The Doña Ana Arts Council (DAAC) is proud to exhibit relief prints in an exhibition titled “What a Relief,” by Las Cruces artist Noël Sandino in the Staszewski Library in the DAAC Arts and Cultural Cente4, 250 W. Amador Ave., in June 2021.
Sandino was born and raised in California and is happy to call Las Cruces home. She has been a lifelong artist, winning her first award and scholarship as a high school student. Sandino taught art at the elementary level in the early 1990s while raising her family.
Later she worked as a professional faux finisher and muralist and ran a lucrative business in northern California doing residential and commercial jobs working for many local interior designers for 12 years. Upon retiring from residential and commercial work, Sandino began printmaking studies and continued to paint.
Printmaking and painting are her primary mediums, and birds, animals, indigenous plants and shapes are often represented in her work. For the past 11 years, she has been teaching printmaking, and both her prints and paintings have won awards in local, national and international shows.
"In my abstract art, I use colors of the Southwest and high desert and I am influenced by the culture here,” Sandino said. “My humorous outlook on life becomes apparent as you look through my body of work and see how I interpret interactions and situations. I don’t feel that one has to limit themselves to one type of idea. Inspiration in life is abundant.”
Sandino’s printmaking techniques are varied, and she currently focuses on bringing them together in a contemporary manner. Sandino often combines techniques within one print, stating that it challenges her and pushes her art forward.
Most of the work in “What a Relief” was created during the pandemic.
"I found the time to work on an idea and continued developing a series that was not only abstract and purely imaginative but recognizable as an idea moving from one piece to the next,” Sandino said. “You can recognize some of the same roots in ‘Warrior’ and ‘Mask,’ for example.”
Sandino finds carving the woodblocks to be very meditative and calming instead of painting, which requires more thinking and analyzing.
Sandino has had many solo and group exhibits to her credit, and she has judged and curated shows. She is a member of the California Society of Printmakers and was the President of ArtForms of Las Cruces, and is a member of the 10 O’clock Club, a local women’s art support group. Her work can also be seen at MAS Art, 144 Wyatt Drive, at www.noelsandino.com and on her Instagram page, #monoprintess.
Editor’s note: Sandino teaches printmaking, collagraph, monotype and relief-edition printing at her own Blackbird Studio on Watson Lane in Mesilla Park. Contact here at noelsandino@yahoo.com.
DAAC is open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday and noon-5 p.m. the second Saturday of every month: June 12, July 10, Aug. 14, Sept. 11, Oct. 9, Nov. 13 and Dec. 11.
Call 575-523-6403. Visit www.daarts.org.
