Art, Education, Free Events, Youth

Winter Arts Preview

By Theresa Anderson


Platteforum Creative Residency

Hollis+Lana working at PlatteForum

Hollis+Lana working at PlatteForum

Hollis+Lana, have been in residence since October 29th working on a new large environmental series, boom, bang and splat. Amorette Lana and Conor Hollis collaborate on graffiti/mural-like painting as well as organic, discrete, three-dimensional forms.  Each painting and sculpture is fabricated through natural interplay between the artists. The polyurethane foam used in the sculptures can only be manipulated during a finite time and then after hardened can be carved, sanded or trimmed before coating with glossy plastic. Interestingly the artists choose to make minimal alterations allowing a much more transparent process. This manner of working and end result reveals the beginnings and parts of the paintings. The forms of the organic sculptures, when aggregated within the paintings, document a notion (or an intuition) of the quantum possibilities of experience.

Hollis+Lana working at PlatteForum

Hollis+Lana working at PlatteForum

Painting directly on the gallery walls this collaborative team uses a combinations of flattened sacchariferous color and similar to the sculptures an unrefined glopular form. Influenced by the Japanese Superflat postmodern art movement their use of highly graphic mark-making, non-objective imagery, and keyed up color plays upon a sense of emptiness of a consumer culture selling all and sundry at any price. The pieces bring to mind the repeated graphics on a computer screen that have been deleted of all real content. Within the paintings, the forms are flotillas, small worlds of destroyed fantasy where the viewer is engulfed. And not.

Platteforum offers repeat studio visitors a unique insight into the educational component of residency. “Hollis+Lana have been working with 12 middle-school-age youth, called dreamers, from the Colorado I Have a Dream Foundation, in intensive Learning Lab workshops in which they have been exploring a variety of two- and three-dimensional techniques with youth who are creating collaborative pieces that mirror the working style of Hollis+Lana.”

While this exhibition opens Thursday, December 13, 2012, 5:30 – 8:00 pm and continues through January 4, 2013, I’d encourage visitors to explore Hollis+Lana’s working process during open studio anytime Tuesday-Saturday, noon – 4:00 pm or by appointment.

Platteforum 1610 Little Raven Street, Suite 135, Denver, CO 80202 platteforum.org 303.893.0791


VSA Colorado, The State Organization on Arts and Disability, Access Gallery + Studio

I’ve recently attended a few exhibitions that would have been much more meaningful had the artists and exhibition managers made components of the installations more accessible to differing abilities of people. VSA Colorado/Access Gallery + Studio offers a series of Arts and Accessibility Workshops that give artists, galleries and other organizations the knowledge and skills to work towards accessibility for all people.  The workshops provide practical guidance on ways to make access considerations an integral part of the arts in Colorado.

Led by a team from VSA Colorado, workshops can be designed from ½ day to 2 days and are approximately $50 an hour. The instructors use hands-on sessions as well as practical information on 504/ ADA responsibilities. Some interesting components include accessibility programs such as Audio Description, Shadowing, Touching Galleries, and Interpretation, adaptive technologies, and accessible web design and communication devices.

Artist Melissa :: Shake, Rattle, and Roll at VSA

Artist Melissa :: Shake, Rattle, and Roll at VSA

VSA Colorado questions the effectiveness of communication by asking artists and organizations –“What makes an exhibit really accessible?  Exhibit designs that result from universal design techniques are more likely to serve a wider array of people:  individuals who have temporary disabilities, people with permanent disabilities, and those whose abilities change with age.  Techniques used include tactile, olfactory and auditory components to exhibits.”

Call VSA Colorado at 303.777.0797 or 303.777.0796 TTY for a session or with any questions.

VSA Colorado’s current exhibition Shake, Rattle and Roll brings together three programs: pet portraits, a field trip to see El Anatsui at the Denver Art Museum, and a transportation field trips. This exhibition closes Friday, December 21, with a holiday reception

VSA Colorado Access Gallery + Studio is located at 909 Santa Fe Dr, Denver CO 80204
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday from 10 am-5 pm accessgallery.org


Edge Gallery

Susanne Mitchell :: Crossing Into

For her exhibition, Crossing Into, Susanne Mitchell has combined a series of worn and used chitenje cloth from a village in Malawi with Victorian era images. Mitchell depicts and references the British occupation and colonization of Malawi with the busts of royalty, white women in elaborate dress sporting parasols for lazy strolls and fine furniture. The chitenje is an object of many uses, including a sling to carry a baby, a beautiful head-scarf, a padded head wrap to carry heavy objects, an apron, a towel for daily work, and a water sieve. Mitchell’s fabric pieces, collected from a village where her extended family lives, are frayed from daily labor and represent body and a woman’s toil exacted economically, politically, within her community and the household.

Susanne Mitchell :: Crossing Into

Retrieving the remnants of clothing used as work objects, personal adornment and even political advertising and then combining them with highly detailed drawings or prints of British colonization, luxury and leisure, begs the viewer to answer a series of questions. Where are the real women who originally wore the chitenje that were collected for exhibition? Have they disappeared behind their own toil? What are the real remnants of colonialism in Malawi?

Crossing Into opens to the public on Friday, December 7, 2012 with an artist’s reception scheduled from 6–10 pm through December 23, 2012. The Gallery is open Fridays from 6–10 pm and Saturdays and Sundays from 1–5 pm or by appointment.
Edge Gallery 3658 Navajo Street, Denver, CO 80211 edgeart.org 303.842.5859


Art Students League of Denver

Co-curated by Joshua Wiener and Karen Roehl, the exhibition Side Effects May Include explores the creative life of artists through video documents of artists who are asked the big questions- “Why do you make art? How has your family responded? What do you give up or gain by being an artist? Or to finish the sentence, Without art I would….” By exhibiting these personal artist video documents alongside pieces that artists have made that intentionally explore these questions, Roehl and Wiener try to get at the age old humanist questions of the role of the artist in culture and their oft-incomprehensible existence.

Roehl, part of ASLD’s painting faculty specializes in classes that explore the language of abstraction. Roehl’s artistic career includes 30+ years as a graphic artist, running her own design business and exhibiting her paintings both locally and nationally. Walker Fine Art in Denver, CO currently represents Roehl.

Joshua Wiener was born into a stone sculpting community, as his mother founded the Marble Institute of Colorado. Wiener has apprenticed in Japan with Kazutaka Uchida, is an instructor at the Art Students League in Denver, has taught workshops at the Denver Art Museum, The Colorado Academy, and in 2009 completed a residency at PlatteForum in Denver. Wiener’s public sculptures can be found in collections throughout the United States.

The exhibition Side Effects May Include opening reception is Friday, March 1; 5:30 – 8:00 pm but is available to the public at no charge Feb 4- March 20, 2013 at
Art Student League of Denver 200 Grant Street, Denver, CO 80203 www.asld.org 303.778.6990

Jenny Morgan :: We are all Setting Suns

The Art Students League of Denver as part of the League’s Visiting Artist Series is offering a lecture and master class with the nationally recognized artist Jenny Morgan who was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and currently lives in New York City. Morgan is represented by Driscoll Babcock Galleries in New York City, has exhibited nationwide in solo shows at Like the Spice Gallery, New York City, and Plus + Gallery and Pirate Gallery in Denver, as well as in many group shows nationally.

In this two-day workshop, The Psychological Self-Portrait, Morgan will dig deeper into her developed methods of conceptual realism, self-portraiture, drawing, use of mirrors and photography as well as the intersection of traditional painting techniques and experiment. While the master class best serves those whose abilities are intermediate to advanced, her public lecture is available to all levels of instruction.

Join Jenny Morgan as part of the Visiting Artist Series at the Art Students League of Denver Public Lecture Friday, March 15, at 6:30 pm and sign up soon for the master class Saturday & Sunday, March 16 & 17, 2013 9 am- 4 pm. See the website for prices and registration.

Scholarships for classes are available with application.
Art Student League Denver 200 Grant Street, Denver, CO 80203 www.asld.org 303.778.6990


Colorado Photographic Arts Center

Sharon Harper :: After Image, One Month Weather Permitting, Sun/Moon (Trying to See through a Telescope)

There are two solo exhibitions Vivian Keulards: “80439” + Sharon Harper: “From Near and Far” opening the 2013 season at CPAC. Vivian Keulards and Sharon Harper both use their photographic lens as mitigation or connector with places outside of their known zones. That is where the commonalities between the artists works ends. Keulards photographs document a sort of awkward coup de foudre. Harper’s work is an acclimation.Much of Harper’s photography takes place with special lenses or a telescopic arm that describes spaces between perception and technology. Her series of works such as After Image, One Month Weather Permitting, Sun/Moon (Trying to See through a Telescope) documents the elements and processes of seeing as many of the landscapes she photographs are unintelligible to the naked eye. It is only through aggregation and a constancy of recording is the correlation to space fully understood.

Vivian Keulards :: Places #8

Keulards series 80439 comes at portraiture from a place not of voyeur or conqueror but as a way to navigate new territory. She moved from the Netherlands to 80439, Evergreen, Colorado. In numerous pieces like Places #8 her gaze searches for solid territory amongst a plethora of nonsensical idioms such as moments held in Oh Dear. 80439 is her own personal self-portrait capturing object, people and place in odd moments that reflect back on her own inconsistencies within space and time.

Vivian Keulards: “80439” + Sharon Harper: “From Near and Far” is open to the public January 8 – February 18 with an opening reception Friday, January 11, 6:00 – 9:00 pm. The hours are Tuesday – Saturday from 12 – 5:30 pm.

Colorado Photographic Arts Center
445 South Saulsbury St
Lakewood, CO 80226
www.cpacphoto.org
303.837.1341


Theresa Anderson maintains an art blog featuring an experiential document of her work as well as visual art criticism. She is a member of Pirate: Contemporary Art and is the founder and director at Ice Cube Gallery.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

3 Responses to “Winter Arts Preview”

    Error thrown

    Call to undefined function ereg()