Child’s Play

When you ask middle-school students to draw something, they usually create something representative and concrete, says PlatteForum education director Meagan Terry — which is why the community art center brought in abstract artists Conor Hollis and Amorette Lana for its newest learning lab. “These artists are not representative; they are...

By Robin Edwards

December 13, 2012

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When you ask middle-school students to draw something, they usually create something representative and concrete, says PlatteForum education director Meagan Terry — which is why the community art center brought in abstract artists Conor Hollis and Amorette Lana for its newest learning lab.

“These artists are not representative; they are extremely abstract and fun,” Terry says. “We’ve really worked to expand [the students’] minds and get them thinking outside the box of their typical world.”

As part of PlatteForum’s artist-in-residency program, the partners, who go by the collective name Hollis+Lana, created vivid, colorful murals and polyurethane foam sculptures, and they worked with kids from the Colorado I Have a Dream Foundation on an abstract, collaborative piece. The students were asked to create drawings inspired by their dreams and then to write about the piece after it was complete.

“The younger students are really coming out of their shells, and I think they’re influencing the artists,” Terry says. “The work that’s being created has a real depth to it and a lot of fun, but it’s also a little dark and funky.”

See the fruits of their labors at the opening reception of boom, bang and splat tonight from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at PlatteForum, 1610 Little Raven Street. The exhibition stays up through January 4 and is free and open to the public; for more information, visit www.platteforum.org.
Thu., Dec. 13, 5:30-8 p.m., 2012

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