Albuquerque Journal from Albuquerque, New Mexico • Page 38

D-2 ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL Sunday, May 20, 1984 Sunshine Building's Demise Could Cost Pride V. II. Price Architecture Writer Us til: I Central Avenue, the main axis of Albuquerque development from the railroad era into the 70s, is the visual and functional backbone both of downtown and of the important chain of period neighborhoods west and east of it We don't believe that it is necessary to destroy these important elements of our city to implement this or any other revitalization scheme." Berent Groth, president of The Albuquerque Conservation Association, said recently, "We should not look east on Central and see it end in a building that makes itself more important than Central Avenue and Albuquerque's history." He was referring to the proposed market structure, designed to evoke memories of the long demolished Alvarado Hotel, that would occupy the present Sunshine site and sit in the middle of Central. The 12-acre festival market plan, updated for city officials by Enterprise earlier this month, lies between Gold and Tijeras and between Second and the railroad tracks. Aside from the market place itself, most of the plan foresees an amusement park atmosphere and usage with as much as perhaps seven acres of developed open space plenty of room, in other words, to incorporate the Sunshine, keep Central open, and design a winning retail attraction.

The six-story Sunshine building, a Renaissance Revival high-rise built in 1924, is shaped like an with the now vacant Sunshine Theater occupying the lower core of the building. Groth, a local architect, thinks that a festival market on that site should use the Sunshine as a "landmark and sentinel" that anchors and announces the project. The Sunshine is structurally sound. It is one of the first two high-rise, reinforced concrete structures built in the city. A developer could use it in a number of ways by removing the theater, glassing in the enclosure and designing multi-level restaurants and shops; by making it a retail and office building and using it as an architectural backdrop and facade against which a new market place structure could be built; by turning it into a hotel; or by keeping the theater, and using the building as an architectural anchor for new construction.

The festival market concept is a good one and has worked well in other cities. It could do much for Downtown, as long as its life doesn't depend on cannibalizing what little is left of Downtown's -historic identity. If you're interested in the Sunshine, the Landmarks and Urban Conservation Commission will meet at 3 30 p.m. Wednesday in the Council Chambers at City Hall to discuss giving the Sunshine landmark status. V.B.

Price, a longtime observer of the local scene, is contributing a weekly column to the Albuquerque Journal on "The Built Environment." He was the editor of Century magazine. ill ii ill 1 1 Sometimes a city can make one change too many. The proposal for a publicly financed festival market on Second Street would seem to put Albuquerque on the brink of self-destructive change. Enterprise Development's plan would mean demolition of the venerable Sunshine Building and the obstruction of Central Avenue. The built environments of most modern cities are, by their nature, in a persistent state of flux.

To prosper they must prow, and to grow they must change. Change often means weeding out the old to make room for the new. But the growth of modern cities involves more than the financial cycle of demolition and new tcnstruction, more than territorial expansion and reaction to technological and commercial rapid change. Growth also mwis striving for maturity, for self-knowledge, identity and healthy self-respect. For built environments, a good part of such growth comes from valuing the past as a source of the future.

Citizens of cities that consistently suffer the effects of radical change and demolition can see their civic identities destroyed and with them their hopes for prosperity and an invigorating quality of life. The destruction of the Sunshine Building and the blocking of Central could well be the kind of radical change from which Albuquerque's pride and historic character might never fully recover a last straw, a compromise that erodes integrity. Downtown Albuquerque today is perhaps the most vital and changing part of our city. No fewer than 20 new projects, many of them involving the re-use and preservation of historic buildings, are under way. A festival market might do much to enhance downtown's already vibrant new life, but it might also do much to squelch it.

What if we permit the destruction of the Sunshine and the closing of Central, and Enterprise Development's projected 4 million annual visitors to the festival market don't materialize? What then? Are we willing to risk a white elephant at Central and Second Street? Do we want a botched extravaganza that has uprooted one of downtown's major remaining historic properties and blocked the city's main arterial and symbolic spine? Especially when it's possible to create a festival market that takes nothing more from Albuquerque's already savaged architectural history, but actually adds to it instead. Sunshine Building 1 IS -m An ad hoc committee called Save the Sunshine, of which I am a member, believes the festival market as a commercial concept is a great idea and wants to see it work. But in the words of committee chairwoman Edna Heatherington Bergman, "We think that the festival market, and other types of redevelopment for the same large site, can be designed so that instead of destroying ever more of the city's older fabric, they would incorporate and enhance what remains, and maintain and restore Downtown's connection with the Central Corridor, (the old) Albuquerque High School and Huning Highlands." In a letter recently sent to citizens, politicians, and preservationists, Ms. Bergman, head of specifications at W.C. Kruger and Associates, wrote that "The Sunshine, not very long ago rehabilitated with the use of $800,000 in Metropolitan Redevelopment Bonds, is an important architectural element in what remains of downtown, and a fine example of the humane urban scale appropriate to downtown development- Three Artists' Collaborations Blend Well rrJ 3 EXCHANGED ENERGIES, Weyrich Gallery, 2935-B Louisiana NE, Monday through Saturday 10 a.m.

to 5:30 p.m. through Jane 1. By JOSEPH TRAUGOTT "Exchanged Energies" is a three-person exhibition of individual works and collaborations. The craft images of Mary Sharp Davis, Iren Schio and Susan Zimmerman make a remarkably unified statement. The viewer reacts directly to the works of art Wey rich's small, well-planned exhibition space, because the viewer is never more than a step away from each work.

The size of the room combines with the scale of the images to reinforce the strength of the art. This is an exhibition in which the choice of space is absolutely appropriate to the works. "Untitled Collaboration," Mary Sharp Davis Iren Schio and Susan Zimmerman However, the addition of man-made, monofilament hairs to Ms. Davis' ceramics is not successful. The fiber's linear qualities accentuate the mass of the clay and add a decorative quality that diminishes the simple elegance of her work.

Ms. Zimmerman's serial images investigate the process of papermaking just as Ms. Davis delves into the essence of ceramics. Ms. Zimmerman often laminates paper, sticks and other found materials into her handmade sheets.

The most direct of these images presents an Mi D'-vis' pit-fired ceramic pieces revel in the si pie beauty of fire and earth. The surface of each work is a by-product of the I interact ion of artistic planning and the natural I filterii'M p-ocess. The universality of her forms mirrors the directness of her materials and prx ess. oriental sensibility that is difficult to resist. However, the images have a tendency to become too complex and to contradict the power of her process-oriented imagery.

Ms. Schio's works are troubling. They exude a surrealist feeling strongly reminiscent of Joseph Cornell's box images. Ms. Schio combines her monoprints with old, weathered objects that she finds.

Yet the juxtaposition of objects does not challenge the viewer to find meaning in the combinations. Instead the viewer simply responds to the overwhelming nostalgia of the objects. In these works nostalgia could easily be mistaken for Surrealism. The content of Ms. Schio's images lies in the objects themselves, not in their sculptural recombination.

Ms. Schio's reliance on nostalgia can be seen in the antiquing of her assemblages. When materials with a patina are not available, parts of the assemblages are aged with paint and raw construction to match the rest of her work. At first the distinction between the found and the fabricated may be overlooked. But in the long run the process results in predictable images based on a kind of shock of the old.

The collaborations of the three artists blend well and underscore their similarities, which may be camouflaged by their varying choices of materials. Elements within the collaborations reflect the individual artists, but the compositions are indistinguishable. Usually galleries organize exhibitions that blend, yet counterpoint, the individuality of each artist. In this case, what is so fascinating, and perhaps worrisome, is the unity these artists create. Their collaborations do not seem to be greater than the sum of the parts; instead, they are synthesized in a manner that blurs each artist's point of view.

DYANNE STRONGBOW, Adobe Gallery, 417 Romero NW, Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday 1 to 6 p.m. through May 26. Dyanne Strongbow's pale watercolors at Adobe Gallery illustrate her vision of contemporary Native Americans contemplating their historic past. With graphic certainty, Ms.

Strongbow depicts her subjects wearing traditional costumes Behind each figure is a reverie of an often unknown past presented as bands of silhouettes. Ms. Strongbow's rectangular, flat backgrounds foil the modulated people in the foreground. At the same time, the outlined figures or animals pop forward to challenge the modeled figure for visual prominence. In this exhibition the figures are drawn more naturalistically than in her previous images.

The viewer is never at a loss to understand the activity within each time band. A recurring theme presents figures mounted on Less well known subjects include the gathering of saguaro cactus fruit, but even a viewer not well acquainted with the Southwest can decipher this image. Ms. Strongbow is of Choctaw descent and grew up around Austin, Texas, so many of her images include references to Plains Indians and the Southwest. For example, "Young Navajo Shepherdess" portrays a lone, pensive Navajo woman holding a small lamb.

In the distance, a flock roams under the watchful eye of a person on horseback. The play between these well-drawn figures and the graphic elements creates a serene, idyllic image of contemporary Native Americans. Joseph Traugott, an Albuquerque artist with a Master of Fine Arts degree in art from the University of New Mexico, covers visual arts regularly for the Journal. Irene Oliver-Lewis Jose Rodriguez Edinburgh Invitation Gives 4La Compania' Worldwide Prestige Continued From D-l set must fold up and fit into three duffle bags. Founding artistic director Rodriguez has returned this week to collaborate wit Ms.

Oliver-Lewis on the script, which carries the working title, "Cuentos Nuevo Mexicanos: Voce de Ayer Hoy" Voices of Yesterday and "We wanted to take something that would really tell the story of this culture," Ms. Oliver-Lewis said. "It's important that we tell about the mosaic nature of the state and show the movement, look, sayings and music of New Mexico. This is a unique area; we've dealt with the multiple cultures in unique ways, and we want to give this international audience some sense of our uniqueness. But we have to do it in a universally appealing way, because art is only truly relevant when it says something universal." The festivals represent an entirely new arena for the local group, and the exposure to a world audience is something the theater artists are taking seriously.

"I am so aware of our responsibility not only to each other as artists, but to the entire state we represent. This is New Mexico going out into the world, not just La Compania. This is an incredible challenge to us as professional artists to think carefully how we will represent ourselves in this newer, larger realm. "It matters a great deal to all of us how we conduct ourselves and what we say in this world forum. And thinking about that awesome responsibility is making it awfully hard to sleep at night." ftcsi So Mors ALBUQUERQUE (compiled by local bookstores for the Journal): FICTION 1.

The Aquitaine Progression Ludlum 2. Full Circle Steel .1 Walking Drum L' Amour 4. Smart Women Blume 5. Witches of Eastwick Updike NONFICTION 1. The March of Folly Tuchman 2.

The Nightmare Years: 1930-1940 Shirer 3. Eat To Win Haas 4. Balls Nettles and Golenbock 5. Past Imperfect Collins TRADE PAPERBACKS 1. The Mists of Avalon Bradley 2.

The Road Less Traveled Peck 3. The Fit or Fat Target Diet Bailey 4. Wildflowers Along Forest and Mesa Trails Bernard and Godfrey 5 Flowering Plants of New Mexico Key Sit tjt ji WAf V't "Young Navajo Shepherdess," by Dyanne Stronghow i.