MCA Denver, Exploring the CounterCulture (West Coast Style) from adobeairstream.com
The counterculture movement was in essence a western phenomenon. That’s the premise of West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977, a book and exhibition currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. Yes, significant moments played out at Woodstock and in Greenwich Village, but the American West allowed … Read more
Pagosa Springs Exhibit Shows Off its Art from The Durango Herald
There’s no place like home for the holidays. But when home is Pagosa Springs, Colorado where people are more interested in the latest ski report, and you’re an art writer, well, home is more a place you retreat to than a place you spend a Saturday viewing art. That’s not the case thanks to Michael … Read more
Best of 2011: Clyfford Still in Denver, De Kooning at MoMA from adobeairstream.com
On November 22, I visited the newly opened Clyfford Still museum in Denver, which for the first time presented the artist’s work as it developed, in stages, visually highlighting how Still got from landscapes and figures to abstraction. A few days later I was in New York taking in the Willem De Kooning retrospective at … Read more
Ricky Allman at David B. Smith Gallery Exhibition Essay
Ricky Allman Surface flaws render light reflections unreliable Ricky Allmanʼs paintings on view in this exhibition at David B. Smith gallery are neither dystopian or utopian—they fall somewhere in the middle—dark, yet hopeful. The series seems cavernous, as if Allman has gone underground to secret bunkers, perhaps the abandoned silver mine beneath Area 51 or … Read more
Specific Environments: The Landscape as Metaphor
Specific Environments: The Landscape as Metaphor was conceived as the dynamism of visual forces, unearthing art that is actionable, and objects that ask the viewer to step away from the obvious and move toward the enigmatic, yet not arcane. The goal was to bring together artists whose works are not merely handmade copies of nature, but who use landscape, nature, and the land to enter into a discourse of contemporary issues of our time: environmental degradation, consumption, myth, memory, and perception, and the intersection of technology and terrain, both internal and external.
Clyfford Still: Part Menace and Yes, Part Majesty from adobeairstream.com
But the question remains, though, once the school field trips come and go, and the novelty of the new wears off, will this museum with its $10 admission price be appealing to a public with a millisecond attention span more interested in snapping photos with their smartphones than actually spending a sustained time looking at the paintings as Still wanted? With an art viewing public that can go to art fairs for a viewing hypermarket, is there a contemporary art lover capable of seeing the majesty in Clyfford Still’s vision?
Exhibition Essay for Kim Keever at David B. Smith Gallery
Kim Keever creates landscapes that are mesmerizing. The viewer stops, ponders, frozen in her tracks. Where is it? What is it? Have I been there? Will I go there? Itʼs familiar, yet strange. Real, yet an apparition. A Kim Keever photograph is prehistory and post history, the epoch and the apocalypse.
Exhibition Essay for Gregory Euclide at David B Smith Gallery
Gregory Euclide is an outsider. An observer. Whether walking in the woods, or driving across country, he pays attention to the minutiae. Important details become part of his art. Since his last solo exhibition at David B. Smith Gallery, his work has branched out into objects that are similar yet diverse. Heʼs created large installations for New Yorkʼs Museum of Arts and Design and Denverʼs Biennial of the Americas. He also produced an album cover for Bon Iver, has been featured at the PULSE Art Fair, and continues to broaden his studio practice creating 3-dimensional works on paper, sculpture, captures, and video. Euclide is pushing the boundaries of the way he thinks about the land, and how itʼs used.
Fort Collins to Make a Rocky Mountain Regional Arts Incubator from adobeairstream.com
Fort Collins, Colorado, tasked with creating a Rocky Mountain Regional Arts Incubator, won a $100,000 “Our Town” grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The collaborators on this public-private “creative placemaking” initiative include the city of Fort Collins’s Cultural Services Department, Colorado State University and Beet Street, a cultural programmer behind Fort Collins’s creative industry. When developed, AIR (Arts Incubator of the Rockies), plans to serve 10 states.
Denver Arts Week in Review from adobeairstream.com
The Mayor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts were awarded November 3 to kick off Denver Arts Week. Mayor Michael Hancock honored the American Indian Galleries at the Denver Art Museum and Phil Bender with the Excellence awards and Veronica Barela with the Legacy Award. Arts Weekends November 12, but it’s not too late to participate. Here’s a selection of things to do as Arts Week comes to a close.
Follow Art Write Leanne Goebel
From adobeairstream.com- Paint Arrest: Emil Bisttram on the Flip Side January 27, 2012I had a floor glue moment the other day at Aaron Payne Fine Art when I turned around and looked dead on at Homage (recto), a 5 x 4 foot canvas by Emil Bisttram, astonishingly painted ...Ellen Berkovitch
- BANDHAPPY Founder Matt Halpern Talks Techno January 27, 2012BANDHAPPY is the natural progression of everyday technologies, combined with a heaping wheelbarrow-full of paradigm shifts and ingenuity, designed for the music education world. It’s a one-stop online music instruction mall, where students can receive video ...Groovey
- Sundance Live: The Imposter January 26, 2012The Imposter, a documentary by Bart Layton, revisits the trail of a missing child, and the con-man who stole his identity. The story doesn’t end with the conviction of a serial grifter. Did the child’s family ...David D'Arcy
- Craig Anderson Resigns from Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe January 25, 2012Craig Anderson has resigned as executive director of the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe to “focus on curatorial pursuits.” In what appears to inject a note of managerial uncertainty for an organization that has ...Ellen Berkovitch
- OH SNAP! Festival In Memory of Sergio Machado January 25, 2012Originally from Mozambique, Africa, Sergio Machado studied at Southwestern University (Georgetown, TX), where he graduated with honors. During his four years at Southwestern, Machado was known for being an all around great guy who made friends ...Don Simpson
- Artpace Announces New Director Regine Basha January 24, 2012Regine Basha is scheduled to assume post March 1 as the new director of Artpace. The non-profit arts organization based in San Antonio, Texas is “so very pleased to announced that Regine Basha has been appointed ...Katy Crocker
- To Calatrava or Not To Calatrava January 24, 2012In November, The Denver Post reported that the City of Denver had settled with starchitect Santiago Calatrava, agreeing to pay him a $250,000 licensing fee to utilize his designs for a hotel, bridge, train station and ...Leanne Goebel
- CAMH Presents the Women Artists Behind the Curtain January 23, 2012The Contemporary Art Museum of Houston hosts The Desconstructive Impsulse: Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power, 1973-1991—not quite as ambitious as MOCA’s WACK! feminist art survey (2007), which had people desperately searching for wall tags ...Katy Crocker
- Sundance Live: West of Memphis January 22, 2012David D’Arcy reviews West of Memphis, a documentary investigation, into the wrongful murder convictions of three teenagers in 1994, that screened at Sundance Film Festival 2012. The fourth film on the subject, this one is directed ...David D'Arcy
- Occupology, Swarmology … On Artjournal by Gregory Sholette January 20, 2012Gregory Sholette writes: Things have changed since we witnessed the power-scrubbing of Zuccotti Park’s People’s Library[1] and the mulching of the encampment’s hundred-page opus of dissent written on corrugated scraps of cardboard and inverted pizza boxes, ...Ellen Berkovitch
- Paint Arrest: Emil Bisttram on the Flip Side January 27, 2012
