Beginnings

A.me Alamag was always an artist.

“My mom started painting when I was in the womb, so I was working in the womb,” A.me said. “She [mom] gave me free reign in my room to draw on the floors and the closets, and she always encouraged me even when I didn’t think I was an artist because at school everyone was always drawing reality and I had no desire to draw from reality. I just drew from my head.”

The little girl would even draw on her sheets, then wake up with body prints of characters from sleeping on the ink. Her life partner Mitch was also creating since he was young, always building things and making things.

Together, Mitch and A.me created the concept for and built the Rokoko Gallery in Las Cruces 10 years ago. Now they are moving out and into the next phase of their lives. There will be a closing sale at the gallery from noon to 5 p.m. on Feb. 8 and Feb. 15. The gallery is located at 1785 Avenida de Mercado.

They will be selling most everything, including chairs, tables and umbrellas, A.me said.

A.me said they are really sad to be selling the gallery, but not too sad because it is time for change. For A.me, leaving the gallery is like leaving her art in other’s hands.

“I feel like it’s not mine to begin with, and to let it go gives it life,” she said. “I look at my work like I am co-creator with the person who walks away with it. We are partners and you are the other part of it.”

A.me said she is like a nomad walking through the material world and and she didn’t need material things while “Mitch needed home and needed life and he had much more needs.”

Together, these opposite people have grown to know they work well together. And have lived off being artists for 35 years, through tough times and better ones.

“Now I’ve learned to appreciate stability,” she said. “I would come up with something and be done with it. So, he made me stand still a little longer, taught me there is merit in selling the work.”

Elva K. Österreich may be reached at elva@lascrucesbulletin.com.