Conversation with Karen Yank, Tonya Turner Carroll, and Marisa Sage
Thursday, August 31st, 5:30-7:30pm
The Bleachers at the UAM

UAM Director Marisa Sage will spend an evening with Artist Karen Yank and Santa Fe’s Turner Carroll Gallery Co-Owner Tonya Turner Carroll. Sage, Turner Carroll, and Yank will explore the themes of UAM’s current exhibition Agnes Martin and Karen Yank: Meditations on Mentor and Student on display in the Bunny Conlon Modern & Contemporary Art Gallery. Martin taught Yank how to focus her inspirations, create a strong artistic vision through meditation, and scale her mind's-eye sketches into large-scale artworks. Turner Carroll and Sage will discuss with Yank the practices she gained within her mentorship with Martin and how it has influenced Yank’s career.

Karen Yank received her MFA from Rutgers University and her BFA from the University of Wisconsin─Madison. Her sculptures are included in numerous museum and public collections, including the New Mexico Museum of Art, New Mexico State Capitol Art Collection, Albuquerque Museum, and the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet in NYC. Yank has completed more than 50 public and private outdoor commissions across the US, including most recently being chosen for the Sunport Boulevard extension project in Albuquerque, NM. Yank was a 2022 Governor's Awards for Excellence in the Arts recipient.

Tonya Turner Carroll graduated with Honors from the Art History Department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Tonya was awarded the prestigious Morehead-Cain Scholarship for her studies in the history of art at UNC. Along with her husband Michael, she was the co-founder of the Turner Carroll Gallery in 1991. Tonya previously worked at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Israel Museum, and Sotheby’s London. She studied Italian art and language at Stanford’s Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome. Turner Carroll received the Raoul Wallenberg Scholarship to study at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where she focused her research on Ancient Near Eastern art, art as propaganda, and art for social change.

Marisa Sage is the Director and Head Curator of the New Mexico State University Art Museum in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Sage is a curator with a passion for emerging contemporary art and artists. Throughout her fifteen-year career, Sage has planned and executed over 100 international exhibitions, which included more than 200 individual artists globally. Previously, Sage served as the Director of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, in New York, NY, and Galleries Manager for Salisbury University Art Galleries, in Salisbury, Maryland, before that, she established Like the Spice Gallery, a contemporary art gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn which held over 65 exhibitions between 2006 and 2012.