Chroma is Expanding!

Chroma Studios is expanding! We now have three locations, two with band studios and one with artist studios.

Our Band studios are located downtown on the NE corner of 1st street and Roma and near Nob Hill at 210 Manzano NE. There are a variety of spaces and rents(ranging from $200-600), totally secure with 24/7 access, central heat and air. We rent to all types of musicians and bands, and have a great community atmosphere. Availability of studios varies. We are usually full and have a waiting list, though with the new location, openings happen more frequently.

Contact Paula at 505-259-6320 for more info or to be put on our waiting list, or email me at paula@paulamanninglewis.com.

Chroma Studios was named the “Best New Business” in downtown Albuquerque at the annual 2009 LOOK awards. We are now in our 13th year of operation.

News Flash!

There are changes afoot at Chroma Studios. At the end of June we are giving up our lease at the Central location of Chroma Studios. The location will still be rented/used as artist studios, but someone else will be running it as a new business. Paula and Aaron have moved their studios home and will continue to run the Downtown location as band/music practice studios.

While we are a bit melancholy about leaving Central after 9 years, it was time to make a decision and the decision was that it was time to let it go. One of the conditions of leaving the lease was that the space would still be used as artist studios, because Albuquerque already has a shortage of space and we couldn’t bear the thought of closing it down completely after all these years. Paula is ready to work full time as an artist again and running the studios made that difficult.

Huge thanks to all the artists who made Chroma their studio home all these years! We appreciate you all! We like to look at it not as an ending, but as a new beginning. 🙂

Studios Available!

We currently have 2 band studios and 2 art studios available!

Studios Available Downtown: (musicians/band location)

Studio #10: 11.5 x 13′ room, big enough for a 5-6 piece band, $250 per month, $250 deposit.

Studios #17: 10.5 x 11.5′ room, enough room for a 3-5 piece band, $225 per month, $225 deposit.

Contact Aaron at 505-908-1392 for more info.

Studios available on Central: (artist location)

Studio #2: 10 x 20′ room with a wall of north facing windows, $360 per month, $360 deposit. Available June 1st.

Studio #11: 10 x 20′ room, no outside windows. $315 per month, $315 deposit. Available Now!

Contact Paula at 505-259-6320, Aaron at 505-908-1392 or email at plewis11@comcast.net.

Band Lineup for ChromaFEST 2017

We are excited to announce we have 10 bands participating in ChromaFEST on April 8th! There will be rock, metal, and folk rock. In between each of these great groups we will have singer/songwriters, poets and maybe a comedian or two from Albuquerque sharing their craft.  This is going to be a great show featuring several of our Chroma Studios resident bands. Tickets are only $10 for the whole day! More ticket information will be available soon! We weren’t anticipating this kind of participation so unfortunately for this year’s show we will not have any of our past bands perform. We’re thinking next year’s ChromaFEST will need to be a two day event!

The schedule of bands is as follows;

11am: Old Devils/the shine

11:45am: TBA

12:10pm: Humble Waves

12:55pm: TBA

1:20pm: Psykick Monkey

2:05pm: TBA

2:30pm: The Haptics

3:15pm: TBA

3:40pm: The MLC

4:25pm: TBA

4:45pm: Sunlight

5:30pm: Aaron Lewis

5:55pm: Critterz

6:40pm: TBA

7:05pm: Modus

7:50pm: TBA

8:15pm: Electoral College Dropouts

8:55pm: Doug Hoelbinger

9:15pm: Decapitation of a New Day

The Haptics and Psykick Monkey are performing in their second ChromaFEST show.

IF you are a fan and supporter of live independent music, these bands all take themselves serious enough to rent space so they can rehearse and put on shows in their community. Come help us celebrate their talent and dedication to Albuquerque’s indie music scene.

February Open Studios, Saturday 4-7pm

This Saturday is our monthly open studios event. Several of our artists will open their doors to the public. This free event is open to all! We invite you to stop by, look at the art, talk to the artists, get a peak at our behind the scenes workspace, buy a great painting you can’t live without, sign up for our email list, hang out on our roof top patio…..you get the idea! We are open 4-7 pm and we are located at 1606 Central Ave SE suite 201. We are located upstairs, sorry, no elevator. See you there!

Looking up at our window from the street below

The stairs

The stairs

The view from our rooftop patio!

The halls

Comfy place to sit in the reception area

Inside window

View from the couch!

Another angle

Landscape painting by Cynthia Zeedyk

Mixed media piece by Dee Alexandria

Spiral Abstracts by Paula Manning-Lewis

Flowers by Cynthia Zeedyk

Abstract paintings by Jamie Wynter

February at Chroma Studios

First off, I’m happy to announce that we are at 100% capacity. We have started a new waiting list, so if you are looking for a band or art studio, please contact us to be put on the list. Work continues on our plans for purchasing a building for Chroma Studios to expand into and if all keeps going as planned, we should have a new space and more studios to fill by May/June!

ChromaFEST is coming up soon! If you are an artist who would like to participate, remember, our submission deadline is February 15th. For more info, see THIS POST. It’s looking like there will be room for everyone so far! Get those submissions in as soon as you can, we have to start promoting the show in March, so I can’t take late submissions.

Our crowdfunding campaign is getting close to launching. We hope you will be able and willing to help us spread the word! There will be lots of great rewards for your donations, including tickets to our ChromaFEST show on April 8th.

Saturday, February 18th is this month’s Open Studio event at our Central Art Studios location. We have changed the times to 4-7pm to make it easier for everyone to make it. We look forward to showing you around the space and the art. Please stop in and say hi!

 

January Open Studios

This Saturday from 4-7pm at our Central Studios, 1606 Central SE, suite 201. We have a couple new artists this month. We look forward to showing you around and showing you our art work! 

This is a short post today, my husband and I are currently at the hospital waiting for our first grandson to be born! Needless to say, I’m having a hard time concentrating on anything else right now. Come see me this Saturday and I will probably have photos to share! Have a great rest of the week!

Chroma Studios, the Music Perspective

We here at Chroma Studios are fans of music ourselves, owning a record collection with well over 8,000 records (if you want to count them come on over). It is through this that we have developed the philosophy that all music has something to offer. Instead of not listening to it and saying it sucks we decided to open ourselves up to the opportunity to listen to a different perspective. Which is all music is really. A different perspective due to a different upbringing. It seems to me that we all could use the reminder that this is one of our strengths. It does not matter what style it is there are only 12 notes, there is melody, there is harmony and form. There is rhythm syncopated and straight. The beauty of all of that is it’s an individual’s voice that makes those 12 notes, melody, harmony, form, and rhythm all come together.

Whenever I rent spaces to bands, they ask what the rules are and this is my response. My number one rule for the band studios is be supportive of your fellow musicians no matter what you do or what they do.  We currently rent 19 band studios and these bands will provide the majority of the music at ChromaFEST. We rent space to all different types of bands. There are some cover bands, original bands, trained musicians, untrained hip hop, rock and roll, metal, and bands I have never heard. Chroma used to house a performance space where Chroma developed a relationship with many Singer Songwriters and poets who will be a part of ChromaFEST in what we call Tweener acts. The Chroma community will provide a diverse set of music that is Albuquerque.

If you are up to listening to a bunch of different styles of music all in one place as part of your day, mark down April 8th and come to ChromaFEST in Albuquerque, NM. I can make you this promise, you won’t be disappointed. More info on ChromaFEST will be shared as we get closer to April, stay tuned…

 

Call for Artists!

We are in full planning mode for our upcoming ChromaFEST on Saturday, April 8th. What is ChromaFEST, you may ask? It’s a music/art festival and a fundraiser for Chroma Studios. We plan to make it an annual event, but this year is extra special. You may have seen our Big Announcement a couple of months ago. Now that 2017 is here, we are in full swing fundraising/planning mode. This year’s event will be at The Cell Theater in downtown Albuquerque. We will know more about times once we get the band/music lined up. There will be live music, food truck/s, a silent auction and of course, an art market!

We are looking for artists who would like to set up a booth to show/sell their work. The term artists is used in a broad sense here as we are open to any kind of creative handmade items. Fine Art, jewelry, photography, fiber arts, really ANYTHING handmade by YOU. This will be an outside show, so you may need a canopy for shade. You will need to bring your own set up; tables, chairs, easels, canopy, etc. Since this is a fundraiser show, we are asking each artist to donate a piece for the silent auction. In return, we will be eternally grateful to you!

What we need you to submit is 4-10 photos of your work, a bio/artist statement, and a $10 application fee. If you rent a studio from us, the fees are included in your rent. If you are not a Chroma Studios artist, the booth fee will be $25 in addition to the $10 application fee. This is a one day, Saturday show that may go as late as 10:00pm. Booth fees will be collected after you are accepted to the show. There is limited space, so unfortunately we can’t accept everyone. 😦 The deadline is February 15th and we will notify artists by March 1st.

Please send your submissions to chromastudios@comcast.net and pay your $10 application fee by paypal to plewis11@comcast.net or by check/money order mailed to Chroma Studios, 1606 Central Ave SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106.

Please email if you have any questions. We look forward to hearing from YOU!

Our BIG Announcement!

Good afternoon! If you follow Chroma Studios on facebook, you may have seen some recent posts about a big announcement coming soon. Without further ado, here it is!

First of all, we are planning ChromaFest for next year. April 8th is the date, the Cell Theater (on 1st street between Roma and Lomas) is the place. We will know the hours once we know how many bands will perform. This is going to be a music and art festival that we hope to hold annually. The first Chroma Fest happened several years ago and was a lot of fun. This is going to be a MUCH better and bigger festival. The space at the Cell will hold up to 1,800 people. We will showcase live music from the bands who currently reside in our studios as well as bands who have previously called Chroma Studios home. We will have artist tables for our current and past artists to set up and show/sell their work. Depending on how much participation we have from Chroma artists/musicians, we may also bring in other bands and artists to fill in. We will have food trucks set up. ChromaFest will be a fundraiser for Chroma Studios.

Why a fundraiser you may ask? April 2017 marks our 9th anniversary in business. It is also the end of our long term leases in both locations of Chroma Studios. Aaron and I have made the decision to take the leap in making Chroma Studios a more permanent part of the Albuquerque scene. We are going to purchase a building! Currently, we lease both our spaces which gives us little to no control over what happens in and around our space. We plan to move into a space where both artist studios and music studios will be in the same location. We are currently split between two locations, art and music. We plan to soundproof all the music studios and have ventilation and natural light in all the art studios. In the future, we plan to add a performance space, art gallery, classroom and recording studio. We are hoping to have enough parking for everyone! Our biggest hope is that we will be able to lower our rents too! The reason we need to do fundraising is simple. Aaron and I are not independently wealthy. We work as full time artist and musicians in addition to running Chroma. Although it is our business, the move will improve things for everyone!

In addition to ChromaFest, we are setting up a crowdfunding campaign to help raise additional funds. There will be lots of Chroma merchandise for rewards, but we hope to get donations of CDs and artwork from the artists and musicians of Chroma. Tickets for the festival, compilation CDs and ChromaFest posters will also be included as rewards. Stay tuned for more information on the Crowdfunding campaign and the ChromaFest line up!