SEPTEMBER 2010 ONLINE EDITORIALS
Two to see, one to do: Exhibitions at the UNC Galleries, painting classes at Creative Spirits
By Sarah Vaeth
Raechel Cook's "Frangible Shelter"
This month I have the pleasure of exhibiting with an exceptional group of women at UNC’s Oak Room Gallery. At the Moment: Constructing, Deconstructing, and Reconstructing presents the work of five Colorado artists. According to curator Kris Heintz Nelson, “The curatorial aim...is to celebrate contemporary women artists who reflect continuity with the past as well as represent a progressive approach towards media, process and idea. The show replicates a mere portion of the diversity and complexity seen ‘at the moment’ in visual art.”
This intimate show is paired with a larger, historically significant one in the Mariani Gallery: Selected Works by Women Artists from the Bob and Chris Petteys Collection. The paintings and prints in this selection include some major figures of 19th and 20th century art – such as Mary Cassatt, Kathe Kollwitz, Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, and Bridget Riley. Reason enough to make a trip to the Greeley campus. My co-exhibitors in the Oak Room aren’t so shabby either, so introductions are in order.
Connie Bethards is an associate professor and Head of Art Education in the School of Art and Design at UNC. She received her Ph.D. in art education from the University of Iowa where she was an artist-in-residence for the University Hospital School.
Bethards’ mixed media works are “fabricated from the artifacts used in the everyday ‘rituals’ of women’s lives.” These objects are reconfigured “from the ordinary world into new contexts, new meanings and metaphors arise for those mundane items. For example, the commonplace routine of taking daily medications was taken into account in the Mandala works.”
Raechel Cook is slated to graduate from UNC this December. She works for the Center for Integrated Arts Education, a non-profit art agency. Her installation, Frangible Shelter, is a series of five hanging, burned and stitched umbrellas.
The word fragile can mean broken, damaged, destroyed, physically weak, or tenuous. Frangible adds to this the connotation of liability to being easily broken because of the use to which the thing is put.
“...This work is an exploration of transition, transformation, and momentary shelter through the use of umbrellas, which are meant to keep the user dry between here and there,” Cook states.
Allie Pohl finished her Masters in electronic media arts and design at DU this year, and has already garnered critical acclaim for Ideal Woman, her series of mass-manufactured objects based on Barbie’s improbable torso: manifesting in a white picket fence in this show. She characterizes her sculptures and pendants as a critique of “cultural trends that I find impractical or destructive to the female form,” an expression of “the absurdities, conflicts and hypocrisies society presents about ideal women.”
Jill Tisdale resides in Estes Park. She earned her MA in painting at CSU Fresno, developing her painting in response to nearby Yosemite National Park. Her richly active, semi-abstract paintings derive from the natural landscape, touching upon social implications of mankind’s relationship with nature: Tisdale explains, “I investigate the control of nature and conversely the nature of control. I address control on multiple levels: conceptual, physical and personal. I am interested in the push and pull between rigid, controlling human influence, and the wiggly, runny, spontaneous nature of nature itself.”
Tisdale is an instructor and exhibitor at Creative Spirits in Fort Collins. This new gallery/classroom has been getting some buzz: It’s the creation of Rob and Patty Caines, recent transplants from Pennsylvania. I like the concept: classes for the beginner, guidance by a professional, a completed painting in one session and “a glass of wine at hand” (or beer).
This experience is designed as an entry point for the newbie, using a method of follow-along painting. If your goal is to paint independently from observation, the gallery will be offering in-depth private lessons too.
Rob stresses that he’d like participants to get three things out of his beginner classes. First, they should just have a good time: in addition to regularly scheduled classes, the gallery will host private parties and special events like “Ladies-Only Night.”
Second, they should walk away with a new understanding for what an artist does, inspiring them to go further in learning art, or simply valuing art as potential collectors.
Third, the “ultimate goal,” Rob says, would be a client telling him “This place changed my life!”
After a full career as an engineer, and later becoming Director of Operations for a print and mail company, Creative Spirits is Rob’s retirement dream. He hopes it will also be a special place for visitors discovering art for the first time.
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Exhibits at UNC open with a public reception on September 1 and run through October 23. For more information, contact Joan Shannon-Miller at 970-351-2184 or joan.shannonmiller@unco.edu.
For information about classes at Creative Spirits, go to www.mycreativespirits.com, or call 970-282-7774.
Also check out Sarah Vaeth's blog, Vaeth Art Blog