Writer. Author. Contributor. Critic. Essayist. Journalist. Novelist. Poet. Reporter. Storyteller. Scribe. Wordsmith.
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The kinesthetic vision of blind sculptor Michael Naranjo from Arts Perspective Magazine
Sculpting is dimensional, physical, even touchable (though we rarely get to run our hands over an object). Michael Naranjo, however, encourages viewers to touch his sculptures. To caress the smooth ebony finish of his bronze figures. To detect the bark of a tree or the wings of a bird. Feeling provides meaning and allows viewers…
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Pissing On (or Near) Art at the Clyfford Still Museum from adobeairstream.com
First, there was Duchamp’s “Fountain,” and since then piss, dung, feces, even menstrual blood have been handy tools of art. Andy Warhol made piss paintings and Andres Serrano pissed off the Catholic Church with his recently damaged “Piss Christ.” Unfortunately, it appears that Carmen Tisch’s recent drunken escapade at the Clyfford Still Museum was nothing more…
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Colorado Releases Creative District Guidelines from adobeairstream.com
UPDATE: Salida Art District and Art District on Santa Fe in Denver certified as first two Creative Districts. In yet another effort to boost creative placemaking, the state of Colorado has released the guidelines in support of HB11-1031 the creation of Creative Districts in communities, neighborhoods or contiguous geographic areas around the state. Colorado Creative…
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2012 Preview: Yves Saint Laurent, as Apres-Ski? from adobeairstream.com
The Denver Art Museum is the only scheduled U.S. venue in 2012 for two exhibitions imagined as crowd-sources: Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective, and Becoming Van Gogh. One of these exhibitions will be the most well attended in DAM history. My prediction? Yves Saint Laurent, which opens March 25 and runs through July 8, 2012, will…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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Leanne Goebel 