Artbeat

Brief sketches of what's happening in the Denver art scene.

Comments (0) By Michael Paglia Thursday, May 24 2001

There's a great show, Dave Yust: Selected Monotypes 1997-2001, now on display in the gallery at Open Press (40 West Bayaud Avenue, 303-778-1116). It highlights Yust's work with master printer Mark Lunning from a series of sessions held over the last four years in Lunning's printmaking shop, also at Open Press. "Mark is a tremendous resource for so many of us in the area," says Yust. "I don't know what we'd do without him."

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Yust has long been interested in making prints, even before he came to Colorado from Kansas in the early 1960s, but he's better known as a painter. So it's no surprise to learn that the monotypes produced at Open Press were later touched up with paint at Yust's Fort Collins studio.

The prints in the show, many of them diptychs, some pairing a circle with a square, seem to be abstractions of the Western landscape. And that's no accident, says Yust. "There are topographic and landscape references," he admits, "but I hope color comes through as a major concern and interest." Some pieces, such as "Hieromantic Inclusion I" (above), look like hand-painted renditions of satellite photos.

Yust, a painting professor at Colorado State University, has exhibited only rarely in Denver since the gallery that represented him, Inkfish, closed a few years ago. That makes this show a special opportunity -- and a brief one, since the gallery's open only on weekends and the show closes June 16.