Exhibition Dates: November 4 – December 31, 2022
The City of Littleton Fine Arts Board is proud to present the 57th Own an Original juried fine art exhibition. The competition is open to all artists residing in Colorado working in any medium except photography. This year’s exhibition theme is “Labyrinth” and was juried by Molly Casey from the art consulting firm, NINE dot ARTS.
In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was an elaborate, confusing structure designed and built by Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. It was intended to hold the Minotaur, a mythical creature that was part man and part bull. Daedalus had so cunningly crafted the Labyrinth that he could barely escape it after he built it. In modern day English, the definition of a labyrinth is anything confusingly intricate or complex and difficult to navigate. It has become synonymous with the word maze - a network of paths and passages that is hard to find one’s way through. However, a maze refers to a complex branching puzzle with choices of path and direction, while the classical labyrinth was unicursal: having only a single path to the center. A labyrinth in this sense has an unmistakable route to the center and back and presents no navigational challenge.
Labyrinths are frequently seen as an ancient symbol of wholeness where circle and spiral combine into a meandering but purposeful journey. For some, the Labyrinth represents a journey or path to our own center and back again out into the world. Often, walking a labyrinth can serve as a metaphor for life’s journey or as a symbol that creates a sacred space and place and takes us out of our ego and into our spirit within. With this concept in mind, labyrinths have long been used in meditation and ritual and are increasingly found in hospitals and hospices for therapeutic use. Depending on one’s perception of the term, a labyrinth can either be confusing and restricting or directional and liberating. This exhibit features various artistic interpretations of this complex theme from twenty-five local artists listed below.
- 153 artworks from 65 artists entered
- 35 entries selected from 25 artists for exhibit
Participating Artists:
Stephen Austin, Diane Bauerle, Matthew Bollinger, Jay Benedict Brown, Teresa Castaneda, Niri Cath, Cayce Gates, Stephanie Genser, Mitchell Gomez, Lorraine Herrera Bonilla, Tara Kelley-Cruz, Emily Lamb, John Long, Tim McKay, Jake Meyer, Elizabeth Morisette, Michael Morris, Linda O'Neill, Frederick Pichon, Stacey Roberts, Jacqueline Shuler, Randall Steinke, Barbara Veatch, Gail Watson, Sean Yarbrough.
- Best of Show: Niri Cath, The Park, $1,000 award
- 1st Place: Randall Steinke, Keyhole, $500 award
- 2nd Place: Stacey Roberts, Hidden Place, $250 award
- 3rd Place: John Long, Imaginary Time, $100 award
- Honorable Mention: Emily Lamb, Enlightenment
- Honorable Mention: Elizabeth Morisette, Lean In
As NINE dot ARTS Chief Curator, Molly Casey leads, mentors, and supervises interdisciplinary creative teams through the research, curation, acquisition, and installation of a range of national art experiences. Her leadership and consulting expertise includes working directly with private and public sector clients on everything from curated corporate art collections to robust community art plans. Molly’s innovative approach to art consulting includes building a global community of artists and supporting education, advocacy, and career-building opportunities. She and co-founder Martha Weidmann formed NINE dot ARTS in 2009 with the vision of building a forward-thinking art consulting company that both curates incredible art experiences and advocates for art and artists. Since then, the firm has completed over 900 projects in real estate development across 35 states and five countries, generating more than $40 million in revenue for the creative economy. Currently, their artist app, Dotfolio, features over 10,000 artists from around the world.
November 5, 2021 – November 27, 2022
With over 8 billion people on Earth, one of the common threads that humans share is wearing clothes as a basic necessity for protection and also a means of self-expression. But when we think about clothing, it’s usually in connection to fashion and how and where the person is wearing their clothing, more often than not, outside of the home and irrespective of the origins of the very fabric the item is made of. While clothing began as a basic necessity to individuals who had a very intimate connection to the laborious process of its creation, care and storage, in more modern days, it has evolved into a highly accessible, but easily detached from and disposed of, means of societal expression.
The Secret Life of Clothes tells the everyday story of the “lifecycle” of clothes – the overlooked journey of clothing as a progression from fiber to finished garment, sale to storage, and finally to mending, disposal or reuse. This exhibit examines the purpose and need for different clothes, as well as the lifecycle processes over different time periods in Colorado: 1860 through modern day. Visitors will experience a variety of fashions, as well as the tools, materials, and context of how those clothes were made, worn, cared for, mended, and stored.
The exhibit also explores the future of clothing, considering the economic, cultural, and environmental impacts of the massive growth of the fast-fashion clothing industry and how, in response, new innovations are leading the way towards a more sustainable clothing lifecycle for future generations.
Exhibit Dates: Friday, July 15 – Sunday, October 9, 2022
("škhé" is the sounds 'shh', then 'kay', pronounced together as 'shkay'.)
škhé: it is said is an early-career body of work by Denver artist Danielle SeeWalker, an enrolled Citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. SeeWalker works across disciplines to explore the intersections of Native American stereotypes, microaggressions, and colonialist systems, both historically and in contemporary society. Drawing on au courant color palettes, expressionistic art strategies, and her Lakota traditions, SeeWalker spins her work into a contemporary vision to elevate historical perspectives as told from the side not often heard.
“My work over the past few years has used the revealing aspects of American Indian history, as told from the perspective of a Native person, to demonstrate the profound impact it has had on our contemporary cultures today. In the current climate, where many believe history has no relevance, or believe Native Americans are relics of the past, I find myself continually returning to those aspects that are often hidden or misrepresented in the ’official’ recordings for posterity. In my multidisciplinary and diverse approaches to making art through installations, studio work, public street art, and curatorial work, I want the context of the work to leave the viewer with a thirst for wanting to know more about the truth or simply leave realizing a new perspective.” – Danielle SeeWalker
The title škhé is the Lakota word that translates to “it is said” or “so they say” and exemplifies the storytelling through SeeWalker’s work. Historical events, stories, ceremonies, and ways of life of the Očeti Šakówiŋ (Lakota/Dakota/Nakota people) have always been passed down through oral tradition by elders, community criers, and culture bearers. These stories have been carried down from generation to generation and many of them have been told to Danielle by her father or other elders in her community.
About the Artist:
Danielle SeeWalker is a Húŋkpapȟa Lakȟóta citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation in North Dakota. She is a mother, artist, writer, curator, activist, and businesswoman currently based in Denver. Her visual artwork often incorporates the use of mixed media and experimentation while incorporating traditional Native American materials, scenes, and messaging. Storytelling is an integral part of her artwork and pays homage to her identity as a Lakȟóta wíŋyaŋ (woman) and her passion to redirect the narrative to an accurate and insightful representation of contemporary Native America while still acknowledging historical events.
Alongside her passion for creating visual art, SeeWalker is a freelance writer and recently published her first book, titled “Still Here: A Past to Present Insight of Native American People & Culture.” She is also very dedicated to staying connected and involved in her Native community and is currently in her 2nd year serving as Co-Chair for the Denver American Indian Commission. Since 2013, SeeWalker and a long-time friend have been working on a personal passion project called The Red Road Project. The focus of the work is to document, through words and photographs, what it means to be Native American in the 21st century by capturing inspiring and positive stories of people and communities within Indian Country.
Instagram: seewalker_ART
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Exhibit Dates: April 1, 2022 - June 26, 2022
Plastic touches every aspect of our lives. It’s in clothing, housewares, toys, medical devices, vehicles, and infrastructure. It coats our walls, transports our water, encases our food, fills our cavities, even prolongs our lives. Yet the word “plastic” is equated with cheapness, both in quality of construction and value. Why? How has a material that in only seventy years has replaced all traditional materials in every application earned the reputation for being worthless? Shouldn’t it be the opposite? Shouldn’t it be revered?
Though much of the environmentally themed work we see that deals with plastic is about trash and guilt, the work of Kalliopi Monoyios seeks to reach people by embracing the complexity of our relationship with the material and speaking openly about it. By treating it with devotion, like the precious resource it is, she points a finger at consumerism as the root of our pollution problems, while honoring a material that makes modern life efficient and comfortable. Monoyios collects, washes, folds, and sews food wrappers into quilts that could be handed down through generations as heirlooms. She folds plastic into thousands of interlocking modular origami pieces while meditating on her wish for a solution to the plastic pollution problem in the tradition of senbazuru (folding 1000 origami cranes for peace). Creating beauty from a workhorse material that society undervalues and treats as disposable is an act of devotion and hope. Only when we fully appreciate how integral it is to our lives and our livelihood can we begin to change our attitudes about its value.
The body of work in this exhibit expands on Monoyios’s themes of surprising and quirky uses of plastic, all with the goal of inviting people to think deeper about their own relationships with the material. Featuring a combination of framed works, free-standing sculptures, large quilts, and installation, the exhibit combines single-use plastic food wrappers, PTFE dental floss, silicone contact lenses, and other surprising plastics (spoiler alert: chewing gum is plastic!) as fine art media. A small selection of familiar mass-produced items is also included in the exhibit in order to reveal the incredible versatility of this wonder material.
The exhibit will be open to the public in the Fine Art gallery at the Littleton Museum from Friday, April 1, 2022 - Sunday, June 26, 2022.
About the Artist:
Kalliopi Monoyios is a visual creative dedicated to communicating the wonder of the natural world to a wide and varied audience. After graduating from Princeton University with a degree in geology, she built her career as a science illustrator for the prominent paleontologist Neil Shubin at The University of Chicago. Her illustrations have appeared inside and on the covers of top peer review journals such as Nature and Science as well as in four popular science books, including The New York Times best-seller, Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. Illustrating for such diverse audiences taught her the value of having a large array of media at your fingertips — everything from traditional media, graphic work, fine art, cartoons, writing, and even performance can spread science far and wide. In 2011, she co-founded Symbiartic, a blog covering the intersection of science and art, exploring some of these broad-ranging scicomm/sciart efforts for Scientific American.
In 2019, she was elected President of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators, a group of professionals who communicate science through art. Now, driven by the conviction that science communicators operating in all spheres are a critical part of creating a scientifically literate public, she is developing new avenues of public engagement with science via her own art and curated exhibits.
Exhibit Dates: January 21, 2022 - March 12, 2022
Juried by Rupert Jenkins
The City of Littleton Fine Arts Board proudly presents the Eye of the Camera juried art exhibition, featuring Colorado artists working in photography. This year’s theme is Space to Wonder. The show is on display from January 21 to March 12, 2022.
There is no science to explain what causes us to admire those things that strike us as amazing. But wonder is a shared human emotion, some would say the hallmark of human experience.
Some feel wonder wanes with age and is unattainable as we become information-retaining adults. But if we are given the space to wonder, does this change? And what does that encompass, “space to wonder”? Is it a literal or a physical space, a mental space? Is it permission to admit ignorance and awe? Does it have a sense of urgency or is it irrespective of time and physical location? This year’s 41-piece exhibition brings us Space to Wonder.
The exhibit will be open to the public in the Fine Art gallery at the Littleton Museum from Friday, January 21, 2022 - Saturday, March 12, 2022.
Best of Show:
- Best of Show ($1500) - “Muonionalusta No. 37” by Marshal Clark, 2021
Awards:
- 1st Place ($600) - “The Day Before I” by Kasey Medlin, 2021
- 2nd Place ($300) - “Envelope no. 7” by Farhad Vakilitabar, 2021
Honorable Mentions:
- Honorable Mention 1 – “Post Trader’s House, Fort Steele, Wyoming” by Thomas Carr, 2021
- Honorable Mention 2 – “El Papelote de Nina” by Tony Ortega, 2019
- Honorable Mention 3 – “Pregnant Climber 9” by Ethan Herrold, 2021
Participating Artists:
Juror's Statement by Rupert Jenkins:
"It has been a privilege to jury this year’s “Eye of the Camera” exhibition. It’s title, “Space to Wonder,” invites photographers to celebrate beauty and phenomena—the visually wondrous—and also to interpret situations beyond the mere visual—wonder as in to speculate. It was this second perspective that I used when making my choices. Did an image prompt me to question what I was seeing, or encourage me to develop a narrative of what might be happening, or about to happen? Viewing is subjective and often solitary—ideal conditions for contemplation; as the juror, I invite you to create your own legend as you ponder each image in the show."
Rupert Jenkins has thirty years’ experience working as a writer, curator, and gallery director in San Francisco and Denver (1985–2015). Between 1985–2005 he curated numerous exhibitions of photography and related media by emerging and mid-career artists at three San Francisco organizations: The Eye Gallery, San Francisco Camerawork (both non-profit), and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, the city’s municipal gallery programming at four sites.
Jenkins was editor of the San Francisco Camerawork Journal for six years. From 1994–95 he was book editor, essayist, and exhibition consultant for Nagasaki Journey: The Photographs of Yosuke Yamahata, a project commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki (Pomegranate ArtBooks/Friends of Photography, 1995).
After moving to Denver in 2005, he worked as editor/curator at the Victoria H. Myhren Gallery, University of Denver. Among his projects there were Warhol in Colorado (co-curator with Dan Jacobs/catalog writer and editor, 2011).
Subsequently he directed the Colorado Photographic Arts Center for six years (Chair 2009–2010; director/curator 2011–2015). CPAC, a small nonprofit organization in Denver, was founded in 1963. Its five-plus decade history, and its 600-print collection of fine art photography, inspired him to begin researching the post-WWII history of creative photography in Colorado in 2016.
As a freelance editor, his most recent projects include Rauschenberg: Reflections and Ruminations (exhibition catalog, Museum of Outdoor Arts, Littleton, 2020) and three books on Native American art for UCLA scholar Nancy Marie Mithlo: Making History (University of New Mexico Press, 2020), Knowing Native Arts (University of Nebraska Press, 2020), and Visualizing Genocide (University of Arizona Press, forthcoming).