Late on a Monday night, I pulled into the vast parking lot of the Step Gallery in downtown Tempe. The desert, dusty wind blew me around as I approached the studio fronts.
"My gallery will be the only one with the lights on."
Sure enough, I look straight ahead and I see the front of a gallery that has the clean, welcoming feel of your favorite store. “Unreal” was cut out in translucent white paper with letters that were almost as long as your legs. Shadows tease your eyes behind the translucence of the of gallery front.
The light of the studio shining through the letters beckoned me to the door and I was excited to enter this strange, irresistible world. The door is unlocked and I am welcomed by the woman behind the magic, 21-year-old Rebecca “Becky” Nahom. “Unreal” is the second major art exhibition she has curated, setting the artistic stage and picking the players.
Nahom is pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Arizona State University with a focus on painting, but what she dreams of is not painting her heart out with oil on canvas, but rather making the gallery her canvas and curating her paint.
She did not always know curating shows was her passion, but after coming to ASU, it became her dream.
Nahom, an Arizona native, started out at the School of Visual Arts in New York. When deciding where to go to college, one of the main reasons she picked ASU was that she wanted to attend graduate school. So Nahom decided it would be best to not spend all her money on an undergraduate degree.
“When I came to ASU, I had no clue what I was going to do," Nahom says.
She enrolled in some summer courses before her first full year at ASU to knock out some classes.
While sitting in one class, she heard the teacher and another student talking about a course called Gallery Exhibitions. Nahom loved the sound of it, sitting in a gallery and learning how it all works. Plus, she could see what was going on in the ASU art scene.
She was not disappointed.
One of the final assignments was to write a proposal for a small display case that would be submitted for approval by a committee. Turns out that her idea won and her very first exhibition, “That's Sketchy,” appeared in a tiny display case.
“She was tenacious from the start as far as getting her hands dirty,” says Ryan Peter Miller, who was the professor of her Gallery Exhibitions class before taking a position at Carthage, a private college in Wisconsin.
“I knew she was going to be serious about any project she does,” Miller says.
After the year Nahom spent learning and working with Miller, Nahom left as much of an impression on him as he did for her.
“I would love to have a classroom-full of Beckys … she is an ideal student,” Miller says.
After her first appearance as a curator, Nahom was saying to herself, "I think I really like this ..."
In fact, Nahom loved it, and felt she had even more to learn – she enrolled in the class again.
And once again, she turned the final project for the class into a show.
“It Gets Better” debuted in February. The title comes from the project with the same name, started in September 2010 in response to homosexual suicides. It is used to bring awareness and encouragement for those in the LGBT community that are experiencing discrimination and pain.
Some of the inspiration for this show came from her own life.
Nahom's mother is gay and in the midst of the suicides, Nahom thought to herself, “What if my mom felt so discriminated that she committed suicide?”
Nahom projected an image of "Playground" by Paul Cadmus and had live models pose in front of the image.
"I only started to become happy when I started curating shows," Nahom says with a smile in her voice.
So with a now not-so-hidden talent for curating, why is Nahom sticking with painting and not something like art history or museum studies?
“I want to have an artist background. I want to know the process, materials, how artists think and feel, their ideas," Nahom says.
She also wants to learn this in a contemporary setting, explaining that in art history, you learn about people from hundreds of years ago. Nahom wants to learn about her fellow students.
In her elementary and middle school years, making art a career was not on her mind. Instead, Nahom poured her passion into competitive jazz, tap and hip-hop dance.
"I wanted to be a dancer on Broadway," she says.
She danced alongside her older sister, Jessie, who went to ASU for a BFA in sculpture. Nahom did not want to be an artist because of the whole sibling rivalry game and the worry in the back of her mind.
"I didn’t know if I was going to be as good as her."
Still, the sisters somehow always did the same thing. Nahom realized that she had a place in art and would not let anything hold her back from it.
"This is what makes me happy, so I decided to do it," she says.
At 16, Nahom saved her money and took a month-long drawing and painting course during the summer at Parsons The New School for Design, an art and design school in New York. It was her first time in New York and she made the trip alone. Nahom had no clue what she would be doing in the class.
“A lady comes in, she’s sitting in her normal clothes. Then all of a sudden she gets up and disrobes … that was my first nude drawing," she says.
Despite the surprise, Nahom found nothing but contentment.
“I know this is where I need to be,” she thought to herself.
Ask Nahom where she thinks of all her wonderful ideas and you may be surprised. It involves water. Can you guess it? It is ... the shower – her self-proclaimed stress-reliever and thinking place.
And then ask Nahom’s best friend since kindergarten.
“Becky continues to shock me everyday. She’s someone who allows herself to continually grow and be inspired by current issues and people in general,” says Natalia Trulsson, a junior studying sustainability at ASU.
So when Nahom was drawing up a proposal for her most recent exhibit, “Unreal”, where do you think the idea hit her?
That's right — in the shower.
“We’re always told to draw what we see. What about the people that do stuff about the unreal? What about people that make up characters, impressionist painters [who create] from things they haven’t seen?" she asks.
Not one piece of art in the show is something that you would normally see; none of it exists in real life.
As Nahom says, that kind of art does not come from observing what you see.
She is very proud of her weeklong exhibit that was on display, starting Sept. 12. Nahom is especially proud of how many visitors she got on Friday, Sept. 16, the last day the exhibit was on display.
“If you get one person that walks into that gallery on a Friday, you’re God," Nahom says. Fourteen people came. So what does that make her?
Her best friend would like to weigh in on that one.
“Becky’s ability to sit back, observe and grow is what’s going to make her curations and creations timeless,” Trulsson says.
She already has something brewing for her next show, but for now, it's a secret. Nahom believes it is important to take some time between shows and pieces of artwork to get fresh inspiration again.
“I need to step out from what I just did and experience things and just take my next show as a new challenge.”
Dreaming about the future, Nahom longs for her own space to curate shows in.
"If my mind were not to change, I would want to have a gallery and curate my own shows, contemporary art … definitely New York … " she trails off, as her mind wanders to what could be.
Contact reporter at mfidura@asu.edu
