When Lydia Madrid was a young girl, for ten months each year she spent nights with her brothers sleeping under the star-lit veil of the West Texan sky. During her waking hours she passed the time telling stories and hearing them from friends and relatives.

Madrid, who presented her art works Wednesday at the Palmer Museum of Art as part of the School of Visual Arts' visiting artists program, said memories of her childhood, including its surplus of storytelling, has had an influence on her life and art.

Madrid's own storytelling abilities have influenced the interpretation of her work. Judine Stola (junior-elementary education) said of the work in Madrid's presentation, "When I was looking at the pictures I didn't understand what she was depicting until she told about them."

For Madrid the line between family and community was nearly nonexistent. Most of the 200 residents in her hometown of Redford, Texas were her relatives. For example, she said the elementary school she attended had only four teachers, one was her mother, a second her father and a third her aunt.

"That kind of community is one of the things I deal with in my work," said Madrid, who is currently an assistant professor of printmaking at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque.

Playing on the nature of her childhood and its lack of traditional boundaries, Madrid's work often deals with breaking down the lines between formality and informality or reality and illusion.

Describing one of her earliest works, which combines drawing with photographs of her childhood home, Madrid said, "There might be an apparent order or an apparent lack of order."

In one piece from the series, which she described as "capsules of location," Madrid placed on the same piece of paper a small photograph of ceiling corner with a blueprint-like rendering of the house beneath.

Madrid said she strove to represent "familiar parts of the house combined with something unknown" in this series.

"I was aware that there was a great deal to be known," she said.

This merging of more than one art form to create a single piece is often referred to as a mixed-media technique. As its name suggests, the technique allows the artist to implement several media during the creative process. Thus expanding the creative capabilities of the artist.

The mixed-media technique is a favorite of Madrid's. In another series she also employs the artistic method. "I made several books that were actually notebooks with collages of information," Madrid said.

The series of notebooks are just that, notebooks. Madrid brought photographs together with writing, which often reflect her Mexican Indian, American Indian and Hispanic heritage. She added that in some of the notebook collages she occasionally included folded pieces of paper to express that "information can be concealed as well as revealed."

"I might make a drawing and then fold it so the viewer wouldn't know what was there, but I would."

Madrid said a motif emphasizing the hidden or unknown pervades a great deal of her work.

"I involve a lot of metaphors. The metaphors are based on what is tangible, what is concrete."

One metaphor she incorporates into her work consistently is that of the river that ran through her hometown. Madrid said rivers are often used by communities as political boundaries. However, Madrid said the river in Redford represents life while in her work it represents her own longing for it.

"I'm trying to find a location for a river of my own. When I'm away from the river I sort of need it in a way," she said.

About her work, Madrid said, "The major incentive for my work is to find a way to make the most of what I know and what I have learned and to express it in an aesthetic way."