Here + Now
Here + Now
Curtis Center for the Arts
2349 E. Orchard Road, Greenwood Village, CO 80121
September 8–October 23, 2026
Curator: Mai Wyn Schantz
Admission: free
Review by Ayah Al-Masyabi
Here + Now, a group exhibition currently on view at the Curtis Center for the Arts, reunites the artists who were part of Mai Wyn Fine Art Gallery. The latter was a prominent commercial gallery led by the artist Mai Wyn Schantz on Santa Fe Drive in Denver. Schantz closed the space in 2020 due to COVID-19.
An installation view of the exhibition Here + Now at the Curtis Center for the Arts. Image by DARIA.
Schantz opened her gallery in 2013, where she consciously selected sixteen artists whose work harmonized with her own. As evidenced by the Here + Now exhibition, these artists work in a striking variety of mediums, ranging from ceramics to steel and wood sculptures to watercolor.
Mai Wyn Schantz, Adventure Awaits, oil on stainless steel. Image by DARIA.
Schantz’s signature oil on stainless steel paintings are also included in the show. Adventure Awaits, one of three of her cloud study works on display, depicts the sky at sunset. A range of mountains with green vegetation below sits at the bottom of the composition, but this landscape takes up less than a quarter of the image.
An installation view of the exhibition Here + Now at the Curtis Center for the Arts. Image by DARIA.
The real focus is the dramatic colors and details of the sky, with orange-tinted clouds at the top and purplish blue and gray clouds below, all contrasting with the bright blue sky behind. Schantz leaves an unpainted stainless steel border around her oil works, pointing to the difference between the representational portrayals of the natural world and our human means of capturing and contemplating it with industrialized materials.
An installation view of Rian Kerrane’s work in the exhibition Here + Now at the Curtis Center for the Arts. Image by DARIA.
In a hands-on installation, Rian Kerrane invites viewers to interact with her work to ponder the challenges of modern communication. A long wooden table filled with branding irons lines one wall, with each iron featuring a pattern or recognizable shape; some have even been burnt into the wood table itself.
An installation view of Rian Kerrane’s work in the exhibition Here + Now at the Curtis Center for the Arts. Image by DARIA.
Along the opposite wall, Kerrane’s Ironing Board and Emoji Prints are on display. Four of the framed Emoji Prints—each an image of a single branding iron burnt into the white paper—hang on the wall, and the hand-made, wooden Ironing Board sits below, the phrase “THIS PRESENT MOMENT THAT LIVES ON TO BECOME LONG AGO” burnt into the light wood.
Rian Kerrane, Emoji Prints, scorched watercolor paper. Image by DARIA.
Rian Kerrane, Speech Bubble, fabricated steel and found step stool. Image by DARIA.
A binder of the Emoji Prints sits atop the board, and printed instructions direct visitors to choose a print from the binder to switch out in the Speech Bubble sculpture nearby. Made of nearly pitch black, fabricated steel, Speech Bubble features an oversized word bubble cut out of a flat sheet of metal perched on a freestanding pole and round platform, approximately six feet tall.
An installation view of Rian Kerrane’s work in the exhibition Here + Now at the Curtis Center for the Arts. Image by DARIA.
Next to the sculpture, a library stool allows visitors to reach the top of the bubble to remove the current emoji on display in the oval window in the steel and replace it with another. By combining emoji images used to communicate via email and text messages with older technologies like branding irons, Kerrane asks us to consider the evolution of language.
Charles (Chuck) Parson, Emergence Through the Momentary and Point, dimensional drawing and mixed media. Image by DARIA.
Charles (Chuck) Parson uses industrial materials to contemplate how we confront and coexist with nature and the landscape. In the drawing Emergence Through the Momentary, he portrays the flat skyline of the Colorado prairie in graphite on a long, narrow, white paper ground framed in clear, floating Plexiglas. He augments the central gray circle on the horizon line with half and full circles of peach and light blue acrylic bolted on top of the clear plastic covering the drawing.
A detail view of Charles (Chuck) Parson’s Emergence Through the Momentary and Point, dimensional drawing and mixed media. Image by DARIA.
On either end of the work, Parson draws two smaller circles on the horizon that he also covers with additional plastic circles, but he interrupts each graphite circle with a T-shape emphasized by silver screws. By making his abstract landscape drawing dimensional and even architectural with these materials associated with building, Parson prompts us to question the myth of untouched nature and the appeal of order and geometry.
An installation view of the exhibition Here + Now at the Curtis Center for the Arts. Image by DARIA.
Here + Now brings back together the artists from Mai Wyn Fine Art with work focused on nature filtered through human experience, as well as on communication, using distinctive images and materials. The show is also a testament to community and friendship, and the closeness in the Colorado art community. See the exhibition for yourself through October 23.
Ayah Al-Masyabi (she/her) is a journalist, writer, and artist whose work revolves around the power of stories. She has been published in Westword, the Colorado Sun, The Mantelpiece, Literary Purveyor, Youth Communication, Inspire the Mind, and YR Media. You can find her on Instagram here: @ayahalmasyabi.
