Gearing up for April Anniversary Celebration!

April marks Chroma Studios 2nd year in business and our first year downtown! Hard to believe it’s already been 2 years, but time does fly when you are having fun. This month we are gearing up for the big show with some improvements to the gallery and studios. Aaron just tore down a wall in the gallery to open up the space and make it flow better. Pictures are posted below. We are also tearing up carpet and painting floors, something we’ve talked about doing since we first moved into the building. Downstairs in the studio hallways, we’ve already done some painting and hung more art. April also means open studios for our First Friday opening event. You will be able to see inside the artist’s studios and see where the art is made. I will post more information about the Anniversary show as the date draws near, lots of fun activities planned, should be exciting!

Aaron working on opening up the gallery space!

looking from the other direction

March Events!

March is here and spring is in the air! This month’s featured artist is Caroline C. Blaker, painter and web designer extraordinaire! This month we are becoming even MORE kid friendly with the addition of a kid’s art studio, a NEW area in the gallery with art supplies and musical instruments for your kids to play and make fun things while you enjoy the show.

March Events:

Friday, March 5th, 6-10pm: First Friday Art Opening; Featured artist Caroline C. Blaker will be showing her recent Pixelation paintings on latex, and her new digital deviation, Twitterscapes:                                                    Paintings with Twitter. The show will likely feature realtime user-generated Twitterscapes, as well as Pixelation paintings of all sizes and Twitterscapes in print.

Friday, March 26th, 7:30pm: Storytelling with Susi Wolf. Silk Stockings – a Celebration of Women Through Storytelling. Since March is Women’s History Month, we are celebrating women                                                        through an ancient tradition – storytelling. Come enjoy multicultural tales of women and the feminine experience throughout the ages. Hear clever woman stories,                                                        strong woman parables, she-roe tales and more. It’s time to celebrate the wonder and mystique of those who wear Silk Stockings!

Tuesday, March 30th, 7:30pm: AMP Concert featuring Walter Strauss & Mamadou Sidibe. When American guitarist Walter Strauss and Malian kamal’ngoni master Mamadou Sidibe engage                                                   in a musical interplay of finger-style guitar and West African hunter’s harp, the result is a deep, soulful music that is simultaneously ancient and fresh. These two                                                           unique musicians from distant origins create an intoxicating blend of music in which they gracefully complement each other through intertwining melodic grooves                                                       and spirited improvisation. To hear these two musicians from far flung places collaborate is to to take in two souls, listening and greeting one another in a universal                                                       language—seamlessly interweaving two continents and two bright musical sensibilities.

Coming up in April: Chroma Studios 2nd Anniversary show! First Friday in April we will have the downstairs studios open, plus lots of live music and poetry throughout the building, activities for kids of all ages, door prizes and lots of fun!

Would you like to get 10% off ALL purchases, and 2 FREE Intimate Concert tickets? Become a Chroma Studios member today! $35 yearly membership for individuals, $50 for businesses (Businesses also get a mention in our monthly newsletter and a link on our website).

Make sure to stop by Chroma Studios this month, we would love to see you!

New at Chroma Studios: Weekly Specials!

This week’s special you ask? 10% off on all jewelry! Every week we will have a new special, you never know what it might be, free concert tickets, a free Chroma membership, discounts on art, etc. You get the idea! Of course, started this month, hugs are always FREE!! So, stop in, get your free hug, check out some amazing New Mexican art, and take something awesome home with you! We would like you to think of Chroma as the “friendly gallery”, where community comes first!

Looking for a Unique Valentine’s Gift?

This month being the “Peace and Love” show at Chroma, we have lots of wonderful Valentine gifts! From lots of lovely jewelry, to many wonderful paintings and several sweet mosaics, we have great gifts starting as low as $15! Here is just a sampling of our love items!

An Entire Room Full of Jewelry!!

Romance, 10 x 10" mosaic frame by Susanne Baca, $95

"Secret Crush", 6 x 6" painting by Cari Pier, $125

3 Talismen, 4 x 4" mixed media paintings by Cari Pier, $75 each

Small Heart w/ 2 Fridas(top), mosaic by Susanne Baca, $40 & Broken Hearts Bear Beauty, mosaic by Anna Lear, $150

February Events

January is over, the sun has been out a few times and spring is on it’s way!(I can hope right?) Several events happening here at Chroma Studios this month. We hope to entice you out to our 1st Friday art opening or one of our many Intimate Concerts this month. We are also starting a series of AMP concerts this month! Looking forward to seeing you soon!

February Events:

Friday, February 5th, 6-10pm: First Friday Artscrawl This month’s show is “Peace and Love” and features the work of Cari Pier and Paula Manning-Lewis. Other gallery artists are also           showing work with this theme. Looking for that special Valentine’s Day gift? We have some incredible art and lots of fabulous jewelry for the one you love! Live music with the viola-guitar duo of Alicia Ultan & Tim Gaulden. ALSO, a show within a show this month at Chroma Studios Gallery! Justin Simenson, one of our favorite photographers is debuting a new series of photos & audio interviews called “Walls That Talk”. View the photographs while listening to the interviews.

Friday, February 12th, 7pm: Intimate Concert Series featuring Cowboy music with Steve Cormier. After a number of years off from playing such venues as The Kerrville Folk Festival Washington DC folkcenter and The Albuquerque Museum. Steve took to acting in film and television and teaching college history. Come see his return to singing. Tickets $8 in advance or $10 at the door.

Saturday, February 13th, 7pm: Intimate Concert Series featuring NYC Folk Rock with Laura Meyer on her cross country tour. “Elegant singing and playing.. a brilliant guitarist” Steve Traina WCSB Cleveland, “She made time stand still” Dan Berry , Hartford Advocate, “Delicious Gritty Guitars” David Byrne Pop Making Sense. Tickets $8 in advance or $10 at the door.

Thursday, February 18th, 7:30pm: Our first AMP Concert featuring Hungrytown. Musical duo Rebecca Hall and Ken Anderson.  Their deceptively simple compositions are rooted firmly in folk tradition; “in fact, Hungrytown’s music offers such an aura of authenticity–in titles and in tunes–it could be easily mistaken for original trad transcripts,”declares Lee Zimmerman of Performing Songwriter, and Rachel Nones of the Feminist Review raves “Hungrytown is American folk music at its zenith.”Early reviews of the CD have landed the group daily airplay on XM Radio’s “The Village,” and Hungrytown songs are beginning to appear on play lists across the country, including Boston’s WUMB, New York’s WFUV & Philadelphia’s WXPN. $15 suggested donation, reservations strongly encouraged!

Chroma Studios is now offering custom framing services to artists and customers. If you are an artist or have 5 or more pieces to be framed, you get a 25% discount off our already low wholesale prices.  We beat even the 50% off sales of other framers.

Aaron has opened up his teaching studio and is currently taking on new guitar students. Aaron has a music teaching license with the state of New Mexico and has been teaching guitar to kids and adults for over 15 years. For more information see HERE.

We have continued adding individual ARTIST PAGES to the Chroma web site, so far there are 18 pages completed with at least two pages going up every weekday. Shop for art on your computer, then come by the gallery to see it in person. You may also buy on line and have the art shipped to you wherever you happen to be. Chroma now represents over 50 artists, so there is a lot of great art to see. Chroma’s focus is on New Mexico artists and we are excited to show the diversity of New Mexico art available. New Pages completed since the last newsletter: Cari Pier, Justin Simenson, Tricia Simmons, Brian Vallo.

January Events at Chroma!

Happy New Year!

Hope this post finds everyone happy and healthy!  We are playing catch up after the holidays, so the Chroma Events Newsletter is running a bit late this month. Luckily, there are still a couple of events taking place in January and plenty of news for the New Year.

Richard Sandoval, January's Featured Artist

January Events:

Friday, January 15th, 6-10pm: Downtown Artscrawl Artist’s reception for this month’s featured artist is Richard Sandoval. His show “Earththing” features recent and past surreal works in mixed                                                     media for the mind and spirit.

Friday, January 22nd, 7pm: Intimate Concert Series featuring Diana Ivy with Jupiter Rose, duo on guitar performing Goddess Folk Rock. Tickets $8 in advance or $10 at the door.

Chroma Studios is now offering custom framing services to artists and customers! If you are an artist or have 5 or more pieces to be framed, you get a 25% discount off our already low wholesale prices. However, for the month of January, EVERYONE gets our discounted price.

Aaron has opened up his teaching studio and is currently taking on new guitar students. Aaron has a music teaching license with the state of New Mexico and has been teaching guitar to kids and adults for over 15 years! For more information see HERE.

We have continued adding individual ARTIST PAGES to the Chroma web site, so far there are 14 pages completed with at least two pages going up every weekday. Shop for art on your computer, then come by the gallery to see it in person. You may also buy on line and have the art shipped to you wherever you happen to be. Chroma now represents over 50 artists, so there is a lot of great art to see. Chroma’s focus is on New Mexico artists and we are excited to show the diversity of New Mexico art available. Pages currently completed; Blain Anderson, Cate Clark, María de Echevarría, Brendan Gould, Kirk McGee, Scott White, té zins,  Mickey Bond,  Caroline Blaker,  Jenny Durrett,  Karl Eschenbach, Patricia Halloran, John Parish, and Julie Rybachek.

Would you like to get 10% off ALL purchases, and 2 FREE Intimate Concert tickets? Become a Chroma Studios member today! $35 yearly membership for individuals, $50 for businesses
(Businesses also get a mention in our monthly newsletter and a link on our website). Become a Chroma member and be entered in a drawing for a FREE 1 hour massage!

Thank you so much for your continued support of Chroma Studios and the New Mexico art/music/poetry scene. Have a very happy holiday season, we look forward to seeing you soon!

Sincerely,

Paula Manning-Lewis and Aaron Lewis

Picture Framing Services Now Available!

Chroma Studios Gallery now offers custom picture framing services at wholesale prices. Simple to complex, we can handle any framing job! We can match any color! We beat everyone’s prices! 25% discount off our already low prices when you bring in 5 or more pieces to be framed. We also offer our discount prices to professional artists. We keep our prices low by not having hundreds of frame samples to choose from, but it makes your decision easier. 18 years experience in the business, plus excellent design skills! For more information see the Picture Framing page.

Great time to get an art studio at Chroma!

Several studios are available now!

http://chromastudios.wordpress.com/studios/

Tonight! Holiday Art Sale Opening, 6-10 pm!

Tonight is our First Annual Holiday Art Sale! It is also 1st Friday and we will be open with refreshments and hots drinks until 10pm. Many of our gallery artists have work priced under $250 and everything over $250 is 10% off! We also have gift cards available and you get a free Christmas card with any art purchase, while supplies last!

See you here tonight!

November 1st Friday: Photos

Betty Dore with her Diptych painting

Justin Thor Simenson, one of Chroma Gallery’s art photographers, came up with a wonderful idea for our 1st Friday in November and these are a few of the photos he took during the opening. Justin recently found a wireless memory card for his digital camera that sends photos directly to his computer as he takes them. So for the opening Justin set up his computer and had a slide show playing of the photos as he took them. It was a fun idea and people really got a kick out of seeing the photos he took right away. We will most likely do that again for future openings. Thanks Justin! (Click on images to see larger)

Aaron and Travis in performance space

Watching the photos as they appear on the computer

Looking at the gallery from the back corner

Betty and friends in featured gallery

Entry way looking at and talking about the art

Aaron, Paula and Travis performing

Heather White and Te Zins

Brendan Gould's paintings/drawing