The New Mexico State University Art Museum is partnering with Santa Fe-based mobile art space Axle Contemporary to present “E Pluribus Unum: Mogollon”, a photo exhibition featuring over 800 portraits taken by artists Matthew Chase-Daniel and Jerry Wellman. The portraits were taken during their 2024 journey across south-central and southwestern New Mexico in Axle’s mobile gallery. Scott Brocato spoke with the artists about their exhibition, which opens June 5 and runs through August 20th.
Scott Brocato:
Matthew, let's start with you. First, talk about Axle Contemporary, which you and Jerry founded in 2010. An art gallery on wheels--what inspired that?
Matthew Chase-Daniel:
It sort of came around by accident more than by intention. Jerry and I are both artists and working artists, and we were working on a project together. We had known each other a little bit, not nearly as well as we know each other now, luckily. (Laughs) So I was at his studio taking photos of him, making drawings for a series I was working on, and we just got to talking about different ideas. There was an old flatbed truck for sale on the side of the highway near my house, and he had a little camper trailer, and we got to talking about fun, weird things to do. And we thought about starting an art gallery.
Then we went and looked at the truck, and it wasn't the right truck for us. And then we looked on Craigslist and found different things: first, like an airport transport, like a shuttle bus for an airport that we were looking at. And then we found out an old Winnebago RV that we were looking at. We're like, how can we make a gallery that will work? And then we ended up going up to Colorado Springs and buying this 1970 aluminum bodied Grumman Olsen van and ripped off the top and raised it up and put track lighting and clear story windows...
Scott Brocato:
And that's what you're still using to this day?
Matthew Chase-Daniel:
Yeah. Luckily, it's still running. We're I think had two new engines since then and a new clutch linkage and alternator. A lot of gasoline.
Scott Brocato:
Jerry, let's talk about E Pluribus Unum: Mogollon. It's the sixth and final phase of a 12-year project. Talk about the overall concept and what inspired the two of you to do it in the first place.
Jerry Wellman:
Matthew was inspired by--what's the guy's name? Jason...
Matthew Chase-Daniel:
Jason Salavon. He's an artist out of Chicago who's been--(to Jerry) go ahead.
Jerry Wellman:
Anyways, Matthew was kind of inspired by him, and that's one part of it. The other part of it is our interest in doing social engagement, which is a generic name for a type of arts practice where you involve the culture around you, the people that you meet to create the art through your interaction. So we wanted to do something that the people would actually, in their own manner, participate in. So we decided to take portraits of people and have them hold an object that is significant.
Scott Brocato:
And why was that part important?
Jerry Wellman:
Well, because it's their object that they feel is significant to them. At first we were experimenting with this. So at first, we'd have objects that they could choose and say, well, what object in this box speaks to you? But as we started working more and more on the project, we realized we could just ask people to bring in their objects. Also oftentimes, you just go into your car and you have something that is an object that's important to you.
So we started to gather the people. Then the next part of the project would be to take all of these images of each person and composite them into one image. So for instance, our first (E Pluribus Unum project), it was like 600 different photo portraits. You can take all 600 of those portraits and composite them into one portrait.
Scott Brocato:
Hence the Latin name E Pluribus Unum...
Jerry Wellman:
...which means “from many, one”, right. But it also, I think, has a lot of significance, and even more so now, in terms of both political action and just our society in general.
Scott Brocato:
The current project, “Mogollon”, features over 800 portraits of residents across south- central, southwestern New Mexico. How do you gather the people to get their picture taken? How do you get the word out?
Jerry Wellman:
The first thing is we create partnerships with people that live there. One of the things is there's something called Main Street.
Matthew Chase-Daniel:
Main Street is a federal interstate affiliate. So we plan to a financial revitalization of downtowns in different communities around the state. So in Santa Fe, there's the head of Main Street, New Mexico, which I think is under Department of Culture Affairs. So they're very good at hooking us up. There's local arts councils, there's art galleries, there's art museums, there's mayors and council people and people who run breweries and...anything. Parks. So we do a broad outreach. And then, we’ve both lived in New Mexico for decades, and so we know a lot of people. So if we know one person in Raton, we contact them and they put us in touch with someone else in Raton. And soon we're on the radio in Las Cruces talking about our project.
Scott Brocato:
This was taken, when, last August through September of 2024 correct?
Matthew Chase-Daniel:
August through October, yeah.
Scott Brocato:
And you stopped in, in addition to Las Cruces, Deming, Hatch, and Silver City. Where were some other towns?
Matthew Chase-Daniel:
Belen, Grants, Acoma, Pine Hill, Zuni...
Scott Brocato:
Now, did you include everyone's picture that you took, or did you leave any out?
Jerry Wellman:
No.
Scott Brocato:
Everyone's in there?
Matthew Chase-Daniel:
Yes, everyone. Yeah. There's maybe one that's a little blurry, but other than that, they're all really good, but we put ‘em all in.
Scott Brocato:
The cover of the book that accompanies the exhibits has all 800-plus portraits aligned by the eyes of each subject into one singular image: E Pluribus Unum. How did you do that? What is the process of that?
Jerry Wellman:
Yes. It's called Photoshop. (Laughs)
Matthew Chase-Daniel:
So yeah, in Photoshop, there's Layers. So you can put different images in different layers. And put them on top like you would put a piece of film over another piece of film or tracing paper. So in those layers you can adjust the opacity of any given layer. What we do is we make stacks of ten, we resize them so their pupils line up, each one; and the bottom layer we have it at 100% opacity. The second layer is at 50%. Then 33%, 25%, 20%, 17%, 13,11, and 10 (percent). So that's as you're looking through the layers that makes an even image that's equal portions of those ten. So you make ten stacks of ten. That's 100 pictures. And then you flatten those ten, and then you do the same with ten layers, and then you've got 100. And then if you do that with 10 stacks of 100, you have 1000 pictures.
Scott Brocato:
What do you want people to take away from the exhibit when they come see it?
Matthew Chase-Daniel:
It's sort of about humanity and community. And the E Pluribus Unum sort of speaks to all of that: that our community, whether it's south central New Mexico and southwestern New Mexico, or whether it's New Mexico as a whole, or the whole country or all of humanity on the planet, they're all part of these smaller communities that make up larger communities. And it's together that we create the life that we live, for better or for worse.
Scott Brocato:
It's a fascinating exhibit. It opens June 5th at the New Mexico State University Art Museum with a special gala that evening at 5:30. Matthew Chase-Daniel, Jerry Wellman, thank you both for coming in.
Both:
Thank you.
