The University Libraries invites the UNM Community to visit the art exhibit, The Liquid Border – the Rio Grande from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico, located in the Centennial Science and Engineering Library (CSEL). The exhibit is in collaboration with the artist, Jonathan Reeve Price.
This exhibition offers an exploration of the ebb and flow of migration, and the terrible cost, on both sides of the border.
These images and poems look at the invisible border, the imaginary line drawn right down the middle of our river that takes on two names as it flows between Texas and Mexico—the Rio Grande, or, in Spanish, El Río Bravo del Norte.
Beginning with satellite images and high-resolution maps from the U.S. Geological Survey, Jonathan Reeve Price zooms in, pulls back, exaggerates the pixels, and turns the scientific data inside out. These digital landscapes reveal the eerie beauty of the topography, the unrelenting patterns of the geology, and the life-threatening challenges that face migrants as they wade from Mexico into Texas.
The poems and images have been made part of the Stanford University map collection, and one is in the Albuquerque Museum permanent collection. The pieces in the exhibit are also available in Price’s book with the same title.
Starting with a Doctorate in Fine Arts from Yale, Jonathan Reeve Price worked in conceptual art and concrete poetry, showing in co-op galleries and museums in New York. But he quit the art world to join Apple Computer, where the introduction of MacPaint was a life-changing event for him.
Price has coached writers and managers in communication groups in high tech companies in Silicon Valley and Japan. And he has taught undergraduates and graduate students at New York University, Rutgers, New Mexico Tech, and, as a guest instructor, UNM. For more than 20 years he has also taught technical communication online through the University of California, Santa Cruz. He lives next to the Rio Grande as it flows through New Mexico.
The exhibit is available for all in the community to view at no cost. The exhibit can be viewed during regular hours of operation for Centennial Science and Engineering Library, Monday – Friday, 8 am – 6 pm. Images and poems of the exhibit can be viewed at MuseumZero.