Selected visual art portfolios
1988-2020
Each post follows one after another on this page.
Scroll down. It’s direct. It’s simple.
Additional tabs point viewers toward narratives in painting and mixed media, journalism and graphic arts production, many awarded residencies and my embedded in-situ life in the southwest U.S. Four Corners Region.
Please contact me directly at: artjuicestudio@gmail.com.
Scroll down. It’s direct. It’s simple.
Additional tabs point viewers toward narratives in painting and mixed media, journalism and graphic arts production, many awarded residencies and my embedded in-situ life in the southwest U.S. Four Corners Region.
Please contact me directly at: artjuicestudio@gmail.com.
River of Heaven Our Night Sky
1996, Sonja Horoshko
Acrylic on board, 48" square.
Hovenweep National Monument.
Schwein Collection.
I am looking at the west side of the Sleeping Ute Mountain Range on present day Ute Mountain Ute tribal land.
It is night. The Milky Way spreads across my site-line, pulsing through my wake/sleep cycles.
Stones from Hovenweep
Sonja Horoshko
Artist in Residence
Hovenweep National Monument
October 1995 - October 1996
Watercolor studies, Sennelier paper;
No. 1, No. 2 in a series of 12
© 2012 USA all rights reserved.
Private Collections
Sonja Horoshko
Artist in Residence
Hovenweep National Monument
October 1995 - October 1996
Watercolor studies, Sennelier paper;
No. 1, No. 2 in a series of 12
© 2012 USA all rights reserved.
Private Collections
Walking Twelve Hovenweep Canyons
Each watercolor is a study of a pocket full of pebbles picked up singly, deliberately in one of twelve canyons surrounding the main site at Hovenweep National Monument. During my residency, I intentionally walked the canyons in an effort to understand the scale of the land, and the rhythmical influence of celestial swings and the tilt of the earth, and how it affected the light and color.
I promised myself to carry back only five small stones, limited in size by measuring against different parts of my hand, no larger than my palm, for starters. Most were in the range of my thumbnail, and some as small as my little fingernail. In the end, as I spread them out on the tiny kitchen table, each collection of five from an individual canyon resembled the color and texture of the other pebbles within the distinct canyon where I found them. Perhaps, I mused, they hold similar stories of birth and death, travels through time and place and natural conditions.
After living twelve months at Hovenweep I concluded that individual canyons were subtly distinct from other nearby canyons most likely because of nuanced ecosystems eroding or expressing various forms, shapes and colors of earth from layers of ancient geological periods laid down millions of years ago so gradually that our awareness of the changes is nearly invisible today. It takes time to accustom our eyes to the time/map at our feet, within our reach.
Wind and waters have always braided across bedrock here and there, exposing and wriggling solid earth loose from the grasp of the mother rock. Gravity and the spin of the earth also contribute to moving the stones out and along, giving them an additional, slow motion fledgling boost.
And, to me, it is interesting that many of them are similar, that I found them side by side in the canyon washes. Sometimes small related collectives journey together through rivulets of gathering rainwater where they tumble a little smoother under the water pressure there and then slide downriver season after season in tandem. Of course, the families eventually part company. But in the meantime, I like to imagine them on a temporary hiatus, parked on a hot sun-bleached beachhead during a drought or under the weight of the fecund, slime molding amoebas, or in the languid, chilly silt and mud where they wait sometimes for eons drying, solidifying together until they move again, collide, crack apart, divide and plummet through rapids and falls, finally acquiesce to the pull of swift currents that empty them into the sea.
Wherever it goes it is important to note that a rock grows smaller. It is not flesh. It does not grow bigger cell by cell. Instead (like the soles of your shoes), it shrinks―boulder to sand, and more, forming heaps of dust that can rest for decades, even centuries and millennium on a wide swath of silky earth until drawn up, lifted in the wind and carried back in great billowing storm clouds to drop, sunstruck like glitter, somewhere, possibly even over the expansive Navajo Nation just south of Hovenweep, there ... over there just beyond the horizon from where I stand.
What I could mistake for a personal pebble, my sensate ownership of it, is an illusion. I am just a stop over. The high desert pebbles I carry in my pocket entered meandering streams long, long ago, then slipped into the sloshing warm waters of the very deep past and lodged between other matter becoming part of bigger formations until coming apart out here at Hovenweep, jumping up into my eyes, grabbing my attention, drawing my hand forward.
These that are subject matter in my watercolor studies move forward, too, away from where I found them to somewhere else. I know first-hand they do because I am the mover. It astonishes me to be conscious of entering their story―not as caretaker or destroyer, not companion, either, but as an observer merely picking up the beauty in them.
Now, more than two decades later, Anna Sherman’s article, “A Poetic Journey Through Western China,” The New York Times Style Magazine, May 11, 2020, offers amity in the obsessive predilection of rock and sand, minerals and the prevailing echoes of travelers migrating through any arid high desert borderlands. “At night, in my hotel in Turpan, I rinsed sand from my skin, sifted it from my clothing and brushed it out of my hair. But always a few grains remained. Wherever I went, the desert came with me.”
The following are two of twelve watercolors that remain in my personal collection.
Each watercolor is a study of a pocket full of pebbles picked up singly, deliberately in one of twelve canyons surrounding the main site at Hovenweep National Monument. During my residency, I intentionally walked the canyons in an effort to understand the scale of the land, and the rhythmical influence of celestial swings and the tilt of the earth, and how it affected the light and color.
I promised myself to carry back only five small stones, limited in size by measuring against different parts of my hand, no larger than my palm, for starters. Most were in the range of my thumbnail, and some as small as my little fingernail. In the end, as I spread them out on the tiny kitchen table, each collection of five from an individual canyon resembled the color and texture of the other pebbles within the distinct canyon where I found them. Perhaps, I mused, they hold similar stories of birth and death, travels through time and place and natural conditions.
After living twelve months at Hovenweep I concluded that individual canyons were subtly distinct from other nearby canyons most likely because of nuanced ecosystems eroding or expressing various forms, shapes and colors of earth from layers of ancient geological periods laid down millions of years ago so gradually that our awareness of the changes is nearly invisible today. It takes time to accustom our eyes to the time/map at our feet, within our reach.
Wind and waters have always braided across bedrock here and there, exposing and wriggling solid earth loose from the grasp of the mother rock. Gravity and the spin of the earth also contribute to moving the stones out and along, giving them an additional, slow motion fledgling boost.
And, to me, it is interesting that many of them are similar, that I found them side by side in the canyon washes. Sometimes small related collectives journey together through rivulets of gathering rainwater where they tumble a little smoother under the water pressure there and then slide downriver season after season in tandem. Of course, the families eventually part company. But in the meantime, I like to imagine them on a temporary hiatus, parked on a hot sun-bleached beachhead during a drought or under the weight of the fecund, slime molding amoebas, or in the languid, chilly silt and mud where they wait sometimes for eons drying, solidifying together until they move again, collide, crack apart, divide and plummet through rapids and falls, finally acquiesce to the pull of swift currents that empty them into the sea.
Wherever it goes it is important to note that a rock grows smaller. It is not flesh. It does not grow bigger cell by cell. Instead (like the soles of your shoes), it shrinks―boulder to sand, and more, forming heaps of dust that can rest for decades, even centuries and millennium on a wide swath of silky earth until drawn up, lifted in the wind and carried back in great billowing storm clouds to drop, sunstruck like glitter, somewhere, possibly even over the expansive Navajo Nation just south of Hovenweep, there ... over there just beyond the horizon from where I stand.
What I could mistake for a personal pebble, my sensate ownership of it, is an illusion. I am just a stop over. The high desert pebbles I carry in my pocket entered meandering streams long, long ago, then slipped into the sloshing warm waters of the very deep past and lodged between other matter becoming part of bigger formations until coming apart out here at Hovenweep, jumping up into my eyes, grabbing my attention, drawing my hand forward.
These that are subject matter in my watercolor studies move forward, too, away from where I found them to somewhere else. I know first-hand they do because I am the mover. It astonishes me to be conscious of entering their story―not as caretaker or destroyer, not companion, either, but as an observer merely picking up the beauty in them.
Now, more than two decades later, Anna Sherman’s article, “A Poetic Journey Through Western China,” The New York Times Style Magazine, May 11, 2020, offers amity in the obsessive predilection of rock and sand, minerals and the prevailing echoes of travelers migrating through any arid high desert borderlands. “At night, in my hotel in Turpan, I rinsed sand from my skin, sifted it from my clothing and brushed it out of my hair. But always a few grains remained. Wherever I went, the desert came with me.”
The following are two of twelve watercolors that remain in my personal collection.
Sonja Horoshko, Artist in Residence
Aspen Guard Station 2006
La Plata Mountain Range, CO
Aspen III No 3, No 7.Series of Ten
ea. 4" X 4", oil, watermedium on Arches.
© 2012 USA. All rights reserved.
Various Private U.S. Collections
Aspen Guard Station 2006
La Plata Mountain Range, CO
Aspen III No 3, No 7.Series of Ten
ea. 4" X 4", oil, watermedium on Arches.
© 2012 USA. All rights reserved.
Various Private U.S. Collections
Sonja Horoshko, Artist in Residence
Aspen Guard Station 2006
La Plata Mountain Range, Colo.
40" X 74", 2/12 collage,
oil on Arches, ink on rag.
copyright 2012 USA
All rights reserved.
Various Private/Corporate Collections
Aspen Guard Station 2006
La Plata Mountain Range, Colo.
40" X 74", 2/12 collage,
oil on Arches, ink on rag.
copyright 2012 USA
All rights reserved.
Various Private/Corporate Collections
Sonja Horoshko Landscape in-situ
Select 12 from numerous portfolios
Art juice Studio
Across left - right
Down top - bottom.
Select 12 from numerous portfolios
Art juice Studio
Across left - right
Down top - bottom.
Hovenweep Canyon East Face, pen and ink on Arches, 28" X 22"
Milky Way over Hovenweep, hand-made willow charcoal on Arches, 28" X 24".
Corporate Collection, Denver, CO
Winter Willow in Canyon Snow, Hovenweep, acrylic on Board, 48" X 48"
Prvate Collection, Santa Fe, NM
Hayakataki over Hovenweep, 1996, pastel and hand made willow charcoal on Arches, 24" X 32"
Collection of the Artist
Tower at Night, Hovenweep, 1995, pastel on Arches, 24" X 32"
Private Collection, Seattle, WA
Beanfields North of Hovenweep, pastel and Sennelier ink on Arches, 28" X 28"
Private Collection Denver, CO
C.R.T. at C.R.P. West of Cortez, A Beanfield, pastel and colored pencil on Arches, 24" 32"
Private Collection, Berkeley, CA
Beanfields Northwest of Cortez, Northeast of Hovenweep; watercolor on Arches, 24"X32"
Private Collection, San Diego, CA
Storm Cloud on McCracken Mesa, oil, pencil, ink, watercolor on Arches, 28" X 28"
Private Collection, Denver, CO
The Guardrail At Comb Ridge, acrylic and oil on canvas, 60"X 84" 2019
Available $6000
Desert Rock Water Confluence, Sennelier gold shellac Ink, watermedium on Arches, 1.6" X 1.4"
Artist Collection. NFS
Golden Field of our Desert Rock, Sennelier gold shellac Ink, watermedium on Arches, 1.5" X 1.5"
Private Collection, Provincetown, MA
Milky Way over Hovenweep, hand-made willow charcoal on Arches, 28" X 24".
Corporate Collection, Denver, CO
Winter Willow in Canyon Snow, Hovenweep, acrylic on Board, 48" X 48"
Prvate Collection, Santa Fe, NM
Hayakataki over Hovenweep, 1996, pastel and hand made willow charcoal on Arches, 24" X 32"
Collection of the Artist
Tower at Night, Hovenweep, 1995, pastel on Arches, 24" X 32"
Private Collection, Seattle, WA
Beanfields North of Hovenweep, pastel and Sennelier ink on Arches, 28" X 28"
Private Collection Denver, CO
C.R.T. at C.R.P. West of Cortez, A Beanfield, pastel and colored pencil on Arches, 24" 32"
Private Collection, Berkeley, CA
Beanfields Northwest of Cortez, Northeast of Hovenweep; watercolor on Arches, 24"X32"
Private Collection, San Diego, CA
Storm Cloud on McCracken Mesa, oil, pencil, ink, watercolor on Arches, 28" X 28"
Private Collection, Denver, CO
The Guardrail At Comb Ridge, acrylic and oil on canvas, 60"X 84" 2019
Available $6000
Desert Rock Water Confluence, Sennelier gold shellac Ink, watermedium on Arches, 1.6" X 1.4"
Artist Collection. NFS
Golden Field of our Desert Rock, Sennelier gold shellac Ink, watermedium on Arches, 1.5" X 1.5"
Private Collection, Provincetown, MA
