With the holiday season around the corner, you might find your schedule getting packed with shopping, cooking, decorating, and holiday parties—both the ones you’re excited to attend, and the ones you’d rather skip!
But as the temperature falls and the earth becomes quiet, we hope you find time for stillness, too. And what better way to slow down and reflect than through the meditative experience of art?
Here are 6 artist exhibitions, events, and achievements to enjoy this November, featuring our Resident Artist Alumni and Reach artists.
Juntae TeeJay Hwang - Sweaty Wedding Solo Show
What: Solo exhibition
Where: Union Hall — 1750 Wewatta St., Ste 144, Denver, CO, 80202
When: November 10, 2022-January 7, 2023
Opening Reception: November 10, 6-8 PM.
About the exhibition: Sweaty Wedding showcases a new ceramic sculpture series by artist Juntae TeeJay Hwang. Portraying hard work, societal pressures, and expectations as sweat, each sculpture has quirky, human-like attributes that effuse performative qualities. Through the ceremony and pomp of a wedding, Hwang alludes to the stress and anxiety that comes from being on display and the emotional labor exerted in everyday life that is often invisible yet holds familial and societal structures together.
About the artist: Juntae TeeJay Hwang (he/his) blends video, performance, painting, and sculpture in his ongoing exploration of expectations, miscommunications, value, and purpose.
He received his BA from Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London, UK, and completed his MFA at Columbia University in the City of New York. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Seoul, ICA Philadelphia, ICA Singapore, ICA London, Jewish Museum New York, Art in General New York, CCA Tallinn, Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre, Camden Art Centre, Xpace Cultural Centre Toronto, Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum, RedLine Contemporary Art Center, and Denver Art Museum.
Artist website: https://juntae.studio/
Instagram: @juntaeteejay
Daisy Patton - Like Two Drops of Water/Like Oil and Vinegar Solo Show
Untitled
What: Solo exhibition
Where: K Contemporary — 1412 Wazee St, Denver, CO 80202
When: November 5-December 17, 2022
About the exhibition: This show is an iteration on the on-going series "Forgetting is so long," where I take abandoned family photographs, enlarged to life-size, and paint over them as a kind of re-enlivening.
This exhibition is my first exploration of the family portrait and a sort of homecoming for the series. The family is a smaller scale of a larger community, a larger society, a larger world with countless moments of time.
When I look at a family photograph of someone I do not know, I see these ties that bind us close together. My first response is love, but also responsibility. We’re missing the translators of the subjects in the photographs, i.e., their loved ones. — those who could tell the stories of who they were, how they fell in love, how they left small notches on everyone they met, how they left this world.
I want to make space for all the ways a family presents itself. There are relationships that hold so close, that one would fall apart without them like missing one’s heart. There are others that leave deep wounds that will be transferred to the next generation to heal, or to the next after.
Patton will also have a solo show titled Brief Encounters opening on November 5, at Pulp in Holyoke, MA.
Learn more about Brief Encounters here >
About the artist: Daisy Patton is a multi-disciplinary artist who was born in Los Angeles, CA to a white mother from the American South and an Iranian father she never met. She spent her childhood between California and Oklahoma, deeply affected by these conflicting cultural ways of being. Influenced by collective and political histories, as well as memory and the fallibility of the body, Patton’s work explores the meaning and social conventions of families, relationship, connection, storytelling and story-carrying.
Artist website: https://www.daisypatton.com
Instagram: @daisy_patton
Tony Ortega - Transcending the West Group Exhibition
Western Union con Animalitos, hand colored etching and monotype on paper
What: Group Exhibition
Where: Artworks Center for the Contemporary Art — 310 N Railroad Ave, Loveland, CO 80537
When: October 14-December 23, 2022
About the exhibition: Romanticized versions of manifest destiny, cowboys, horses, and dusty landscapes riddle the Western art genre leaving many to question if there’s room to tell stories that defy these tropes. “Transcending the West” is an exhibition that explores work by artists who are actively seeking new and even irreverent ways to challenge traditional Western subjects.
We’re looking for artists employing unusual materials, and who are using their unique voices to investigate not only the history of the West but contemporary issues as well, without reverting to traditional tropes. We’re interested in experiencing the West through a broad lens, including that of BIPOC, AAPI, and LGBTQ+ artists.
About the artist: Tony Ortega has been a working artist and teacher for the past 36 years. He is the recipient of the coveted Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts (1999) and the Mayor's Award for Excellence in the Arts (1998). Tony Ortega’s lifelong goal is to contribute to a better understanding of cultural diversity by addressing the culture, history and experiences of Chicanos/Latinos through his art. His work can be found in the Denver Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum, and the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center. He has exhibited extensively in the United States, Latin America and other parts of the world.
Artist website: www.tonyortega.net
Instagram: @tortegaartist
Molly Bounds - New Artist Residency
A Pattern for a Bell
What: Artist Residency
Where: Kohler Arts and Industry — 608 New York Ave, Sheboygan, WI, 53081
When: 2022
About the residency: John Michael Kohler Art Center and Kohler Company welcomes Molly Bounds, Sarah khan, Yoshie Sakai, and Azza El Siddique as current artists in residence to the iron and brass foundry and pottery factory.
The artists-in-residence participating in the Arts/Industry program hosted at Kohler Co. in the Pottery and Foundry have gone through a very competitive juried application process. Each year, up to twelve artists open to new ideas get to take advantage of the resources, technology, and materials of Kohler Co., to explore new ideas, processes, and perspectives for a three month residency. Many artists come to the program with no experience in the material they will be working with and are asked to come with an open mind and eagerness to learn and work.
About the artist: Molly Bounds is a printmaker and illustrator living in Denver. Her prints explore how power, authority, and the structural training of doubt can undermine those who lack agency in determining their futures. Influenced by aesthetics and narrative sequencing within alternative comics and zine culture, she aims to emulate others who have used zines as a forum to voice stories that are rarely shared in normative culture.
Artist website: https://cargocollective.com/mollybounds
Instagram: @molly_bounds
Melody Epperson - Curating the Vote NO Vote Group Exhibition
“RIBBONS OF REPRESENTATION” - Collaboration with Tsehai Johnson
What: Group Exhibition Opening Reception
Where: Bell Projects — 2822 E. 17th Avenue, Denver, CO 80206
When: November 4-27, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 5, 2-6pm MST
Artist Talk: November 11, 7pm MST
About the exhibition: This country has a complex history about who gets to vote and who does not. Vote NO Vote shines a light in the dark corners of voter suppression and investigates the individual stories and relationships we have with voting.
This art exhibit invites the viewers to dig into the complex issues around voter suppression and challenge our current narratives and voting policies and laws.
Artists include the collective, Institute of Sociometry, and artists Leslie Boyd and Tsehai Johnson, Annalee Schorr, Laurie Hill Gibb, Anne Thulson, Connie Stewart, and more. Guest curated by RedLine Reach artist Melody Epperson.
Curator Bio: For the past 6 years, Melody Epperson’s artwork has focused specifically on how women finally won the right to vote in the United States. She painted over 50 portraits and created sculptural pieces addressing women’s rights. This series began with mostly portraits of white women, which is the dominant narrative.
This narrative is her story, as a white woman, but in 2020 as everything shut down and her exhibit was postponed, George Floyd was murdered and people poured onto the streets in protest.
She was given the gift of time to re-imagining the story. This time allowed her the opportunity to learn about the many people of color who also participated in voter reform.
As her own knowledge grew, her understanding of the issues expanded. Epperson’s artwork focuses on her experience as a woman. Her creative process starts when she becomes curious about a concept, in this case, voter rights. Then she reflects or investigates the idea, and finally, she takes creative action.
In 2020, her creative action was to register voters. Vote NO Vote is the natural next step for Melody. Voter suppression continues today and this is her opportunity to curate a collection of art that illuminates this sad fact.
About the artist: “My artwork focuses on my experience as a woman, both in society and within my own skin. My creative process is central in my artwork. It starts when I become curious about a concept. Then I reflect or investigate the idea, and finally I take a creative action. The concept of the artwork, and the discovery of its meaning, is often more important to me than the media itself. Thus, I feel free to switch media to better express my meaning.
My process of curiosity to creative action is evident within my series of suffrage portraits. I became curious about my own history as a woman. Then, I began to investigate the individual leaders involved in woman suffrage. From this research I created a series of almost fifty portraits and twenty assemblage pieces telling the story of woman suffrage. Sometimes my creative action manifests with the actual artwork, but other times it comes in the form of social activism such as registering voters.”
Artist website: www.melodyepperson.com
Instagram: @melody.epperson
Gretchen Maria Schafer - Organizing the Like Like Group Exhibition feat. TANK Studio Artists
What: Group Exhibition
Where: Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design — 1600 Pierce St, Lakewood, CO, 80214
When: October 31, 2022–February 3, 2023
Reception: Friday, November 4, 2022, 4-7 pm
About the exhibition: In the fall of 2012, nine artists rode bikes around sketchy warehouses and took tours of old stock show slaughterhouses, looking for affordable studio space in Denver. By early 2013 they had found a space off of south Broadway and around the corner of a thrift store. They built out ten studio spaces with no doors, maximizing the square footage and creating an architecture that echoes critical elements of a thriving working space: open dialog and critique in a friendly and responsible community of professional artists. The space soon expanded to nineteen studios.
Ten years later, TANK Studios has provided more than 35 artists at all levels of a career with private, long-term, sustainable, and affordable studio space.
In 2014, TANK Studios artists exhibited our work at Ironton Gallery in an exhibition titled More Than Friends. Ironton is now a brewery in the rapidly gentrifying area of RiNo, a symbol of how Denver continues to test the limits of affordability (and increasingly exceeds them) for many communities, artists very much included. After the last couple of years, the recognition that community is key to well-being has been made even more visceral.
From the start, TANK artists have supported each other in and out of the studio. Babies have been born, people have gotten married, people have broken up, they’ve quit jobs, gone to grad school, won awards, and mourned the loss of a parent, all while striving to be good people that make great art. They are more than a group of artists, more than friends, they like like each other.
By hosting this exhibition at RMCAD, they hope to encourage students to collaborate and build creative communities that foster resiliency and care in a sometimes hostel landscape. Because strong artist communities are vital for us all.
About the artist: Schaefer was born, raised, and currently lives and works in Denver, Colorado. She earned a bachelor degree in English Literature and Visual Arts from Regis University. She is a co-founding member of artist-owned and operated TANK Studios, LLC., a sustainable, community-centered studio space for professional artists in Denver. Schaefer is on the board of directors of Tilt West, a non-profit dedicated to fostering critical dialog in art and culture through roundtable conversations and a publication. Since 2013 Schaefer has directed the Visiting Artist, Scholar, and Designer Program at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design where she curates the annual theme and artists including Miranda July, Andrea Zittel, Judy Chicago, Starlee Kine, Dario Robleto, Sondra Perry, Paul Pfeiffer, Sara Cwynar, Kalup Linzy, Michael Jones McKean, Christine Sun Kim, Kevin Beasley, Lynda Barry, and Kevin Young among many others.
In 2014, Schaefer was listed as one of Denver Westword’s “100 Colorado Creatives” and in 2016 she received Westword’s “Best Of” for her work directing the visiting artist program at RMCAD. Her artwork has been exhibited at numerous locations including the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the University of Colorado Boulder Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Rule Gallery in Marfa, TX, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO. Schaefer was an artist-in-residence at RedLine Contemporary Art Center (Denver, CO) and Breckenridge Creative Arts (Breckenridge, CO). In addition to the public speaking she does regularly as the director of a visiting artist program, her public talks and presentations include a Q+A for her solo exhibition Folding and Thrusting at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, a presentation as part of her residency at Breckenridge Creative Arts, and a presentation at the Denver Art Museum’s 20th Annual Symposium in Art and Art History.
Artist website: http://gretchenmarieschaefer.com/
Instagram: @gretchenmarieschaefer
November Exhibitions at RedLine
Carey Fisher Exhibition
On display at RedLine November 11, 2022 - January 8, 2023.
Featuring artwork by artists Beau Carey & Ian Fisher. Curated by Cortney Lane Stell.
Carey Fisher is a two-person exhibition featuring new paintings by RedLine resident alumni Beau Carey and Ian Fisher. Building off the long history of landscape painting, the work of Carey and Fisher marks a remarkable transformation due to our changing relationship with the natural world and the issue of climate change.
Join us for the opening reception on Friday, November 11, 6-9pm MST >
