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May 15-21, 2008
buzz@boulderweekly.com
 Art on the ranch
A Colorado ranch provides room and board
for artists from across the country
by Amelia Ishmael
A little over 200 miles west of Boulder, the Anderson Ranch in Snowmass Village hosts about 28 artist residences a year.
Established as a learning community where emerging and mid-career artists can develop their work and engage in creative experiments, the Anderson Ranch residency program offers each artist a place to live and work during their stay, which can last up to six months. Participating in the larger art community, this organization also offers various internships, a wide range of artist workshops and outreach programming.
artists in residence: Anderson Ranch, currently on display at the Foothills Art Center, includes work by 20 artist residents and staff members. Together, these artists represent studio practices in ceramics, photography, installation, woodworking and furniture design, presenting a sample of the high quality and wide variety of art being created there. Although no educational requirements exist for application to the program, the majority of residents has at least earned an undergraduate degree in studio arts and are making work that participates in the continuation of modern and contemporary fine art discussions.
Holly Curcio — from Aspen — contributes “Between you and me, it’s not in your mind,” a surrealist ceramic wall sculpture whose primary form is bulbous and organic, resembling a rain cloud. Its title seems to introduce a personal narrative and gives the impression of overhearing a private dialogue between two close friends. Atop the main form is a loosely knit red cloth, which a smaller ceramic form, with a rich orange and green patina, rests upon. Long red strands extending from the knit cloth suspend several seed-like forms, which are each bound with a folded sheet of paper. One can see the dampened handwriting bleeding through a few of the pages, which the artist describes as excerpts from old journals. Together, Curcio’s sculpture offers rich dreamlike imagery that is ambiguous, yet highly suggestive and lyrical.
Three large monochromatic works by Erin Dinsmoor — of Woody Creek — exhibit a tendency towards experimentation. Reminiscent of post-expressionist paintings, Dinsmoor creates these pieces by staining large sheets of translucent Mylar with different dilutions of colored acrylic ink, water and salt. Working horizontally, the artist pours and splashes the mixtures onto the sheets, creating spontaneous polymorphous shapes with crystallized textures in earthly green, brown and black hues. The dried sheets suspended from the wall defy gravity with symphonic visual pleasure.
Kathleen Loe — who lives between Boulder and New Orleans — presents a large wall installation titled “Peter Pan’s Shadow I-IV.” Using insect screening, Loe has captured the silhouetted shapes of two military helicopters that overlap slightly on the gallery wall. With her reference in the title to the shadow of the children’s book character Peter Pan, which was continuously escaping from Pan to cause some sort of mischief, Loe seems to be working toward a personal political statement with these ominous dark and ghostly images. (Perhaps unintentionally, the inclusion of this piece highlights the absence of political imagery throughout the rest of the exhibition, which seems slightly peculiar when sampling the work of so many artists during a time that our country is still at war.)
“West of Venus,” “Injury to Insult” and “Gravity in Chains” are the three poetic titles given to salt-fired ceramic vessels by Susan Muenchen — of Snowmass Village, Colo. With a Constructivist reference to material and process, these large vessels appear to have been created solely out of manipulated slabs of clay as opposed to the more traditional process of wheel throwing. Their plump, seemingly heavy forms are visually rich and solemn.
Overall, artists in residence is sure to stimulate new interest, generally, to the opportunities to be found at the Anderson Ranch and, specifically, to the diverse talents of all of the artists whose works are on display.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
On the Bill:
artists in residence: Anderson Ranch will be on display until July 6 at Foothills Art Center, 809 15th St., Golden, 303-279-3922. There will also be a gallery talk with the exhibiting artists on Saturday, May 17, at 11 a.m.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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