Exhibit Dates: November 12 - December 30, 2021
The City of Littleton Fine Arts Board proudly presents the 56th Annual Own an Original art competition. Open to Colorado artists, the competition is for any art medium except photography. This year’s exhibition aspires to bring us “Together (Again).” After a long year apart due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the time has come to gather again, and celebrate all that was missed during social distancing. Whether to laugh with one another, empathize, or mourn, being together is integral to society and humanity. It strengthens our common bonds and lets us feel supported and part of a greater purpose.
Best in Show:
- Best of Show ($1000.00) – Michelle Lamb “Global Murmuration”
Awards:
- 1st Place ($500.00) – Barbara Veatch, “Vortex”
- 2nd Place ($250.00) – Emily Lamb, “Vacillation”
- 3rd Place ($100.00) – Anne Feller, “Passing On”
Honorable Mentions:
- Honorable Mention #1 – Scott DeWeese, “Basket of Illusion #022”
- Honorable Mention #2 – Pat Isaacs, “Ravel 2”
- Honorable Mention #3 – Ashton Lacy Jones, “Rain in Peacock Park”
Participating Artists:
2021 Juror: Catherine Chauvin (See her website)
Catherine Chauvin is an associate professor at the University of Denver, teaching drawing, common curriculum, and all forms of printmaking.
After earning an MFA at Syracuse University, she trained at the Tamarind Institute and has since collaborated with artists such as Gladys Nilsson, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and William Wiley in New Mexico, Texas, and Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado. These experiences as a collaborative printer and artist combine in multiple ways in her artwork and teaching. Residencies in Ireland, Spain, Norfolk Island, Oregon and Wyoming have allowed her to develop bodies of work based on landscape.
Her research interests include observational drawing, contemporary printmaking processes and environmental topics. Her immediate focus is looking at how parasitic plant growth is complex, beautiful and a metaphor for something being revealed as it overwhelms other systems. For Chauvin, the tangles of plant growth hint at both our current complicated world and how opportunistic elements can affect us all.
Exhibit Dates: September 24 - October 16, 2021
The founding of new print studios in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s led to a resurgence of printmaking. As artists began working alongside skilled printmakers, lithographs and silkscreens grew increasingly popular as more affordable options for collecting original works. Artists, including Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Frank Stella and Robert Rauschenberg, integrated printmaking into their artistic practices. This exhibition features these artists and more in a celebration of 20th-century masters of American printmaking. Visitors will learn about printmaking techniques and this important chapter in American art history.
Print Renaissance features 18 artworks and is part of the University of Colorado Art Museum’s Polly and Mark Addison Outreach Exhibition Program, through which the museum works with Colorado cultural institutions to tour art exhibitions curated from works of art Polly and Mark Addison donated to the museum. The Outreach Exhibition Program is supported by the Office of the Chancellor.
Exhibit dates: May 21, 2021 - July 17, 2021
The City of Littleton Fine Arts Board is pleased to announce an upcoming exhibition of fine art, Best of Show, featuring the artwork of Ashley Allen and Olga and Aleksey Ivanov. The artists won the award “Best of Show” for competitive exhibitions in 2020; Allen for the 2020 Eye of the Camera exhibit, and the Ivanovs, for the 2020 Own an Original exhibit.
Through a curated selection of these artists’ recent works, I and We, explores the concept of the individual versus the duo when considering artistic inspirations and processes. Allen, whose work explores the role of the individual within familial groups, as well as one’s relationship with nature, focuses on using photography to explore one’s identity in the larger world. In contrast to the unique and dynamic role of the individual, is the delicate and harmonious balance of a partnership. The Ivanovs are spouses who have worked together on paintings for over twenty-five years. They collaborate symbiotically on each egg tempera painting they create, reflecting the strong bond they share as life partners.
For Ashley Allen, whose work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, photography is a medium to explore questions about identity. Where do we fit in the world with each other and with our environment? How do we identify ourselves within our landscape or within our family? How do we maintain, realize or lose our personal selves within the relationships that we hold most closely? By photographically investigating these questions, she finds a deeper understanding of self. To explore more of Allen’s work, explore her website, ashleyallenfineart.com.
Olga and Aleksey Ivanov experienced an intense classical art education in Russia, which gave them an “exceptionally strong foundation for our artwork—a springboard we use to translate the modern world around us”. Inspired by Russian iconography and European Renaissance artwork, and exceptionally skilled with egg tempera, the duo considers “each painting with an open heart, building up the surface with thousands of tiny strokes, one on top of the other” to intensify the depths and luminosity of each image. Visit their website, oaivanov.gallery to see more of their works.
Virtual Tour
Exhibit dates: March 19 - April 24, 2021
This year, our annual juried photography exhibition explores the concept of “Myths and Legends.” From classic allegories to modern urban tales, the narratives of myths and legends are ideal for creating artistic imagery. These stories are often passed down generationally, through written text or orally. A legend is traditional narrative that is regarded as historical fact; heroic historical figures are often at the center of legends. Myths, on the other hand, are stories about early histories, or ones that explain a natural or social phenomenon. Supernatural beings or events figure strongly in mythologies. Artwork selected for the exhibit embodies these concepts in some obvious or distant manner.
This year’s exhibition was juried by John Lake, Photo Area Coordinator and Interim Foundations Coordinator at the School of Art and Design and College of Performing and Visual Arts at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado. Lake selected forty-two artworks from twenty-four artists for the show, which will be on display from Friday, March 19 through Saturday, April 24, 2021.
More juror info:
John Lake, Photography Area Coordinator, College of Performing and Visual Arts, School of Art and Design at University of Northern Colorado, has a Master of Fine Arts from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY and a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies from Eugene Lange, New School of Liberal Arts, in New York, NY. His photograph-based art practice involves creating and investigating artists books, installations, photo-sculpture, and traditional photographic practices. His research interests include the everyday, urban visual and cultural studies, experimental geography, vernacular and archival photography, visual poetry, the intersections of social studies and photography, artistic process theory, and the psychology of art. Lake is interested in the versatile and dynamic power of photography and how it can connect to multiple viewpoints, challenge and investigate ideas, and cause effective change. More info at www.johnbarnabaslake.com.
2021 Award Winners
Best of Show - Sherry Wiggans and Luís Filipe Branco, Outside Woman
First Place - Mattie Cox, Gondola Hill
Second Place - Kathryn Charles, Between Me and the Sea
Honorable Mention - Emma Lilly, Three Figures on a Fence
Honorable Mention - Danny Lam, Grand View
Honorable Mention - Scott Lee, The Dance
Digital Exhibit
Exhibit dates: January 22, 2021 - February 27, 2021
"Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
— Mary Oliver, poet
The Littleton Museum is proud to present Colorado Abstracted: Five Artists Capture the Transcendental Experiences of Nature, a group exhibition, featuring the artwork of Patricia J. Finley, Annamarie Mead, Lydia Riegle, Janet Rundquist, and Cyncie Winter.
Life in Colorado is a lyrical mix of sight, sound, air, and spirit and the combination thereof serves to replenish the creativity of this established group of abstract artists. Together their paintings celebrate what the Colorado lifestyle means to them and how it influences their artistic process. The genesis of these female artists’ creativity is driven by the ethereal qualities of the natural world: the expansive blue skies, the magical quality of light at high altitude, the abundant sunshine, and the clarity and dryness of the air. Additionally, mountain adventures and hiking and skiing together is a valued part of their inspiration. With an independent Western spirit, they paint the wonder of a life lived in Colorado in an abstracted way. Each artist employs different materials and unique points of focus to go beyond the details of nature. In their work, they dive below the surface of things to capture and express the emotional, sensory, and transcendental experiences that emerge from the sights and sounds of this beautiful state. The selected works presented in this exhibit will invite viewers to experience Colorado through the distinct and transformative lens of each artist.
Virtual Tour
Artist Info
Patricia J. Finley
Patricia J. Finley is an American painter who has sold her work internationally and has won several awards including most recently First Place in the 2019 Littleton Museum’s Own an Original: Destination show.
Patricia was a successful lawyer before turning to full-time art, and today focuses on using pigment, paint and ink mixed into resin to compose intense, lively works. Her landscapes, seascapes and abstracts burst with color and shine from resin's polish, and there exists a complexity between the apparently simple surface and what lies beneath it: the power of every shape and curve to immerse the viewer in visceral scenes.
Patricia is represented by Walker Fine Art in Denver and Chicago Art Source Gallery in Chicago.
patriciajfinley.com
Patricia J. Finley, I Am A Translation, Ink and Resin, 36 inches x 36 inches, $3,250.
Annamarie Mead
Annamarie Mead, Dream into Dawn Oil and cold wax on cradled birch board, 24 inches x 24 inches, $1,000.
A native West Virginian, Annamarie Mead has made Colorado home for over 40 years. Annamarie has always made creating art a part of her life and has been a professional artist for the last 11 years. She is an award-winning artist in Evergreen, Colorado. As a lifelong creator, Annamarie has always had her head in the clouds while she walked in nature, being guided by a force beyond herself. Abstract art became her way of expressing nature through the light and beauty she saw and felt everywhere. Annamarie approaches her canvases with intuitive marks and gestures full of life, light, energy and color as she dreams of visiting distant realms. Annamarie hopes that the audience feels the touch of light and energy from a source beyond our daily lives when viewing her paintings. Her goal is to wash away the dust of mundane existence and reveal the rich depth of meaning that shines through our lives when we pause for a moment and reach for something magical in the present world.
annamariemead.com
Lydia Riegle
Lydia Riegle is a Denver, Colorado, based painter and printmaker. Her expansive gestural approach and material exploration cross-pollinate in abstract paintings and printmaking resulting in artwork that is highly charged, complex, and uniquely personal. Often utilizing a drawing quality in art making, Riegle’s work is reflective of her immigrant background and serves to illustrate the rich and often complex concepts of connections and back-stories.
Riegle combines a Degree in International Studies with an emphasis in Latin American Studies from the University of Colorado Denver. Her experiences at art classes at the Art Students League of Denver as well as with Homare Ikeda, Jordan Wolfson and Mark Lunning create her personal perspective towards her art making.
Riegle’s work can be found in numerous private and corporate collections. She is an active member of Denver’s art community participating in art symposium panels and juried art shows. As a member of Sync Gallery since 2011 and D-art Gallery since 2019, she was awarded Best Painting at The Best of Art District on Santa Fe in 2014. She has been interviewed by Voyage Denver and The Denver Dart Magazine.
lydiariegle.com
Lydia Riegle, Gathering Stories Monotype, Collage, Archival Paper, 33.5inches x 33.5 inches, $950.
Janet Rundquist
Janet Rundquist, Yet, Closer Than You Think, Oil, cold wax medium, and wood ash, 48 inches x 48 inches, $4,600.
Janet grew up on the prairies, hills and mountains of Wyoming. She spent much of her time outdoors collecting animals, exploring, and watching the changing clouds and weather. These experiences ultimately culminated in her infatuation, love and respect for her natural surroundings. Since graduating from the University of Wyoming with a BA in Art and Art Education, Janet has led a life which has revolved around art.
Before she began painting full time, she co-managed an art gallery, worked as a graphic designer, taught art in the public schools and served on various non-profit art boards. As a painter, Janet continued her art studies at the Chicago Art Institute. Later, under the mentorship of Marianne Mitchell, she was encouraged, and still continues to experiment, evolve and become more intimately connected to her work.
Having painted with oils for over 20 years Janet only recently became intrigued with the process of mixing cold wax with oil paints. She completed a cold wax workshop with Jerry McLaughlin and continues to use this combination along with different colored sands found on her travels, and wood ash from her fireplace. Janet builds layer upon layer, scraping away and building more. Eventually, artwork emerges which speaks of Janet’s deep ties with Mother Nature both spiritually and emotionally.
janetrundquist.com
Cyncie Winter
Cyncie Winter is a professional artist, a psychotherapist, a life coach, and a certified creativity coach. Although she has painted all her life, for the past several years she has focused primarily on working with abstract acrylics. Her paintings are a reflection of the beauty found in the natural world and the courage of the human experience. Her current artwork is featured on her website at Cyncie Winter Contemporary Art.
In addition, she has been a member of SYNC Gallery in the Arts District of Santa Fe in Denver since 2011, and also exhibits her work in other local galleries, public places, and high-end businesses. She has sold her work nationally.
Cyncie strongly believes that when we respond to the inner call to create, we build the capacity to claim balance, peace, and commitment to a transformative path and the ability to forge a life of meaning.
cynciewinter.com
Cyncie Winter, Lacewing, Acrylic, 24 inches x 24 inches, $900.
Video link: Family Program - Make Your Own Abstract Collage