Best Western is pleased to announce Proximities, a five-person exhibition of work that explores the interconnected web of nearness and occurrences. Proximites includes the work of Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Amanda Curreri, Nick Larsen, Hilary Nelson, and J Rivera Pansa. The works in this exhibition are comprised of hand made paper, digital and traditional weaving techniques, stained glass, manipulated photographic collage, and regenerative sculpture. The artists share a speculative sense of discovery in reshaping how things could be. There is an intentionality that threads each artist’s practice. Along this thread are themes of anarchy, activism, romance and ecology that open into multitudes.

Proximities is on view August 26th through October 7th, 2023. Opening reception from 4:00 to 6:00pm on Saturday, August 26th.

Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo: “The banners-flags-wings, in this show, hold and give flight to how we understand, lean into and embody language, communication and legibility. Using symbolic storytelling forms also known as ‘the flight school alphabet’ (named by the artist), these large handmade paper works give flight to stories that are ready to take off.”

Amanda Curreri (she/they) is an artist and educator. Her artwork is interdisciplinary and dialogic, characterized by an engagement with social hxstories of resistance. The work is situated between textiles and painting, social practice, publishing, performance, and pedagogy. Textiles are key for their ability to invite an experience of collectivity and connection. She currently lives on the unceded territory of Tiwa and Pueblo Peoples also known as Albuquerque, NM. 

Nick Larsen: “I use the speculative potential of collage—a kind of making do with what's materially at hand—to map and mine both what’s present and visible in the desert landscape and, maybe more importantly, what isn’t. This speculative groundwork, in the no man's land between fictional archaeological inventory and autobiography, supports other preoccupations: camouflage (as landscape painting), punk merch, the infinite uses for a bandana/hanky, map legend poetics, excavation and survey patterns, interior design mood boards, color naming, place naming, ghost town reoccupation, vestiges and artifacts, and the meaningful human activity that transforms a place into a site.”

Hilary Nelson: "My work combines ideas of the familiar and alien through sculpture, installation, and drawing. Material exploration acts as a foundation to confront the paradox implicit in the idea of something being “finished”. When does “usefulness” end?"

J Rivera Pansa: “The “grid” works operate on the potentials of constant contact.The “grid” is a network binding everyone together, that even at points of disconnection, -- the moments we go off the grid, the moments we lose touch of another -- there will always be a point where the grid appears and continues to seek other structures to link to, multiply, and be seen.”

At the beginning of formulating Proximities, we presented each artist with this Larry Eigner poem.

“ things

      stirring

    together

the wind

    fly

  objects 

       birds, shove

   out

          thermals”

Larry Eigner poem from Things Stirring Together Or Far Away

Artist Bios:

Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo is an artist, activist, educator, storyteller, cultural worker and person of multitudes. Through a practice based in the printed multiple, community-based work and installation building, they invite the viewer to recall and share their own lived narratives, offering power and weight to the creation of a larger dialogue around the telling of B.I.Q.T.P.O.C. (Black, Indigenous, Queer, Trans, People of color) stories. Branfman-Verissimo has had solo shows at SEPTEMBER Gallery [Kinderhook, NY], Deli Gallery [New York City, NY], Roll Up Projects [Oakland, CA], Printed Matter Inc. [New York City, NY] and STNDRD Projects [Steuben, WI]. Their work has been included in exhibitions and performances at Konsthall C [Stockholm, Sweden], EFA Project Space [New York City, NY], San Francisco Arts Commision [San Francisco,CA], Leslie Lohman Museum [New York City, NY], Yerba Buena Center for the Arts [San Francisco, CA], and L’Internationale Online, amongst others. They have been awarded residencies and fellowships at The University of New Mexico, Black Space Residency, Kala Art Center, Women’s Studio Workshop and ACRE Residency. Lukaza’s artist books and printed editions have been published by Endless Editions, Childish Books, Press Press and Printed Matter Inc. and is in the permanent collections at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, California College of the Arts Printmaking Archive, University of California Santa Cruz Library, New York University Special Collections and San Francisco Museum of Art Library.

Curreri’s artwork was recently commissioned by Facebook Open Arts and the Cincinnati Art Museum and will be presented by the University of New Mexico Art Museum this fall. Her work has been exhibited at the Oakland Museum of California (Queer California), Cincinnati Art Museum (Women Breaking Boundaries), Contemporary Arts Center (Archive as Action), Asian Art Museum (SF), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), Ortega y Gasset Projects (NY), and the Incheon Women’s Biennale, Korea. She is a 2023 Artist in Residence at Praxis Digital Weaving Lab, a recipient of an Alumni Traveling Scholars Fellowship from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to research textiles in Japan, a Pogue Wheeler Research Grant to study textiles and architecture in México, a Summerfair Aid for Individual Artists grant, and a SF Guardian Goldie Award. Her artwork has been featured in the New York Times, Artforum, VICE, Hyperallergic, Frieze Art, KQED Arts, San Francisco Chronicle, and more. Curreri holds an MFA from the California College of the Arts, a BFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and a BA from Tufts University in Sociology and Peace & Justice Studies. She has recently joined the Department of Art faculty at the University of New Mexico. Curreri is represented by Romer Young Gallery in San Francisco, California. 

Nick Larsen is an artist living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He studied at the University of Nevada, Reno and the Ohio State University, where he received his MFA in Sculpture. Larsen has had over a dozen solo and collaborative exhibitions and been a part of a number of notable group exhibitions, including Tilting the Basin, a survey of contemporary art in Nevada (Nevada Museum of Art) and several editions of New American Paintings. In 2019, he self-published a book of images, drawings, and writing that straddled the line between autobiography and fictionalized archeological inventory of Queer Mountain, a real though poorly documented desert wilderness in western Nevada. He currently works as the managing editor at Radius Books, a non-profit art book publisher in Santa Fe.

Hilary Nelson received an MFA from the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History. She has had a recent solo exhibitions at Public Space One (Iowa City, IA) and The Class of 1925 Gallery at The University of Wisconsin (Madison, WI) and has been included in recent group exhibitions at SOIL Gallery (Seattle, WA), Taos Abstract Artist Collective (Taos, NM), Public Space One (Iowa City, IA), Collar Works (Troy, NY), Underground Flower & Rhizome Parking Garage (online), GHOST (online), and The Every Woman Biennial (Los Angeles, CA). In 2019 Nelson was a resident at Yaddo and a resident and recipient of an artist grant at The Vermont Studio Center. Also in 2019, they were given access to the collections at The Museum of International Folk Art (Santa Fe, NM) for extended research. From  2018-2021 they were Gallery Director and Curator for The Times Club Gallery (Iowa City, IA). In 2022 Nelson was an artist in residence at La Wayaka Current Desert 23º (Atacama Desert, Chile), and in 2023 she was an artist in residence at Buinho Residency (Messejana, Portugal) and at High Desert Test Sites (Joshua Tree, CA). Nelson is an Assistant Professor at Maharishi International University.

J Rivera Pansa (they/them) is a transdisciplinary artist based in Huichin Ohlone Land, Oakland, CA. Their work incorporates sculpture, text, and performance as an expansive "grid" field tethering form and reflections on humanistic systems regarding modular seriality and contemporary capital structures. Rivera Pansa completed their BA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley and has shown work at Pied-à-terre (San Francisco, CA), Nook Gallery (Oakland, CA), NIAD Art Center (Richmond, CA), Lane Meyer Projects (Denver, CO), BAMPFA (Berkeley, CA) among others.

Best Western would like to thank Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Amanda Curreri, Nick Larsen, Hilary Nelson, and J Rivera Pansa for their trust and collaboration in the making of Proximities.

Best Western hours are Saturdays from 1pm to 4pm and otherwise open by appointment for the run of the exhibition. Please contact Shane Tolbert & James Sterling Pitt by email at office@westernbest.org with questions or to schedule an appointment.