Las Cruces – A celebration for a new area to showcase art at Doña Ana Community College (DACC) East Mesa Campus features a display by famed St. Petersburg artist Mihail Chemiakin.
Three art displays will be featured, a suite of prints by Chemiakin on loan from the collection of Ron and Diana Johnson, ceramics by DACC faculty artist Glen Shwaiger and DACC art students printmaking.
Chemiakin was born in Moscow and was admitted to the Special High School of the Repin Academy of Art in Leningrad. He was expelled from school for not following Russian norms. Chemiakin was admitted to a mental health hospital where he was tortured. In 1967, Chemiakin founded the St. Petersburg Group that created iconic paintings taking their influence from religious art of all peoples. Chemiakin is shown worldwide and has been called the Pablo Picasso of modern times.
Glenn Schwaiger is an artist and associate professor at DACC. He recently returned from a 3 month sabbatical to Jingdezhen, China where he studied the collaborative processes and methods used by traditional Chinese porcelain artists. On display are several of Schwaiger’s works influenced by the materials and techniques of Jingdezhen, along with examples of contemporary Chinese porcelain.
DACC art instructor Ouida Touchon’s will explain the tools and techniques used by her students to create the prints on display. Touchon has studied with distinguished printmakers and painters in Italy, Mexico, and the United States. Her students Angela Beniche, Jeremiah Bryan, Elvira Castro, Sandra Cooper, Adrian Madrid, and Tzabrina Rawinsky are featured.
The show will be held on Thursday, April 28 from 4:30 to 6:00 pm in DAEM building at the East Mesa Campus in the mezzanine of the DACC President’s office suite.
Also on display in the building will be the DACC permanent art collection with more than 250 original artworks and limited edition prints donated by artists and patrons over the past ten years. The collection includes representational, abstract and non-objective artworks in various media.
Several suites of works representing the careers of notable artists, John Moffitt, Bill Gambling and Royce Marin Rein are included in the DACC collection.
Information from DACC