2007 Faculty Exhibition

The University of Colorado is the state's premier learning institution, and Boulder is the region's only true college town, on par with Madison, Wisconsin, or Ann Arbor, Michigan. Changes initiated by Hank Brown, the school's president, have put a damper on the famous party atmosphere there, but there's still a palpable energy and enthusiasm that not even a former Republican senator can snuff out completely. CU-Boulder is my alma mater, and when I left, I had both a BA and an MA as consolation prizes for having to give up all the tremendous fun I had while working to get them.

The campus is undeniably beautiful, partly because of its dramatic setting right against the Flatirons, and partly because there's an astounding degree of architectural harmony to the buildings. Since the 1920s, everything constructed has followed an architectural vocabulary that mandated the use of Lyons sandstone for the walls and red tile for the roofs, with both coming together to broadly refer to Tuscan-revival architecture. There are some exceptions to this, like Old Main, which is an impressive Italianate confection, or the Sibell Wolle Fine Arts Building, which is a functionalist red-brick industrial building of no particular distinction.

I used to love hanging out in Sibell Wolle, and between art history classes, I'd catch the shows at what is now the CU Art Museum. I was overcome with nostalgia while on campus last week, because it was the first time I'd been there since learning that Sibell Wolle is going to come down to make way for a new art center (see Artbeat, page 47). I feel a little bad about it, but it's long overdue: CU definitely needs better facilities for studio art, art history and the art museum.

Lisa Tamiris Becker, the museum's director, is on cloud nine regarding the impending construction that's to get under way this summer, even if it does put her exhibition schedule into limbo until fall semester 2009, when the new complex is set to open. In order to deal with having no venue for a couple of years, Becker plans to partner with the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art for an exhibit or two and mount the required BFA and MFA candidates' shows at the Dairy Center for the Arts.

For one of the last shows to be presented in the current space, Becker organized the 2007 Faculty Exhibition, which features pieces by full-time professors as well as adjuncts and demonstrates that the art instructors at CU embrace a wide range of mediums and work in a variety of styles. Despite all this diversity, the show, as put together by Becker, looks good and, more surprisingly, holds together.

The exhibit begins on a touching note with a piece by Antonette Rosato, who died last year from breast cancer at the age of 53. Rosato had been on the art faculty since 1989. Her Faculty work is a part of an installation done in 2005 in which she took fallen leaves and sewed gauzy containers for them. "Pattern That Connects" is really beautiful, with the leaves in their slipcovers being very delicate in both appearance and materials.

Rosato is best known in Denver for a piece she did with her husband, William Jackson Maxwell, who also died prematurely. "Kinetic Light/Air Curtain" at the Denver International Airport is something everyone knows: It's the propeller-lined train tunnel. Like "Pattern," "Kinetic" is made up of many parts orchestrated into an impressive whole.

Among other installations are two by Yumi Janairo Roth that use luxurious references in the context of workaday objects -- in this case, the pallets that forklifts move. In the floor-bound "Paleta :: Pallet (Made in the Philippines)," Roth uses boards carved with baroque decorations; for "Paleta :: Pallet (Made in the U.S.A.)," it's fine, dark-finished mahogany planks accented by bits of mother-of-pearl. Roth sets up a tension between the functional and the decorative, thus raising questions about work and social class.

Another standout is the major multi-part painting "Counter Parts," by Chuck Forsman, one of the region's premier contemporary realists. Forsman often puts political content in his work, but this one stands out even more than usual. The subject is death in the perspectives of Vietnam and Iraq. A row of severed pig heads and a stuffed lizard are put together with a stack of four portraits at the extreme left depicting Ho Chi Minh, Lyndon Johnson, Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush. The meaning is clear: Ho was to LBJ as Saddam was to Bush.