Paul Bartlett Ré
Artist, Writer, Poet, Peace Worker
“I received the notice of your show and thought the drawing on the front to be very nice. If you are passing through this area and have any of your other work with you I would be interested in seeing it. Luck to you.”
-Georgia O’Keeffe from a letter to Paul Ré
About Paul
Paul Ré is best known for his book The Dance Of The Pencil: Serene Art by Paul Ré, his widely shown traveling exhibit of Touchable Art for the Blind and Sighted, and most recently for the Paul Bartlett Ré Peace Prize administered by the University of New Mexico Foundation. This has been endowed to operate in perpetuity and extends his five decades of work promoting harmony in the world through art. Beyond the joy of creating the art itself, Paul's greatest reward is when people are moved by his work towards peace and fulfillment. Ré's latest volume, Art, Peace and Transcendence: Réograms that Elevate and Unite, is now available from UNM Press. It has received the 2016 New Mexico – Arizona Book Award for Philosophy and the 2019 Independent Press Award for Distinguished Favorite in Fine Arts.
Paul Ré (pronounced Ray) was born in 1950 in Albuquerque, NM where he still resides. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree in physics with honors (fifth in class) from Caltech in 1972; this has served him well as an artist expressing the beauty of science. Paul has been acclaimed by art critics as "a virtuoso of the pencil" for his art of "quiet greatness and noble simplicity." In 13 states, he has had 22 solo exhibits including those at the UNM Jonson Gallery, Albuquerque Museum, Triangle Gallery, Wichita Museum, Sumter Gallery, J. B. Speed Museum, the Colorado Springs Museum and the Karpeles Museum. His traveling exhibition of Touchable Art for the Blind and Sighted has been shown 18 times in North America. A documentary film on his Touchable Art was produced by SCETV in 1990 and a companion book was created. He is now making a second tactile exhibit, Inspired By Nature, which is dedicated to environmental conservation. In 1993, his monograph The Dance With The Pencil: Serene Art by Paul Ré was published. The Journal of the Print World reviewed it as "one of the outstanding art books of the year." His writings and art appear in Leonardo 13-2, 14-2 and 15-2, The Journal of Visual Impairment, New America, Spirit (7 covers and poems), La Mamelle and Design Journal. Significant articles about his work are included in Contemporary Graphic Artists III, Spirit Of Enterprise: The 1990 Rolex Awards and other reference volumes. His art has been highly regarded by artists Georgia O’keeffe, Raymond Jonson, and Ed Garman; Nobel Laureates Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Richard Feynman, and Roger Sperry plus a diversity of individuals. Also an accomplished guitarist, poet and humorist he is editing his collected poems The Iris Ballet and compiling his 52 volumes of aphorisms and micro–essays into The Recycled Dictionary. He greatly enjoys walking and meditating in nature.
2024 Winner of the Paul Ré Peace Prize:
Katie Stone
Katie Stone is the Executive Director of the New Mexico nonprofit, The Children’s Hour Inc., and was a volunteer producer of The Children’s Hour for more than 17 years at KUNM before the show went into national syndication. For two decades, Stone has been working to foster peace, understanding, and empathy among young radio listeners, as the founder and executive producer of "The Children's Hour," a public radio program designed for kids, but valid for any age, airs in 150 stations reaching an estimated 750,000 listeners. In her nomination, Katie states, “The Children's Hour has been a labor of love, aiming to make complex global issues accessible and relatable to children.”
2024 Lifetime Achievement Awardees:
Charlene Delaunay
Charlene Delaunay, BA ’78, after earning her degree in Elementary Education she went on to teach for Albuquerque Public Schools, in Taiwan for the US State Department, and for the Navajo and Zuni Tribes. She is an award-winning writer and member of the Northern Arapaho tribe. For more than 40 years, Delaunay has written, taught, and promoted issues relating to civil rights, community outreach, and indigenous cultural traditions and practices.
Selma Ćatović Hughes
Selma Ćatović Hughes, BA ’00, has worked in architecture and design for more than 20 years. After earning her undergraduate degree in Architecture from the University of New Mexico, Ćatović Hughes developed a unique multidisciplinary artistic practice that she has presented at conferences in the UK, Finland, Luxembourg, Poland, Lithuania, Bosnia, Spain, and the US. Her mixed media art projects dealing with difficult histories, disputed territories, identity, heritage, and intergenerational memory in post-conflict society have been recognized through awards, research grants, and several academic publications.
2024 Emerging Promoter of Peace Awardees:
Mario Del Angel Guevara
Mario Del Angel Guevara, MA’ 17, PhD ’23, after earning his master’s degree in Spanish, he was named assistant professor and co-director of the Curanderismo Traditional Medicine Program at the University of New Mexico. He earned a PhD in Spanish with a Concentration in Hispanic Linguistics. Del Angel Guevara was instrumental in creating and running the Summer institute on Traditional Medicine Without Borders that has drawn thousands of students and health professionals worldwide to learn curandismo. He has created free Spanish and English courses on coursera.org that have enrolled over 40,000 students from different countries who learn how to become their own healer and learn to empower themselves using elements of nature for minor illnesses and ancestral concepts that support the healing of emotional distress such as grief, stress, and anxiety. Del Angel Guevara was the recipient of the Sara Belle Brown Award for Excelling Community Service, November 2022 and was appointed a member of the Board for Human Rights for the City of Albuquerque, December 2022.
Kelly Luzzi
Kelly Luzzi, BFA ’17, MFA ’20, is a Native New Mexican who was raised in a household marked by poverty, violence, and childhood trauma. This difficult upbringing helped to shape her educational experience, where she came to regard school as a safe place. Now, as a teacher at Cibola High School, Luzzi created her empathetic but firm teaching style born out of her challenging background. She created a “classroom mediation” program to dialog with students about challenging issues including racism, homophobia, and violence. Her program focuses on creating a community among her students, fostering an environment where everyone is safe from bullying and oppression, allowing students to focus on learning and positive social interactions.
References
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The above three articles focus on the derivation of Ré’s artwork from closed curves. This theme is developed further in his books The Dance of the Pencil and Art, Peace, and Transcendence. It also helped provide the philosophical basis for The Paul Bartlett Ré Peace Prize.
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Additional reference materials about Paul Ré may be found in Contemporary Graphic Artists III, Biographical Encyclopedia of American Painters, Sculptors and Engravers – Colonial to 2002, Who’s Who in American Art, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World, Great Minds of the 21st Century, the Dictionary of International Biography, 2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century and numerous other titles including Mentoring for the Future – NASA ISEF Award Winners 1961-1994. (In 1967 and 1968 Paul received First Place in Physics and NASA Awards at the International Science Fair. His projects concerned fluid mechanics, on subjects that were both of scientific interest and aesthetically pleasing. For his supersonic wind tunnel, he designed and constructed 3 Laval nozzles. With their graceful form like an hourglass, he considers them to be among his first sculptures.)