Urban & air: Harwood to host dual exhibits through June 1

May 5—While many artists portray the beauty of the Sandia Mountains, and the mesas and the cloudscapes of New Mexico, Jordan Caldwell prefers a more urban take.

The artist's paintings of bus terminals and old motels are hanging at the Harwood Art Center in "A Moment's Time" through June 1.

Caldwell captures the everyday hidden beauty of Albuquerque, the gritty, daily scenes most people would pass over. He finds comfort and contentment in dusty streets and dilapidated buildings; the flotsam and jetsam of city life.

Born and raised in Albuquerque, Caldwell grew up in a trailer park as the middle child of a single parent. Not expecting much from his life, he was content with simplicity and mundanity.

Then he saw Edward Hopper's famous "Nighthawks" painting, a study in American loneliness and isolation. He connected with Hopper's study of alienation and the time he grew up in.

He chooses to locate beauty in small moments like leaving for school at dawn, being stuck in traffic, waiting for a bus and coming home at dusk.

"As a kid, I always imagined being an artist," he said. "I couldn't think of doing anything else."

He won a scholarship to the former Southwest University of Visual Arts. He wanted to create something beautiful that would last and to make something of his own.

"It's to do with how simple I am," he said. "I want to paint the things I see around me."

He takes photographs first before returning to his studio. He even cuts and stretches his own canvases.

When he was attending college, he saw and used the bus system everywhere. The vehicles crop up regularly in his work.

"I would see them at all hours," Caldwell said. "They were a big part of my life. I spent up to two hours a night going to school. When I look at my own bus paintings, I imagine who's on them."

"5 Carlisle" shows a bus moving through the rain as puddles glisten and form in the streets.

"I took that photo on a rainy day when I was still going to college," Caldwell said.

After he prints the photo, he grids it on the canvas, the free hands the paint strokes. He calls his style "romanticized realism."

He regularly saw the Unser depot on the way to class "when we still had the Rapid Ride before ART," he said.

"For people who know Albuquerque, it's sort of a time capsule of the way it used to be," Caldwell continued.

It's one of the few paintings containing people as the crowd boards the bus. Caldwell still feels uncomfortable about photographing strangers.

"French Quarter" captures an old motel in its waning days with thick, impasto brushstrokes.

"I'd pass it every day on my way home," he said.

"I want to show what it's really like for the people who live here, as opposed to the balloons and green chile."

Caldwell won a blue ribbon for fine arts painting at last year's State Fair. Most recently, he juried into Masterworks of New Mexico.

If your taste runs more toward sunshine and vistas, "Plein Air Collaborations" in the Harwood Art Center Hall Gallery reveals the inspiration provided by painting outdoors.

The Plein Air Landscapers exhibit includes works by Catherine Alleva, Lisa Avila, Ann Blankenship, Anna Escamilla, Connie Falk, Colleen Gregoire, Risa Taylor and Alice Webb.

"I was mentoring Risa," Webb said of her painting "Placitas Arroyo." "We talk about each other's work all the time. I told her she could make stronger shapes."

The pair headed to Placitas, one of Webb's favorite painting spots. Webb has been painting the Southwest for 45 years after moving here — first to Taos — from Texas. She painted outside from two to three days per week for 10 years.

"I believe the best way to learn is to paint from life," she said.

Webb also paints abstracted work. She shows her paintings at Old Town's Romero Street Gallery and at Magpie in Taos. She also teaches through the New Mexico Art League.