Telluride Arts’ Art Walk, September 4 Hilites

03 Sep Telluride Arts’ Art Walk, September 4 Hilites

In the second decade of the 20th century old-fashioned realism made way for abstraction, which became the Holy Grail of modern art. Cezanne and Cubism were two of the triggers that motivated painters and sculptors to stop copying what is and instead find the essence of what is. Commune with nature, don’t copy it. Celebrate the beauty of a raw, blank canvas. Legible images and logical narratives made way for art for art’s sake, the aesthetic premise that art need not depict recognizable scenes or objects; forms and color can exist for their own sake and communicate plenty, even spiritual values. Kandinksy is often cited as the first person to paint an abstract image, but other  artists were eager to stress the primacy of their revolutionary ideas, including the American Arthur Dove and the Swiss Augusto Giacometti, a cousin of  better known Alberto. These pioneers were soon followed by groups of abstract artists and movements: Constructivism, Rayonism, Suprematism, etc.

The legacy of what was a revolution that shook the art world with the magnitude of a Magnitude 8 earthquake is on display this month at Telluride Arts’ Gallery 81435, The opening of the show entitled CO/BKLYN HALF DROP coincides with the First Thursday Art Walk, this month, September 4.

Vince Contarino, Brooklyn

The First Thursday Art Walk is a festive celebration hosted of the arts in downtown Telluride for art lovers, community and friends, and produced by Telluride Arts, the regional cultural engine. Eighteen venues host receptions from 5-8 p.m. to introduce new exhibitions and artists. A free Art Walk Map offers a self-guided tour and can be used at any time to find galleries that are open most days. Listen to Open Art Radio on KOTO from 12-1pm on first Thursdays to hear interviews with the artists. Maps are available at participating venues and at the Telluride Arts offices located in the Stronghouse Studios + Gallery at 283 South Fir Street.

Yazoo, Meredith Nemirov, Ridgway Creative Arts District

CO/BKLYN HALF DROP is an invitational group show of abstract works on paper curated by Meredith Nemirov. This exhibit features the work of 14 artists, seven from Colorado with one from each of the first Colorado Certified Creative Districts and seven from Brooklyn, NY. Each artist’s work will be represented by 10 abstract unframed works on paper, which include collage, solar etching, ink drawings, watercolor, gouache and mixed media.

Vilas Tonape , Corazon de Trinidad Creative Arts District

“I was looking for artists whose work is abstract and who could put together a series of ten small works on paper. I was also looking for a diversity of medium. There is also a variety of approaches to the same medium, conceptually and aesthetically,” explains Meredith.

Meredith was referred to artists from Brooklyn by Christopher Ho, whose work is in the show. The artist has a place here in Telluride, a studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and lives in Manhattan.

“Christopher teaches at RISD and he knows many artists there. My son also put me in contact with other abstract artists in Brooklyn – including his girlfriend Gaby. I visited five out of the seven artists’ studios when I made a trip to New York this past May,” explains Meredith. “The seven artists from Colorado had to  include one from each of the Creative Arts Districts. It was a bit more challenging than Brooklyn to find artists working in rural Colorado who had a body of work that included abstraction. In the end, I think the work we found shows the diversity of approaches we were after.”

Gabrielle D’Angelo, Brooklyn

The installation of these works follows a French textile design that was widely used in the 1800s to hang wallpaper. The half-drop patterns repeat at the ceiling on every other strip and the direction tends to run diagonally, like a checkerboard.

The Telluride Arts District embraces both regional and global artists and their combined work contributes to the dynamic culture of the arts. Connections between Telluride and Brooklyn are numerous and this exhibit unites communities across both state and country.

Gold Fever by Melvin Strawn, Salida Arts District

The exhibit runs through September 29. Regular hours are noon-six daily or by appointment. Contact Gallery 81435 at 970.728.3930 for more information.

Another outstanding September Art Walk show is right across the street from Gallery 81435 at Telluride Arts’ Stronghouse Gallery & Studios: Forms in Felt, an exhibit by Jill Scher.

Puzzle Vessel

Jill Scher’s passion for various weave structures, techniques, and handwork, led her to develop and expand her own work in fibers. Since establishing a studio at the Third Street Center in Carbondale, Colorado, Scher has happily focused the past 12 years of her creative energy on the felting medium. Her work draws inspiration from the natural world and the relational aspects of color, exploring sculptural possibilities and color play.

This current show consists of two bodies of work: felted vessels and silk panels that have been hand-painted and then felted sparingly. The artist resonates with the vessel form and loves the process of creating. Each piece is a unique exploration of its own idea, ranging from urban crossings to sea forms. With landscapes and seasons in mind, the new wearable silk panels have been created by first painting the silk, then selecting which areas to layer over with wool and felt.

The exhibit runs through September 29. Regular hours are noon-six daily or by appointment. Contact the Stronghouse Gallery at 970.728.3930 for more information.

Other highly recommended shows for September Art Walk include the following:

The Ah Haa School for the Arts, is excited to announce its second annual juried Ah Haa Photography Prize. The show is all about “capturing the essence of Telluride through portraits of its people.” Subjects may be anyone—locals or visitors—as long as the setting is a location within an hour’s drive of Telluride.

Prizes will be awarded at the Opening Reception, which will be held during Art Walk from 5-8pm.

Ah Haa East Room Gallery: Aela B. Morgan (Textures: Drawings and Photography)

Aela’s work explores the human figure in its multitude of forms through careful observations of nature. The images represent a microcosm of the macro forces that operate within our world. Each piece is a conversation that speaks to our unique physical, emotional and individual realities. By drawing, manipulating or simply observing color and lines her work illuminates how intertwined and embedded we are with nature. In some pieces the figures are formed with a variety of mediums while other images are left to personal interpretation. Aela has accumulated a library of textures, shadows, skies, pathways, earth, and trees over the last 15 years. Much of her work was shot in infrared as a statement that perceptions and experiences are influenced by our individually unique lenses.

Arroyo, a fine art gallery and wine bar, specializes in southwest contemporary realism, in painting, photography, and mixed media on the walls as well as bronze, steel, and clay sculpture. This month the gallery continues to feature the work of painters Albert Murillo and Chris Crossen.

Murillo’s paintings in particular also owe a debt to the work of Mark Rothko, whose Color Field paintings were often described as transcendental landscapes and by one critic as “a unified atmosphere of all-encompassing, awe-inspiring spirituality.”

Painting by Alberto Murillo

Murillo’s work, however, is more representational than the work of the aforementioned Sixties purists: his images rendered in acrylic paint read as landscapes or seascapes, the variations in the “sky” reflecting the changing light, their lush surfaces preserved forever like fossils caught in amber under a protective coat of UV resin.

Albert Murillo is a native of Madrid, Spain where he lived and operated an Interior Design company and showroom. His work emerged into the United States contemporary art market around 2007.

Crossen’s work is characterized by the interactions of cells, waves, circles and other shapes, delivering sensations of contrast and balance, movement, depth and stasis. The paintings arise from an impulse to capture color and form within basic compositions and patterns, so color and form, the Holy Grail of the Color Field painters of yore, dominate.

“Patzcuraro: by Chriss Crossen

“Take an object, do something to it, do something else to it. What you do alters what you want to do. In seeing one thing, we probably see many,” said artist-philosopher Jasper Johns.

The gallery at Arroyo is curated by local artist Amy Schilling, whose signature images pay tribute to petroglyphs long-associated with prehistoric peoples – only her work vibrates with color and razzle-dazzles with metallic paint. Think rock engravings on steroids.

Dolce offers clients the finest in custom and designer jewelry, as well as unique sculptures in all sizes and mediums. Each piece is designed and crafted by hand and has a story to tell.  The knowledgeable staff includes GIA certified gemologists and goldsmiths. Dolce’s featured artist for September will be Pamela Huizenga.

Pamela designs one-of-a-kind jewelry that celebrates the color, texture and imperfections found in gemstones that vary in shapes and colors ranging from her favorite, opals, to aquamarine and tourmaline. The artist believes each stone has a story to tell and allows each one to guide her to the perfect form for each piece in her line.

Lustre, an Artisan Gallery is captivated by Monique Péan jewelry collection, which showcases natural forms and materials.

Monique works with artisans around the world to preserve art traditions and embellish her jewels: fossilized ivory from woolly mammoth and walrus tusks and discovered in the Arctic Circle find a prominent place in her collections. Carved into bangles, beaded necklaces, and the backdrop for pendants, earrings and rings, the ivory is at times embellished with delicate scrimshaw and diamonds.

The colors of the collection are soft and rich, ranging from every shade of neutral through fossilized jet. The blues and greens of the Caribbean beaches are captured through Peruvian opal and opalina, Guatemalan jade, aquamarine, tsavorite, emerald and azurite. Monique uses stone specimens and slices to expose the inherent beauty in the naturally occurring minerals. Agatized dinosaur bone set into a ring and a beautiful amazonite necklace, are examples of two stones in the collection that are typically found in Colorado.

Monique names her most recent collection “Renhet, “the Norwegian word for purity and it symbolizes Monique’s focus on precision of form, color and construction. The collection is inspired by Norway’s natural landscape – sculptures of glaciers, frozen waterfalls and the fjords – and the stark contrast of these elements with the country’s modern architecture.

Monique’s designs are largely inspired by the indigenous art and culture she discovers in her travels. She is committed to the exclusive use of sustainable materials in her designs including devastation free diamonds and recycled gold.

The Monique Pean jewelry collection will be at Lustre Gallery through September 4.

At Melange, Howie Garber is a fine art wildlife and nature photographer, whose images have the power to transport viewers to another place.

Howie has won national and international awards for photography including two first place awards in the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year Contest. His photos have been exhibited in the Smithsonian Museum and the Museum of Natural History in London and he has photographed landscape and wildlife on seven continents. Clients include National Geographic, Nikon, Newsweek, and Patagonia. His recent book, “Utah’s Wasatch Range: 4 Season Refuge” won a Silver Medal in the Ben Franklin competition for independent book publishers.

Photographs in his Mélange exhibit were captured on digital as well as medium format film cameras. They are printed on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper. On exhibit are open edition and limited edition prints.

“The creation of a single fine art image can take hours in the same place waiting for the right light or an intimate moment with wildlife. I have returned numerous times to the same locations in different years and seasons in order to perfect the image with proper light and composition. Only capturing pure beauty seems hedonistic and socially irresponsible. It is important to document what we are trying to save as well as what we are destroying at a fast pace.” 

Bling is also the thing at The Telluride Gallery of Fine Art  which features “48 Studio Jewelers,” a special exhibition of work by all of its bench jewelers. Enjoy an array of creativity and quality from local to internationally recognized jewelry artists. Wine tasting provided by the Wine Mine.

Barbara Heinrich, diamonds and 18K gold

Pat Flynn, iron, diamonds and 18K gold

Petra Class, lapis, pink sapphire and 18K gold

  In August the Telluride Historical Museum and Telluride Arts teamed up for a free workshop in conservation photography with local photographer Riley Arthur. The event began with a history and photography lesson at the Museum, and then headed out to Alta Lakes for a sunset photo shoot at the beautiful and historic ghost town. A showcase of the work of the photographers is featured at the Museum at the top of N. Fir Street during the September Art Walk. Also at the Museum, a book signing, 6 – 7 p.m. of “Telluride: A Silver Past, a Golden Future” by Susan Dalton. The book chronicles the town’s history from the early days when only the Uncompahgre Utes roamed the valley to today when homegrown skiing hero Gus Kenworthy won an Olympic silver medal and everything in between.