May 22, 2014 Around Denver Last Week: Myth, Memory and Metaphor

On the way to a fascinating lecture on the art and culture of Bhutan at the Denver Art Museum last week, we stopped to see a small but amusing exhibit called Drawn to Action.   The show featured posters created by Polish artists for American Westerns shown there from the mid-1960’s to mid-1970’s.  We were amused to see how artists from another country interpreted a quintessential American genre.

Jerry Flisak, El Dorado, 1973

Wikto Gorka, Kasia Ballou, 1967

Witold Janowski, Ostatni zachod slonca, 1966

Then, over the weekend, we went downtown to follow a map to the RINO (River North) Art Safari, a once/year open studio event in Denver’s latest art district.  At Plus Gallery we were really wowed by work by Kristin Stransky, a young MFA candidate at CU Denver.  Using 3-D printing, laser etching in plastic and nylon and some fine woodworking skills, her show, Common/Myth, made a very coherent statement concerning her ideas about digital memory, technology used to measure the body and digital/emotional interfaces.  She told us that the base of the two-part EmotiScan took 14 hours to print!

MRI Chest NO.1

MRI Hips NO.1

EmotiScan

Ice Cube Gallery usually features two of its artists in each show.  The Butterfly Effect with images by David Reed and Sandy and Terry Lane explored personal mythologies that they, cousins, discovered in their families.  The other half of the gallery contained small framed white cut-paper pieces and two larger wall cut-paper works by J. Diane Martonis entitled Justamere based on memories of a summer cottage in the artist’s family.

David Reed, That Which Is Lost Will Remain, 2014

J. Diane Martonis, The Chedwel Club, 2014

After a brief stop at Helikon Gallery to see an exhibit of photography from Burma, we left “the known world” to find Chestnut Place and the Ironton Gallery which has its entry through a lovely garden.  We peeked into a sculpture studio where an artist was showing his partially completed marble female figure and also into a very well-equipped wood shop.  In the gallery space was a show by Jillian Pate, Metaphorical Fugues: Exploring interconnection.  Many pieces combined steel and wood, all with wonderful textures.   The one below with detail used only steel.

5 Studies In Canonic Composition, 2014