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.
Nils Folke Anderson at Dikeou Collection Pop-Up from adobeairstream.com
Nils Folke Anderson’s styrofoam sculptures are “reciprocal linkages,” a term borrowed from website connections. The works are all untitled with only the address listed to identify each piece. They are made of styrofoam— a humorous yet functional material that allows the artist to manipulate the works and for the process of that manipulation to be visible in the debris and abrasions that appear in the material.
