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.

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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 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!

 

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!

 

October Open Studios Event

It’s almost time for our monthly open studios event! We have a new artist joining us this month. He recently moved into studio #3. His name is Jamie Wynter and he’s an abstract painter.

Abstract painting by Jamie Wynter

Jamie started painting a couple years ago when he was living in Santa Cruz ,California.  He’s interested in hard edge abstract paintings and plans on completing two painting series. The first will be called “Neon on the wall” and the other will be called “Ice on the dune”. Jamie’s artistic inspirations are William Blake, Alex Grey, Charles Bukowski, Death grips, his mother, and nature.

In addition to Jamie Wynter we have 3 other artists opening their studios tomorrow from noon-5pm. Dee Alexandria, Cynthia Zeedyk and Paula Manning-Lewis.

We are located at 1606 Central Ave SE, suite 201 (upstairs). Our building is 1 1/2 blocks west of University Ave. Enter from Central eastbound lane, turn into our parking lot right after passing Ash Street and Yasmine’s Cafe on the corner. Parking is free in our parking lot or there is metered parking in the front of the building. Follow the signs and sidewalk chalk to find the entrance. See you there!

Prime Artist Studio Available!

North facing windows. With the door hanging system taken down.

This is one of our prime studio spaces! It has been continuously occupied for the entire 8 1/2 years we have been here. The last time it was available was 6 years ago! The space is 10 x 20′, which is our largest room size. The windows wrap around 180 degrees and the majority of the windows are north facing.

West side of the room with the hanging doors up

One of the previous tenants made the cool door hanging system you see in front of the windows, for hanging art, since the windows take up lots of wall space. This space rents for $360 per month with a $360 deposit. Rent includes utitilities, wifi and reserved parking. Contact Paula at 505-259-6320 for more information or to schedule an appointment to see this great space! No doubt it will rent fast! 🙂

East side of room with doors hanging

Chroma Open Studios: Saturday, Sept. 17, noon-5pm

Reception area at Chroma Studios

This Saturday from noon to 5pm I will be opening my studio to the public. Not just my studio, but 3-4 other artists in my building will also be here to show their work! It’s been years since we opened Chroma Studios to the public and I am so excited to share all the color and energy with you all! We have 11 studios in all, though not everyone is able to be open this time around.

We have 2 studios that are currently being moved out of, so we also have 2 studios opening up for new artists at the beginning of October. If you are looking for an art studio, stop by and see what we have available! We are always happy to welcome new artists into the Chroma Studios fold. 🙂

Mixed Media by Dee Alexandria

I recently moved into a new studio that I’m sharing with another artist. Dee Alexandria has been a friend since we first met selling our art at the New Mexico State Fair almost 10 years ago! We decided to share a studio because neither of us needed a big studio to ourselves. Plus, it’s nice to have company in the studio. So often, artists are isolated from their peers. That is one of the things about Chroma Studios that makes it so nice! We have a community of artists here that help each other out. Mine and Dee’s work compliments each other perfectly as we both love color, flowers and spirals!

Landscape painting by Cynthia Zeedyk

Cynthia Zeedyck is another artist who will have her studio open this Saturday. She is a lifelong artist with 45 years of training and experience in the arts, including: Fine Arts, Appalachian Arts, Poetry, many styles of Dance, Wildcrafting Herbs, and Poetry. Cynthia was awarded with an Apprenticeship Grant from Ohio Arts for Traditional Heritage Basket Making. Her works sold both nationally and internationally. She was the largest female producer of Heritage Berry Baskets in the world. Her designs and creations include landscape paintings, floral and contemporary. Newest works in Scrimshaw. Cynthia has been a Chroma Artist since 2014.

Mixed Media by Robert Medina Cook

Robert Medina Cook has been a Chroma Studios artist off and on for at least 5 years. He began his journey in the creative arts over forty years ago in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A native New Mexican whose local family roots go back centuries in Northern New Mexico, in 2012 Robert was one of 7 artists honored for their excellence in the arts by being proclaimed a “Local Treasure” by the Albuquerque Art Business Association. Featured in several publications, his artworks have won numerous awards and can be found in corporate, museum, public art and private collections throughout the US and abroad.

Mixed Media by Phillip Vigil

Phillip Vigil (Jemez Pueblo/Chiricahua Apache) is a fourth-generation artist residing in Jemez Pueblo. He is new to Chroma Studios. He is a self-taught artist and has been working seriously on his art now for several years. He always had a love of art since he realized at a young age that the paintings on the walls were done by members of his family. He is highly influenced by the abstract modernists of the early and late 20th century. He works a lot on paper with oil pastels, oil sticks, oil paint sticks, spray paint, oil and acrylic paint as well.