![Future Fabulist - Opening reception May 30 at 5:30 p.m.](/files/sharedassets/museum/v/1/images/event-images/future-fabulist-fb-event-header-opening.jpg?w=600&h=315)
Exhibit Dates: Friday, May 31, 2024 – Sunday, August 18, 2024
In Future Fabulist, Jodi Stuart explores the aesthetic of the digital technologies that saturate our lives, in relation to tactile and sensory experience. Her woven sculptural forms are made using the plastic filaments intended for 3D-printers. Through her materials and processes, Stuart replaces the computer with the human hand subverting the materials of high-tech culture in a nostalgic gesture towards the hand made.
Stuart’s Future Fabulist exhibition consists of anamorphous, quirky and vaguely biological forms created by hand using a 3D-pen and plastic filaments. These are combined with colorful and pixelated background imagery, as well as super-synthetic materials such as acrylic rods and industrial foams. These works allude to craft traditions including weaving, knitting, and basket making; while hinting at virtual space, neural networks, cloud computing, and biomimicry. Her art practice explores ideas around the invasive materiality of consumer plastics, while playing on aspects of the virtual versus the physical, by integrating notes of contemporary culture’s aesthetic of hyper-stimulation and sensory overload.
This body of work was initially inspired by a depiction of the inner workings of a cell from the computer animation called ‘The Inner Life of the Cell’ by Harvard University Biology Department, produced in 2006. The hyperrealist, educational, computer-generated imagery demonstrates the mechanisms of cellular processes, and in Stuart’s view, inscribing machinic connotations onto the tiny organic forms. Biology and technology have become increasingly interwoven since then. For example, describing cellular processes as ‘tiny machines’, medical treatments as 'bio-hacks', or even the term ‘genetic engineering.’
In combination, Stuart’s bright synthetic colors, layered filaments, and textures combine to create optical and visceral sensations hinting at the insidious nature of technology and biomechanics. Her tone is kitsch, colorful, and playful in appearance, with forms that are ambiguous in meaning. Overall, she aims to create an immersive visceral experience where the viewer must constantly resist touching the deliberately inviting works.
About the Artist
Jodi Stuart was born in New Zealand, where she attained a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Manukau Institute of Technology, Auckland, and an MFA from Auckland University. Stuart currently lives, works, and teaches in Denver.
Now based at TANK Studios, Stuart has previously been an artist in residence at RINO Art Park, part of Redline Denver’s Satellite Program. As well as exhibiting in her home country of New Zealand, Stuart has exhibited in California, Colorado, Michigan, Maryland, Texas, and Washington.
Exhibit Events
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 30, 2024 at 5:30 p.m.
Light appetizers and beverages will be served. No RSVP necessary.
Artist Talk with Jodi Stuart: Thursday, June 20, 2024 (2 - 3 p.m.)
Jodi Stuart will speak about her ‘Future Fabulist’ exhibit, including a gallery tour.
No RSVP necessary.
![Image of elderly woman holding her hands up around her eyes](/files/sharedassets/museum/v/1/images/exhibits/cl35-renee-perkins_web-res.jpg?w=725&h=544)
Joe Wallace, Rene Perkins, 2021; ink on paper, 28 x 35 1/4 inches (framed, approximate); Courtesy of the artist.
Exhibit Dates: February 9 – April 28, 2024
In 2022, over fifty million people are living with dementia globally. In the United States, one in three seniors suffers with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia at the time of their death. And yet despite the millions of individuals and families affected, dementia is often a taboo subject with limited public awareness or discourse. A diagnosis can become a mechanism for segregating those affected from society, making it easy to see only the label instead of the individual.
“…be joyful in every moment, because you might not have another one. If you just go to the grocery store, you can be kind to anybody you meet, and that could change their day.” – Bama Bradley, diagnosed with dementia
The typical narrative about dementia tends to focus on the clinical diagnosis or medical status of an individual, and is all too often depicted using fear, despair, and vulnerability. This narrow and incomplete view of dementia quickly becomes a powerful means to distance oneself from their humanity. Portraits of Dementia destigmatizes those living with dementia through moving portraits and stories of lives well lived.
“It is my hope that my story and the stories of others just like me will start a conversation and end the stigma that comes along with this disease. Just maybe I can bring a new face to Alzheimer’s so people know that it can happen to anybody, not just the elderly.” – Carrie Salter-Richardson, diagnosed with dementia
Trained as a journalist, artist Joe Wallace has been a portrait photographer and storyteller for twenty years. Like many, Wallace has a deeply personal connection with dementia. His maternal grandfather and hero, Joe Jenkins, had Alzheimer’s. His maternal grandmother had vascular dementia. And in recent years, his mother has begun her journey with the disease. Wallace was frustrated by the common, one-dimensional narrative of dementia—futility, despair, and loss. These are real and important elements of the dementia journey, but focusing only on the narrowest of views, very little is done to change the stigma of those living with the disease. Wallace feels strongly that to give the audience courage to act in ways large and small, you must show the whole story.
Wallace shows not only the fear, loss, and despair, but also the love, connection, dignity, and powerful humanity that always remain—in the subjects, in the care- partners, and in the families and communities. That is the only path to evolve the narrative and have a positive social change.
People living with dementia must be seen as people first, not as their disease. Public recognition of the enduring humanity of those who live with disabilities, including cognitive disabilities, will decrease fear and stigma. … Joe’s vivid photographs remind us of our shared humanity as well as the uniqueness of each person. -Beth Soltzberg, Director, Alzheimer’s/Related Disorders Family Support Program, Jewish Family & Children’s Service
This exhibition provides opportunities for rich programming and community engagement. Dementia impacts the lives of many people and this exhibition serves as a catalyst for community storytelling, learning, and healing. Artist Joe Wallace continues to add to this project and upon hosting Portraits of Dementia, could be contacted to collect more stories and portraits from your community. Additionally, this exhibition provides each hosting venue with the opportunity to foster new community partnerships. Special tours could be held for those with dementia and their caregivers. There is a powerful opportunity for local connection and collaboration with Alzheimer’s support groups, caregiver support and training, and councils on aging. Wallace has presented the work at university programs for social work and gerontology. Local libraries and agencies could work to archive community stories and photographs. Each booking will come with contact information for the artist, as well as a guide with ample programming resources.
![Image of a female artist hanging blue scalloped artwork on a wall](/files/sharedassets/museum/v/1/images/exhibits/taiko-chandlerheadshot_web-res.jpg?w=750&h=750)
Photo by Scott Dressel-Martin, courtesy of the artist.
Exhibit Dates: September 22, 2023 – January 7, 2024
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 5:30 pm
Virtual Tour
There are many ways to approach art making, all of which are influenced by an artist’s training, background, and individual mindset. For some, an outline, pre-conceived layout, or diagram of some sort is necessary to complete the work. For others, the process follows a path of intuition with no fixed outcome in mind from the start. This process can include some or all of the following: addition, pause, response, subtraction, revision, fine-tuning, etc. Much of the intuitive creative process is based on feeling, memory, or perhaps the subconscious, differing from artistic practices that rely more on structure and specific steps in order to fulfill an outlined plan, or to recreate a sketched scene. Thoughtful Intuition is a solo exhibition featuring abstract artwork by Denver-based artist Taiko Chandler. This exhibit features monoprints, paintings, and installations by Chandler, all of which were created through her incredibly thoughtful yet intuitive process.
Taiko Chandler’s methods and her work are truly unique. Even though she possesses a natural ability to instinctually feel her way through a beautifully constructed piece from start to finish, her creation process is not without thought or cognition. Indeed, her approach is as layered as her pieces, nuanced with fragments of memories, interwoven with past and present personal events, and tied together with the strength of human bonds and a desire to share emotion and connection. Chandler does rely on conscious reasoning in her artmaking, although perhaps not in a linear form as most would anticipate. Rather, she seems to balance feeling with thought, thought with memory, and memory with desire, in a pattern that results in artwork that feels entirely precise and complete.
This is evident in some of her larger Tyvek print installation pieces on display in the exhibit. She starts by creating organic shapes on a sheet of acrylic using a piece of mat board. As she spontaneously fills in the space a pattern emerges that is then transferred onto Tyvek using a printing press. The emotion-driven creation doesn’t stop there, as Chandler then removes negative or non-inked parts of the Tyvek that don’t suit the piece by hand-cutting hundreds of holes. The result feels symbolic of the way we might experience some of our most deep-rooted memories that can have multiple perforations or blank spots. Instead of having an exact visual picture or a structured outline of the experience, we instead recall the curve of sentiments felt in that space. We sense the wispy dappling of a beautiful light, or the dense pull of a heavy sense of loss or sorrow. Chandler recreates the feeling of memory in a way that is both tangible and intangible simultaneously. Through each step of the creation process, there is a sense of her putting things in place, not systematically, but intuitively and organically as though gravity or a force of nature is at work.
About the Artist
Printmaking is Chandler’s primary art medium where she is driven to develop her own vocabulary. She is drawn, in particular, to its unpredictability. Chandler composes her work instinctively, combining shapes, colors, lines, and textures in order to express her imagination and react to the environment around her. The process is, therefore, both deliberate and iterative. She is constantly improvising with no fixed destination in mind. It is the open nature of the process that is constantly creating new possibilities. In addition to printmaking, she is interested in three-dimensional work, particularly installation art. Here, the work is also process driven. She is fascinated by the visual effect that occurs when responding to the material. There is an element of repetition in the construction of the finished piece. It is meditative yet compelling. The accumulation on a large scale changes the narrative and produces something that is transformative.
Born and raised in Nagano, Japan and originally trained as nurse, Taiko lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Since taking her first art class at the Art Students League of Denver, Taiko has focused on printmaking; more recently she has begun exploring other media, including installation, to express her inner vision. Taiko’s site-responsive installation made with monoprints on Tyvek was part of the exhibition “Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence” at Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Massachusetts, (March 26 – July 16, 2023). Taiko’s work has been exhibited in Colorado (including solo exhibitions at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver Botanic Gardens) and other states, as well as numerous print fairs throughout the U.S. Her work is included in private and public collections in the U.S. and Japan, including the Cleveland Clinic Art Program, University of Colorado Denver Business school, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and the Denver Art Museum (Education Collection).
https://taikochandler.com/
![2023_CW_Facebook-Image-2_DRAFT.jpg](/files/sharedassets/museum/v/1/images/2023_cw_facebook-image-2_draft.jpg?w=750&h=393)
Exhibition Dates: February 17 – May 14, 2023
Humans have been reinterpreting nature as far back as we can record. From the paintings of lions and bulls in the Lascaux Caves of France, to the countless landscape paintings through the ages, humans have been recreating the natural world around them through visual art. In the digital era, those recreations have come in the form of isolated slices that are then turned into bits of data. Images are turned into tiny square pixels, one color each. Smooth arcing sound waves are broken into narrow rectangles that mimic the mountains and valleys of audio. Stunning landscapes are translated into concentric lines emanating from the tallest points as topographic maps. This process of digital cataloging has allowed the average internet user to access a mind-bending amount of data, but after this digital transformation, the landscape is rarely, if ever, recreated into a physical form again. REinterpreting REcreating Nature explores the digitization of natural forms, be they landscapes or biological shapes, and presents known lands and gestures in new ways, by retranslating the digital information back into a physical representation.
Christopher Warren began this artistic exploration with the recreation of landscapes through digitized topographic maps. By combining a massive trove of digitized maps, their free access on the internet, and affordable use of machinery at maker spaces across the US, he created the initial sculptures in this collection that are products of the era and technology they were created in. Warren has since expanded his initial investigation of physical recreations of digitized data to include biological forms such as hands and faces, as well as the merging of biologic and geologic forms. He also generates physical edits into the landscape to illustrate historic events that occurred on the land.
The fractal geometry of nature is a calming presence for all humans, especially since we are surrounded by the Euclidean geometry of rectangles, triangles, and circles in the modern world. Exploration through recreation of these natural forms is an endless pursuit that can veer into countless mediums and directions. Nothing can compare with the wonder of seeing a giant encompassing tree or a breathtaking mountain vista in person, but the study of human recreation of these natural forms provides a look into the inspiration that surrounds us, encompasses us, and even defines us.
This exhibit features a body of work that includes sculptures from across the entire career of Christopher Warren. While topography has been the primary focus throughout Warren’s career, and dominates the collection, wall hanging reliefs, topographic tables, free standing installations, and tabletop pieces are included.
About the Artist
Christopher Warren was born in Durango, Colorado. There he grew up exploring the towering peaks of the San Juan Mountains and the red rock canyons of Southern Utah. These iconic American landscapes instilled in him a sense of geologic wonder. He attended CU Boulder and graduated with a BFA in Film in 2013. He was awarded his first art honors through micro grants from the Durango Arts Center, and a partnership between the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and Denver Botanic Gardens. His explorations of 3D topographic sculptures launched when he became a member of the maker space “Tinkermill” in Longmont, Colorado, where affordable access to machinery allowed his imagination to flow unimpeded by financial constraints of owning his own shop. In 2018, he was awarded his first public art commission, a mural for the North Boulder Arts District. In 2019, he started painting murals across Colorado and began representation with Walker Fine Art in Denver. He also joined the board of the North Boulder Arts District in that same year. In 2020, he created multiple commissioned sculpture installations, as well as exhibited in Land Lines at Walker Fine art. Christopher Warren finds unending inspiration for sculptures and installations all around him, from hikes in Canyonlands National Park, to the stage lights at a concert, he is constantly inundated with new ideas that he hopes to one day create. More information can be found at www.beatnikprints.com.
Virtual Tour
REinterpreting REcreating Virtual Tour
![Image of a dragonfly up close with exhibit title](/files/sharedassets/museum/v/1/images/2023-natures-blueprint-facebook-image-2.jpg?w=750&h=392)
Exhibit Dates: February 3 - March 15, 2023
In an age of complex environmental challenges, why not look to the ingenuity of nature for solutions? The forms, patterns, and processes found in the natural world—refined by 3.8 billion years of evolution—can inspire our design of everything from clothing to skyscrapers. This approach to innovation, called biomimicry, is becoming increasingly popular. Nature’s Blueprints: Biomimicry in Art and Design opens February 3, 2023 at the Littleton Museum.
The exhibition Nature’s Blueprints: Biomimicry in Art and Design brings together art and design with environmental science using artifacts, artworks and photography, as well as interactive learning stations.
Biomimicry is not a novel idea; Gaudi and Da Vinci both took inspiration from nature. Modern science and technology, however, are rapidly expanding the types of materials and systems we can create. Bird wings. Spiderwebs. Rainbow Trout. These have inspired design improvements that enable faster travel, safer bridges, and more effective wind turbines. Similarly, biomimicry in art is a process that entails exploring the material properties, cycles, and dynamics of nature, and how whole biological systems are structured—and putting that into works of art. Artworks and designs that are rooted in the laws and forms of nature can address pressing issues, such as conservation, sustainability, and environmental justice. They can also spark an interest in, and connection with, nature.
This exhibition is aimed to encourage discourse among audiences of all backgrounds as our understanding of the natural world can lead to some extraordinary creations that improve lives and reduce our impact on the environment. Nature’s Blueprints: Biomimicry in Art and Design is an adaptation of the High Desert Museum’s Innovation Lab: Design Inspired by Nature, and is produced and toured by ExhibitsUSA, a program of Mid-America Arts Alliance.
About ExhibitsUSA
This exhibition is toured by ExhibitsUSA, a national program of Mid-America Arts Alliance. ExhibitsUSA sends more than twenty-five exhibitions on tour to over 100 small- and mid-sized communities every year. These exhibitions create access to an array of arts and humanities experiences, nurture the understanding of diverse cultures and art forms, and encourage the expanding depth and breadth of cultural life in local communities. For more about ExhibitsUSA, email MoreArt@maaa.org or visit www.eusa.org.
About Mid-America Arts Alliance
Mid-America Arts Alliance (M-AAA) strengthens and supports artists, cultural organizations, and communities throughout our region and beyond. Additional information about M-AAA is available at www.maaa.org.
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