UPCYCLED: Spring/Summer 2010 is a group exhibition of wearable art made from recycled materials, featuring the work of Judith Selby Lang, Sara Goldenberg, and the Wearable Shelter Project. Each of these works shows the hidden beauty and value in the detritus of our consumer society. For the past ten years, Judith Selby Lang has been collecting trash on Kehoe Beach in Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California together with her husband Richard Lang. As a befitting representation of their shared passion, she created her wedding ensemble entirely from reused, recycled materials. Boulder-based artist Sara Goldenberg White shows an installation including several gowns with surrounding environment made from collected scrap and waste materials. A design-team at the Philadelphia University of the Arts created Wearable Shelters as a solution for a hypothetical post-disaster scenario in a metropolitan area. Constructed from repurposed thrift-store sleeping bags, exercise clothing, and performance jackets, the pieces act as protective all-weather gear in the day and insulating shelter at night.

This exhibition is curated by Jennifer Heath and Joan Markowitz in connection with Resurrections: ECO-logy and ECO-nomy, on view at the Boulder Public Library from May 1 to June 30, 2010.

Humor & Pathos aptly describes Gary Sweeney’s approach to art and life in general. Contagiously charismatic with a refined taste for wittiness, Sweeney’s visual vocabulary includes common icons of popular culture, ranging from hand-painted advertisement and neon signs to television shows and road trip memorabilia. This all-American aesthetic, reminiscent of his 1950s Southern California childhood, has an unthreatening, familiar appeal. But this keen observer of civilization’s phenomena and societal oddities leaves us strangely bemused, wondering weather we should laugh or cry in the face of our own imperfections. Within the easy-going world of Sweeney’s creation, we may happen upon the serious side of the human condition.

Sweeney, who is now based in San Antonio, Texas, has lived in Colorado for many years and is well remembered here, especially for his work America, Why I Love Her, a two-panel relief map of the United States on permanent display at Denver International Airport. Technically well-versed in printmaking and figure drawing, Sweeney is best known for his conceptual text and language-based work. His exhibition at BMoCA includes a neon sign installation inspired by a true love story and a large-scale house of cards as a powerful symbol for instability. The exhibition continues with a mosaic made from cups inserted into the chain link fence in Boulder’s Central Park, across from the museum.

Through monotypes, serigraphs, charcoal drawings and a mural installation we get a glimpse of the melding of histories, traditions, culture and politics of our ever expanding and diversified population. Additionally, Ortega will create murals in collaboration with students from “I Have A Dream” Foundation of Boulder County and The Family Learning Center. Following their display at BMoCA during the exhibition, the murals will be on view at the Boulder Public Library and Denver Public Library. This exhibition is organized in connection with the Denver Biennial of the Americas 2010. Additional support comes from the Boulder Arts Commission and the Kevin Luff Family Fund

The relationship between the Baker family and Andrea Modica came from the artists interest in farming, wishing to socially engage the people who put food on our tables. Focusing on a slaughterhouse, Modica investigated southern Colorado, searching for a community that would be open to her photo explorations. Two hours from Boulder and sandwiched between Fort Carson military base and the Air Force Academy lays the city of Fountain, Colorado. The city, with a population of 15,000, houses a community of families tied together by the realities of war and the business of government. Word of mouth led her to the Bakers, a family that in the end permitted Modica to enter their world and observe the evolution of their slaughterhouse family.

It was clear from the beginning that her interest laid in the four children. What is an everyday existence for these kids? School, work and play in rural America, the young Bakers sustain a contemporary farming life. In this series of 24 photographs Modica captures poignant images of children un-phased by the viewers who will analyze their existence, feel sympathy, and ask questions that cannot be answered.

A Guggenheim fellow, Modica has exhibited her work extensively in the United States and Europe. Modica’s photographs are featured in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institute, the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, among others. A longtime professor and guest lecturer, Modica has taught at numerous institutions including State University of New York at Oneonta, Princeton University, Parsons School of Design, and Colorado College. Modica is currently an Associate Professor of photography at Drexel University. She currently resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Lunenburg, Vermont.

Wilcoxon lives and works in Sausalito, California. She received her BFA and MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She is the recipient of two Pollock/Krasner Foundation Grants and has been exhibited and collected widely. Her houseboat, the Delta Queen, and intricately adorned car are the manifestations of a life of relative simplicity lived consciously and with an eye always open to aesthetics.

For many years artists and architects have explored the multiple dimensions of urban and rural environments. Two University of Colorado professors-Richard Saxton in the Art and Art History department and Rob Pyatt in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning have challenged their students to revisit the age old debate; can urban exist in the rural and can the rural exist in the urban. Two different and sophisticated projects ensued with the goal of functionality and community participation.

The BASELINE GROUP is a special topics course at CU-Boulder that engages fine art students-both graduate and undergraduate-in the processes of designing and implementing tangible large-scale projects. This class encourages students to develop work that is community-based, site-specific, and to incorporate non-traditional media and ideas. This first installation, titled the “Chicken Shack Village” explores rural aesthetics, farming, and “intuitive building.” The project was created through 2-semesters of experiential activities and hands-on workshops that involved visiting artists Haiko Meijer from the Dutch design team Onix, and Marjetica Potrc, an award-winning artist from Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Urban Hens, a Boulder-based organization, captures that idea and adds an educational perspective about healthy living and environmental responsibility with its goal of implementing a citywide backyard chicken coop movement. The Children, Youth and Environment Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder Going Local, and the Institute for Intentionally Sustainable Neighborhoods engaged University of Colorado, College of Architecture and Urban Planning instructor Rob Pyatt’s design and build class to complete the first model for the easy-to-build chicken coop kit for homeowners. This first structure explores ideas about “urban aesthetics” including; art, architecture, design and approaching theories about city, social space and public space.

June 5-September 6, 2009
Opening Reception, Fri. June 5 from 6:30-8pm
Members preview from 5:30-6:30pm

After our five month closure due to building renovations, “Pure Pleasure” will highlight the rich and varied talents of a renowned group of artists well- known in the region. In diverse media, including photography, painting, ceramics, and installation, these artists explore the boundaries of varied definitions of pleasure. Bucking recent trends in contemporary art, in which work often seems incomprehensibly esoteric, shockingly grotesque, even intentionally offensive, this exhibition has been conceived to delight the senses. Through pleasures derived from beauty, spectacle, wonder, and nostalgia, while not expecting to redeem a world in pain, we can hopefully allow art to provide a counterbalance or salve to the uncertain times in which we live.

Artists in this exhibition include; Phil Bender (installation), Julie Blackmon (photographs), Deborah Dell (ceramics), Rebecca DiDomenico (installation), Ana Maria Hernando (installation), Tsehai Johnson (installation), Mark Sink and Kristin Hatgi (ambrotypes), and Stacey Steers (film).

Wanenmacher is widely recognized for her ongoing interest and intrigue in the conflict between nature and culture with a large body of her work derived from New Mexico’s atomic history. As a multi-media artist, Wanenmacher moves seamlessly between her contemporary use of audio and video to woodcarvings, hand-stitched quilts and the re-appropriation of ready-made artifacts. Moved by reports that radioisotopic iodine was given to children to determine sensitivity to radioactive fallout by government doctors (1940-1970), Wanenmacher constructs her exhibit. The intersection between nature, art and science convenes in “The Science Club.” In an eerie all black and white environment, Wanenmacher constructs a 1960′s 10-year-old boy’s bedroom with nostalgic toys, paint by number pictures, ham radio operator ala atomic bomb decor. Juxtaposed to the child’s room, Wanenmacher re-appropriates equipment cases, dials, gages and meters-found objects from the surplus of the Los Alamos National Laboratory-with magical inscriptions. This sense of occult, mystery and experimentation elicits the larger conversation of radioactivity, government promises and secrets kept (or not).

Wanenmacher has been widely exhibited throughout the US. Her two most recent one-person exhibitions were featured in New York at the Claire Oliver Gallery and in New Mexico at Linda Durham Contemporary Art. Another notable exhibition, “Grimoire” was featured at SITE Santa Fe in 2001, curated by Louis Grachos. A 20-year survey of Wanemacher works was shown at the Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe in 1996. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, Museum of Albuquerque and the Fisher Landau Center, New York.

Erika Wanenmacher is represented by Linda Durham Contemporary Art, Santa Fe.

The Science Club exhibition is generously sponsored by the Boulder Valley Center for Dermatology.

This exhibit shows work “About Us” in a broad range of media. The art dates from the 1970s to now. There are well-known artists and not-so-well-known artists. They come from four continents and from Colorado.

Artists included in this exhibition are:
Laylah Ali
Ricky Armendariz
Tina Barney
Mary Carlson
Enrique Chagoya
Robert Colescott
John Coplans
Roy De Forest
Agnes Denes
Lesley Dill
Kim Dingle
Jeanne Dunning
Tom Friedman
Claudio Gallina
Mark Greenwold
David Hockney
Alfred Leslie
David Maisel
Zwelethu Mthethwa
Vik Muniz
Cornelia Parker
John Schabel
Jeanne Silverthorne
Fred Tomaselli
Floyd Tunson
Carrie Mae Weems
Matthew Weinstein

Johnson was born in 1969 and grew up in the Colorado Rockies. He obtained his BFA from The University of Colorado at Boulder and his MFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. His work as an artist has been informed by such as experiences as herding cows on the Navajo Reservation, traveling upon the Silk Road and living in Venice, Italy. He presently teaches at The Colorado College in Colorado Springs.

The Artist’s method of working pushes forward what has been recently termed “digital painting,” refining and personalizing the process to make it uniquely her own. Gannis begins with a story board for each work, creating a concept which weaves together references from cinematic, literary, and art historical interpretations of “the wanton woman”, and then recontextualizes them into a new tableaux in which her characters convey strength, intelligence, beauty and complexity. Next she shoots photographs that will be used as the “stage” for the character, which she then collages with appropriated film stills in Photoshop. Finally, the Artist goes over every centimeter of these newly combined images with many layers of digital painting, creating a truly unique visual language.

Gannis exhibition “Jezebel” features six large scale digital prints, each with a coinciding predella. Created in the 14th century to illustrate the life of a saint, these horizontal panels were originally attached to the lower edge of an altarpiece as a narrative for the larger panel above them. Gannis adopted this vehicle to give context to Jezebel’s historic and cultural currency, updating them to resemble a film strip which hangs below each major panel. Her subject is always dressed in red, not only as a signifier of lust and sexuality but as an expression of revolution, anger and courage.

“The agenda of a woman making art today should be as complex and mysterious as the work itself,” says Gannis. “Jezebel is a person conflicted and flawed yet forward thinking and courageous. Although I feel there is a feminist bent to this body of work, my hope is that it rises above any kind of ‘exclusive’ interpretation and takes into account a love for cinema and fascination with the history of narrative form and its new possibilities as expressed through my digital media collage.”

Carla Gannis, originally from North Carolina, currently lives and works in New York. Trained as a painter and having received her BFA from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her MFA from Boston University, Gannis shifted to producing digital print and multi-media installation work in the late 1990′s.

Gannis is the recipient of several awards, including a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Grant in Computer Arts, an Emerge 7 Fellowship from the Aljira Art Center, and a Chashama AREA Visual Arts Studio Award in New York, NY. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Her most recent solo exhibitions include Jezebel at Claire Oliver Gallery in New York, Everything That Rises Must Converge at Kasia Kay Art Projects Gallery in Chicago, Il, Jezebel presented by Claire Oliver Gallery at Loop Video Art Fair, Barcelona, Spain; and I Dream of Jeannie Emerging from a Fresca Bottle at Christa Schuebbe Galerie, Dusseldorf, Germany.

Features on Gannis’s work have appeared in Res Magazine, Animal Magazine, 11211, and Collezioni Edge, and her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The LA Times, The Miami Herald, NY Arts Magazine, The Daily News, The Star Ledger, and The Village Voice. She is currently on the Digital Arts teaching faculty at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and The School of Visual Arts in New York.