This Is Spark Annual Members’ Show | two of two
This Is Spark Annual Members’ Show | two of two
Spark Gallery
1200 Acoma Street, Denver, CO 80204
May 9–June 3, 2025
Admission: free
Review by Raymundo Muñoz
After an almost year-long hiatus (and recent successful fundraiser), Denver’s OG, self-supporting, artist-run art space Spark Gallery is back with the inaugural members’ exhibition This Is Spark! Spread over two shows, this annual, open-themed exhibition invites full and associate members (i.e. Tier 1 and 2; supporting members a.k.a. Tier 3 get their own show later in the year) to come together and display a few works of their own choosing.
An installation view of the This Is Spark Annual Members’ Show. Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
Part One, unfortunately, has already passed, yielding a solid roster that included the likes of Alicia Bailey, Peter Illig, Tom Linker, Susan Rubin, and Mai Wyn Schantz, to name a few. Part Two, though, is now on view and worth your time and consideration. So, stroll on over to the gallery’s new location at the Civic Center Cultural Complex, across the plaza from the Denver Art Museum’s shiny Hamilton Building, and reacquaint yourself with this quality crew.
Eric Wall, Yellow Boy, acrylic on hand-cut woven canvases. Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
From their previous location at the anything-goes street party of the Art District on Santa Fe to the institutionally legit Golden Triangle Creative District, Spark has some things to get used to. Moving sucks for most people, and art galleries are no exception. It’s not so much the shuffling of hanging hardware, paint buckets, and pedestals across town that is tough; it’s more difficult to get your hard-earned patrons to shuffle along with you. Inevitably, some people will seek the latest art offerings mistakenly at the old location. Others will complain about the lack of free street parking. Still others will wonder where the hell the Mad Greens fast casual restaurant is (it’s next door). Get past all that and therein lies the long-beloved Spark.
Barbara Baer, Go Outside, plastic film and steel rod. Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
In the shadows of the surrounding futuristic silver buildings downtown, good natural light still finds its way into Spark’s western-facing wall of windows, and thankfully so. In the northwest corner, Barbara Baer’s buoyant mobile work Go Outside floats and lazily revolves in the late spring breeze, with its translucent leaf designs just soaking up the sun’s rays and transmuting them into soft, leaf-shaped shadows. It’s a soft welcome, a marshmallow of a piece that invites you to kick back and enjoy the season.
An installation view of the This Is Spark Annual Members’ Show with works by Deborah Howard (left) and Scott Lancashire (right). Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
Wendy Clough, The Brave One, oil on board. Image courtesy of Spark Gallery.
Scott Lancashire’s lovely diptych landscape nearby aids the atmosphere with his smooth and blocky oil painting style that’s reminiscent of block relief prints. Around the corner, Wendy Clough’s seaside landscape painting The Brave One is idyllic, yet more on the fantastical side. This naturalistic tone carries on through many of the works in the north side of the gallery (the organization of which might be inspired by the abundance of sunlight streaming in).
Elaine Ricklin, River Rocks at 10,000 Feet, archival pigment print. Image courtesy of Spark Gallery.
Sally Elliott, Turtle Island, gouache on paper. Image courtesy of Spark Gallery.
Elaine Ricklin’s bubbly photographs of colorful pebbles in a river (aptly titled River Rocks at 10,000 Feet) converse well enough with the vibrant energy of Sally Elliott’s nature-inspired gouache paintings across the way. Elliott’s works Awakening and Turtle Island meanwhile depict hearts opened up to animals and bugs that are nibbling on plants, framed by feathers and flowers, and bursting with fun summer garden vibes.
Michael Herburger, Passing Scene, archival photographic print from 120 format color film negative. Image courtesy of Spark Gallery.
Jill Powers, Atmospheric Layers, kozo fiber. Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
Perpendicular to this visual conversation is that of Michael Herburger and Jill Powers. Herburger’s pinhole photographs capture landscapes in quiet and meditative ways, stretching time and light across hills and fields. Opposite Herburger’s works, Powers's elegant kozo fiber-based compositions pull away from the walls and call to mind natural elements like air, water, and the simple structural beauty of plant seeds. The fine yet strong natural fibers arranged in organic shapes cast soft shadows that seem to undulate like coral underwater (in her Atmospheric Layers in particular).
Michaele Keyes. Old Ruin, wood, buried canvas, stones, and shards. Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
A detail view of Michaele Keyes’ Old Ruin, wood, buried canvas, stones, and shards. Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
Also on the naturalistic side and approximately midway through the space, Michaele Keyes’ mixed media works collect and accentuate found objects in a manner that appears randomly composed, yet they are anything but. Rich natural hues, curling old canvas, weathered wood, and a bric-a-brac of “stones and shards” express the rawness of objects aging (notably in Old Friend and Old Ruin). These sit well next to Herburger’s photographic reflections on the passage of time.
An installation view of the This Is Spark Annual Members’ Show with work by Deborah Howard in the foreground. Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
Relating to time as well, Stories, a collection of sculptural works by Deborah Howard, suggests a historical narrative told through glass longwing brogues, brass women’s lace-up boots, and a polymer-modified, gypsum-covered old suitcase. These pieces are mysterious and intriguing.
An installation view of the This Is Spark Annual Members’ Show. Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
Much of the rest of the exhibition musters intrigue through an abstract lens, ranging from mathematical and reductive to random, emotional, and recontextualized. Take the structural works of Bill Ballas, Gary Manuel, Annalee Schorr, and Eric Wall. Each artist offers hard-edged geometric pieces that break down reality into blocks, strips, and striking color interactions.
Bill Ballas, Don’t step on a rake, oil media collage on illustration board. Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
Ballas sets a lively tone with his complex, abstract, mixed media paintings Don’t Step on a Rake and Singing Waiters. Marked by decisive linework and punctuated by sharp pops of color, his work comes off as both musical and architectural.
Gary Manuel, Box on Box, wood. Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
Nearby, Manuel’s Box on Box mottled-red-painted wooden boxes intersect in a vertically oriented sculpture that seems to balance on a vertex. Its angular silhouette and hard-edged shadows work well with the gallery’s sharply angled southern windows. Flanked by two small, geometric, red-colored sculptural works, this repetition of elements makes the most of an arguably awkward architectural feature (and home of the establishment’s fire extinguisher, no less).
Eric Wall, Cardinal Error, acrylic on hand-cut woven canvases. Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
Meanwhile, Wall’s compulsive abstract works Cardinal Error and Yellow Boy utilize hard geometry and an algorithmic approach to mix colored patterns with repeated twirls of cut canvas. Part paintings, part textile works, the produced effect buzzes with beautiful saw-toothed gradients of raw and painted canvas. The highly ordered and meticulous process of hand-cutting, arranging, and re-stretching the canvas mingles with chance (at least partly), resulting in compositions that rely on what’s hidden to emphasize what remains.
Annalee Schorr, Off Kilter Color Wheel, acrylic and duct tape on Plexiglass. Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
Annalee Schorr’s geometric abstract works exist in a similar realm as Wall’s, but with some key distinctions. Where Wall’s works are painterly and detailed in their approach, Schorr’s brightly colored works seem more mathematical in their precision and concepts. The artist explores color relationships in Off Kilter Color Wheel and levels of order in Twenty-Four Six-Inch Lines on Twelve-Inch Squares.
Annalee Schorr, Twenty-Four Six-Inch Lines on Twelve-Inch Squares, duct tape on Plexiglass. Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
The former draws your eye into a vanishing point of multi-colored acrylic painted lines, duct tape, and the white of the gallery walls (seen through Plexiglass). The latter lays out the rules of its composition in a separate title card, taking the same ingredients (24 pieces of 6-inch-long colored tape) and changes how they interact over 9 square panels. Is it just a coincidence that Spark has 24 full members? Could this be a playful investigation into how members might interact, from totally random to highly ordered?
Katharine Smith-Warren, Taking Off, mixed media. Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
Janice McDonald, Spirit, collage. Image courtesy of Spark Gallery.
On the loose side of the abstract spectrum, we have Barbara Carpenter, Janice McDonald, Kathryn Oberdorfer, and Katharine Smith-Warren. McDonald and Smith-Warren recontextualize their source material through collage with different approaches and effects. Where Smith-Warren’s textured and energetic mixed media collage works Taking Off and Stages fill her canvases with cut paper shapes, magazine scraps, drawings, and paintings, McDonald chooses a simpler approach and aesthetic. Her beautifully balanced collage works on paper rely instead on softly torn edges and ample negative space, composing evocative pieces like Essence and Spirit with remarkably little.
Barbara Carpenter, Untitled, photographic giclée print. Image courtesy of Spark Gallery.
Kathryn Oberdorfer, It Takes Time to See, acrylic, pastel, and collage on canvas. Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
Across from McDonald’s collages, Carpenter’s digitally manipulated abstract photographs seem to melt and shimmer before your eyes. Shot through wavy glass blocks that wildly distort the subjects of her photographs, these works suggest that what you see largely depends on the lens you see through. Nearby It Takes Time To See, a striking abstract expressionist painting by Kathryn Oberdorfer, seems to thunder with emerging, dark, cloud-like forms within a boldly colored composition. Indeed, maybe time itself can be a lens, altering what the viewer sees and experiences emotionally in the work. And in a similar way, it takes time to see what a new space can be, what conversations will take place, and who will be talking.
An installation view of the This Is Spark Annual Members’ Show. Image by Raymundo Muñoz.
In all honesty, This is Spark: Part Two ain’t exactly a fiery comeback, more a good and crackling slow burn, but the spark carries on all the same. The flames will likely flicker higher and brighter as the year progresses, so consider this rather a time of gathering and stoking. As such, in the consistent and considerate way that Spark distributes their talent on the regular, the inaugural annual members’ exhibition is more a taste of things to come. So, keep coming back, because the Spark surely remains.
Raymundo Muñoz (he/him) is a Denver-based printmaker and photographer. He is the director/co-curator of Alto Gallery and board president of 501(c)(3) non-profit Birdseed Collective. Ray is guided by the principle that art is a bridge, and it connects us to ourselves and each other across time and space.
