Darlene Olivia McElroy has deep roots in Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico. Her family arrived in the late 1600's and held a land grant in La Cienega for three centuries. Darlene's heritage and ancestry is Spanish, Irish and Native American. Although she grew up in Newport Beach, CA, she spent almost every summer in New Mexico. She studied art at Chouinard Art Institute, Otis College of Art, Art Center Pasadena, and received a BFA from Cal State Fullerton. She then lived and created in Paris for two years before moving to Santa Fe and returning to her family roots in 1994. She has been teaching in Santa Fe since 1995, while being featured in numerous magazine articles. In 2008 she was awarded Best in Show at The Contemporary Hispanic Market. While her greatest influence was Robert Raushenberg, she is drawn to the feminine. Her constructions of mixed media and collage have been widely recognized and collected in Northern New Mexico. Known for her influences of Baroque Shrines, Latin and Hispanic iconic imagery, her new body of work has a different focus. She has abstracted the figure in more of a flat way; flat versus dimensional in contrast. In this new artwork she wants the viewer to have a joyous experience relating between the simple and complex. A featured work in the exhibit is “Cultural Appropriation” attributed to the culture she grew up in SoCal and the indigenous part of her ancestry.