Karen S. Mazur

An Ohio-born, third-generation American emigré New Mexican, I did not grow up around art or artists, and to become an artist I forged a path from photography through fine arts and graphic design to arrive where I am now: A practicing artist who doesn’t always know what her practice should be. Engaged, but forever emerging. I have exhibited and sold work sporadically, but the most rewarding work has been the collaborations. For example, I co-founded a photography collective out of which sprang exhibitions, pop-up shows, and multiple books and other shows. During this COVID-era, I performed original writing in conjunction with the New Mexico State University Art Museum.

Fully formed in the twentieth century, I showed up to learn many labor processes and situations at the end of their runs or at a pivot point: newspapers, film-only photography, typesetting by hand, book publishing. This strange experience of time (was behind it? Ahead of it?) fueled an interest in living history and the way we document ourselves. As I age, the loops of repeat and the many other patterns of humanity are coming more clear daily; how we communicate this visually is what drives my desire to keep digging through the detritus to unearth the full 256 gray values in our human stories. Before my current role in the public art program at the city of Albuquerque, I was awarded a graduate fellowship involving research on public art through the University of New Mexico archives while working on a MA in Art Education.