There Is Another Sky MFA Graduate Exhibition from Confluence Low-Residency Program

Opening Reception: May 17, 2025, 6:00-8:00 pm
Closing Reception: May 22, 2025, 6:00-8:00 pm

The University of New Mexico’s John Sommers Gallery is honored to host the final MFA thesis exhibition of the Confluence Low-Residency Program, a program for place-based learning in interdisciplinary art and regenerative culture. This culminating exhibition shares the work of nine artists whose practices span painting, sculpture, textiles, performance, ceramics, language, and collaborative education. As the final graduating class of this MFA program, the exhibition is both a celebration of artistic achievement and a bittersweet farewell to a beloved program that has nurtured a generation of socially and ecologically engaged artists.

There is Another Sky is curated by Erin Elder and showcases the work of:

Megan Bartley Matthews (Albuquerque, NM, US), who distills lightness, darkness, and language into durational and sculptural forms that provoke wonder;
Rachel Hebert (Phoenix, AZ, US), whose large-scale quilt entwines memory, public land, and care for a commons;
Julia Knowlden (Canmore, AB, Canada), whose layered paintings trace the subtle presence and erasure of nonhumans and human impact, both efforts to conserve wildlife and shortcomings in the Canadian Rockies;
Jill Nuckles (Calgary, AB, Canada), who weaves sculpture, textile, and natural dyes into water-based narratives of connection and transformation;
Carissa Pobre (Manila, Philippines), who developed Slant School, a socio-poetic framework for organizing writing and learning around cultural realities in the postcolonial urbanized South;
Shondra Leigh (Atlanta, GA, US), who collaborates with her students through an evolving painting practice rooted in dialogue and shared authorship that share this generation’s multifaceted struggles;
Kimberly Thompson (Santa Fe, NM, US), who transforms discarded objects into intimate and precious sculptures that contain emotion, revaluing the overlooked;
Clare Wilkening (Roberts Creek, BC, Canada), who combines ceramic installations with workshops, and in this case shares a sculptural tableware set that tells the story of the connected ecology of salmon.

The Confluence MFA program has been a fertile site of experimentation, reciprocity, and interdependence. Rooted in New Mexico and unfolding across geographies, the program has shaped practices that are attuned to place, politics, and the poetics of care. This final exhibition shares what we built together: a community of artists, thinkers, and educators whose work will continue to ripple outward.

The exhibition will be open to the public at the John Sommers Gallery in Albuquerque from 5/17/2025 to 5/23/2025. Visitors are invited to engage with the works, meet the artists, and reflect on the legacy of a program that championed field-based learning, deep material inquiry, and collective stewardship.

For more information, please contact co-directors:
Mary Mattingly: mmattingly@unm.edu
Carol Padberg: padberg5@unm.edu