Lorene Johnson Gratton Workshops

Collaborative Mural Workshop with Dina Perlasca: Exploring Concepts of Force Fields

Saturday, August 5, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. 

Installation August 6


  • Open to adults of all experience levels

  • Register online, at the front desk during museum open hours 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. daily, or call 575-624-6744

  • Sliding scale fee:  $0 - $75

  • Lecture is free and open to the public 


Adults of all artistic experience levels are invited to participate in a one-day workshop with El Paso-based artist Dina Perlasca. Inspired by her current exhibition Campos de Fuerza / Force Fields, explore personal concepts around the idea of “force fields,” or protection systems, in your life that preserve your family, culture and traditions. Then draw or write your ideas in chalk and mixed materials on canvas that will be assembled into a community force field for temporary display at the Roswell Museum. Participants will take away a unique experience and skills in translating ideas through multimedia and supplies to continue on their own.

Perlasca lives with her three children in the Paso del Norte region composed of El Paso, Texas, in the United States and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, in México. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Ceramics with a minor in Metalsmithing from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) in 2018 and her Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Ceramics from New Mexico State University (NMSU) in Las Cruces in 2022. Perlasca is currently teaching undergraduate ceramics and design at UTEP, NMSU, and Eastern New Mexico University in Portales. She is constantly exhibiting her artwork regionally and nationally. Campos de Fuerza / Force Fields, currently on view at the Roswell Museum, is the artist’s first solo exhibition at a museum since receiving her MFA. 

Workshop funding is provided by the RMAC Foundation through funds contributed by Lorene Johnson Gratton, a long-time museum member and Roswell resident, in support of learning opportunities for adults. *Participants pay a sliding scale fee between $0 and $75, based on what they can afford. Supplies are included.

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CANCELLED

Sorry this workshop has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. If possible, we will try to reschedule it in 2024. 

Woodcarving Workshop with Stan Peterson: Carve a Conversation

Friday & Saturday, September 29 & 30, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. 

and Sunday, October 1, 1 – 4 p.m


Public Lecture: Saturday, September 30, 12 noon


  • Open to adults of all experience levels

  • Register online, at the front desk during museum open hours 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. daily, or call 575-624-6744

  • Sliding scale fee:  $0 - $175 

  • Lecture is free and open to the public 


In this three-day workshop, learn to carve two or more animal or simple human figures that relate to each other using basic whittling/carving techniques and basswood. Safety, as well as a sense of humor, will be encouraged. Students will take home a handheld story and skills to continue working on their own. No previous woodcarving experience required. 

An Oregon and New Mexico-based artist, Stan Peterson’s approach to teaching is individualized to the skill and interests of the students. He has taught drawing, printmaking, and woodcarving for more than 25 years to a wide variety of emerging and mid-career artists. He believes storytelling, humor, and a traveled perspective from visiting carvers in New Mexico, Oaxaca, and Bali inform the ways we sit down together with a piece of wood, some sharp tools, and a few hours. 

Workshop funding is provided by the RMAC Foundation through funds contributed by Lorene Johnson Gratton, a long-time museum member and Roswell resident, in support of learning opportunities for adults. *Participants pay a sliding scale fee between $0 and $175, based on what they can afford. Supplies are included.

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Funding for Gratton Workshops is provided by the RMAC Foundation through funds generously bequeathed by Lorene Johnson Gratton, a long-time museum member and Roswell resident, in support of learning opportunities for adults with professional artists. 

Gratton received her first art training in free classes at the Roswell Museum in the 1930s. Programs like these provided the skills necessary to express herself artistically, and the inspiration to bring art into the lives of her family and friends. The Gratton Endowment supports similar access to quality art education for adults, continuing a museum tradition of making art a regular part in the lives of the citizens of Roswell.

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Lorene Johnson Gratton


Lorene's mother Molly Wright, a Sooner farm girl, ran into a carnie named Carl Johnson in Oklahoma City and married him in 1903. He left the circus and turned to farming: a series of homesteads on the Great Plains proved agriculture was not his proper vocation. In 1912, Lorene and the State of New Mexico came into the world and the family's turn to town life in Roswell brought a measure of prosperity. In the 1930s, the Roswell Art Museum gave Lorene access to art, which, after her children and her husband Pat Gratton, she would most love.

Her first lessons were taken at the Museum. Peter Hurd's and Henriette Wyeth's regional realism, the expressionism of artists like Luis Jiménez, and the folk traditions of Hispanic New Mexicans became touchstones for what she wished to create. In life and in art, she married a vivacious spirit to a kind soul. For decades before her death in 2003, she worked in watercolor, wood, and found objects, striving to reveal that which we might not see in the things around us. At times she succeeded. Her art pieces won prizes and are deeply prized in the homes of her children. 

As the grandchildren she cared for well know, Lorene believed that a creative talent might lurk in any one. An endowment at the Roswell Art Museum to train those who wanted to find out, in the place where she first learned to draw, seemed a fitting way to thank her for her generous, artistic life.