What is Aggie Logic? It's so many things, including my newsletter, that I have thrown together this page of (Aggie logic) explanations. There's more here than you could ever possibly want to know about me, so just pick and choose what grabs your attention, but most of all have fun (and don't forget to subscribe at the very bottom of the page, or to your left)
Join me (above) as I narrate a slide show of my work created by Dave Warner after we interviewed on his show, Exposing the Great Masters of Photography. What an honor is was to be on his show.
If you get tired of the slide show above You can listen to the 45 minute interview here. Or enjoy the slide show below.
Aggie's view: Foley Art Center presents
photos by Aggie Villanueva
by Thomas B. Harrison August 02 , 09
Mobile Register, Mobile, AlabamaShe is known as the "Grandma Moses of the American Southwest," and the nickname fits as comfortably as a well-worn pair of jeans. Aggie Villanueva is a self-taught artist, a grandmother and something of a folk hero to anyone who opts to pursue a new vocation later in life....
Mike Orenduff, Premiere Writer of NM, author of THe Pot Thief series
"(Aggie's) photographs are like a cross between photography and painting, Ansel Adams and Georgia O'Keeffe rolled into one. If you took an Ansel Adams photograph and had Georgia O'Keeffe re-do it in a painterly way, you'd have a genuine Aggie Villanueva. With your ability to see meanings and messages in things, it must have occurred to you that it is almost poetic that someone named Villanueva would end up in New Mexico."
What is the Value of Aggie's Art?
If you like, you may read quotes of what art reviewers, peers and others think about my art, but here, I want to simply talk to you.
If you are looking for rare art investments you made a wise choice coming here. Most of my photographic art cannot be duplicated. I'm not talking about the fact that each artist's style is unique. It's true, that cannot be duplicated. But this goes far beyond that truth.
I don't photograph the world-famous. Here you won't find photo art from Monument Park, Yosemite, Soquoia and other sites that have been raped of their spirit. In the vast chasms of Southwest beauty I don't spend time shooting scenic routes and tourists parks.
I roam the wonders of my own world of northern New Mexico and the Southwest regions surrounding me. Another photographer simply couldn't find most of the places I shoot. I need my 4X4 to get to the places where my camera and I spend time.
Though there remains hardly a spot on earth unmapped by man, there is still undiscovered territory all around us, especially in the American Southwest -- a place that holds vast, yawning chasms of unplumbed wisdom, alive with it's spirit still speaking, captured by my camera. This is what my photo art depicts. The raw beauty that 99% of humanity will never see with their own eyes.
Who is Aggie?
Rural subjects in the Southwest are very different than elsewhere in the United States. We are the last true American frontier; with a gritty purity born of living close to the land. The American Southwest continually draws awe and interest worldwide.
Beginning in 1996 I lived in rural New Mexico's Madrid/Cerillos area without water, electricity or plumbing, hauling water by hand, the only light the kerosene lamp, with no phones as cell phones don't work in the "dead zones" I occupy, past and present. I spent those years roaming the mountains, sometimes sleeping on the ground under the vast, crystal expanse of southwestern skies; sometimes in my van.
When at home in my 27-foot trailer with no conveniences of any kind, (even my outhouse had no walls) I spent my days on the land, which tried and tested me. But that was not only OK, it was good, because the locals informed me, "Whom the land calls the land tests." I'd been called home. All was good.
In 2001 I moved to an even more remote sector with my dogs, into a tiny log cabin in the foothill forests of the San Pedro Wilderness area, getting snowed in for most of every winter, but now with the luxury of "water pouring right out the wall when you turn the knob!"
Locals say I have "paid her dues to the land," but I still spend my time roaming the majestic mountains of northern New Mexico to know them more intimately. Locals of many generations can't recognize where most of my landscapes were taken, though they are "in our own backyard." It is my hope that my photographic art reflects that spiritual intimacy.
And More than you could
possibly ever want to know about me:
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