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!
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 seeHERE.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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
We are finally getting the individual artist pages posted here on the web site. With over 50 artists represented here at Chroma Studios Gallery, it may take a few days or weeks to get them all done! Check back often as I will try to finish a couple artist’s pages everyday. We are wrapping up shooting a cool video tomorrow afternoon! We have an awesome film maker, Reinhard Lorenz, pulling it all together for us. I don’t want to give too much away yet, but once it’s done you will have the chance to get to know some of the Chroma artists much better. Including owners, Paula and Aaron! Not to mention hearing more about how Chroma got it’s start.
November 6th, 6-9pm, is the artist reception and First Friday opening for our November featured artist, Betty Dore, and her show “Mostly Koi”. Betty’s paintings of Koi and water lilies are just incredible! This is a show you won’t want to miss. We also have several new pieces by our gallery artists and a couple of new gallery artists showing with us starting this month. There will be refreshments as always, and live music in the performance space. Make sure to stop by and say hi!
Thursday, Nov. 5th, Doors open at 7pm, show starts at 7:30pm. $8 in advance or $10 at the door.
Ken Keppeler and Jeanie McLerie are the core of Bayou Seco well loved, long time Albuquerque residents who now live in Silver City, NM. Ken and Jeanie have been making music together since 1978, always with an ear to the regional traditions that capture their interest. This unforgettable evening will be filled with tunes gathered from the source, the direct transmission through human contact and interaction. Rare music from the old country and the new world will fill the air, and stories that go with them. You will hear old Cajun music, New Mexican dance tunes and songs, cowboy songs, and fiddle tunes from the Tohono O’Odham people of Southern Arizona, all played with authenticity and joy. Expect soaring, stellar vocals from Jeanie, growling wool from Ken -Crack fiddling, banjo and guitar, rollicking accordion, cowboy prairie rhymes and ballads, and plenty hijinx from these veterans of the folk music world.
Recently returned from a successful Spring and Summer tour this year in Ireland, England, France, and Germany, they will grace the wonderful Chroma Gallery with their music and stories. Not to be missed!!!!!!!!
My name is Paula Manning-Lewis and I am the owner of Chroma Studios Gallery in downtown Albuquerque. If you have been to the gallery you have probably met me or my husband and partner, Aaron Lewis.
Chroma Studios represents the art work of New Mexico artists and more specifically, we are dedicated to supporting Albuquerque artists. Unlike most galleries, we only take a 30% commission on sales. We believe the artist should retain the majority of their sales since it was their blood, sweat and tears that created the art in the first place. We are also an artist-owned small business. I have been a working professional artist for almost 20 years and Aaron has been a professional musician for almost that long.
We’re writing today to ask for your support of a great and upcoming local institution. We’d also like to tell you about some of the great things going on and all the benefits you’ll receive by becoming part of Chroma’s work. There’s something for every budget that will add art to your world while bolstering a vital local business that’s contributing to our community.
This state is called the “Land of Enchantment” for a reason. For over a hundred years artists have been coming here to paint and moving here to live. Some of us were lucky enough to grow up here. Albuquerque has been the home to many well-known and -loved famous artists. You always hear about the art scenes in Santa Fe and Taos, but did you know there has always been a thriving art scene here in Albuquerque? In just the last ten years, Albuquerque has gone up to the top of several national lists. Most prominently for the art scene, we are number 5 on the American Style magazine list of large city art destinations. That puts us in the midst of cities like New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Miami and ahead of cities like L.A., D.C., Seattle and Denver. Albuquerque’s art scene is on the verge of a major national and even international explosion. Here at Chroma Studios gallery we are excited to be a part of that explosion. In May 2009 we were awarded the “Best New Business” at the Downtown Action Team LOOK Awards. We were recognized with a story on Channel 7 news as a “thriving gallery in a time of recession.”
In the years to come we will host some of the best artists of Albuquerque. Currently, we are home to around thirty Albuquerque artists, including Rein Whitt-Pritchette and Herb Goldman, who have already been recognized by the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History. Both artists have pieces in the Museum’s permanent collection. Rein has been honored with inclusion in the Museum’s “Albuquerque Now – Fall” show which opens October 10th and runs through January. This month at Chroma we are featuring the work of Meg Leonard, the 2009 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta poster artist.
We are so grateful to all the people who have supported us and helped to make our dream a reality! Thank you for helping us create such an incredible space! What we ask from you now, our patrons, friends and fellow artists is support to keep our mission going strong. We truly appreciate your attendance at our events, however we need your financial support as well. You don’t necessarily have to buy an expensive work of art, though it would be greatly appreciated. In fact, we have very flexible payment plans to help make larger purchases possible, and we don’t charge interest! We have many smaller affordable paintings, sculptures, glass pieces, jewelry and prints to choose from.
A great way to support us while getting something in return is to become a Chroma Studios member. Only $35 for individuals or $50 for businesses, you get a membership card good for one year, that entitles you to 10% off all purchases, plus two free tickets to any show in our intimate concert series. Businesses also get a link on our website and a mention in our monthly newsletter. These memberships will provide the funds to help us continue our work as a New Mexico art gallery presenting the art, music and poetry of local creative people and putting money back into our local economy.
600 1st Street NW, Suite 100 & 210
NE corner of 1st & Roma
Albuquerque, NM 87102
505-554-3805
chromastudios@comcast.net
We still have studios at our UNM location;
1606 Central Ave SE, Suite 201
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87106
Chroma Studios is a contemporary art gallery focused on the art of New Mexico artists. We also provide classroom and studio space rentals for artists and musicians looking for a professional working environment. We now have two studio/classroom locations, downtown and near UNM. In our new downtown location we also have an acoustic performance space!
