Patricia Aaron - Best in Show!

This is Colorado, an exhibit held each year to showcase the work of Colorado artists, is currently being held at the Madden Museum of Art.  It's a new location for the traditional show, though the rest of the tradition seems to have remained intact.  This is Colorado is a "juried exhibit", meaning that the works are judged by locals and then awarded the art equivalents of gold, silver and bronze.  "Gold", in this case, is actually called "Best in Show", and we are thrilled to announce that the gold medal goes to...Patricia Aaron!

This is Colorado featured Aaron's ink-and-encaustic work Youngstown, circa 1964.  The piece is a large-scale cityscape rendered in a vibrantly colored, abstract combination of beeswax, India ink, graphite and other materials on a birch panel.  The result is a brilliant mish-mash of colors, movement and shapes that simultaneously pull the viewers eye in different directions, which actually recreates the bustling, stimulating feeling of being in the middle of a crowded, industrial urban area.  In looking at the abstract work it is almost possible to make out the blurred outlines of buildings against the grainy, gray sky that framed Aaron's childhood in the industrial city of Youngstown, Ohio.

(Underwater Maze, archival ink on plexiglass)

Aaron's work will next be featured in Translations Gallery's upcoming show New Perspectives.  The show will present the work of artists who approach familiar topics in unexpected and non-traditional ways - in Aaron's case, cityscapes and personal history done in a slightly wild, somewhat unsentimental, abstract yet comprehensible style.  The show opens at Translations on February 16th and runs through April 2nd.

Yee Haw, Cowboys...and Girls. Contemporary Art says Howdy.

Last week began the annual Denver Stock Show.  As usual, it commenced with a parade involving several covered wagons, a variety of Western-style beauty queens, lots of people on horses wearing chaps and fancy hats, and, inexplicably, several old-school fire trucks.  There was also a somewhat unnerving mascot dressed as Woody the Cowboy.

As a huge crowd of pedestrians, some of whom possibly just got caught up in the shuffle on their way to lunch, stood around chatting and blocking traffic, a crowd of stampeding longhorns was shepherded down 17th Street by cowboys-and-girls (cowfolk? cowpeople?)

Suppressing an unexplained fear of farm animals, we braved the crowd and observed as the clamor moved uptown.  

The whole parade experience was extremely patriotic.  Pedestrians of all ages cheered and waved flags and cowgirls in fancy outfits smiled blindingly (and really, who isn't a sucker for a sparkly cowboy hat?)

All in all, an hour well spent.  

In honor of the stock show, Translations is currently featuring artists influenced by the culture of the American West.  The show is wide-ranging, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, jewelry and photographs, and showcasing both abstract art (traditional for Translations) and realistic work.  While the show certainly features traditional images of the west, bucking broncos are not the only offerings.
 rainbow-colored rust on an old Dodge

Bryan David Griffith
701 Dodge Print #3










an incredibly detailed rendering of Johnny Cash

Brian Curran
Johnny Cash










semi-abstract longhorn skeletons

Paula Hudson
17th Street Canyon






and traditional western landscapes approached in a thoroughly nontraditional manner give the show the element of surprise and open it up to viewers who may not necessarily be interested in conventional western art.  Even if Cowboys-and-Indians isn't your thing, there's probably something here for you anyway.  We love Bryan David Griffith's crazy colors, Paula Hudson's unusual approach to traditional subject matter, Jillian Pate's lace-like metal work, and the stunning digital prints done by Izah Gallagher.  (For the show's full catalogue, click HERE).  
Contemporary Western Art will be showing at Translations from January 6, 2011 - February 12.    

Do You Know Laura Carpenter? 100,000 People at D.I.A. Do.

Don’t worry - getting your work an audience of 100,000 people a day is simple. To accumulate this volume of viewers, you can either broadcast on the Times Square Jumbotron, which sounds costly, or you can get Denver International Airport to hang your work in one of its terminals.  Laura Carpenter, an artist with Translations Gallery since April of 2010, is taking the latter approach, participating in DIA’s Shows Promise, exhibited on level 6 of the Jeppesen Terminal East.  True, the airport is not a typical exhibition space for fine art, but it has proven surprisingly adept at housing the work of well known artists around Denver, allowing a massive audience to view the artwork each day as they mosey through the airport terminal (or sprint depending on how late they are for their flights and how long the TSA screening lasted).

Carpenter, a Colorado-based artist who is also a Masters of Fine Arts student at Colorado State University, is getting a huge amount of exposure from the Shows Promise exhibit.  The show emphasizes Colorado’s landscapes and history while providing artists seeking higher education with an audience of international viewers who get to see the work hassel-free as they travel across the terminal on one of those moving sidewalks.

Path

oil on canvas

2010

Carpenter’s work moves effortlessly between concrete objects and abstract images.  Her pieces are surprising and unexpected; partially realized representations of woods and houses are rendered in vivid colors that seem oddly at home in the work despite the noticeable contradiction of Carpenter’s bright blues and bold yellows with the muted

greens and browns typically imagined to be the base colors of the Colorado landscape.

Inside/Outside

oil on panel

2010

These works are a seamless combination of natural and imagined elements, combining traditional Colorado scenery with Carpenter's dreamlike execution, making her work fascinating to view.  Her work will next be featured in Translations Gallery’s upcoming Contemporary Western Art show, which begins January 6, 2011 and runs through February 12.

Shows Promise will be up in DIA until February 2011.