SAY WHAT: poetry + art

This session of SAY WHAT pairs an artist talk from GOCA121 featured photographer William Wylie with a reading by Colorado poet Merril Gilfillan.

Poetry and contemporary art can be difficult to approach–they don’t always seem to make sense. SAY WHAT offers conversations on both. Each session explores ideas related to structure, theme, landuage and content in poetry and the corresponding visual art exhibition.

Merrill Gilfillan: A native of Ohio, MG has lived in the American West since 1980. He is the author of a dozen collections of poetry and seven books of prose, both short stories and essays, many of which engage the western landscape, its cultures, implications, and psychologies. Recent titles include UNDANCEABLE and THE BARK OF THE DOG (poems) and RIVERS AND BIRDS (essays regarding various American places.) He currently resides in Denver.

William Wylie received an MFA from The University if Michigan in 1989. He has published four books of his photographs, Riverwalk (University Press of Colorado, 2000), Stillwater (Nazraeli Press, 2002), Carrara (Center for American Places, 2009), and Route 36 (Flood Editions, 2010) all concerned with landscape and place. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography in 2005 and a Colorado Individual Artist Fellowship in 1998. His photographs and films have been shown both nationally and internationally, including A Complex Eden at The Museum of Fine Art, St. Petersburg, FL, 100 Great American Photographs at The Amon Carter Museum. Fort Worth, TX, and Forged Power at Arizona State University Art Museum. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Yale University Art Museum, among others. He lives in Charlottesville where he teaches photography at the University of Virginia.

•   /  
• Posted in Blog, Events / 
• No Comments »

Return to top of page

Hypothesis

Hypothesis: a suggested explanation for a group of facts or phenomena, either accepted as a basis for further verification (working hypothesis) or accepted as likely to be true.

Hypothesis: Process in Science and Art is a multi-disciplinary exhibit and an experiment highlighting the connections between the scientific and artistic processes.

Exhibit Dates: August 19-October 21, 2010
Public Reception: Thursday, August 19, 6-8 pm
Gallery Hours: Tues-Friday, 12-6 or by appointment.

The hypothesis is the heart of the exhibit — positing that processes followed by artists and scientists have much in common. Hypothesis explores these scientific and artistic processes and is itself an experiment.

UCCS Anthropology, Chemistry, and Geography faculty are partnering with artists who have responded to the faculty’s research and data in sculptural and video installations. Process is examined through both the faculty’s research and the artist’s finished work, bringing about greater understanding of the inherent connections between the scientific and creative processes.

Curated by Daisy McConnell, co-director of GOCA, the opening of Hypothesis coincides with the Grand Reopening of the Science Building (newly renamed “Centennial Hall”) at UCCS. The Gallery of Contemporary Art at UCCS is located in the newly renovated Centennial Hall. Highlighting the interconnectedness of the arts and the sciences is the basis for this experimental exhibit.

HYPOTHESIS LECTURE SERIES

A series of lectures will accompany the exhibit. Each lecture will feature a faculty member and the artist partnered in the exhibit speaking individually about their work, then coming together to discuss the interconnections between their respective processes.
All lectures are free and open to the public, 7 pm
Location: Centennial Hall Auditorium (adjacent to GOCA 1420 entrance)

September 30 Scott Johnson & Curt Holder (Geography & Environmental Science)

October 7 Erin Elder & Minette Church (Anthropology)

October 14 Chris Coleman & Brandon Vogt (Geography, GIS Mapping)

October 21 Kim Abeles & Janel Owens (Environmental Chemistry)

ARTIST BIOS

Kim Abeles is an artist who crosses disciplines and media to explore and map the urban environment and chronicle broad social issues. The Smog Collector series brought her work to national and international attention in the art world, and mainstream sources such as Newsweek, National Public Radio, CBS Evening News, and The Wall Street Journal. A mid-career survey curated by Karen Moss and sponsored by the Fellows of Contemporary Art for the Santa Monica Museum, Kim Abeles: Encyclopedia Persona A-Z, toured the United States and South America, and was awarded the Best Regional Museum Show category for 1993-94 by the International Association of Art Critics. She continues to exhibit internationally, including recent projects in Vietnam, Thailand, Czech Republic, England, and China. She represented the U.S. in both the Fotografie Biennale Rotterdam and the Cultural Centre of Berchem in Antwerp. Her work is in numerous private and public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art; United States Information Agency; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Yucun Art Museum, Suzhou, China; Sandwell Community History and Archives, U.K.; and is archived in the library collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt Publication Design Collection of the Smithsonian. Abeles work was awarded grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation and Peter Norton Foundation and fellowships from J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, Pollack-Krasner Foundation, and the California Arts Council.

Chris Coleman received his BFA in his native state from West Virginia University in 2001 and his MFA from New York State University at Buffalo in 2003. A number of his undergraduate years were devoted to studying Mechanical Engineering, knowledge that he brings to bear in his installations. His work includes sculptures, performances and videos as well as interactive installations. Coleman was twice a participant in the VIPER Basel Festival in Switzerland and has had his work in exhibitions in Singapore, Finland, Sweden, Italy, Germany, France, China, the UK and Latvia. In North America he has had solo shows at Big Orbit in Buffalo NY, Pratt at Munson Williams Proctor in NY, and NE plus Ultra in Toronto as well as exhibitions at the Albright Knox in Buffalo NY, Spaces Gallery in Cleveland OH, and other shows in Minneapolis MN, Austin TX, and New York City to name a few. He currently resides in Denver, CO and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Denver.

Erin Elder is an independent curator, writer, and teacher interested in collaboration, sense of place, and expanded notions of culture. Her research has focused on Drop City, the first of the ‘60s era artist-built communes and she continues to research and write about the countercultural activities of the American Southwest. She has produced projects with a variety of institutions including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Creative Time, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, and the University of Houston. In 2009, Erin co-founded PLAND, an off-the-grid residency program near Taos, New Mexico where she is now based. Erin holds dual self-designed BAs from Prescott College and an MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts. She enjoys hiking, hot springs, and building forts.

Scott Johnson was born in 1969 and grew up in the Colorado Rockies. He obtained his BFA from The University of Colorado at Boulder and his MFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. His work as an artist has been informed by such as experiences as herding cows on the Navajo Reservation, traveling upon the Silk Road and living in Venice, Italy. He presently teaches at The Colorado College in Colorado Springs.

FACULTY BIOS

Minette Church, PhD., Associate Professor of Anthropology is an anthropological archaeologist. Her research focus is on the nineteenth and early twentieth century United States West, where she explores Plains-Southwest interactions along the Santa Fe Trail, and the precedents for and ramifications of such interactions through time. She is particularly interested in archaeological expressions of gender, class, nationality, and ethnicity at several scales, from that of individual sites to cultural landscapes. She has pursued similar interests in western Belize, Central America, on Caste War era Maya village sites. Minette earned her B.A. in History and Anthropology in 1987, at the University of Colorado, Boulder. After three years of private sector archaeology on pre-Columbian sites across the west, she earned her M.A. in 1991, a Certificate in Museum Curatorship in 1992, and her Ph.D. 2001, all at the University of Pennsylvania.

Curt Holder, PhD., is Associate Professor of Geography at UCCS. Curt received his B.A. degree in geography from Clark University. After graduating from Clark, Curt developed an appreciation for the potential role of scientific knowledge in addressing community needs when he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala (1988-1990). Curt worked on reforestation, soil conservation, and watershed management projects in Peace Corps, and following a two-year service, Curt received a M.A. degree in geography from the University of Georgia. Curt returned to Clark University for a Ph.D. in geography. Curt works at the nexus of hydrology, biogeography, and human-environment interactions in tropical montane cloud forests of the Sierra de las Minas Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala. Results from his studies have contributed to the theory of vegetation influences on watershed management by addressing the significance of fog precipitation in hydrological models. His current research focuses on three topical areas, including vegetation-atmosphere processes in tropical montane cloud forests, foliar biogeography and ecology, and human influences on forest change in Guatemala. 

Curt is currently working on two major research projects: the first project was funded by the National Science Foundation and examines the significance of leaf water repellency, leaf optical properties, and photosynthesis of cloud forest and non-cloud forest species in order to expand existing hydrological and ecophysiological models for cloud forests. The objectives of this study are to define the spatial patterns of leaf water repellency between different habitats and to assess its importance in the overall water balance in cloud forests. With a clearer understanding of the interactive responses between leaf water repellency, gas exchange, and leaf optical properties among dominant species at a site and between sites, better models of forest hydrology processes can be formulated that incorporate leaf surface variables. As well as conducting extensive fieldwork on tropical ecosystems, Curt’s research experience also includes investigations of temperate forests. As a trained forest hydrologist and biogeographer, he relies on a multidisciplinary approach to address research questions that often requires a research team from various disciplines to understand relationships between social and physical processes. 

Janel Owens, PhD., is Assistant Professor of Chemistry at UCCS. Dr. Owens graduated with a B.S. in Chemistry with Honors from Southwestern University, a small liberal arts college in central Texas, in 2003, and a PhD in 2007 from the University of California at Davis where she was part of the Agricultural and Environmental Chemistry graduate group. Postdoctoral research was conducted in a position at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  Current research interests include the development of quantitative methods for the analysis of pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and nanomaterials in foods and environmentally relevant samples. Of particular interest is the interaction and effect of food components (such as polyphenolics or similar antioxidants) on the stability and bioavailability of such environmental pollutants.

Brandon Vogt, PhD., is Assistant Professor of Geography at UCCS. He received his BS in resource management from the University of Missouri in 1992, his MA and PhD in Geography from Arizona State University in 2002. His current research is related to 1) sandstone weathering in southeast Colorado, 2) mapping Late Pleistocene glacial landforms on Pikes Peak, 3) pedagogy for classroom and field studies curricula in physical geography, and 4) cloud-to-ground lightning interactions with topographic high points in southeast Colorado. 

David J. Weiss, PhD., is Associate Professor of Analytical Chemistry at UCCS. He received his B.S. in 1992 from the University of California, Riverside and his Ph.D. in 1997, from the University of Kansas. Postdoctoral research was conducted as a Fellow at the University of Kansas, 1997-2000. Dr. Weiss’ research involves the development of enzyme based biosensors for diagnosis and monitoring diseases such as PKU, and developing new capillary electrophoresis methods for the analysis of pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, and chemical warfare agents.

•   /  
• Posted in Blog, Exhibits, Upcoming Exhibits, awol / 
• No Comments »

Return to top of page

William Wylie

In the exhibition American Places William Wylie focuses on the concept of place; how we respond to the landscape, how we move from the general to the specific in our personal associations with it, and how our lives are interwoven into the histories of places. In his work over the past twenty years, Wylie has balanced a striking formal sensibility with a dedication to a documentary role for his photography. In this respect, his photographs are marked by both intensity and dispassion. He writes: “The landscape is a visual presentation of forces at work, from the biological and geological to the human. As an artist I am interested in the evocative quality of that presentation. I make photographs not only to honor what is in front of the camera but also to invoke a sense of inclusion (my own and hopefully an audience). The act of attention is a way of connecting and photography is a tool that supports our involvement with the world. “

For the two bodies of work represented in this exhibition Wylie used a landscape feature to create an itinerary by which to document the place, in both cases a pathway. One is a river, the Cache la Poudre River in northern Colorado, the other a two-lane highway, Route 36, traversing northern Kansas from border to border. By using an established geographical reference as a trajectory into the landscape Wylie accepts his route as a given. Concomitantly, these photographs document the personal experiences of the photographer. He spent four years working on each project, traveling (and in the case of the Poudre River, walking) the entire lengths of the commons. With this in mind, they can’t be viewed as only referencing the places themselves but also as locating a moment in time when a specific individual stood in front of a subject that mattered. That relationship is always paramount in Wylie’s images.

Riverwalk (1994-1998) is a collection of 49 photographs documenting the landscape surrounding the watershed along the Cache la Poudre River in Colorado. Both a Wild and Scenic River and one of the most polluted in Colorado, the place is being developed at a rapid pace. At the same time, Wylie attends to the river itself, its shifting flow and fluctuations in light, as well the manner in which it has shaped the environment through which it passes. The publication Riverwalk (UPC, 2000) won the 2000 Colorado Book Award.

Likewise, Route 36 (2004-2008) functions as both a program and a subject. Though Wylie’s images, we glimpse the Western prairie through the frame of trucking and agricultural industries. The turnouts and roadsides that draw his attention prove sparsely populated and largely neglected. His photographs are revealing not only of American spaces, but spatial practice: our production and consumption of space, our way stations and movement through it. This documentary series of photographs moves progressively westward, beginning at the Missouri River crossing, where oxbows form the platforms for the city of St. Joseph, and ending where the two lanes of Route 36 disappear into Interstate 70 at Byers, Colorado, within sight of the Rocky Mountains. These photographs document not only a geographical landscape, but a social one as well, recording a particular moment in the history of vernacular culture. Route 36 has just been released by Flood Editions.

As the poet Merrill Gilfillan has commented, “It seems continually necessary to reassert that landscape study and its reflective arts are anything but passive disciplines, that civilization in a sustaining, daily sense emerges most surely from good relations with one’s surroundings (the perfect word) and the inner landscape of possibility held in the head and heart.” (Merrill Gilfillan will be participating in an artist discussion with William Wylie in September, details will be announced shortly.)

ARTIST BIO
William Wylie received an MFA from The University if Michigan in 1989. He has published four books of his photographs, Riverwalk (University Press of Colorado, 2000), Stillwater (Nazraeli Press, 2002), Carrara (Center for American Places, 2009), and Route 36 (Flood Editions, 2010) all concerned with landscape and place. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography in 2005 and a Colorado Individual Artist Fellowship in 1998. His photographs and films have been shown both nationally and internationally, including A Complex Eden at The Museum of Fine Art, St. Petersburg, FL, 100 Great American Photographs at The Amon Carter Museum. Fort Worth, TX, and Forged Power at Arizona State University Art Museum. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Yale University Art Museum, among others. He lives in Charlottesville where he teaches photography at the University of Virginia.

•   /  
• Posted in 121, Blog, Events, Exhibits, Upcoming Exhibits / 
• No Comments »

Return to top of page

CC Summer Music Festival at GOCA121

The Colorado College Summer Music Festival brings their extraordinary students and faculty to join with GOCA121 on June 18 to bring music and art together. These incredible musicians will be creating new work based on their responses to the current exhibition, 4×4.

The evening promises to woo you with world class music, fabulous art, free wine and great place for dinner right next door (Nosh).

•   /  
• Posted in Blog, Events / 
• No Comments »

Return to top of page

SAY WHAT: art + poetry

7 pm at GOCA 121
121 S. Tejon

SAY WHAT is a new forum for poetry in Colorado Springs.

Poetry and contemporary art can be difficult to approach—they don’t always seem to make sense, but this program eases visitors into conversations about both (with a glass of wine and expert interpreters at hand). SAY WHAT is the product of community collaborators interested in teaching people about poetry through art and vice versa. Each session explores ideas related to structure, theme, language and content in poetry that can also be seen in the corresponding visual art exhibition.

The second installment of SAY WHAT will feature award-winning Oregon poet Matt Schumacher. Schumacher’s second full-length book, The Fire Diaries, was published this year. A shorter version, Fire Diary, was selected by Matthea Harvey for the Well Lit Press chapbook contest, and his first first collection, Spilling the Moon, appeared in 2008. Virgil Suarez writes, “To read a Matt Schumacher poem is to enter a world of riotous word riffs and fire-related incantations. Meditative, hauntingly chaotic, and beautiful, these poems will singe your memory. This ample collection glows with great personal and historical revelatory spark.”

BYOP (bring your own pillow) and enjoy the program.

•   /  
• Posted in Blog, Events / 
• No Comments »

Return to top of page

4X4

AT GOCA121 | 121 S. Tejon St. | Suite 100

4×4: 4 artists, 4 curators developed out of a series of conversations between four local contemporary art curators. After many informal discussions about artists and exhibitions we decided to explore further the similarities and differences of our curatorial approaches by collaborating on a project featuring four Colorado artists.

While the artists are diverse in their chosen media and conceptual choices, taken as a whole, 4×4 challenges the viewer to consider space, scale and stories and ask questions about the relationships between objects, between object and space and between local visual arts institutions.

CURATORS
Caitlin Green (GOCA)
Blake Milteer (Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center)
Jessica Hunter Larsen (The I.D.E.A. Space at Colorado College)
Holly Parker (Smokebrush Gallery & Foundation)

ARTISTS
Andrew Beckham
Carol Golemboski
Kate Petley
Stacy Steers

•   /  
• Posted in 121, Blog, Events, Exhibits / 
• No Comments »

Return to top of page

FREE CANDY!

FREE CANDY! is the annual Visual and Performing Arts exhibition highlighting work from 2010 graduating seniors. The exhibition is planned and executed from start to finish by the visual art students as part of their professional development course and is the sampling of work from 10 students working in sculpture, drawing, painting, digital media, video, and photography.

FEATURED ARTISTS
Laura Bearl
Jen Blair
Lisa Cross
Tracy Falsetto
Tiffany Gray
Frankie Medeiros
Emily Morgan
Daniela Oettinger
Gretchen Piper
Monica VanConant
Tim Winkelbauer

•   /  
• Posted in Blog, Events, Exhibits, awol / 
• No Comments »

Return to top of page

1440: Moan

Taking inspiration from a sound that straddles pleasure and pain, Moan features art work in a variety of media by UCCS Visual Art faculty and students as a part of the City Dionysia Festival. A maelstrom of violence, The Bacchae is a potent source for examining the heart of revelry, intoxication, and vengeance. Opening reception: March 4, 6 – 9 pm. Closing reception (with a live performance of excerpts from the Bacchae score): April 2, 6 – 9 pm.

COMPLIMENTARY PARKING IN LOT 3 PROVIDED BY UCCS PARKING SERVICES.

Featuring work by:

Carol Dass
Aaron Graves
Claire Rau
Kim Lovelace
Corey Drieth
Laura Bearl
Erik Schubert
Taylor Stamp
Mariya Zvonkovich
Amber Marchlowska
Matt Barton
Courtney Matthews
Olivia Lundberg
Elizabeth Raitz
Pauline Foss
Brett Wilson
Valerie Brodar
Dom Puleo
Erin Elder
Lisa Cross

•   /  
• Posted in Blog, Events, Exhibits, awol / 
• No Comments »

Return to top of page

AWOL: Rotozaza

The Gallery of Contemporary Art and THEATREWORKS are proud to host the world premier of the ENTIRE Autoteatro Series by Rotozaza, a UK-based performance group. Three works make up the series: ETIQUETTE, GURUGURU and WONDERMART.

BUY TICKETS or call 719.255.3232 to make reservations.

ETIQUETTE by Ant Hampton and Silvia Mercuriali
Etiquette is a half-hour experience for two people in a public space. There is no-one watching – other people in the cafe or bar are not aware of it. You wear headphones which tell you what to say to each other, or to use one of the objects positioned to the side. There is a kind of magic involved – for it to work you just need to listen and respond accordingly. Etiquette is theatre at its most raw; it is live, insightful, philosophical and incredibly unique. The participants are both the actors and the audience, and the show offers the fantasy of being able to speak without having to think what to say.

GURUGURU by Ant Hampton with Joji Koyama and Isambard Khroustaliov
You have been told what to do every moment of the day, for years on end. The voice in your headphones has understood who you are and gives instructions which mirror what you’d be doing anyway. A life free of dither and uncertainty! In your job, this voice is a career-saver… but the day has come when you need to come ‘off the headphones’. You need help.

Five audience-participants enter a brightly lit room and discover chairs positioned for them around a screen. As they each follow different instructions via headphones, they find themselves at the centre of an oddly familiar dystopia, and that they’re wearing headphones permanently, ‘for their own good’. Proceedings are led by an on-screen, animated character whose twin roles of marketing and spiritual Guru are confused by his reliance on untested and accident-prone technologies. The overproduced, digital sheen of this focus-group world begins to crack, as the group edge towards the dangerous situation of having to think for themselves. In true Rotozaza style, a beautifully orchestrated chaos develops, exposing today’s consumer-mad inability to distinguish between what we want, and what we need.

WONDERMART by Silvia Mercuriali with Tommaso Perego and Matt Rudkin
Wondermart takes a mischievous swipe at the dominance of supermarket culture and consumerism. This interactive audio tour takes you on a journey of rediscovery through the familiar surroundings of the supermarket. Wearing headphones and anonymous behind your trolley, you are guided around the aisles immersed in a private world, as the carefully constructed soundscape overlays a fictional world that blurs the real with the imaginary.

Here’s what the press has to say:
“Wondermart is an absorbing journey into the heart of modern consumerism.” The List (Wondermart)

“The concept is clever and the result an altered engagement with the commonplace.” Irish Times (Wondermart)

“gripping… If the line between audience and performer seems blurred, Rotozaza’s Etiquette erases it entirely.” New York Times/Herald Tribune (Etiquette)

“This is a magical, unthreatening experience… the act of relinquishing responsibility for thought, word and action is unique and the effect is unmissable.” British Theatre Guide (Etiquette)

“Hugely entertaining… This smart, mysterious exercise in programmed thinking and collective chaos is strange but exhilarating.” The Times (GuruGuru)

“You may find yourself frantically looking for yourself again in the moments after the performance has finished.” The Guardian (GuruGuru)

MORE INFORMATION ON ROTOZAZA CAN BE FOUND ON THEIR WEBSITE: www.rotozaza.uk

•   /  
• Posted in Blog, Events, Exhibits / 
• No Comments »

Return to top of page

Winterim Course in LONDON!

This interdisciplinary course is designed to create an opportunity for students to explore and experience visual and performing arts in London and to form critical responses to select exhibitions and performances. Course work will be completed in galleries, theaters and museums across London. This course is an all access to pass to the arts in one of the most fabulous cities in the world. All students, including extended studies students, are welcome to enroll.

$2165*
Includes roundtrip flight from Colorado, lodging, daily breakfast, guided excursions, theatre performances, art events and one amazing way to earn college credit!

You can register for this course with SPRING 2010 registration in November, a $500 deposit is dur on November 30. ROLE OF THE VIEW will be led by Gallery of Contemporary Art director Caitlin Green & THEATREWORKS executive director Drew Martorella. More info on our FACEBOOK PAGE.

Questions? Call 255.3232 or email cgreen@uccs.edu.

*Does not include airport taxes and fees or tuition

•   /  
• Posted in Blog / 
• No Comments »

Return to top of page