“The strength of wildness attracts me. I enjoy the simplicity, the complexity and the clarity of nature. It feels like the power and lightness of a river that is defined by the flow of constant change.

“My work is about everything that is attracted to this river of movement. Open spaces, groupings of intimate objects, texture of woven twigs, the contrast of transparent and opaque; how do I express the feel of this?

“I find that unusual alliances become the connective tissue that holds images together. The primitive appeal of wandering, navigating, and migrating is expressed in space organized around emptiness, isolated gestures, and the essence of wildness is found in the evocative sense of the moment

“As I go along, the paintings thread together cementing my connection to these energies and the path that my life is on. The paintings are maps, to find a path out there, and then to find a way home.”

Crane Song 8. Oil.

About the artist:

“From the beginning, there’s always been something unique about her work, a special quickness about even the earliest studies. I say she’s the universe’s urge to remind us that it’s all alive out there. She has ordered her life to make sure that the work gets done. This is an artist through whom extraordinary forces are flowing. Artists are supposed to show us things we keep forgetting, and inspire hope in us, and she does.” – Tom Milligan, Public Broadcasting System, NY

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United Nations World Conference, Beijing China
National Museum of Women in Art, Washington DC
United States Embassies, Washington DC
Carnegie Art Center, Leavenworth, Kansas
Albuquerque City Art,  Albuquerque, New Mexico
Barbara Conrad Gallery, Durango, Colorado
Daytona Art League, Daytona, Florida

riverdrawings@gmail.com
www.fineartamerica.com

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Barbara has been a graphic designer since 1992 and her love for photography evolved naturally from that work. Born in upstate New York, she moved west and has spent most of her life in a photographer’s paradise-Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico.

Barbara has taken many photographic workshops but it was Jay Maisel’s “Color, Gesture and Light” that really ignited her passion for photography. Her work has been featured in juried art shows throughout the west. Recent exhibits include the Annual New Mexico Photography Art Show and InSight, a fine art exhibit by New Mexico Women. She is a member of the Enchanted Lens Camera Club of Albuquerque.

Examples of Barbara’s photography can be seen on her website, www.rosnerphoto.com.

Her work will be on exhibit May 2 through May 31 at the Fifth Corner Photo Gallery upstairs at the Durango Arts Center. The Fifth Corner is co-owned by local photographers Kathy Myrick and Linda Pampinella.

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Fashion-forward Durangoans can catch a glimpse of Big Apple styles when TOP presents the documentary film “Bill Cunningham New York” at the Back Space Theater, Thursday, May 3. Two showings, at 4 and 6:30 p.m., will be preceded by the screening of Durango’s own fashion scene as chronicled by local photographers Kyla Jenkinson and Wesley Sebern. Light snacks and TOP-tinis will be available for purchase before and after the shows.

Tickets, at $10 for adults and $5 for students, are available at whatshappeningdurango.com.

Iconic Bill Cunningham is best known for his regular columns “On the Street” and “Evening Hours” in The New York Times. For decades, this 80-something cyclist has been capturing uptown celebrities and downtown eccentrics in his inventive chronicles of fashion trends and high-society charity soirees. The 2010 award-winning documentary, directed by Richard Press, pays tribute not only to the man but to individualists of all ages.

Roger Ebert gave the film his highest rating of four stars, writing, “This movie made me happy every moment I was watching it.”

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Joaquin will show 25 never before released photos taken on extensive travels throughout the west. He will also discuss the importance of art and wilderness, imagination and why we should teach the art of wilderness to children, much like we teach them language. He will discuss his themes of Consonance and Agreements Made, based his own travels through the high desert where the agreements he made are what led him to understand.

Joaquin’s art “training” started in the second grade, when he won several state contests for pen and ink. He won a national contest in the 5th grade for a pencil drawing of the space shuttle. By the eighth grade he was taking college level art classes. After graduating from the Berklee School of Music, he custom-designed sophisticated artistic interiors for some of the finest residential structures in Seattle until a spinal injury brought him back home to the desert.

Born and raised under the big skies of northern New Mexico, Joaquin spent his last six years since moving to Bluff documenting his relentless travels through the canyons of southeastern Utah where he found beauty like he had never known before.

Joaquin’s work in on exhibit for the month of April at the Fifth Corner Photo Gallery upstairs at the Durango Arts Center. The Fifth Corner is co-owned by local photographers Kathy Myrick and Linda Pampinella.

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4 to 6 p.m.

Rochester Hotel Courtyard

Come and make your own unique hat for the Durango Kentucky Derby, a fundraiser for the Durango Arts Center. Please bring the following supplies: base hat, tacky glue, scissors, needle and different color threads to match your trims. You can also bring whatever trims you would like to work with (lace, ribbon, tulle, cording), feathers, silk flowers, beads or anything else that you would like to put on your hat. Bonnie Cabrera will be at the event selling vintage trims, feathers and flowers, and Jane will help you be creative with what you bring and will show you how to put your creation together.

This workshop is free to anyone purchasing a ticket to the Derby event, a fundraiser to benefit the Durango Arts Center on Saturday, May 5. Tickets are available at the Durango Arts Center and the Rochester Hotel as well as on line at www.durangoarts.org.

Decorated hats will also be on sale at Durango Antique Market, 600 E. Second Avenue.

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Celebrate the Kentucky Derby in style at the 2nd annual Durango Kentucky Derby, a fundraiser for the Durango Arts Center. Included in the event will be a derby hat and suit contest, mint juleps, and silent auction of a painting by Colorado artists Nicole Finger. At 4:24 p.m., watch the broadcast of the 138th Kentucky Derby.

Tickets are $65 for DAC members and $75 for non-members and includes two drink tickets, prizes and hors d’oeuvres catered by Mutu’s Italian Kitchen. Call the Durango Arts Center at (970) 259-2606 or the Rochester Hotel at (970) 385-1920.

In the event of rain, festivities will be moved to Mutu’s Italian Kitchen.

(Facebook event here)

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The Durango Arts Center is pleased to announce that the works of Durango artist Don Cooke will be featured in the departure lounge at the Durango-La Plata County Airport through June 30.

Don Cooke is a local physician who has been painting seriously since 1997. He began painting in oil and had some early coaching by Durango artist Mike Desatnick. In 1999, he took a workshop with Albert Handell in Taos and became interested in pastel as a medium. He works primarily outside, en plein air, but also continues studio work, particularly in figure painting and portraiture. Most of his landscape paintings are completed in pastel or oil on site, and often the field studies are used for larger studio paintings. Don has also studied at the Scottsdale Artists School with Leslie B. DeMille and Matt Smith. He also attended workshops on portraiture in New York City and landscape painting in New Mexico, California and Arizona.

Don’s work has appeared in many juried shows. His work has been juried into the International Association of Pastel Societies show in Santa Fe. He won both the People’s Choice award and Juror’s award at the New Mexico Pastel Society show in 2002. He has exhibited with the Four Corners Plein Air Painters. At the show in Farmington in March of 2005, he won the Juror’s award, the Award of Excellence and People’s choice. At the show at Fort Lewis College in November 2005, he won the Best in Show Award. His painting “Evening on the Animas” was selected as the La Plata Open Space Conservatory poster in 2006. His work was also juried into the Scottsdale Artists School Best and Brightest show in 2010.

Don describes himself as a colorist, and advances in pastel manufacture and papers have allowed the intense use of color that turns out to be anything but “pastel” in appearance. He is currently working as a consultant on color selection with Isabelle Roche of Henri Roche pastels in Paris, France.

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A show of local and regional artists, co-creating new messages through public art forms

Please join us for a special reception for YPOD at the Durango Arts Center

April 11, 5 – 7 pm

$3 beer/$4 wine

The reception will include a live graffiti demonstration.

YPOD/DAC docents and the artists will be available to answer questions.

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Could you afford to give your Durango Arts Center 10 cents every time you use your debit card?

Can you imagine how much money DAC would collect in a year if every one of our nearly 900 active members made this donation each time he or she made a debit card transaction? Can you imagine the increased programming we could support in our gallery, in local elementary schools and in after-school and weekend programs?

Alpine Bank is offering DAC members the opportunity to participate in the Alpine Bank Loyalty Check Card program.

Here’s how it works: When DAC members open an Alpine Bank checking account, they can sign up for the Alpine Bank VISA debit card and specify their preference for the Alpine Bank Arts Card. Alpine will donate 10 cents per transaction to DAC every time you use your debit card.

If you bank with Alpine or if you are considering opening a new checking account, please sign up for the VISA Arts Debit Card and start earning money for your Durango Arts Center. In 2011, DAC received a donation in the amount of $1,000, the proceeds from this program.

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In 2010, 26,000 people participated in DAC events. With the expansion of the education, gallery and theater programs and events in 2011, we are expecting that number to increase to nearly 30,000 people.

Join us and be a part of this growth.

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