All in Review

A Mi Manera | Latitude 37°: Art of Southern Colorado | Colcha Embroidery of the San Luis Valley

A Mi Manera | Latitude 37°: Art of Southern Colorado | Colcha Embroidery of the San Luis Valley

Dani/elle Cunningham
Review

The Arvada Center’s three newest exhibitions explore the history, traditions, and aesthetic of the San Luis Valley, affectionately known as the Valley. In the Main Gallery, Emilio Lobato’s retrospective A Mi Manera: A 40-Year Survey encompasses the Valley native’s innovation and numerous stylistic changes. Meanwhile, two group exhibitions, Latitude 37°: Art of Southern Colorado and Colcha Embroidery of the San Luis Valley, embody the region’s influence and relationship to colonialism and hybridity, respectively. 

Reflections on Amache

Reflections on Amache

Mary Grace Bernard
Review

Currently on view at the Parker Arts, Culture & Events Center until November 12, 2023 is a solo exhibition of work by Sarah Fukami entitled Reflections on Amache. From cut Plexiglas® to lithography, and personal documents to government archives, Fukami uses a variety of media to layer her family’s history and the immigrant experience as Japanese Americans living during World War II.

It’s a Wrap / IFeel Monsters / Giving Voice

It’s a Wrap / IFeel Monsters / Giving Voice

Paloma Jimenez
Review

In collaboration with Nicole Banowetz, Access Gallery artists DILLPhoenix, Heather H., Jareth J. Charles, and Skylar K. have created an installation of soft sculptures brimming with textural delight and dynamic colors. Abstract fiber forms inspired by a variety of natural organisms activate the entire space from floor to ceiling. Alongside the installation titled It’s a Wrap, two community projects offer generative tactile experiences as outlets for people who have been affected by bullying.

Light Contrasting with Dark

Light Contrasting with Dark

Dani/elle Cunningham
Review

Cabell has always worked with re-purposed materials in a subversion of human consumption and waste, while Bailey focuses on conservation education through photography. Though the artists work in markedly divergent mediums, these shared interests became connective points. With Light Contrasting with Dark, their second collaborative exhibition at the Artists on Santa Fe gallery in Denver, Bailey and Cabell have honed their artistic relationship, generating unexpectedly cohesive works that are as natural as their subject matter.

Colorado Women to Watch

Colorado Women to Watch

Zoe Ariyama
Review

An open, curious approach to material and a long-term commitment to process emerge as the conceptual through-lines of Colorado Women to Watch, currently on view at MSU’s Center for Visual Art (CVA). Curated by CVA director Cecily Cullen, the exhibition brings together five well-established, female-identifying artists: Kim Dickey, Ana María Hernando, Maia Ruth Lee, Suchitra Mattai, and Senga Nengudi. 

Wild and Precious

Wild and Precious

Laura I. Miller
Review

You could call Rachel Denny’s Wild and Precious exhibition at Visions West Contemporary romantic. After all, her textile sculptures include a frolicking fawn, a soaring bird, grazing sheep, and a hopping rabbit. But if you look closer, you’ll see that the sculptures, which take their inspiration from taxidermied animals, have dark undercurrents that stem from man’s conflicted relationship with nature.

Neuron Forest

Neuron Forest

Bella Malherbe
Review

Intricate flowing systems that mingle, connect, and divide from one another exist in everything that moves. Imagine the rooting systems of plants, the complex network of river systems, and the jutting flashes of lightning as they find their way to the earth. These complicated structures scaffold how we think, move, and comprehend the world around us through the consciousness that constructs the pathways of our neurons. The artist Katie Caron plays on this dynamism of the neuron and nature’s unconscious geometric patterns in her new exhibition Neuron Forest at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder. 

High Desert Homecoming / Nude Masculine States

High Desert Homecoming / Nude Masculine States

Mary Grace Bernard
Review

For the month of September, Lindsey Bell has curated two solo exhibitions in her Denver gallery Bell Projects by artists Jamie Gray (in the front gallery) and Jon Sargent (in Bell Project’s Living Room gallery). Gray’s High Desert Homecoming and Sargent’s Nude Masculine States together share the common theme of nature. 

Fiber Art International 2022

Fiber Art International 2022

Dani/elle Cunningham
Review

This Fiber Art International exhibition at the Museum of Art Fort Collins praises the handmade and the materiality of objects, revealing that many artists still enjoy interacting physically with their work. Although AI-generated artwork isn’t likely to disappear, it seems that neither is fiber art. The strong relationship between artists and objects is profoundly felt and impacts their selection of materials and concepts, ranging from the macro to the micro, demonstrating that art can be made from anything.

Abstract Expressions

Abstract Expressions

Raymundo Muñoz
Review

Clyfford Still Museum presents Abstract Expressions, a terrace installation by composer Nathan Hall and Denver Botanic Gardens assistant curator and horticulturist Kevin Phillip Williams. Not since the museum’s opening in 2011 have the terraces been revamped and reimagined, so the change is a welcome one. The new installation invites viewers to enjoy the second-level outdoor spaces with a multisensory experience of soundscapes and regionally relevant gardens inspired by the life and art of abstract expressionist Clyfford Still.

Islands Beyond Blue

Islands Beyond Blue

José Antonio Arellano
Review

Like tourists embarking on a Pacific excursion, visitors of the newly reopened Arts of Oceania gallery at the Denver Art Museum are greeted by plastic leis. Whereas the kitschy garlands that adorn vacationing travelers adhere to advertised paradisal fantasies, the hundreds of synthetic leis of this installation gather to form a more dismal image—that of an imposing mushroom cloud. The exhibition Islands Beyond Blue: Niki Hastings-McFall and Treasures from the Oceania Collection confronts the visitors’ learned vocabulary and expectations and exposes the (mis)understanding these can produce.

Clayprints

Clayprints

Jillian Blackwell
Review

A cornucopia of colorful prints spread in a continuous line across the walls of The Bridge Gallery and The Commons Gallery in Colorado Springs. Clayprints, an exhibition of the work of Michael Cellan and friends, showcases a unique and not widely practiced type of monoprinting. Clayprinting merges the spontaneity of clay and the trace-quality of printmaking. If you have never seen a clayprint in person, this is not a show to be missed. 

Evocation

Evocation

Raymundo Muñoz
Review

Changing forms and colors call forth in our minds and hearts anything from personal truths to great mysteries. In a similar way, Evocation―the current exhibition on view at Walker Fine Art―presents selected works from six artists that invite introspection through the common themes of nature, landscape, and memory. It’s a well-curated show with a strong backbone of fine, representational painting from Matt Christie, Doug Haeussner, Peter Illig, and Virginia Steck, further enhanced by striking abstract work from Atticus Adams and Kim Ferrer.

Colombia: The Corn, the River, and the Grave

Colombia: The Corn, the River, and the Grave

Djamila Ricciardi
Review

The most recent exhibition at Museo de las Americas features 13 international artists and two artist collectives who together “represent Colombia’s cultural diversity as well as its geographic differences.” It is truly an expansive survey that “emphasizes the interconnectedness of people and nature and the contradictions of that connection.” It is rare that artwork produced in one location can transcend time and geography to connect with local viewers on such a visceral, human level. Presented in collaboration with independent curator and native Colombian Alex Brahim, Museo de las Americas offers Colombia: The Corn, the River, and the Grave—a far-reaching exhibition that seeks to reconcile with the ghosts of a nation’s past and look towards the future with hard-won hope and empathy.

I Invited Myself, vol. II

I Invited Myself, vol. II

Stacy J. Platt
Review

Eiko Otake’s oeuvre encompasses a wide range of practices. She has worked as an internationally recognized movement and media artist for nearly 50 years. I Invited Myself, vol. II at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (FAC) is in keeping with the multidisciplinary character of her work. In part, it is a survey of five decades of art. It is also a contemplation of space and time—indeed, the works on display rotate through a series of literal "seasons."  Additionally, vol. II includes live performances that engage directly with the work on display and three symposiums with Colorado College that feature artists, curators, and scholars in dialogue with Otake and each other. 

MFA Thesis Exhibition 2023

MFA Thesis Exhibition 2023

Mary Grace Bernard
Review

This year’s Colorado State University (CSU) Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Thesis Exhibition celebrates the culmination of artworks by three graduate students. Leila Malekadeli, MFA Graduate in Sculpture, Sam Hamilton, MFA Graduate in Painting, and Vicente Delgado, Graduate in Printmaking, completed three years of study in the Department of Art and Art History’s creative studio arts program. By fostering individual research, CSU’s MFA program encourages graduate students to focus on a specific medium and complete a strong body of work in their chosen field.

Made in Colorado

Made in Colorado

Laura I. Miller
Review

The juried Made in Colorado exhibition at the University of Colorado Denver's Emmanuel and Experience Galleries features artists currently living in the state and typically was held every two years. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the exhibition has been on hiatus since 2018, but the 45 artists now on display haven’t been idle. They’ve been busy painting, sculpting, sewing, photographing, videographing, building, and making. If the exhibition, held at CU Denver’s Emmanuel and Experience Galleries, is any indication of how we’ve evolved over the past five years, then it appears that we’re in the midst of an artistic renaissance. The exhibition thrums with vibrancy and awareness of the artist’s role in society.

The Castle / Blossom & Decay

The Castle / Blossom & Decay

Paloma Jimenez
Review

Leo Franco’s The Castle and Brian Cavanaugh’s Blossom & Decay at Pirate Contemporary Art present two different approaches to constructing narratives out of a material-based logic. Franco favors a visual rhythm composed of elegantly finished wooden structures, while Cavanaugh intertwines organic matter through endless lengths of wire to grow a joyously provisional ecosystem.

Prismatic

Prismatic

Dani/elle Cunningham
Review

Talent from Colorado and beyond shines in “Prismatic,” as does the breadth of the queer artist community. More than that though, this exhibition illustrates that art doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Life experiences lead to ideas and influence artistic styles, generating concepts to which the public can relate. Maybe minds won’t be made more inclusive or accepting by this exhibition, as it seems largely tailored to a queer or an already-receptive audience, but minds will certainly be strengthened in the idea that there is no such thing as identity, singular.

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