Visual Arts: Current Exhibits
Shelter: Beauty Sustainability, Function
1/19-5/17
Unlike other Arts Center exhibits that showcase the work of a single artist or group of artists, Shelter: Beauty, Sustainability, Function has instead been created by a group of professors, curators, students and volunteers, under the consultation of professional artists and architects. Together, this collaborative group worked to create and install an eco-centered and interactive exhibit. What does sustainability have to do with art? “Art is life and life is art”, Colorado State University Pueblo art professor, Maya Avina said.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude
1/26-4/19
Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s exhibit features signed posters about their works of art. Posters of The Gates, Central Park New York City, 1979-2005 and Over the River, Project for the Arkansas River, State of Colorado will be part of this exhibit which has been generously donated by Christo and Jeanne-Claude to the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center.
On March 6, at 6p.m., Christo and Jeanne-Claude will give a slide presentation and answer questions in the Arts Center Theatre that is free and open to the public.
Richard Hansen: Some Rocks, Some Water
2/2-5/3
Local artist, Richard Hansen, use innovation to interweave beauty and poetry in his environmentally sustainable public art. Some Rocks, Some Water takes the self imposed directive of raising awareness about natural and cultural systems back inside the hallowed walls of the Hoag Gallery. Inside the gallery, Hansen will marry his beautiful stone sculptural elements with what he describes as large-scale flow drawings of the Arkansas River drainage. Measuring approximately 7 feet tall and 3 feet wide, these Japanese inspired works on paper combine sweeping brush strokes with photo documentation and GPS (Geographic Positioning System) coordinates in ink. They are designed to reflect the sweep of water along the Arkansas River valley. These unique works are coupled with a series of rock sculptures and basins created specifically for this exhibit. A variety of basin, pillar and slab features will combine stone and steel to create the illusion of water with rock to complete this distinctive exhibit.
S.K. Cothren: Captured Earth
2/9-5/10
Captured Earth will feature abstract layer paintings by Sara Cothren. Her paintings display strong texture with abstract brush strokes, color and a variety of media. Cothren’s paintings provide an abstract study of colors interacting with texture. Her medium of choice is acrylic on canvas, supplemented with various textures and drawing tools such as sticks and knives. She also reuses materials such as magazines, newspapers and clothing.
In addition to her paintings, Cothren will exhibit the interactive junk mail sculpture, Mail Block, created on December 15, 2007, by members of the community. The sculpture will feature individual blocks of junk mail pasted together with statistics on the impact of junk mail on our environment. Viewers can interact with the pieces, move them around, form shapes and learn about junk mail.
Kate Leonard: Shallow Water
2/9-5/10
Kate Leonard presents abstract digital manipulated photos of landscapes and water in her Shallow Water. “My response to the landscape attempts to find connections between geometric and organic, often in ways that while informed by direct observation result in abstract imagery,” says Leonard about her work. She likes to combine different perspectives, creating images that suggest both aerial views and cross sections. She also mixes close-up detail with distant observations. The resulting imagery can become kaleidoscopic, or fractured, but such conditions exist in nature. Originating from small works on handmade papers to large collages of printed silk and paper on canvas, Leonard’s images seem like strange meeting grounds for dreamlike imagery.
SW Pisciotta: Nature on the Grid
2/9-5/10
Pueblo artist, Samuel Pisciotta presents Nature on the Grid, featuring mixed-media collage and digital montages focusing the nature of time. As a young boy, Pisciotta remembers sitting through a church sermon in which the minister showed the congregation an old photograph of a forgotten gold miner of 1849. He explained that the man had lived, been photographed, but had soon died and become forgotten. “That started my obsession with the passage of time that dominates the theme of my current work,” Pisciotta says. His work explores the idea of time as illusion, the nature of nostalgia, and the enigma of future self.
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