SANTA FE, NM.- An exhibition of works by Helen Pashgian will open at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art on October 10 and will remain through November 10, 2025. The gallery is located in the Railyard Arts District at 554 South Guadalupe Street.

It isn’t the how that draws you in. Even if these color-saturated, luminous sculptures do boggle the brain – there is something beyond how that challenges our perception, pulls us in, makes us step closer, look deeper.

Each small, seven-inch sphere calls us to fall into it, to see something more that must be hidden within its deep colors. There is something enigmatic in the curved column of shaded turquoise within deep turquoise that casts shadow and shape. Something unexpected in the cubed tunnel of clear transparent material that provides a window into the core of a brilliant orange piece.

The darkly lit and rippled square wall pieces offer impossible windows which seem to glow from within. Some contain what appear like rips within darkly luminous surfaces which reveal glowing, flickering yellow cores. Another seems to ripple light and shadow in complex waves like water or fire.

As a key member of the Light & Space movement, Helen Pashgian’s sculpture explores the possibilities of light, color and volume, using materials from cutting edge technology. The resins that she uses came out of labs exploring new chemical materials to be used in aerospace and industry. Pashgian pushed the limits and stretched the boundaries of these materials – using them in ways that the scientists themselves had never conceived. Having studied the unique discoveries of the Dutch Golden Age masters in depicting light while in graduate school, Pashgian set about pioneering her own techniques to capture and explore color and light.

But perhaps it is Pashgian’s early experiences on the shores of the Pacific in California, exploring tide pools filled with strange and colorful creatures, rippling with cast light and shadow as a breeze activated their surfaces, that was the more foundational influence. Here were worlds of color and volume, light and movement. Here was something that flickered just on the edge of knowing.

The resulting sculptures of Pashgian’s explorations are small paradoxes. Somehow dense and ethereal at once. Both luminous and shadowed, merging science and art, solid and yet always changing with the shifts of ambient light and perspective. We are moved and fascinated, mystified and enlightened by turns. We are there, in the moment, experiencing wonder.

And this somehow provides the key to why Pashgian’s sculptures entrance. The writer Joseph Campbell once said, “I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”

We bend toward these pieces, eyes and brains not sure what exactly is occurring, yet knowing there is a mystery at the heart of this experience, body and emotions responding with recognition. This is Helen Pashgian’s gift to the viewer – an experience that crystalizes attention to the moment.


For More Information:

Charlotte Jackson Fine Art
554 South Guadalupe
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-989-8688
fax 505-989-9898