+ Tennis and Mark Mothersbaugh magic at the MYOPIA exhibit party at the MCA

+BLACKTOP is a progressive art and experience festival happening in downtown denver next weekend!

It’s time downtown Denver experienced a new art and music festival – Blacktop arrives September 29, 2012, to downtown Denver’s Performing Arts Complex from 2:00PM – 10:00PM. Presented by Unit E and hosted by the Denver Theatre District, the DIY (do-it-yourself) free music and arts festival is hinged on creating a truly engaging and interactive experience for everyone.

Starting at 2:00PM, the sprawling, urban space will be filled with new entertainment of all kinds from
international film shorts and video art on a giant L.E.D. screen, to a zine making station, live comedy
and ballet performances. In addition to a main stage that boasts national musical acts Cody ChesnuTT, n his first ever Colorado performance, Nurses, and Luke Wyland of AU, Blacktop will feature a noise dome curated by Westword’s Tom Murphy that will familiarize audiences with new sounds that bridge the gap between music and performance.

Body casting stations, free bike maintenance, fortune tellers, performance artists, live fencing, poetry,
local food, and much more will add to the texture of this unique event. World-renowned international
artists including Martin Creed, Jillian Mayer and Ira Sherman will be lending art installations never-
before-seen in Colorado. At any given time, guests can find several different things to see, taste, and,
hopefully, try for the first time. By the evening’s close, they will have made something special, heard
something that made them dance, learned something new, and above all, gained a new appreciation for our great city.

Named Best Denver DIY Venue by Westword, Unit E began May 2011 in Lincoln Park when three
Denver natives set out to expand the city’s exposure to new sounds, invest in emerging visual artists,
and rejuvenate the community’s relationship with printed works. Always fresh and accessible, this unique venue hosts high-energy CD releases, the next wave of touring bands, art openings, poetry readings, and theater performances that boost community productivity and ignite consistent local support.

The proud host of the event, The Denver Theatre District, is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) created to enhance Downtown Denver through public art investment, city and regional art, and cultural promotions.

Sponsors include Denver Theatre District, Bellco Credit Union, and Gates Carbon Drive.

blacktopfestival.com

Further inquiries, contact:
Kaela Martin
kaela@blacktopfestival.com
p: 970.744.0114

+ mom and me

these are a few snapshots of the wonderful time my mom and I have had together during her stay in denver this week. shes been a great sport dealing with this 100 degree weather days in a row.


farmers market beets from longmont colorado at full circle farms


artist tracy felix painting, a colorado local


brunch at jelly in capital hill


vance kirkland in his studio weeks before he died, still painting away.


mom and I at the DAM with a fox installation.


me in kirklands studio


checkers and snacks at home.

+ Over the River


An Art Installation Draws Controversy
By Micah Williams | March 15, 2012 | Community, Design, Environment
www.tedxmilehigh.com

Colorado is well known for it’s fifty-four 14,000-foot peaks, its wild, rushing rivers, its endless natural beauty, and the highest per-capita beer production in the United States. Maybe not the last one, but it is certainly known for the outdoors. Colorado also has Denver, a teeming city with business prospects, major sports teams, and a burgeoning arts scene that is becoming well known in its own right.

A combination of those factors led environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude to develop a controversial plan, dubbed “Over the River,” that would temporarily suspend nearly six miles of silvery, luminous fabric panels high above the Arkansas River along a 42-mile stretch of the river between Salida and Cañon City in south-central Colorado. After years of research (begun in 1985), the duo decided upon the section of the Arkansas due to its high banks, which would allow recreational rafters to enjoy the art as they passed through the stretch and rode through the bubbling waters. The art installation itself is only slated to last for two weeks in August of 2015, and there has been an enormous amount of pressure on both sides to allow, and disallow, the Arkansas River project.

The proponents are from many sectors, including Governor Hickenlooper, and have argued that there will be tourist-generated revenue (344,000 expected to view), a focus on Colorado as an artistic hub, and the project will create hundreds of temporary jobs. Opponents argue that the project will visually reduce the landscape, cause major delays on highways, and damage the river eco-system.

Christo is determined to finish the project that was his late wife’s dream, and is contributing 100% of the associated costs of the project, funding coming primarily through the sale of his original works of art. According to the website, there is no public subsidy or taxpayer fees involved because he himself has never asked for money to view his projects.

The issue brings to mind a fascinating TEDTalk on moving sculpture, from American artist Jent Echelman, entitled: “Taking Imagination Seriously.”

Photo credit: Wolfgang Volz, photograph of a 1992 drawing from Christo Over the River, Project for the Arkansas River, Colorado

What are your thoughts and comments on the art installation? Is it good for Colorado?

+ Recalcitrant Memesis

On a cold January evening, I ventured on my bike downtown to the David B Smith gallery to experience the artwork of one, Liz Miller. Miller was asked to make a site specific installation as part of a celebration of the opening of the Clifford Still Museum here in Denver. This major piece of work, Recalcitrant Memesis 2012, was a gallery installation consisting of intricately shaped large felt pieces, hung in a rhythmic order, overlapping and connecting at diagonal angles, and suspended from the ceiling along one wall of the gallery. The colors used in this piece were warm hues of mustard yellow, crimson red, soft cream and rich plum. This gave it a striking presence within the white walls and caramel wooden floors of the space. The size of the installation was thirty feet long, 4 to 6 feet wide, and stretched towards the ceiling at 10 feet in height. The specific shapes of the felt pieces that made up this work of art were forms inspired by Still’s paintings. Miller’s thoughts on Still’s work are that it is aggressive and unbalanced which contributes to the power his work expresses to the viewer.
A theme that Liz makes clear in her work is her use of low tech methodology. For example she hand cuts her designs rather than having them machine cut. The low tech ‘immediate sculpture’ creates three dimensional forms in a painterly style by layering colors and using a flat material. Her low tech method combined with the use of symmetrical shapes and organic repetition achieves striking art work that harmonizes energetically with the bright colors and hard edges of the silhouettes.
Liz speaks of the constant layering and editing needed for this installation as if she is painting. The way she works with the unique feeling of this space shows how space itself is paramount to her overall methodology. The feel of each gallery changes the artists’ process, in turn shaping the way the piece will communicate with the viewer. Liz emphasizes the importance of a structured and planned idea to then enable the freedom of abandoning that formal planning. This touches on her desire to balance order and chaos within an artistic work.
Common principles of design that inspires Liz Miller are symmetry and repetition because of the calming and positive feelings a person can infer from these qualities. She achieves balance by contrasting flatness and dimensionality, painting and sculpture, order and chaos, beauty and devastation. Another theme is mixing organic and inorganic shapes, creating a “fiction of narrative” as she puts it, within her work. An example of this is a past work, Repetitive Deception Scheme 2011, in which she has taken the shapes of weapons and abstracted them by mirroring their image, then repeating this new shape in colorful felt installations reminiscent of a psychedelic dinosaur ribcage. Liz expresses that her current artistic practice resonates through new projects and she communicates that this influence happens consciously and/or unconsciously in all artists’ work. A friend observed in her Memesis piece, that she had “made a weapon out of Stills work.” This suggests strongly to me that there is an inherent interconnectedness of context and content, and making art becomes, as Miller states, “a dialog with your own life.” It is made obvious that the artist is aware of the concept of abstract art by her playing with the viewers perceptions through these shapes in the arrangement and color.
It was really eye opening to see someone’s work and hear them talk about themselves, their process, the things they are drawn to and why. It really communicated to me the importance of context within artwork and I connected so much more to the art once I heard Liz’ statement. Her strong Minnesotan accent colored the lecture, drew me into the stories she was telling, and made her presentation that much more interesting. I asked her after the lecture if she had any advice for a young person who makes art but isn’t fully self aware of her motives in her process. She reassured me to keep making art, and that kind of understanding can come later. This statement inspires me to constantly become more aware of my choices within my artistic process, to not be afraid to change things, ask myself why am using certain elements and how those choices are effected by space and use of opposing principals.

+ drop city

On February 18, see a special sneak preview of the documentary, DROP CITY. Come see a hot-off-the-press screening of the film prior to its release, and meet the filmmaker Joan Grossman and producer Tom McCourt as well as Drop City co-founders Clark Richert and Richard Kallweit, and some of the other original Droppers. Drop City was an artists community on the Southern plains of Colorado that is often cited as the first rural commune of the 1960s. Their iconic domes were built from found and scavenged materials and were an inspiration to a global counterculture.

Saturday, February 18 | 4PM
FREE with museum admission

concourse A; artwork at DIA

Shadow Happy by Brianna Martray softly enhances a pathway to Concourse A with the addition of 10,000 tiny origami birds folded from pages of a novel written by the artist, appear ready for individual flight. The birds are gently intertwined with elegant glass circles that glisten and shine as the sun rises and sets over the bridge. Both the birds and glass circles have a story to tell.



along one of the moving sidewalks to my frontier flight this xmas were beautiful origami, playing in shadows and light, it inspired me, and i remembered to look up the artist upon returning home. this is what i found...


Artist Statement:

SELF: (Folded paper cranes) Once upon a time, I wrote a novel. I took me eight years and upon completion a New York City Literary Agent asked for a copy. I reread it again, decided it wasn’t good enough and never sent it. In 2006, I started folding the stacks of manuscript pages lying around my house into origami cranes. Fast forward to the summer of 2010 when both my computer and my back up hard drive are stolen and the only finished copy of my novel lives in 10,000 folder paper cranes, the shadow of thousands of hours of work, the history of my creative journey, remnants of a former self.

COMMUNITY: (Glued circles of tempered glass) Everything is made from the same 118 known elements. What if all those elements were once one, just one giant Something. Let’s say That Something was an enormous sheet of glass but it was lonely because It was all that Was. So it shattered, broke into trillions upon billions of little pieces so it could experience itself as infinite possibility; as a solar wind, a ponderosa pine, a human being. And we’re all just jagged pieces of broken glass with our sharp parts that can cut deep, but we can also laugh and love and bump into each other; find the pieces that fit and hold onto those as best as we know how. And with the fault line of experience, something shattered becomes solid again can reflect the gift of light more brilliantly than without, we need contrast to see, a shadow to rise from, we are more beautiful broken.

Brianna Martray is a working artist in the Santa Fe Arts District of Denver, Colorado. She is a painter, sculptor and installation artist. Brianna is fascinated with biomorphic shapes that are repeated throughout the infinite smallness and infinite bigness of the natural world and the cosmos. Within that context, she thinks of herself as a landscape artist exploring new possibilities of surreal and unique flora and fauna.

Brianna was recently interviewed on Denver’s 9NEWS about her installation piece and listed as #15 in 5280 Magazine’s 27 reasons to love Colorado in the summer. Awards: Museum of Fine Art Houston Curatorial Award for Excellence in Sculpture; Cain Park Third Prize; 2009 Best Studio Artist of the Year, Arts District on Santa Fe Drive.

http://flydenver.com/artexhibits
photo by Adam Halloway on flickr