Rose B. Simpson: LEXICON

About

In this exhibition, Rose B. Simpson, a mixed-media artist from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, brings together two art forms: Pueblo pottery and classic cars. Simpson refurbished a 1985 Chevy El Camino, transforming it with a black-on-black Tewa pottery motif, titled Maria in honor of renowned artist Maria Martinez. Ten years later, this exhibition debuts Simpson’s second customized car, Bosque, a 1964 Buick Riviera painted in vibrant polychrome. Both cars are presented against an expansive geometric design, evoking the environment of the Southwest and transforming Wilsey Court into a bold, contemporary expression of Pueblo pottery traditions. Through this use of scale and space, Simpson forges connections between the ancestral and contemporary, and forms a new visual vocabulary, or lexicon, to assert her cultural heritage and its continuity.