Potent Whisperings

For a chunk of my life, I avoided shy people, assuming they had nothing to say. Then one day I realized that if I quit blabbering for a minute, they’d often utter something that would blow my mind.

The etchings and pencil drawings in Sara Honeycutt’s show “New Drawings” at the New Gallery on 108b Dona Luz will not hit you over the head with irony, political statements or blasts of color. Like with a shy person, you must be silent for a few moments to invite their potent whisperings.

A three-year-old clutches a bowl of fresh-picked plums and offers a blessing through wide, innocent eyes. Two bare feet nuzzle and create a basket for an egg. A woman holds a mango to her face, her eyes closed in sublime appreciation. If you get close enough, you can feel the delicate touch of her subjects, taste their contentment.

“These are a reminder of that peace and comfort and simplicity we all have at particular times of our day or lives. Every person needs that – that’s what keeps us going,” says Honeycutt.

Honeycutt’s first child, India, was born four years ago and her energy parades through many of the works, whether she’s modeling or making marks of her own. Her scribbles dance along the top edge of a portrait and one line even wanders rebelliously down through the subject’s face.

“When she did that, it scared me to death,” says Honeycutt. “But then I kept it… I love having her marks in there.”

Scrawled beneath “Plums,” a portrait of India, are excerpts from Honeycutt’s journal, raw with emotion of new motherhood. “I used to just take off whenever I would feel trapped, just go out to the trails or across the country but now that I have every thing I’ve ever wanted I have no escape,” she writes.

“India, I’m so sorry I’ve been a beast for days. What mother can be an artist without family, child help or money… I know how to get us untrapped, except it’s almost 3 a.m. now, will I remember in the morning?”

When Honeycutt was nine she was faced with the decision of whether to be an artist or a writer. “Somehow I knew I couldn’t do both, and there were artists in my family so I knew it could be done and that I loved doing it,” she says. She worked as an illustrator for magazines, newspapers and books for over a decade, always making time for her personal expression whether through self-portraits or sketchbook journaling.

The writing she’s begun to include in her work is a long-awaited celebration of both her childhood passions.

In one of her etchings, an assortment of amorphous cookies cool on a wire rack. Beneath it she writes about baking cookies and muffins with India, at home “where love resides.” But domestic bliss is not without its strife. She writes on, “Money worry slumped on the couch next to food stamp papers. How much did you make last month? At home where we are… is no I to be taken down, degraded.”

Below this piece is one of India’s scribble drawings, made into an etching. Its spontaneity grabs the viewer – it’s like a woman whirling, untamed and ecstatic. Honeycutt says India’s prints are one of the gallery’s most popular items.

For more information call New Gallery, which also displays recycled art lamps and psychedelic monoprints by Jan Nelson, at 575 779-7657 or email saramaji@gmail.com