04 Apr Telluride Regional Artists Showcased at DIA through June 15
If your off season plans take you through the Denver Airport, pray that your plane is delayed (slightly) so that you’ll have time to go check out the current exhibit at the Ansbacher Hall, located on the walkway between the A concourse and the main terminal. Two local artists, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and Meredith Nemirov, are featured in 33 IDEAS!, an exhibit showcasing innovative artists and writers who have investigated land and social issues in a variety of mediums. With an artistic and literary exploration of contemporary topics, this exhibit is intended to create dialogue about a variety of issues and inspire new ways of thinking.
33 IDEAS! showcases visual and literary artists associated with Colorado Art Ranch, where they have been presenters, artists-in-residence, or involved in one or more Artposia (public interdisciplinary symposia). The group was selected to represent Colorado Art Ranch’s philosophy.
The artists draw on their passion, skills, knowledge, and talent to ask questions and react to the world around them. The work, in turn, inspires us to ask questions and to view the world from a different perspective.
Trommer, who serves as San Miguel County’s poet laureate, collaborated with Durango photographer Claude Steelman and designer Lisa Snider Atchison to create an exhibit of four poems and four photographs based on their recent book, “Intimate Landscape: The Four Corners in Poetry & Photographs.”
“For five years, Claude and I have been working on creating a book that would help people connect more deeply to our region—to help illustrate what an intimate relationship might look like between humans and the landscape,” Trommer says. “Why is this so important? In 1809, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck noted that the ultimate downfall of humanity will be our separation from the natural world. Through poems and photographs, we are offering a map of sorts to help people forge deeper relationships with the world around them.”
To accomplish their goal, the duo decided to think small. Instead of huge vistas, the photographs are close ups. Instead of showing a forest, they show a single tree. Likewise, the poems notice small details and bring the imagery into everyday situations: dealing with loss or frustration, finding joy or inspiration in this very moment.
“Not everyone has (or makes) time to go explore the landscape—the lichen, the sunflowers, the alpine lakes, the snow fields,” Trommer says. “So we bring these details to them and help step-parent the relationship, giving them many more reasons to fall more deeply in love with the world. As Lamarck noted two centuries ago, our survival as a species depends on it.”
Nemirov’s exhibit, entitled “Walking Among Trees: Mapping the Aspen,” comes from Nemirov’s observational on-site drawings, which have focused on the trees in the landscape for the past eight years.
“I initially approached this work through the traditional door of an Asian philosophy,” she says. “A sensitivity to the all-encompassing sweep of the seasons formed the foundation of Japanese life and culture since the establishment of Kyoto as the capital city in 794. Central to Chinese philosophy is the fundamental notion that nature and humanity are one. My vision for the work is to convey the idea that nature is not observed simply from one particular location. Nor is it fixed in time. Rather it has an invisible and intangible aspect, beyond direct experience of the senses, related to sequential changes in cyclic patterns that suggest an underlying purpose.”
Nemirov lives in Ridgway, and frequently teaches and presents at the Ah Haa School for the Arts in Telluride.
Whether or not you have a ticket to fly, Ansbacher Hall: The Art of Colorado is accessible for everyone’s enjoyment.
For more information visit www.flydenver.com/art and www.coloradoartranch.org.
Photos courtesy of Michael Mowery
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