Respond
Respond: A Juried Exhibition of Artworks Artists
Artworks Center for Contemporary Art
310 N. Railroad Avenue, Loveland, CO 80537
October 9-November 28, 2020
Admission: Free
Review by Emily Zeek
Described as “an environment for artistic growth,” Artworks Center for Contemporary Art sits across from the railroad tracks in Loveland, CO in a repurposed industrial building with concrete floors. [1] With the smoke looming overhead from nearby fires when I visited, the stark, apocalyptic aesthetic of 2020 seems ubiquitous and unescapable. Inspired by what she called “the beauty of survival,” curator Sarah LaBarre working with co-curator Sharon Carlisle decided to lean into the aesthetic of the moment. They assembled a show simply entitled Respond, which features 10 artists’ responses to these unique and harrowing times.
In the foreground, Susan White, The Road To Best, 2020, found objects, 26 x 43 x 40 inches (dimensions variable). In the background, Chuck Brenton, The Future Is Primitive, 2020, acrylic on sustainably-hunted, hand-tanned deer hide with antique nails, 4 x 2.5 feet. Image by Emily Zeek.
A detail image of Susan White’s The Road To Best, 2020, found objects, 26 x 43 x 40 inches (dimensions variable). Image by Emily Zeek.
The art center is the only space in Loveland that focuses solely on contemporary art. But the works in this show pick up on more modernist themes such as psychological trauma, abstraction, and obsessions with the divine as it filters its way through the primitive as well. A piece by Susan White titled The Road To Best features a patched up, torn, and singed American flag draped over a shopping cart resting on a flattened cardboard box. On the wall behind a deer hide—sustainably hunted by the artist Chuck Brenton the placard assures us—hangs with the text “The Future is Primitive” scrawled in blue paint, setting the tone for the exhibit as bleak but beautiful.
Becky Hawley, from left to right: Grief, 2020, mixed media, 6 x 6 x 2 inches; Undone, 2020, mixed media, 6 x 6 x 2 inches; Hemorrhage, 2020, mixed media, 6 x 9 x 2 inches. Image courtesy of Artworks Loveland.
“Concept is the driving force of the exhibition,” explains LeBarre, who requested that artists submit works that display what they have been working through during the pandemic and economic collapse of the last nine months. Becky Hawley, who is showing four works in the exhibition, explains: “Like many others, 2020 has left me feeling fragmented, stressed, angry, depressed, confused, and many other emotions I can’t even pinpoint.” Hawley uses red thread, evoking blood, chaotically placed on wooden boxes and imagery of skeletons to express this anguish.
Abbie R. Powers, this is me (you, us, we), 2020, video. Image by Emily Zeek.
Meanwhile artists Andrew Svedlow and Abbie R. Powers use the face as a conduit for their “unsettled emotions.” Powers uses her own eyes as muse in a video work that has viewers simply watch as the contours of her eyebrows ebb and flow in and out of concern. Sedlow’s distorted and sickly faces with bio-medical overtones pick up on the almost hospital-like milieu created by experiencing the pandemic. Laura Cofrin, exploring an unrelated physical trauma that coincided with the timeline of the pandemic, shows a black and white photograph of her stitched-up arm.
Madeline Wilson, Time Passes, 2020, framed needlepoint, 12 x 12 inches. Image courtesy of Artworks Loveland.
Madeline Wilson, New Moon, 2020, framed archival inkjet photograph, 20 x 24 inches. Image courtesy of Artworks Loveland.
While the emotional nature of this shared crisis weaves its way through the pieces in a quite direct and visceral way, the range of textures and materiality of the works plays into the unsettling theme of the show. A cross-stitched coronavirus created by Madeline Wilson abuts a spherical metal sculpture by Michael Anthony Simon. Poetry by Veronica Patterson shares space with a silk cocoon by Sylvia Eichmann.
Sylvia Eichmann, Cocoon, 2020, silk, cotton, thread, shisha mirrors, and inks, 25 x 25 inches, adjustable height. Image courtesy of Artworks Loveland.
Interior view of Sylvia Eichmann, Cocoon, 2020, silk, cotton, thread, shisha mirrors, and inks, 25 x 25 inches, adjustable height. Image by Emily Zeek.
Eichmann’s lovely, white, purifying silk cocoon provides a much-needed hopeful interlude and optimistic accent to the show as a whole. Looking up to the light at the end of Eichmann’s silk tunnel reminds us that this too shall pass. Eventually our vulnerabilities will be fortified and our anger and anguish will be subdued.
But for now, LaBarre is still wrestling with the unsettled emotions of the moment. On the Artworks Instagram, people have been sharing their thoughts about the political work at the centerpiece of the show. While one unsavory commenter makes his voice heard, another artist, Dread Scott, gives his seal of approval on the revolutionary first amendment protest art by Susan White, with “Congratulations. Interesting work.” While the pandemic has changed the context of the environment in which artists are creating, their roles as expressers and protestors have remained unchanged, even when the protest is simply against the inconveniences and frustrations of a pandemic.
Emily Zeek is a transmedia and social practice artist from Littleton, Colorado. She is currently working on her BFA in Transmedia Sculpture at the University of Colorado Denver.
[1] https://artistcommunities.org/residencies/artworks-loveland.
