Karen Yank, Growing Strength, Central New Mexico Community College. (Courtesy photo)
By Michael Hodock
Karen Yank grew up in Wisconsin in “a conservative kind of community.”
Her father was a sculptor, and she says he just really didn’t see gender when it came to art. It was evident to Yank that her father would just work with the best people, so gender didn’t matter.
“I just grew up embracing that kind of feeling,” she says.
From now until May 2, a special kind of metal work exhibition will run in Corrales at INHABIT Gallery (4436 Corrales Rd.) The Metal Rules! show features Yank and artists Bailey Anderson, Bruna, D’Alessandro, Welly Fletcher, Shirley Klinghoffer, Stefanie Lerma and Iulis Octavio. Metal Rules! prominently features emotionally-charged contributions by women and LGBTQ artists – groups who have historically been under-represented in the field.
Yank has certainly earned her place in the metal community, and no we’re not talking rock music. Today her sculptures are featured in galleries throughout the United States, and her public art projects are among the largest in the Southwest, but she had to put in some major work to get to where she is today. She studied for her BFA in Madison, Wisconsin at UW Madison, and says she might have been the only woman that welded in the department. She studied for one year in New Mexico before attending Rutgers for her Masters degree.
“Everyone would call me ‘girl welder’ and I thought, ‘how condescending?’” she says. “And it was always this big battle, and I think that’s where I started building big pieces, because it was like a statement against the male oppression of the sculpture world. They always did big, heavy things and offered to help me, so I started saying, ‘I can make big too, you know? If that’s what I have to do to get my point across, I can make it big and still have my own emotions and sensitivities in there.’”
Karen Yank, Where the Earth Meets the Sky, Albuquerque International Airport, SunportKaren Yank, Growing Strength, Central New Mexico Community College
Now Yank resides in the East Mountains and her permanent installations can be viewed in Albuquerque at CNM main campus, the bridges at the I-40 and Coors interchange (as well as two sculptures in the landscape itself) and other public locations around town such as ABQ Sunport and Academy Hills Park. She has been commissioned to complete some of the largest public sculptural works in the Southwest and in New Mexico, her work has been included in collections at museums such as the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Albuquerque Museum, the NMSU Art Museum, and the New Mexico State Capital Art Collection. She says her piece featured in the Metal Rules! exhibition is representative of what she feels about the world right now.
“It’s a cross or an X, and it’s marking this moment, this time – and actually this whole time since covid even started. It’s become so exhausting because we don’t even have our government and our regulatory agencies to count on anymore. You feel like you’re holding your breath all the time. And so my piece is this marking of a collective holding of our breath, and then a huge sigh. And if you look at the surface of my X or cross, it’s got these swirly marks in the stainless [steel] and it looks like contained air. That’s us, holding our breath. Maybe we’re sighing, you know, or maybe something’s coming. It’s breaking out of its confined edges. It’s hope. I call it wish, and that’s why it’s a cross-like shape, too. I’m hopeful that somehow this is going to end soon, and we can all take some kind of a sigh of relief, but then we are going to have to fight even harder to regain the ground we lost and make sure this doesn’t happen again. Obviously, I’m going broader than just the female stance, or the queer stance, or any of those, you know? It’s people: good people against evil.”
Yank says she likes to engage the viewer as much as possible with her pieces, and her fellow artists featured in the exhibition do the same thing in a variety of styles. Although metal sculptures can sometimes be seen as cold or imposing, she says that the artists in the Metal Rules! exhibitions are emotionally driven, and activate unique physicality from the viewer.
Karen Yank, Aspirations – XO Trio, Stainless & blacken steel, 74x36x3″, 2022
“You’re going to go into the show and see all these other really powerful statements about what it means to be a woman in the art world,” she says. “But some of them are very intricate and sensitive in their approach.”
Metal Rules! curator Marisa Ravalli says art is the thread – or the fabric – that binds humankind and cultures together, and that is the kind of work she seeks out to exhibit at INHABIT Galerie.
“In my opinion, great art should inspire, provoke discussion and lend insight, it can encourage subdued or repressed emotions, it can bring enlightenment,” she says. “And I feel every single person should have a chance to experience that. This is one of the main reasons why I opened INHABIT Galerie, as most Museums and larger institutions hinder this basic access through entrance fees.”
Ravalli says a goal of the Metal Rules! show is to take a look at what women and LGBTQ artists have been doing in the largely male-dominated field of metal arts. So she decided to “have the whole gamut” of artists represented throughout the duration of the exhibition and she feels she’s found the thread that connects them all.
Karen Yank, New Mexico Inspired, I-40/Coors Freeway Interchange Project
The artists are focused, their work aligns well within the gallery, and there’s a conversation going on amongst all the pieces. She says there will be a “total mix” of artists showing their art – from UNM graduate students all the way to 82 year old veterans in the field – and anyone who likes metal work and sculpture will definitely love the show, and although she doesn’t want to give away all of the surprises, she teases some provocative art in Corrales during International Women’s Month. Like Yank, she feels that the show is timely, and this moment is a particularly important time for artwork in small galleries like INHABIT to shimmer, but folks have to come out and support these local spaces.
“There has been a lot of talk in the art world recently on the necessity of commercial galleries. Art spaces are losing funding and have had to shut their doors, and this is always a dangerous sign. Supporting local galleries is supporting artists as well as local small businesses and our economy. I think this goes without saying, yet it is still difficult to get people to come out and support, as we are still riding on the coattails of COVID and people have become too accustomed to buying everything and anything online- and it’s killing our society on a local level,” Ravalli says.
Beyond the boys’ club: Female and LGBTQ welders rewrite the rules of metal art
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By Michael Hodock
Karen Yank grew up in Wisconsin in “a conservative kind of community.”
Her father was a sculptor, and she says he just really didn’t see gender when it came to art. It was evident to Yank that her father would just work with the best people, so gender didn’t matter.
“I just grew up embracing that kind of feeling,” she says.
From now until May 2, a special kind of metal work exhibition will run in Corrales at INHABIT Gallery (4436 Corrales Rd.) The Metal Rules! show features Yank and artists Bailey Anderson, Bruna, D’Alessandro, Welly Fletcher, Shirley Klinghoffer, Stefanie Lerma and Iulis Octavio. Metal Rules! prominently features emotionally-charged contributions by women and LGBTQ artists – groups who have historically been under-represented in the field.
Yank has certainly earned her place in the metal community, and no we’re not talking rock music. Today her sculptures are featured in galleries throughout the United States, and her public art projects are among the largest in the Southwest, but she had to put in some major work to get to where she is today. She studied for her BFA in Madison, Wisconsin at UW Madison, and says she might have been the only woman that welded in the department. She studied for one year in New Mexico before attending Rutgers for her Masters degree.
“Everyone would call me ‘girl welder’ and I thought, ‘how condescending?’” she says. “And it was always this big battle, and I think that’s where I started building big pieces, because it was like a statement against the male oppression of the sculpture world. They always did big, heavy things and offered to help me, so I started saying, ‘I can make big too, you know? If that’s what I have to do to get my point across, I can make it big and still have my own emotions and sensitivities in there.’”
Karen Yank, Where the Earth Meets the Sky, Albuquerque International Airport, Sunport 
Karen Yank, Growing Strength, Central New Mexico Community College
Now Yank resides in the East Mountains and her permanent installations can be viewed in Albuquerque at CNM main campus, the bridges at the I-40 and Coors interchange (as well as two sculptures in the landscape itself) and other public locations around town such as ABQ Sunport and Academy Hills Park. She has been commissioned to complete some of the largest public sculptural works in the Southwest and in New Mexico, her work has been included in collections at museums such as the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Albuquerque Museum, the NMSU Art Museum, and the New Mexico State Capital Art Collection. She says her piece featured in the Metal Rules! exhibition is representative of what she feels about the world right now.
“It’s a cross or an X, and it’s marking this moment, this time – and actually this whole time since covid even started. It’s become so exhausting because we don’t even have our government and our regulatory agencies to count on anymore. You feel like you’re holding your breath all the time. And so my piece is this marking of a collective holding of our breath, and then a huge sigh. And if you look at the surface of my X or cross, it’s got these swirly marks in the stainless [steel] and it looks like contained air. That’s us, holding our breath. Maybe we’re sighing, you know, or maybe something’s coming. It’s breaking out of its confined edges. It’s hope. I call it wish, and that’s why it’s a cross-like shape, too. I’m hopeful that somehow this is going to end soon, and we can all take some kind of a sigh of relief, but then we are going to have to fight even harder to regain the ground we lost and make sure this doesn’t happen again. Obviously, I’m going broader than just the female stance, or the queer stance, or any of those, you know? It’s people: good people against evil.”
Yank says she likes to engage the viewer as much as possible with her pieces, and her fellow artists featured in the exhibition do the same thing in a variety of styles. Although metal sculptures can sometimes be seen as cold or imposing, she says that the artists in the Metal Rules! exhibitions are emotionally driven, and activate unique physicality from the viewer.
Karen Yank, Aspirations – XO Trio, Stainless & blacken steel, 74x36x3″, 2022
“You’re going to go into the show and see all these other really powerful statements about what it means to be a woman in the art world,” she says. “But some of them are very intricate and sensitive in their approach.”
Metal Rules! curator Marisa Ravalli says art is the thread – or the fabric – that binds humankind and cultures together, and that is the kind of work she seeks out to exhibit at INHABIT Galerie.
“In my opinion, great art should inspire, provoke discussion and lend insight, it can encourage subdued or repressed emotions, it can bring enlightenment,” she says. “And I feel every single person should have a chance to experience that. This is one of the main reasons why I opened INHABIT Galerie, as most Museums and larger institutions hinder this basic access through entrance fees.”
Ravalli says a goal of the Metal Rules! show is to take a look at what women and LGBTQ artists have been doing in the largely male-dominated field of metal arts. So she decided to “have the whole gamut” of artists represented throughout the duration of the exhibition and she feels she’s found the thread that connects them all.
Karen Yank, New Mexico Inspired, I-40/Coors Freeway Interchange Project
The artists are focused, their work aligns well within the gallery, and there’s a conversation going on amongst all the pieces. She says there will be a “total mix” of artists showing their art – from UNM graduate students all the way to 82 year old veterans in the field – and anyone who likes metal work and sculpture will definitely love the show, and although she doesn’t want to give away all of the surprises, she teases some provocative art in Corrales during International Women’s Month. Like Yank, she feels that the show is timely, and this moment is a particularly important time for artwork in small galleries like INHABIT to shimmer, but folks have to come out and support these local spaces.
“There has been a lot of talk in the art world recently on the necessity of commercial galleries. Art spaces are losing funding and have had to shut their doors, and this is always a dangerous sign. Supporting local galleries is supporting artists as well as local small businesses and our economy. I think this goes without saying, yet it is still difficult to get people to come out and support, as we are still riding on the coattails of COVID and people have become too accustomed to buying everything and anything online- and it’s killing our society on a local level,” Ravalli says.
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