12/22/14 Catching Up At Year’s End

Determined to see a couple of shows that were about to close, I drove to downtown Denver Saturday on a bright and quite warm afternoon.  First stop was at Helikon Gallery which was hosting two shows, Muses of Mount Helikon II and Volume: A Post Card Tribute to CPR’s Open Air. 

 Muses included quite a variety of painting, drawing, illustrative work, digital art and sculpture from across the U.S.

Rebecca Green’s Hortense and the Leaf Bug was in two parts, a photograph and a mixed media sculpture, presented side by side. The photograph showing a lab-coated female botanist, Hortense, hearkened back to early days of naturalistic investigations.  The related sculpture featured a poem revealing that, in her efforts to find a new unidentified plant, poor Hortense had mistakenly identified a bug for a leaf.

Holly Chastain’s group of four collages, (l to r, top to bottom) Hester, Small Talk, Reveal and Anthony, also had a somewhat nostalgic feel.  Swirls of color in the first and fourth images helped to unify the group.

Detail

A set of small drawings by Edward Kinsella, Wisp Mask I, II and III, were sensitively rendered in  graphite, gouache and watercolor.

Honoring Colorado’s Public Radio station’s Open Air programming, Volume: A Post Card Tribute had some 80 5”x7” pieces of art.  Proceeds from sales of these works was divided between the gallery and the radio station.  The small size did not seem to hamper creativity.

Melanie Pruitt’s Before the Moment and Realizing the Moment were strong drawings using ink on paper.

Choosing an unusual ground for his small paintings, Vinni Alfonso’s works on CD discs captured the exuberance of the music contained on them.

(l to r) Crowded Disco, Common Demographic, Coarse Delight

Detail-Crowded Disco

Not far from Helicon at Redline, a combination art gallery and artists’ studios, was the last show in a year long series of exhibits of women artists, She Crossed the Line.  Judy Chicago’s retrospective, on view until December 28, 2014, covered well-known examples from her famous installation, The Dinner Party, as well as more recent works (paintings, drawings, textiles and sculptures).  Running throughout the show was her ongoing concern about gender, roles of women and art history.

An entire wall of the gallery was covered with Dinner Party Plate-Line Drawings, 1978 (small section below) showing the comprehensive planning that went into that installation.

Four of the test plates for this piece were shown including Elizabeth Blackwell Test Plate, 1975-78.

Another large and very impressive piece occupying an entire wall was her 1983 textile work, Earth Mother, made from sprayed Versatex and DMC floss on fabric.

Submerged/Emerged 1&2, 1976/2005, made of cast paper sprayed with acrylic, with its pleated folds reminded me of Ann Hamilton’s  Ciliary piece from the previous post.

More recent work, displayed in the first gallery, was a series called Retrospective In a Box, a five year project, started in 2008 in conjunction with Landfall Press of Santa Fe, NM.  The collaborations resulted in ten prints, each referring to an important period in Chicago’s artistic life.

The Return of the Butterfly-2012

Rage Rather Than Tears-2012

Other recent works were a series of sculptural heads made from materials such as glass, china painting and bronze.

Masked Head-2013

Bronze Flowering Head-2013

Au revoir until 2015.  Wishing everyone happy holidays and a very healthy, happy, productive and exciting new year!