Cedra Wood: Child Ballads

The Child Ballads, 305 songs collected in the 19th Century by Francis James Child, are ancestral folklore, sweet and strange, telling and tragic, pretty much like life itself. These are traditional ballads from England and Scotland, along with their American variants, all of which bear witness to an essential fact: storytelling is as basic as breathing, as nourishing as food, as quenching as water. They reveal the need to tell and be told, to find again the truths of life on earth, as it was and is.

Cedra Wood, originally from the Texas panhandle, now living a few miles south of Las Vegas, New Mexico, was bitten by these ballads and has put their eerie charms to pencil and paint, allowing these stories to be told again, sans lyrics and melody, as visual read-outs main-lining imagination with skill and dedication, no less accomplished than any musical manifestation of the mystery.

The core works in this pursuit were begun at the RAIR Foundation in Roswell, and are part of the artist’s ongoing search for resonance in a world sometimes less-so, offering even more than meets the eye, though what you’ll see can go beyond what you know. Just as the songs tell tales with an art-fullness that may belie the truth, adventure, mis-adventure, and sorrow of things that actually happened, Wood’s art sings of happenings lost in time, made relevant by the re-telling.

The exhibition opens Friday, May 16, 6 to 8 PM @ kind of a small array, 106 N Main in Magdalena, remains through mid-June, and will be supported with a song circle featuring the artist and musical friends, on Saturday May 17, at 4 PM.

The exhibition is part of Art Magdalena, a community-wide, annual celebration of creativity featuring artists, open studios, workshops, and galleries throughout the weekend.