On Exhibiting in Venice: Artist Talk With Joel Swanson and Laura Shill
David B. Smith Gallery
Wednesday, June 7, 7 p.m.
Cortney Lane Stell and the Black Cube Nomadic Museum took two prominent Colorado artists — Laura Shill and Joel Swanson — to the 2017 Venice Biennale, and now they’re back and ready to talk about their exhibit abroad, Personal Structures, on view in the historic Palazzo Bembo through November. Meet and greet the duo, learn more about the show and its take on the language of gender politics, and get a taste of the artistic climate in Venice on Wednesday, June 7, at David B. Smith Gallery, in LoDo. It might be the next best thing to being in Italy. Admission is free.
Dasha Shishkin: Tram Pam Pam
Mauro Giaconi: Cae a plomo (desde el fondo del tiempo) / falls to lead (from the depths of time)
Walk the Distance and Slow Down: Selections From the Collection of JoAnn Gonzalez Hickey
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
June 9 through September 10
Opening Reception: Friday, June 9, 6:30 to 9 p.m.
BMoCA’s summer exhibits cross the basic lines, shading and perspective of traditional drawing on paper. These shows take over walls, rise in sculpted forms and define whole new worlds of experience beyond the boundaries of a single medium. Russian-born artist Dasha Shishkin’s Tram Pam Pam pulls together new and old works into a sensual, circus-like jumble of color and characters, while Mexico City-based Mauro Giaconi’s wall installation evokes the rise and fall of civilization through a process of building up and breaking down layers of graphite and plaster fragments. Walk the Distance and Slow Down: Selections From the Collection of JoAnn Gonzalez Hickey gathers works by 29 artists from around the globe who break all the rules to redefine drawing. If you’re passionate about collecting art, mark your calendars for Thursday, August 10, when you can meet Hickey and learn more about her experience as a collector during a conversation from 6:30 to 9 p.m.
Continue reading for more ways to celebrate art.
Shawn Huckins, “Misty Morning: Somewhere to Nowhere,” acrylic on canvas mounted to birch panel, 2017.
Goodwin Fine Art
Goodwin Fine Art
June 9 through July 22
Opening Reception: 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, June 9
Civilization — and in this day and age, that often means technology — overtakes the primal piece of being human in contemporary times, something that painter Shawn Huckins unsubtly drives home in works of bucolic imagery superimposed with text borrowed from a simpler time. There’s a little longing in this new body of work for face-to-face contact and emoji-free communication that perhaps signals a call for less screen time and more physical interaction. Give it a shot and see if Huckins's pointed pretty pictures don’t ween you off the passive mental goose of Facebook engagement.
Jennifer Pettus, Plot Twist
Firehouse Art Center, Longmont
Through June 25
2nd Friday Reception: Friday, June 9, 6 to 9 p.m.
For fiber artist Jennifer Pettus, the actual “plot twist” of her new exhibit at the Firehouse in Longmont is materials-driven. Into the labor-intensive process of making art go repurposed bits and pieces and mixed-media compilations of things and a lot of blood, sweat and nose-to-the-grindstone workshop tinkering, and out come whimsical objects waiting to tell stories, like theatrical props and costumery from another planet.
Tom Hoitsma, The Air in the Room
Michael Warren Contemporary
June 9 through July 15
Opening Reception: Friday, June 9, 6 to 8 p.m.
Artist Talk: Saturday, June 10, 10:30 a.m. to noon
Michael Warren brings Dallas abstractionist Tom Hoitsma and his densely layered, almost sculptured canvases to town for a show, with a round of hoopla that includes a Friday night reception and an artist conversation between Hoitsma and art consultant Shelly Glasser the next morning.
Check our calendar for more things to do.
