Stacey Huddleston AKA Radhika - This Spring a marvelous fine art show took place in early May. Stacey Huddleston debuted many pieces of sculpture and painting that she had been creating in her studio on Ledoux Street (now located on Bent Street. In Taos, Stacey's friends call her Radhika, a name she was given by a saint in India some years ago, and she uses that name to sign some of her pieces.
To say that Stacey Huddleston can emerge as one of the important artists of Taos is easy. Her paintings are both lovely and haunting at the same time. The theme of many paintings in her 'Love is Blind' series reflect poetic stanzas to the romantic notion of love. Her color palette is unmatched and demands a wall in any smartly designed house. Ms. Huddleston's sculpture is groundbreaking and 'new school' with shape and imagery that takes the mind into museum collections from ancient cultures. Her style is not imitatable. Radhika's subject matter is off the beaten path giving fresh vistas to familiar scenes.
As a child and young adult into college dancing was Stacey Huddleston's creative expression. Mostly a self-taught artist although she took classes associated with architecture. She wanted to be an Interior designer and decided to major in Architecture but found that they taught designs that wasted functional space and found it frustrating. She became bored with the geometric shapes assignments in her design classes and asked to use body parts. After her semester of handing in body part design assignments her design teacher begged her to take a painting class. She took one painting class and dove into taking classes in every medium that interested her.
She has also designed and made clothing and jewelry, been an environmental activist, taught children recycled art, organized art fundraisers, served as an active board member of a spiritual organization, simultaneously survived years of illness, worked making functional ceramics and mono prints, and enjoyed being a single mother. She moved to Taos 23 years ago on a whim and has pursued her life and art. She focuses most of her time now with mixed media paintings and clay sculpture living and working healthy and happy on the historic street of Ledoux in Taos, NM.
Stacey opened Human Line Studio, Inc. officially on May 12th, 2007 showing of her anthropomorphic paintings and sculpture. She has worked on a few series of paintings in the past year. Love is Blind is a series of paintings dealing with basic human emotions and common bonds that all humans face. She has used stereotypical stencils to give the viewer an instant reminder of something they have seen or experienced some time in their lives.
The first piece of this series is a woman with a blindfold with a background grid of pink elephants. The woman is transparent to signify that she and what is in the background are part of each other. The pink elephants symbolize drunken hallucination which is what the feeling of deep love for another or ourselves often resembles. The Love is Blind series is about being human and feeling empathetic to the human similarities and remembering that we all belong to each other and are the same.
Stacey Huddleston has also been working on a series called The Moods of Flowers and Women. The flower paintings are brightly colored and Huddleston relates to them as human relations. The vases symbolize the limited time we have with each other. As a cut flower in a vase of water. The flowers colors and moods of gesture relate the feelings of different groups.
In some vases the flowers face forward, or all of the flowers are facing away from the viewer or only one looks forward while the other flowers in the vase looks at something else in the background. Two flowers looking at each other showing the same color touching petals. The flower paintings are suggestive of human interaction and emotion within the same time and space of the colored vase.
Stacey Huddleston's sculpture is made of coiled clay. Most of the vessels are non functional vessels. Her latest sculpture is based on traditional Greek vessels. The pieces feel ancient and contemporary. The surface of her pieces are eclectic even though the entire piece is coil. She smoothes, carves and presses objects into the surface of the coils as she builds the piece.
Huddleston loves the natural color and surface so she chooses to fire some pieces without glaze. She uses stains mixed with slip for color and applies glaze to parts of the surface design also. She likes the genuine gesture of the pieces as they create themselves and feels they are perfect in their imperfection in that it shows a bit of humor and beauty to the fact of life that is beautiful and exciting in its individual imperfection, and is still showing its own balance and perfection.
Human Line Studio, Inc. is located at 230A Ledoux Street. The studio is generally open by appointment and welcomes inquiries by phone 505-737-0590 or email
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. the studio will be open occasionally Thurs. - Sun. afternoons throughout the summer. Give a call and stop by for a bright colorful human time...at Human Line on Ledoux.