funds for the "bricks and mortar" of the project came from private donors.

The Museum plans to slowly add new pieces to the garden, including a mosaic to grace the long adobe wall on the Old Town side.

September1991