Sweet Spot

If you’re free-associating, likely the last thing you’d come up with when presented with the word “Loveland” is the term “pop art.” Until now. Because on May 30, the Loveland Museum/Gallery at 503 North Lincoln Avenue will unveil a blockbuster entitled Wayne Thiebaud: 70 Years of Painting, dedicated to the pop-art pioneer.

Thiebaud was born in Arizona in 1920 but spent most of his life in California, working as an artist and a teacher. On a trip to New York in the late 1950s, he fell in with the biggest names in the art world, including early pop artists Robert Rauschenberg and his then-partner, Jasper Johns. At the time, Thiebaud was already doing the kind of work that would later make him famous — images of cakes and pies — so he actually anticipated the pop-art movement, rather than jumped on the bandwagon once it was already moving. In more recent years, he’s done cityscapes and landscapes in the same hyper-realist style as his renditions of desserts.

The Loveland Museum/Gallery has scheduled a raft of events to celebrate this impressive show, which ends August 16, including a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. on June 12; a panel discussion at 2 p.m. June 13; and even a cake-decorating class from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. on June 18. For more information on these and other Thiebaud-related events, call 970-962-2410 or go to www.cityofloveland.org.
May 30-Aug. 16, 2009