DARIA Art Magazine

Jul 5

Jul 5 Made in Colorado

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.

Jun 28

Jun 28 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.

Jun 26

Jun 26 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.

Jun 22

Jun 22 High Strangeness

Madeleine Boyson

Review

On view through July 2 at Lane Meyer Projects in Denver, High Strangeness features eight paintings by Littleton, Colorado-born and -based artist Mark Farrell that are gleefully sinister and ominously playful. Farrell’s works are ideal for the room in which they are featured. The exhibition evokes a corresponding impishness to RiNo’s PoN pOn art bar—through which visitors must walk to reach the project space—while indulging in macabre spectacles that parody cultural façades. But Farrell does more than blur the line between “classic horror and the suburban mundane,” producing multi-layered scenes that delight in the true comedic horror of living in the twenty-first century: life itself.

Jun 13

Jun 13 Skyspace

Jillian Blackwell

Green Box Arts opened James Turrell’s Green Mountain Falls Skyspace in the Red Butte Recreational Area near Pikes Peak this past year. Visiting the installation for the formal Sunset or Sunrise Shows feels like a pilgrimage, requiring an arduous journey to get to the building that houses the artwork, but viewing the sky at the final destination is well worth the trek.

Jun 8

Jun 8 Sanctuary

Stacy J. Platt

Review

Todd Herman’s exhibition Sanctuary at Mercury Framing in Boulder invites associations. He displays his photographs serially and they read like a film strip. Taking in the exhibit, your choice becomes one of narration—of how you will view these images as a story and decide what they mean. Ultimately, the meaning is continually shifting.

May 29

May 29 Clerestory

J. Benjamin Burney

Review

Ethan’s Jackson’s clerestory takes the camera obscura and, using mirrors and sunlight, evolves it into an immersive art experience where the outside is projected inside. The inside in this case is a wing of the Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales Library Branch on the first floor, in the Story Time Tower which is located behind the children’s section. Created as part of the City of Denver’s Public Art Program in 2016, clerestory integrates architecture and optical artwork to create a scene of nature on the vaulted ceiling of the tower.

May 26

May 26 Lasting Impressions / Onward and Upward

Paloma Jimenez

Review

Lasting Impressions and Onward and Upward: Shark’s Ink at the University of Colorado Art Museum in Boulder present prints from an array of artistic movements to tell the idiosyncratic story of the United States. The works on view collectively assert that printmaking, long used as an accessible means for a wider audience to view an artwork or a message, pulses with an inherent urgency rooted in the desire for communication.

May 16

May 16 Art in Black and White

Dani/elle Cunningham

Review

At 3 Square Art (3SA) Gallery’s 4th annual juried Art in Black and White exhibition in Fort Collins, curator and gallery owner Kumiko S. McKee leans into this novelty, assembling 51 works by 29 Colorado artists and one Chinese artist. Working in vastly different media, these artists are a dynamic example of not only regional and international talent, but the boundlessness of a classic style.

May 8

May 8 Thomas Yi

Parker Yamasaki

Artist Profile

Thomas Yi grew up around food in Littleton, just south of Denver. His parents—both Korean immigrants—owned an American-style diner where Yi spent his afternoons as a teen. Eventually he worked at that diner, before transferring his skills to various kitchen jobs in Denver. In 2016 he was admitted to CU Boulder to study film, but a BFA foundations class redirected him toward photography. His images reference both the food and the cinema that have influenced him, a wily mix of Wong Kar-wai and City Wok takeout.

May 3

May 3 Duality

Paloma Jimenez

Review

Duality: Contemporary Works by Indigenous Artists at the Longmont Museum gathers together artists who navigate the societal and material complexities of existing in the United States as members of a group whose stories have largely been told through a colonial lens. In a protest against homogeneous, mainstream descriptions of Indigenous people, Gregg Deal, the curator and a participating artist, orchestrates an emotionally tangible exhibition featuring the works of JayCee Beyale, Julie Buffalohead, Gregg Deal, Nicholas Galanin, Jeffrey Gibson, April Holder, Chelsea Kaiah, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Natani Notah, Jamie Okuma, Virgil Ortiz, Danielle SeeWalker, and Steven Yazzie.

Apr 26

Apr 26 Pioneer Printmaker

Genevieve Waller

Review

Over the course of many years, the Sangre de Cristo Arts & Conference Center in Pueblo has amassed hundreds of drawings, paintings, and prints by the American artist Gene Kloss. A selection of these works from the artist’s nearly 70-year artistic career are now on view in the Arts Center through May 23. While Kloss is mostly known for her depictions of New Mexican landscapes and Native peoples and culture, the exhibition contends that what is most remarkable about her work is her skill and innovation as a printmaker, no matter the subject. Yet the relationship between artist and subject always matter, and the questions that Kloss’s themes raise about representation may be the most intriguing aspect of the show.

Apr 19

Apr 19 Defining Our Voices

Laura I. Miller

Review

Defining Our Voices: Evolving into the Artists We Want to Be at the new Davis Gallery on the University of Denver campus recognizes and celebrates the liminal space between the milestones we use to gauge success in the art world. Featuring eight University of Denver alumni who graduated in the last five years, the exhibition provides space for emerging artists to explore how their relationship to art has changed over time.

Apr 14

Apr 14 Young, Gifted and Black

Djamila Ricciardi

Review

The traveling exhibition currently on view at the University of Denver’s Vicki Myhren Gallery is titled Young, Gifted and Black: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art. The exhibition presents forty artworks made over the last 35 years by an impressive bevy of artists, all of whom could be accurately described as young, gifted, and Black. Curated by Antwaun Sargent and Matt Wycoff, the “lovely precious dream” of this exhibit is to reflect and celebrate the diverse range of experiences within the Black cultural milieu while situating the collection as part of a larger, ongoing dialogue happening in the art world about power, representation, identity, and access.

Apr 4

Apr 4 Art Student and Alumni Invitational

Vanessa Kauffman Zimmerly

Review

Artmaking is the pursuit of expressing our inner life through metaphorical and material means. At the Arapahoe Community College Art Student and Alumni Invitational, on view now at the Colorado Gallery of the Arts on the Littleton campus, ten artists bring their ideas into being through drawing and painting, installation, metalwork, photography, sculpture, and textiles. The premise that materiality holds meaning is what connects them.

Mar 28

Mar 28 Nature, Flora, Fauna, Earth

MG Bernard and Maggie Sava

Review

The exhibition celebrates the upcoming onset of spring by featuring works that visually depict nature—such as flowers, animals, water, and fire—from Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum’s permanent collection. Shown together are antique quilts from the Sharee and Murray Newman collection as well as art quilts from the Rooted in Tradition collection. [2] While Nature, Flora, Fauna, Earth speaks to enthusiasts of the textile-based art form, it raises questions about the relationship between traditional and art quilting: What do antique and modern quilts have in common?

Mar 24

Mar 24 Rice & Resilience

Dani/elle Cunningham

Review

While many wax nostalgic about their favorite childhood foods or those specific to their culture, food plays a deeper, sometimes mystical role in Colorado artists’ work at History Colorado Center’s new exhibition Colorado’s Asian Food Culture: Rice & Resilience. The Japanese Arts Network and Asian Pacific Islander (API) community partnered with the museum for this exhibition, pairing Asian artists’ voices with testimonies from restaurateurs and other community members to highlight the wealth of Asian cuisine in the state and food’s ability to transmit generational knowledge.

Mar 14

Mar 14 Immortalized: Lens and Light

Shana Cruz-Thompson

Review

Immortalized: Lens and Light at the Center for the Arts Evergreen celebrates glass and light as mediums for self-expression. Curator Sara Miller first approached the theme literally, selecting stained glass and mosaic pieces by Evergreen artists Trudy Chiddix, Maria Sheets, and Susan Wechsler. Expanding on the idea of glass by looking at the form of a lens, Miller added photographic works by Thomas Carr, Ron Johnson, Raj Manickam, Stephen Podrasky, Ward Russell, John Shelton, and Michael Trupiano—all members of the Colorado-based collective Photo Pensato.

Mar 10

Mar 10 Entanglements

J. Benjamin Burney

Review

Art has an entangled relationship with nature. As the philosopher Aristotle famously said, “Art not only imitates nature, but also completes its deficiencies.” This ancient ideal is critiqued and expounded upon in Entanglements, a new exhibition at Metropolitan State University’s Center for Visual Art in Denver. As a lens-based exhibition featuring eleven artists, the show explores our connections to the natural world by illustrating the complex relationships humans have with nature and its resources. These works question humanity’s role in the natural world as caretakers, observers, and even destroyers.

Mar 1

Mar 1 Samantha Johnston | Month of Photography Denver

Laura I. Miller

Interview

To celebrate all photography has to offer, Denver-based artist Mark Sink launched the Month of Photography Denver (MOP) in 2004. The biennial festival was inspired by Houston’s FotoFest and brings exhibitions, portfolio reviews, artist talks, and more to Denver in March. “Really, it was a very grassroots effort, and Mark was amazing in building it himself with volunteers and limited funding,” says Samantha Johnston, executive director and curator for the Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CPAC), which now runs the festival. “Since the beginning, the festival has been all about bringing the community together around photography in Denver.”