Loading ...Upstairs at the Durango Arts Center
The DAC Art Library is supported by the Friends of the Arts and holds art-related periodicals and several hundred volumes of fine-art reproductions for research or home loan. The Library shows exhibits of visual art and book-related themes on a range of topics, from book arts and calligraphy to photography, prints, collage and small-image, and mixed-media. In 2012, the Art Library will host 7 exhibits and 2 live workshop/presentations.
Now Showing
May-June
Opening Exhibit Reception – May 2, 5-7 p.m.
Juanita Ainsley – “Fancy This”
Ainsley of Bayfield will exhibit her colorful and fascinating mixed-media works on paper. Juanita recently won an award in one of the Art Center’s juried shows.
‘”I enjoy the challenge and freedom of using disparate elements in my work. One complete piece is a collection of many small works, each with its own unique characteristics regarding medium, degree of abstraction, size, colors, etc. They play off of one another with contrasts for tension and dissonance and commonalities for ease and resonance. The process is demanding and playful at the same time. There is an intentional childlike quality that derives from my appreciation of young children’s art.”
To learn more about the artist, visit Juanita’s website.
July-August
Joan Iversen Goswell - “Politics and Other Diversions”
Goswell of rural Pennsylvania and The Center for Book Arts, will be showing her artists books in July and August. Joan is known nationally for her satirical works on political and societal issues.
September-October
Anthony Holmquist shows Recent Works
Anthony Holmquist, art professor at Fort Lewis College, will show his recent prints in September through October.
Anthony works in media including drawing, printmaking, collage, and digital/new. He is also a musician who researches and interprets old-time music through the fiddle, banjo, and guitar. He will be showing recent prints along with a video excerpt from New England artist Gina Siepel’s “A River Twice” – wherein Holmquist was invited to be a “guide” – playing fiddle tunes on Siepel’s traditional wooden work boat (called a bateau) while floating down the Kennebec River in Maine.
November-December
Louise Grunewald - “Postcards from Germany”
In November and December, Louise Grunewald of Durango will be showing a new series of solar relief prints and calligraphy. Louise is know nationally as a calligraphy artist but her work is always a new slant on the calligraphic line.
Past Shows
March–April, 2013
John Brandi and Tom Leech
We are very pleased to welcome Tom Leech and John Brandi of New Mexico in March and April. Tom is the director/curator of the Press at the Palace in Santa Fe and is known as a master printmaker and marbler using his handmade papers. John Brandi, a world traveler, is a poet-painter and will exhibit haiku and present a poetry reading the opening night.
On John Brandi, “He has been an open roader for much of his life and like his two great forebears, Whitman and Neruda, has named the minute particulars, the details of his sojournings … infusing them with a whole gamut of feelings— compassionate, mischievous, loving and righteous. It’s what’s made his poetry one of the solid bodies of work that’s emerged from the North American West since the ‘60s.”
To Leech, paper and poetry are three dimensional. “A poem is a sanctuary,” he says, showing me the first series broadside, written by Naomi Shihab Nye, entitled “His Life.” A heart-breaking poem about the role of mules in mining, Leech discovered the poem descended into a dark place. To enhance the reader’s experience, Leech printed a dark band across the bottom of the rough page. When making the paper, he added the glint of mica, reminding us of why we sacrifice human and animal life to a mine. From Sanctuary’s an Interview with Tom Leech
