For months, we have debated ways to make The Wright Contemporary more visible from the street, which is the main drag through and into Taos known as Paseo del Pueblo Sur. We’ve had an A-frame sign outside, and we hang banners for every show, but those did not seem sufficient to announce the presence of a brave new art gallery in town. And then I remembered the sculptures of Ed Haddaway, an artist I profiled when I was editing and publishing Vasari21, who just happens to live about 2.5 hours south of us in Albuquerque, NM. Haddaway, who was mostly raised in Texas, makes large-scale and tabletop works in painted and rusted steel whose quirky iconography sometimes recalls Alexander Calder or Paul Klee. Perfect for us!
So we entered into negotiations with Ed, and finally settled on his 11-foot-tall sculpture entitled From a Series of Recurring Dreams. It arrived last week and surprisingly took less than an hour to install. It’s shown at the top of this newsletter as it appears at Ed’s home and studio in Albuquerque, and below as it was during the process of installing it in a new home.
We also have a nifty little untitled Ed Haddaway in the vestibule leading to the main gallery, and we hope to have more to show you in the months ahead.
If you would like to know more about the sculpture, here is Ed's explanation of the title and its origins:
Among all the different aspects of my life that have gotten tangled up and continue to be tangled up in my artwork are my dreams.
When I was much younger I went through a stage where I would write down my dreams first thing in the morning. It only lasted a short time. Not because I couldn’t do it (I was and continue to be good at remembering my dreams), but once I had them written down, they scared the hell out of me.
What I have done since then is to make a conscious effort to remember what I dreamed, right when I wake up, and then move on, into the more stable and mundane parts of my everyday life. And in many of my waking hours, bits and pieces of my dreams drift in and out of my mind like old postcards. The segments and scenes I see internally have become my friends, and I welcome them.
My sculpture From a Series of Recurring Dreams was made some time ago, and is now in front of the Wright Contemporary. While the sculpture does have the word “Dream” in its title, I was not referencing any particular dream, or a particular series of dreams.
I have had what I would call “related dreams," which share a topic such as “death," but are not clearly a series, or true recurring dreams.
This piece is more a reflection on the whole of life, both the time spent during wakefulness and also the time spent while asleep, dreaming. From a Series of Recurring Dreams also refers to the moments I spend, where I’m not at all sure which state of consciousness I am really in.
These two states as well as all things in existence are inseparable in my mind. In fact, the experience I have in making art is essentially dreaming while I am awake. It is as if I have gotten comfortable enough with my subconscious that I can move in for a visit with it and still retain the ability to control the materials that I find in reality
So, the artwork that I make is a synthesis of both.
Carl Jung now resides upstairs, in a tidy room, that is nearby to my life, and I have had many, many, interesting conversations with him.
But like just about everything these days, I have no certainty at all about what he is really driving at.
Ed Haddaway
August, 2023
Come pay us a visit and see Ed's sculpture for yourself!
Ann Landi
Director
The Wright Contemporary
627 Paseo del Pueblo Sur
Taos, NM
www.thewrightcontemporary.com
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