Art studio junior Gabriel Alarid can sometimes be found dragging huge paintings of heads across campus. He also draws faces with black string and gel medium, a move influenced by Jackson Pollock's drip paintings. In 2003, a fire destroyed all his belongings, including his first sketchbook, at his apartment in Denver. While living in Denver, he delivered pizzas and worked at a gallery, which whet his appetite for experimental art.
His daughter's recent birth gave him the push he needed to finish school and move into a house with a backyard studio, which looks like a big art barn.
Gabriel Alarid: I really got exposed to a lot of contemporary art, which I fell in love with. I started to push my style more toward there and less toward an academic style of work. I was at UNM in 2001 and 2002 and felt if I was really going to be an artist, I needed to grow up and figure everything out for myself. I couldn't do that in the dorms.. It was pretty sheltered and pretty controlled.. I focused on (realism) and perfected it. I can draw faces pretty well. I can do a lot of things really well. But it was kind of stale art. There was nothing really to it.
Daily Lobo: There wasn't a big streak of passion behind it that you felt?
GA: There wasn't. It seemed almost like it was becoming mechanical.
DL: Churning.
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GA: So I turned my focus to contemporary art, and I did a little acrylic painting. I called my girlfriend at the time and told her to write in my sketchbook, "red square, white line, black drip." I don't know what I was really thinking.. I'm influenced by a lot of kind of weirdo artists.
DL: Like who?
GA: Rothko, Kandinsky, Pollock, I really draw from.
DL: Kandinsky had synesthesia, where he heard colors and saw sounds.
GA: Yeah, it's incredible. It's wild. You hear how he really visualized painting through music. And music for me is the end-all, even more than art.
DL: Do you play music?
GA: Yeah. I play guitar; I play banjo; I play mandolin. I have a drawing class, and we're not allowed to listen to iPods. It kills me. It's so hard for me to work.
DL: What is the thought behind that?
GA: I think she just wants us to be able to hear her. She gives us a ton of information, which is really great, you know, so I get it. But it's so unlike a lot of my classes where I'm tuned into my own little world and able to kind of brush all aside. But anyhow, so I called my girlfriend up, told her to write that. Went home, whited out the painting and painted this red square, white line and black drip. I loved it. I just freaked out over it. And everybody who I knew just didn't really respond to it up there. So it kind of made me a little self-conscious - you're kind of putting yourself out there a lot more. It wasn't really getting a response. When I moved back to Santa Fe 2 1/2 years ago, people just loved it. It's so wild. It's a lot of my friends' favorite painting. It stokes me out because I loved it and it helped me break out of that box.
DL: Yeah, it sounds like your rebirth move. Like, deconstructing what you know to these basic forms.
GA: It was. Like, super-minimalism. So I really started focusing on that style. My biggest tool's probably my eraser and white paint. But at the end of it, I get what I need. I do so much more art out of class than I do in class.
DL: It means you're self-driven.
GA: A lot of the kids I hang out with are artists in school. It amazes me how much they trip out that I do art out of class.
DL: It is weird.
GA: And I kind of trip out that they don't do more. The things that I do for class, I always try to do with respect to not doing an assignment, rather to do a piece that I'm proud of, that I would hang.. I do a lot of homeless people. I have a huge fascination.
DL: You take photographs of them?
GA: I have tons of photos. I always give people a couple of bucks and just take a shot. And they're always super stoked. I've never had somebody say no. I sit and talk, I've bought them lunch, dinner. I love them. I just think there's something unique and really sad. I just want to know how they looked as little kids. You never think you'll end up in that situation.
