Art and Art History

Preserving the spaces that shaped O’Keeffe’s iconic art

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 14:00:50 +0000

Preserving the spaces that shaped O’Keeffe’s iconic art Rachel Sauer Tue, 04/21/2026 - 08:00

Cody DeBos

CU Boulder MFA alumna Giustina Renzoni considers how to share space and preserve history as director of historic properties at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

In Abiquiú, New Mexico, vast mesas sprawl beneath an expansive blue sky. Among them sit the adobe walls of a home once inhabited by one of America’s most iconic artists. The interior is painted with light and characterized by quiet restraint reminiscent of the natural features outside.

It is here, in the home of Georgia O’Keeffe, that Giustina Renzoni helps visitors see both the artist’s work and the world that shaped it.

“When I first encountered Georgia O’Keeffe’s home in Abiquiú, what struck me immediately was that it wasn’t just her residence. It was also a remarkable example of vernacular adobe architecture with nearly 200 years of history before she purchased it,” Renzoni says.

Giustina Renzoni, CU Boulder MFA alumna, is the director of historic properties at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in New Mexico.

Now, as the director of historic properties at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Renzoni’s day-to-day work involves a careful balance of sharing the space with visitors while also preserving the structure and its layers of history.

A path shaped at CU Boulder

Renzoni’s path to her current role began with a long-standing interest in the relationship between art and environment.

“I’ve always been drawn to the intersection of art, history and place,” she says. “Over time, I became especially interested in how artists’ environments shape their creative work.”

After studying art history and visual culture and gaining early experience working in museums, she pursued a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“I chose CU Boulder because it offered a program that encouraged interdisciplinary thinking. I was interested in exploring art history alongside visual culture, often through sociohistorical frameworks,” Renzoni says.

She also calls out the collaboration required when working in a museum and recalls how her time at CU helped hone these skills.

“My time at CU helped me develop the ability to think across those disciplines and see how they all contribute to interpreting art and history for the public. That interdisciplinary mindset has been incredibly valuable in my role at the O’Keeffe Museum.”

How place helps us understand art

At the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Renzoni oversees the preservation and interpretation of the Museum’s historic properties—O’Keeffe’s home in the village of Abiquiú and another at Ghost Ranch. The Abiquiú home welcomes thousands of visitors a year, while the Ghost Ranch home is currently closed to the public, awaiting renovations and preservation work Renzoni will head. Her work bridges scholarship and public experience, ensuring the physical spaces connected to O’Keeffe’s life remain protected while also giving visitors a chance to experience them.

Much of her work is rooted in a simple, but powerful, idea: To understand an artist, one must understand where and how they lived.

“Seeing the places where artists lived, the landscapes they looked at every day, and the objects they surrounded themselves with can reveal dimensions of their work that aren’t always visible in a gallery setting. For me, those spaces create a kind of context that brings the artwork to life,” Renzoni says.

The Abiquiú patio, bedroom and zaguán of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. (Photos: Krysta Jabczenski/© Georgia O'Keeffe Museum)

Though the art may be stunning, viewers can’t see the full picture when it is hanging on a featureless white wall.

“Historic spaces show the relationship between creative work and daily life. You see what an artist chose to keep around them, how they organized their studio and how the landscape shaped their perspective,” she says.

For Renzoni, one of the most compelling ways to explore that connection is through her recent exhibition, Artful Living: O’Keeffe & Modern Design, which is currently on view at the museum’s welcome center in Abiquiú.

“The exhibition explores how O’Keeffe transformed her traditional adobe home in Abiquiú into a distinctly modern living environment through furniture, textiles, and design objects,” Renzoni says. “What I find fascinating is that the house itself becomes a kind of three-dimensional expression of her artistic vision.”

Balancing preservation with public access

Preserving this one-of-a-kind environment, however, comes with challenges.

“The biggest is balancing preservation with access,” Renzoni says.

Historic homes like O’Keeffe’s weren’t designed for a steady stream of visitors. Even small interactions can cause lasting damage.

“Things like light exposure, temperature changes and foot traffic can all affect fragile materials,” Renzoni notes.

In Abiquiú, where O’Keeffe’s home is built from earthen adobe, those concerns are even more pronounced. Still, ensuring public access is essential.

“The goal is to create thoughtful ways for people to experience [these spaces] without compromising their long-term preservation,” Renzoni says.

Doing so requires careful coordination across disciplines, from conservation and collections management to education and visitor engagement.

“In a gallery, the artwork is often isolated from that context. In a historic home or studio, you begin to see how art, environment and personal life were all intertwined.”

Reinterpreting O’Keeffe’s legacy 40 years later

Renzoni’s work feels especially timely in 2026, which marks the 40th anniversary of O’Keeffe’s death. Decades later, the artist’s work continues to resonate with audiences around the world.

“I think O’Keeffe resonates because her work feels both deeply personal and universal,” Renzoni says. “Her paintings of New Mexico, in particular, capture a sense of space, light and stillness that many people continue to find compelling today.”

Visiting the places where O’Keeffe lived can also reshape how people understand her work.

“Seeing those environments helps visitors understand that her work was deeply rooted in direct observation and in her relationship with the land,” Renzoni says.

Standing in Abiquiú, visitors witness how the scale of the sky, the geometry of adobe walls and the contours of the surrounding cliffs influenced an icon of American art, grounding her paintings in lived experience.

In the end, the spaces Renzoni preserves offer more than a glimpse into O’Keeffe’s life. They let visitors connect to O’Keeffe’s work on a deeper level, granting an understanding of how her work took shape that can be found nowhere else.

“In a gallery, the artwork is often isolated from that context,” Renzoni says. “In a historic home or studio, you begin to see how art, environment and personal life were all intertwined.”

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CU Boulder MFA alumna Giustina Renzoni considers how to share space and preserve history as director of historic properties at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

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Top image: Abiquiú sitting room, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (Photo: Krysta Jabczenski/© Georgia O'Keeffe Museum)

Artist encourages talking with your mouth full

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:06:15 +0000

Artist encourages talking with your mouth full Rachel Sauer Fri, 04/17/2026 - 15:06

Kayleigh Wood

As the featured artist at a recent Black Cube event, CU Boulder's Alvin Gregorio emphasized how getting primal and getting to know each other—and yes, sharing meals—makes better people

Alvin Pagdanganan Gregorio understands the value of a shared meal. The University of Colorado Boulder professor of drawing and painting and associate chair for art practices was the recent featured artist and host of Talk With Your Mouth Full, a series of free, artist-led community potluck brunches organized by Black Cube, a nomadic art museum based in Englewood.

Artists invited to host Talk With Your Mouth Full select one ingredient for a main dish prepared by a local chef. Participants are encouraged to bring a dish as well, although it is not required, nor must it include the selected ingredient. After food and conversation, the artist leads a simple activity with the aim of fostering discussion.

For Gregorio, the choice of ingredient was simple: “Immediately I thought of ube, which is the purple yam of the Philippines,” he says. “It’s one of the most striking colors in Filipino food.”

Alvin Pagdanganan Gregorio, a CU Boulder associate professor of art and art history, was the featured artist at a recent Black Cube Talk With Your Mouth Full potluck event, which featured ube cheese pandesals. (Photo: Alvin Gregorio)

To take on the challenge, Black Cube enlisted the help of Cakeheads Bakery, a family-owned Filipino American bakery in Centennial that created ube cheese pandesals: deep purple bread rolls filled with melted cheese and topped with golden breadcrumbs.

The artistry of the pandesals parallels Gregorio’s art, which features vibrant, eye-catching palettes and diverse textures. Through an unrestricted practice transcending any one technique, material or form, Gregorio creates drawings, paintings, installations, sculptures, performance and audio pieces that explore immigration, family, war, spirituality and defense mechanisms.

Sharing meals, lowering your defenses

Talk With Your Mouth Full addresses an assumption to which Gregorio is particularly adverse: the role of food in the studio and museum space (or lack thereof). Generally, exposing art to food and drink can threaten the quality of the work or destroy it entirely.

Yet Gregorio welcomes food in both the studio and his classroom. “I’m into [the potluck], much in the same way I am in class,” he says. “I want people to eat. As long as you clean up after yourself, I want you to eat in class too, because then you know you’re at home and safe. You’re in a place where you [can] put your guard down.”

In addition to allowing his students to eat in class, Gregorio aims to incorporate shared meals into his teaching practice. “College students aren’t great at feeding themselves,” he says. “Even the best of us get busy, so that’s one of things I want to include in the classroom. If there’s a 12-12:30pm break between all of our classes, then, all right, [every] Wednesday, let’s see everyone. Let’s do a community meal. When you start feeding people, people are like, all right, these people do care about me.”

In the classroom, Gregorio says he’s “trying to do it the right way, you know, where people aren’t being vulnerable [with] people they don’t trust.” Many art classes at the University of Colorado Boulder, including Gregorio’s, hinge on portfolio-building and periodic critiques, which are structured opportunities for a student’s peers to evaluate and analyze their work and share feedback, often requiring a degree of vulnerability from the student.

He sees shared meals as a tool to ease the pressure of critiques and to build trust, because “eating with other people is grounding, talking about things you love is grounding… It’s kind of hard [to] keep your guard up when [you have] powdered sugar all over your face.”

Caring for the person–not just the portfolio

As art practitioners rely heavily on critiques to improve, Gregorio insists that the most important aspect of his teaching practice is earning trust from his students by prioritizing their safety and comfort. “That has to be first,” says Gregorio. “If we’re talking about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, at the bottom there’s safety . . . If people don’t feel safe there (in the classroom), then they can’t get to the top, and the top is generosity and creativity.”

To encourage trust, Gregorio gives social homework, or what he calls “fake homework.” These “fake homework” assignments range from suggestions to hang out with a peer over the weekend to long-term collaborative assignments that occur during class, like starting a “band” with a group of peers, carefully curating a vibe and designing an album cover over the course of a semester. Gregorio also often assigns “docu-buddies,” which are groups of peers responsible for photographing each other’s work in progress throughout the term.

"Plush Safe, We Think," by Alvin Pagdanganan Gregorio, mixed media on paper

While these simple, unserious social assignments may seem menial, Tyson Tieu, a senior in the Department of Art and Art History and a former student of Gregorio’s who attended Talk With Your Mouth Full, says he misses the social activities. In most studio art classes, Tieu says, “you’re in your own little bubble, like you’re doing your own thing and you’re at your table, whereas with Alvin, it could be annoying, but, yeah, he does force to you to, like, get up and move and work outside your comfort zone… if you’re [having] art block or something, it just helps you get your hand moving.”

Gregorio says, looking back, “It’s always been that first—people. I’m [only] able to get [my students] to trust me when we’re doing really hard things if I earn it along the way. . . . So then, if I say something that I need to say to make the work better, it’s a little bit easier for people to accept, because I earn the trust through caring for the whole person rather than just the portfolio.”

‘Art shifts the vibe’

The same ethos of security and companionship helped Gregorio shape his activity for Talk With Your Mouth Full, for which he was intent on addressing the current moment: “I didn’t want to do anything so escapist. I wanted [to] acknowledge that [we’re] living through a weird time.”

For his exercise at Talk With Your Mouth Full, Gregorio started by admitting to his audience: “I hate violence, I hate war . . . I hate Donald Trump and all that he stands for . . . One of the things I hate about right now is [that] I’m living in a time where I feel like there’s a lot of hate in the world, and it’s f***ing exhausting.”

To combat this exhaustion, Gregorio reorients his mindset by wishing the person or thing that angers him well. He asked his audience at Talk With Your Mouth Full to do the same thing, first by offering his own example. “Hi, Donny,” he said to President Trump, “I wish that something great would happen for you today, so that you can have what I have. So that you can feel love in your life that I have. I hope that someone does something for you today.”

Alvin Gregorio (seated, black cap) leads an art project during a recent Talk With Your Mouth Full event at which he was the featured artist. (Photo: Alvin Gregorio)

For Talk With Your Mouth Full, he prepared print outs of his own work for participants to collage onto manilla envelopes he’d spray painted and signed, in the hopes that they could make something beautiful and flip difficult things into positive ones, in collaboration with others, during a time of tension and political unrest. “It’s just to try to remind people that art can help change perspective,” says Gregorio.

Before beginning the art activity, Gregorio explained the significance of the manilla envelopes: to pay for his undergraduate degree, Gregorio worked early mornings as a janitor on his college campus. During his shifts, he plucked used manilla envelopes and other discarded material found in the trash cans of professors and faculty members, a foundation which he transformed into some of the first works he ever sold.

A thread through Gregorio’s work is using art to address difficult things head on and “shift the vibe.”

As the grandson of a Filipino World War II guerrilla sniper, Gregorio spent most of his life hating the soldiers that came to the Philippines and killed his family. Eventually, he says he realized how exhausting that was. “Instead of expelling their ghosts,” Gregorio says, “I want to enlist them. And I think to myself, like, hey, they’re just f***ing teenagers too, [and] their government forced [them] to go to another country and do these things. They're just working-class people, too. So, I started to think, hey, instead of hating the Japanese that came to my village– those soldiers were just like my grandfather. They were sent to do something they couldn’t handle.

“Then I found in my practice that I could truly change my perspective, change my life. I don’t have to hate anymore. I like using art to think of a different way, like, hey, I genuinely want the offspring of those people to [be] happy and safe and peaceful.

‘The best part of my week’

In 2015, Gregorio was diagnosed with Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP), a rare autoimmune neurological disorder affecting the myelin, or protective covering, of peripheral nerves, preventing them from conducting electricity in the way they should.

“Every Friday, Mary [Gregorio’s partner] gets my shots,” Gregorio told his Black Cube audience. “Three [shots], and it lasts three hours. And it’s the worst part of my week, and I’ve been doing it for 10 years.

“I want you all to consider the power we have in reframing the things that we do, and [how] art does that,” Gregorio tells the Black Cube audience. Asking them to hold him accountable, he says, “from here on out, I want you to remind me that [these shots are] the best part of my week. That is the part of my week that helps me be [around] for our continuum… So in front of you all, I’m going to try to change that.”

“I could do the opposite and just talk s*** on everything,” he says, admitting that it would probably be easier. Sharing his mother’s advice, he says, “If you’re not going to do it out of love, don’t do it. And growing up, I was like, are you trying to tell me that I have to be in a good mood about all the things that I have to do? And what I realized is that what I [think] she’s saying now that I look back, is like, if you could figure out how to find the good in it, it’s going to be better for everybody. You’ll enjoy it, the product will be better… that’s art, right? Trying to shift the perspective. Like, hey, you have the ability to shift your perspective… we have the power to reimagine the way we see things.”

At Talk With Your Mouth Full, in his classroom and his day-to-day life, Gregorio says, “I hope to remind people that creativity is an awesome tool. Art is an awesome tool.”

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As the featured artist at a recent Black Cube event, CU Boulder's Alvin Gregorio emphasized how getting primal and getting to know each other—and yes, sharing meals—makes better people.

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Top image: Alvin Gregorio (front row, black cap) with attendees at the recent Talk With Your Mouth Full event organized by Black Cube

When napping in nature becomes art

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 23:55:15 +0000

When napping in nature becomes art Rachel Sauer Thu, 03/05/2026 - 16:55

Cody DeBos

CU alum Rick Silva finds meaning in the stillness of the natural world

Rick Silva (MFA’07) is lying still in the frame, perched on a rocky outcropping overlooking azure ocean waves. He’s sound asleep.

That’s one of 46 places you’ll find him taking a snooze in his new video art piece, Dirt Nap.

As he describes it, “Dirt Nap is composed of one-minute excerpts from 46 naps Rick Silva took in nature across the Western United States between September 2024 and January 2026, sequenced in the order they were recorded.”

“The project has some heavier personal meanings for me, but I also think it touches on broader themes of loss related to landscape in the 21st century, whether that’s the precarity of protected lands or ongoing threats from climate change,” says Rick Silva (MFA ’07) of his new video art piece, Dirt Nap.

The project’s structure is simple, almost stubbornly so. But the simplicity of one-minute naps, repeated 46 times, has a way of becoming something else—a question that challenges notions of patience and what it means to rest.

Taking a rest

The project began in 2024, a time marked by both grief and physical strain for Silva.

“My uncle-in-law died in a ski accident the previous year, and that late summer we hiked into the Grand Tetons to spread his ashes,” he recalls.

That same summer, Silva was dealing with severe migraines that forced him to retire to a dark room, sometimes for the entire day, just to ease the pain.

“The idea for Dirt Nap emerged during a lull in the pain of a migraine,” he says.

From the start, Silva knew the project needed to unfold over time. As the idea of deliberately resting in nature took hold, he started thinking of locations. Some had personal meaning. Others he hadn’t yet experienced but wanted to.

“There was a balance between planning and spontaneity throughout the process. I created a loose set of rules around framing and duration, then pushed against those rules through location, weather and light,” he says.

The title carries its own gravity. Often a dysphemism for death, the phrase “dirt nap” invokes images of a body being returned to the ground for its final rest.

Silva acknowledges the double meaning.

An ‘in-action’ sport

Prior to Dirt Nap, Silva spent years immersed in outdoor action sports culture, especially snowboarding. Video is a powerful medium for showcasing the pulse-pounding motion and spectacle of athletes carving through exotic terrain at high speeds.

CU Boulder alumnus and artist Rick Silva created his video piece Dirt Nap from 46 naps he took in nature across the Western United States between September 2024 and January 2026.

Dirt Nap inverts the formula.

“There’s definitely a connection between Dirt Nap and that lineage of sport and nature filmmaking,” Silva says, “except here I’m doing ‘nothing’ in the landscape. It’s a kind of in-action sport focused on recharging and recovering.”

For Silva, shooting videos lying down instead of airborne while capturing exotic vistas across the Western United States is something of a return to his roots.

“My MFA thesis work at CU was a video art piece in which I filmed myself in nature, sort of DJ-ing various landscapes,” he says.

A CU foundation

Silva traces much of his foundational approach to filmmaking to his time in CU Boulder’s MFA program.

“I was exposed to many different approaches to working with moving images, including experimental film, video art, performance and new media,” he says.

Just as influential was the support he received along the way.

“My professors encouraged me to follow my own path through those techniques and conceptual strategies, especially around time, presence and process.”

That trio anchors Dirt Nap.

“I think meaning emerges through the variation and duration of the project. It’s a very simple act, but multiplied to this extent it becomes something more epic, or perhaps absurd. I hope viewers oscillate between those readings,” says CU Boulder alumnus Rick Silva.

Silva also found inspiration for the meditative quality of his footage from artists like Roman Signer and Ana Mendieta. While filming, he learned about the early works of Laurie Anderson, another artist who captured herself napping in public.

“I’m a longtime fan of her work and felt connected to her through our napping projects,” he says.

For current students, Silva offers some practical advice rooted in his own trajectory.

“If you can make it financially feasible, I highly recommend taking on an ambitious, self-driven creative project during a summer break.”

He points to an example close to home.

“The creators of South Park made Cannibal! The Musical during a summer break while they were students at CU.”

Ambitious early projects, he says, often echo through the careers of their creators for years.

Learning to look longer

As for Dirt Nap, the cumulative effect of 46 one-minute excerpts challenges viewers with one request: patience. It’s a hard ask in a world consumed by short-form videos and a never-ending tide of “the next big trend.”

Silva often finds himself returning to a quote from composer John Cage: “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”

“That quote took on even more meaning for me during this project, which was both born from and made within that zone of observation and reflection,” Silva recalls.

While appreciating Dirt Nap, viewers start noticing the little things. The flicker of shadows across Silva’s face. The rhythm of his breathing. Grass, trees and water responding to the wind. From one minute to the next, a person lying down outdoors runs the gamut of looking peaceful to looking exposed.

What first appears to be “doing nothing” becomes a sustained practice of attention born from grief and structured by repetition. The act is quiet, even vulnerable, and for Silva, it’s a reminder that nothing is ever truly still.

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CU alum Rick Silva finds meaning in the stillness of the natural world.

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All photos courtesy Mario Gallucci

Scholar studies humanity through skin and ink

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 17:51:52 +0000

Scholar studies humanity through skin and ink Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/29/2026 - 10:51

Chris Quirk

In his new book Indigenous Tattoo Traditions, CU Boulder alumnus and Tattoo Hunters host Lars Krutak highlights traditional techniques that sometimes date back millennia

Lars Krutak is not the kind of scholar who is content to simply write about his field. Krutak, a 1993 University of Colorado Boulder graduate in art history and anthropology, is an internationally recognized researcher of the history and culture of tattoos and has about 40 of them himself. He even went under the knife for his research—a scarification ritual of the Kaningara people of Papua New Guinea, during which an elder made more than 400 incisions in his skin.

CU Boulder alumnus Lars Krutak (left) has studied with indigenous artists around the world, including Pius (right), one of the last Makonde tattoo masters of Mozambique. (Photo: Lars Krutak)

“That technique of incision tattooing where they cut you to create a scar and then they rub in the pigment is by far the most painful,” he says. “You're getting cut open like a piece of chicken, and then you're just bleeding all over place. It's hard.”

It’s one of the traditional techniques described in his recent book, Indigenous Tattoo Traditions: Humanity through Skin and Ink, lauded as a best science pick in the journal Nature.

The author of four books on tattooing and host of the Tattoo Hunters series on the Discovery Channel, Krutak became fascinated with the art and custom of tattoos 20 years ago. After completing his bachelor’s degree at CU Boulder, Krutuk began work on his master’s degree in anthropology and archaeology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “I moved there in January of 1996,” he says. “When I got off the plane it was minus 55 degrees.”

Krutak was walking across the Fairbanks campus one day and saw a woman with three chin tattoos. “I didn't have any tattoos. I didn't know anything about tattoos. I didn't know indigenous people had tattoos,” Krutak recalls. “I could recognize that she was indigenous, and I got to know her later on, but that moment opened my eyes.”

His scholarly interest piqued, Krutak began digging through the university’s archives and extensive collection of artifacts. “I quickly realized that basically every indigenous society across the circumpolar north, from East Greenland to Siberia and seemingly everywhere in between, had a tattooing tradition at one time or another, but almost all I could find were records from 100 years ago and a few things from the 1950s.”

Krutak resolved to change that. “My main goal when I started doing this research was to preserve a history. No one in academic circles seemed interested in studying indigenous tattooing,” he says. “There were a lot of stigmas attached to tattooing at that time, and there are still some to this day. But I always felt that this was a significant part of the world's cultural heritage, and it was vanishing rapidly around the world, with no one going out there to document it.”

Permanent records

After learning about the tattooing tradition of the Yupik people of St. Lawrence Island in the northern Bering Sea, Krutak wrote to village councils and received permission to visit. What he found was that tattooing was on the wane among the Yupik, with just a small number of women who were in their 80s or 90s sustaining the custom.

In his recent book Indigenous Tattoo Traditions, author and CU Boulder alumnus Lars Krutak highlights work from indigenous artists around the world.

But he also found that the tradition went back about 2,000 years. The Yupik had, for two millennia, created anthropomorphic dolls, carved out of walrus ivory, that most likely represented ancestral personages. And the dolls had careful renditions of Yupik tattoos.

The significance of tattoos, for the Yupik people and for other cultures across the globe that Krutak has since visited—more than 40 to date—can be widely varied.

“If there is something that needs to be permanently recorded, tattoos can do that,” he says, adding that a tattoo can function as a record of hunting prowess, tally enemies killed in warfare or identify a person as a member of a particular clan or family. There are tattoos that denote a rite of passage, tattoos that invoke ancestral spirits and tattoos that relate to medicinal purposes, Krutak says.

One important meaning that bearers of tattoos have cited, across many cultures, is to identify the person in the afterlife, he says. In the case of the Yupik people of St. Lawrence Island, there are tattoos to help ancestors recognize the person so they can enter the sanctity of the afterlife. “I've been told, by many elders, that they would not be recognized as a true person from their culture without certain tattoos,” Krutak says. “This is one of the most common beliefs and purposes for tattoos across the indigenous world.”

‘Ancient marks of humanity’

What began with that serendipitous moment in Fairbanks has turned into a lifetime pursuit and a synthesis of two threads of Krutak’s interest that he cultivated at CU Boulder as an undergraduate: art history and anthropology. “I had two very formative professors,” he says. “Roland Bernier encouraged me to explore more deeply the connection between anthropology and art history, hence my double major. John Rohner was in charge of the museum studies program and introduced me to what a career in the museum field would look like.”

In some of Krutak’s travels, including his experience with the Yupik, he has encountered some of the last people in the culture who had or could share the history of tattoos in their culture, which increases his sense of urgency. “I firmly feel that indigenous tattooing deserves our attention, because it speaks volumes about what it means to be human,” says Krutak. “I think we can learn a lot about each other by studying and appreciating these ancient marks of humanity.”

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In his new book 'Indigenous Tattoo Traditions,' CU Boulder alumnus and 'Tattoo Hunter' host Lars Krutak highlights traditional techniques that sometimes date back millennia.

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New exhibit celebrates ceramics at CU Boulder

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 23:09:59 +0000

New exhibit celebrates ceramics at CU Boulder Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/27/2025 - 17:09

Rachel Sauer

Opening Sept. 5 at the CU Art Museum, ‘Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020’ focuses on themes including the environment, domesticity and rituals of home and material connections

The joy—and sometimes frustration—of ceramics may be found in its contradictions: its fragile strength, its rough refinement, its elastic rigidity. Drop it and it might shatter, or it might survive millennia.

“It’s a material that’s about so much transformation,” says Jeanne Quinn, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of art and art history. “It goes from being very plastic and malleable to something that’s more like stone. And embedded in ceramics is all kinds of material meaning. Our students who are trained in ceramics are really trained to dig into technical mastery with the material but also dig into how you find meaning in the material itself, how you’re using the material as metaphor.”

Myers Berg Studios, United States, …in plain sight, 2025, ceramic, maple, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec.19, 2025. (Photo Rachel Sauer; © Myers Berg Studios)

For students in the CU Boulder ceramics program, the material also represents connection to an artistic lineage that has grown in breadth and renown through successive cohorts. It is a lineage nurtured by ceramics faculty Quinn, Scott Chamberlin and Kim Dickey, who have been teaching together and broadening the program for 25 years.

It is the length of those associations, in fact, that planted the seed of what has grown into the exhibit “Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020,” kicking off with an opening celebration Sept. 4 at the CU Art Museum and opening to the public Sept. 5.

“CU has a really long history of investing in ceramics and having a very strong ceramics program,” Quinn explains. “Kim (Dickey) had this idea that it’s our silver anniversary of teaching together, we have this incredible group of alumni, so many amazing artists who have come through, as undergrads, as post-bacs and as grad students, so we should create an exhibit to celebrate that.”

A ceramic tradition

CU Boulder has long championed the arts and supported artists, including ceramic artists who have created a student-focused program that prioritizes learning, technical mastery and artistic exploration. The ceramic program was significantly bolstered by Betty Woodman, an internationally renowned artist whose 2006 retrospective show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City was the first such show by a living female ceramicist, and who taught at CU Boulder for 30 years.

Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020

What: The CU Boulder ceramics program is celebrating its history with faculty Scott Chamberlin, Kim Dickey, and Jeanne Quinn. To honor the achievements of artists who graduated from this program, faculty curators are partnering with the CU Art Museum to present a retrospective exhibition.

When: Opening celebration Sept. 4 from 4–6 p.m.; exhibit opens to the public Sept. 5-Dec. 19. There will be an all-day symposium celebrating the exhibit Sept. 5.

Where: CU Art Museum

Learn more

Chamberlin was a colleague of Woodman, and Quinn was a student of both Woodman and Chamberlin before joining the ceramics faculty in 1997.

“In this program, there is a real commitment to ceramics and its incredibly rich history,” Quinn says. “Every civilization from the beginning of time has had ceramics, so it’s an incredible kind of medium to work with and have the opportunity to reference all that. But I also feel like we have a very non-dogmatic approach to teaching—there’s so much history, but also so much space for experimentation and invention.

“Ceramics is a very demanding material. Anybody who’s ever sat down and tried to throw a pot on the wheel realizes oh, you don’t just toss this off. Every step requires real skill, real technical skill, but we’ve worked to build a program where students receive this amazing education in learning how to learn and learning how to grapple with the material and how the material can offer so many different avenues of expression.”

Erica Green, a post-baccalaureate student in the program between 2011 and 2013 and one of the exhibit’s 30 featured artists, credits the ceramics program’s emphasis on exploration with helping her forge her path as an artist.

“Ceramics is always my first love, but the nice thing about this department is you’re encouraged to follow the idea and not just the material,” Green says. “One of my professors in the program suggested I set clay to the side and focus on fiber and being more in tune with the material.”

Green’s work in the exhibit, “California King,” centers on a bed covered in a blanket of knotted felt and wool-blend fibers. “I work a lot in knots as a metaphor for mending and repair and healing.”

Artist Lucero Aguirre, who earned an MFA in the ceramics program, created the quilted tapestry “Mije” to include thousands of iridescent ceramic sequins—bringing together “the spaces of brownness and queerness in its sequined message,” Aguirre explains. “The term ‘mije’ is a gender-neutral version of the often-used Spanish term of endearment ‘mija,’ or daughter.”

In transforming “mija” into “mije,” Aguirre considers the “affective labor of navigating brownness as a queer subject. The piece responds to the way that intimacy is often gendered in Mexican and Latine spaces, leaving queer Latine bodies at once inside and outside.”

Erica Green assembles her work "California King" (2022, knotted fibers on mattress) for the "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020" exhibit opening Sept. 5 at the CU Art Museum. (Photo Rachel Sauer; © Erica Green)

‘You can do anything with clay’

Quinn emphasizes that even though the exhibit celebrates the ceramics program, it also includes textiles, video works, photography, live performances and other media. “(The exhibit) runs the gamut of materials, but the unifying piece is that you can see that sense of commitment to the craft, to really handling a material with authority and also expressing something beyond the material.”

The hardest part, she adds, was choosing exhibit participants “because we’re in touch with all of these alumni, we’re following what they’re doing, they’re sending us updates.”

At the same time the exhibit participants were being chosen, Quinn and her colleagues were working with CU Art Museum staff to envision and plan the exhibit—a time-intensive but rewarding process, says Hope Saska, CU Art Museum acting director. Saska also partnered with Quinn, Dickey and Chamberlin to organize an all-day symposium September 5 celebrating the exhibit; it will include performances, conversations and in-gallery artist talks.

“You say ceramics and people have this idea of, ‘Oh, you’re making pots on the wheel,’” Quinn says. “And ceramics certainly fits in this kind of lane, that is absolutely part of what we teach. But you also have an artist like Casey Whittier, who made thousands of ceramic beads and then strung them together into this gorgeous textile piece that hangs on a wall. Casey has taken ceramics, which you might think of as fixed and static, and then created this piece that hangs and moves and is as much a textile as it is ceramics.

“So, we want people to come to the exhibit, and especially we want students to think, ‘Oh, you can do anything with clay.’”

Lucero Aguirre, mije, 2024, handmade and lustered ceramic sequins, thread and batting and fabric, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer; © Lucero Aguirre)

Linda Nguyen Lopez, United States (1981), Gummy Worm, Ombre Dust Furry, 2021, porcelain, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer, © Linda Nguyen Lopez)

Joanna Powell, United States (1981), Flower Vessel no. 1, 2019, earthenware, majolica, gold luster, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo Rachel Sauer; © Joanna Powell)

Sandra Trujillo, United States (1967), Mosaic - Yellow, 2024, Mexican Smalti (glass), Wedi (polystyrene board), wood, steel, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer; © Sandra Trujillo)

Julie Poitras Santos, United States (1967), The Conversation, 2019, single channel video, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer; © Julie Poitras Santos)

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Opening Sept. 5 at the CU Art Museum, ‘Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020’ focuses on themes including the environment, domesticity and rituals of home and material connections.

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Matthew McConnell, United States (1979), Didn’t Miss a Thing, 2023, dark stoneware, twine and twist ties on steel panels, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo Rachel Sauer; © Matthew McConnell)

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Top image: Matthew McConnell, "Didn’t Miss a Thing," 2023, dark stoneware, twine and twist ties on steel panels, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer; © Matthew McConnell)

From war zones to new worldviews

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 13:30:00 +0000

From war zones to new worldviews Rachel Sauer Thu, 07/17/2025 - 07:30

Cody DeBos

After two combat deployments in Afghanistan, undergraduate Benjamin Blume is eager to share is unconventional educational path with fellow veterans

When Benjamin Blume talks about hiking through the Swiss Alps or photographing the stars above the Australian Outback, he does so with the same clarity he once brought to combat patrols in Afghanistan.

It wasn’t long ago that Blume, now a double major in astronomy and photography at CU Boulder, was in a very different place.

While studying abroad may not seem like an obvious next step for military veterans, Benjamin Blume (here at Stonehenge in England) is adamant that it should be. (Photo: Benjamin Blume)

“I had two combat deployments to Afghanistan that were long and stressful,” says Blume, who served in the U.S. Army from 2010 to 2016. “But the friends and (almost all) the experiences I got out of it, I wouldn’t trade for anything.”

Blume grew up in West Houston before being stationed at Fort Carson upon joining the Army. After leaving the service, he came to CU Boulder in 2022 seeking both a new academic challenge and a return to the Rockies.

Inspired by Star Trek: The New Generation and Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk podcast, Blume found himself drawn to astronomy.

But photography, an integral part of his journey while participating in seven study-abroad programs and getting passport stamps from 30 countries, led him to add a second major in art.

Blume’s path is unconventional, but he’s eager to share it with fellow veterans.

A shift in perspective

Blume’s first study-abroad experience came in 2016 while studying international business. When given an opportunity to join a month-long, intensive German language course in Leipzig, he jumped at the chance.

“I had only been out of the Army less than a year before my first two trips abroad, and wow did my view of the world change,” Blume says.

After years in the military, Blume says his worldview had narrowed. Deployments and Army training had conditioned him to be guarded and wary in unfamiliar environments. While these traits served him in uniform, they became barriers as he transitioned back into civilian life.

After years in the military, Benjamin Blume says his worldview had narrowed. Deployments and Army training had conditioned him to be guarded and wary in unfamiliar environments. (Photo: Benjamin Blume)

“It took me a few weeks being in another country to truly start breaking out of this thick shell I had been in for so long,” Blume says. “But once I started getting out of this mindset, I was able to truly see the world in a different light.”

From that moment on, Blume didn’t look back.

He enrolled in study-abroad programs in Australia, Switzerland, Japan, Germany, the UAE and New Zealand. Some opportunities came through his university, others entirely from his own initiative.

Blume immersed himself in local cultures, connected with fellow students from around the world, and found solace in outdoor adventure.

“I try to do things that (my younger brother and the friends I’ve lost) would have enjoyed,” he says. “Doing this helps keep me connected to their memory and also process the losses.”

Hiking the Swiss Alps, photographing historical landmarks, eating camel burgers and even tubing down an underground river lined with glowworms in New Zealand became part of Blume’s new chapter.

A message to other veterans: Just go

While studying abroad may not seem like an obvious next step for military veterans, Blume is adamant that it should be.

He says, “Many veterans have a hard time breaking out of a certain military mindset or lifestyle where that is their sole identity. This makes it really hard to open up to new things, people and cultures.”

Blume credits his upbringing for his own open-mindedness but says many veterans could benefit from the opportunity to step outside their comfort zone.

Benjamin Blume's many study abroad experiences have included New Zealand and a visit to the Shire. (Photo: Benjamin Blume)

“When we go abroad in any capacity, we should go with an open mind and try to learn, connect and understand other people without judgment or feeling like we are better than them just because of military service,” he says.

One of his favorite talking points when speaking to other veterans? The GI Bill.

“There are currently 83 countries that have schools that take the GI Bill,” Blume says. “Almost all schools have a study abroad office that is a wealth of knowledge and support.”

“Filling out a few applications, renewing your passport and buying a flight are well worth the fully funded education and adventure of studying abroad,” he says. “It’s one heck of an opportunity for veterans to explore the world after serving their country.”

‘You never know until you try’

At CU Boulder, Blume is one of just a few veterans in his science and art classes. Though the coursework is rigorous, he says he’s found his passion and a sense of belonging.

He also uses his rich life experiences to empower those around him.

“I feel like having the life/world experiences I’ve had and being older gives me an opportunity to mentor others. I try to be one of the hardest workers and set an example for younger students,” Blume says.

He’s also grateful for CU Boulder’s Veterans Bridge Program and the campus Study Abroad Office, both of which he credits with making his latest academic journey possible. “The CU Boulder Study Abroad Office is the perfect place to start and get the ball rolling,” he says.

When he’s not focused on combining his love for science and art into a future that includes astrophotography and even more travel, Blume continues to be a passionate advocate for study abroad—particularly for his fellow veterans.

“Joining the military isn’t for everyone, but after getting out as a veteran, why not continue seeing the world? Even if you aren’t going to school, travel is its own adventure and has opened my mind to everything there is to see and do,” Blume says.

“Oh, and it’s even better when it’s pretty much all paid for,” he adds with a smile.

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After two combat deployments in Afghanistan, undergraduate Benjamin Blume is eager to share is unconventional educational path with fellow veterans.

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Artist features the beauty of nature on a 140-foot canvas

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 15:21:21 +0000

Artist features the beauty of nature on a 140-foot canvas Rachel Sauer Fri, 06/20/2025 - 09:21

Rachel Sauer

‘The Tender Hand of the Unseen,’ an immersive video installation by CU Boulder artist Molly Valentine Dierks, is featured through June on D&F Tower in downtown Denver

It happens most often in autumn and winter, when large flocks of starlings roost in protected spots like woodlands, marshes and even buildings. Before settling for the night, often in the gloaming twilight, they sometimes paint the sky in formations called murmurations.

Hundreds—sometimes thousands—of starlings dance in undulating, ever-shifting shapes, a spontaneous choreography that fills the sky like the liquid fall of silk.

One day after class while she was earning her MFA at the University of Michigan, Molly Valentine Dierks saw a murmuration of starlings. She pulled out her phone to capture it—footage that wasn’t as good as she’d like it to be but that nevertheless captured a transcendent moment of ephemeral sculpture in the sky.

Molly Valentine Dierks is an assistant teaching professor in the CU Boulder Department of Art and Art History.

Memories of that murmuration guided her in creating “The Tender Hand of the Unseen,” an immersive video installation that is a featured work through June on D&F Tower in downtown Denver, part of the Night Lights Denver program.

For Dierks, an assistant teaching professor in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Art and Art History, her work represents a confluence of many influences, musing on the nature of time and referencing periods of growth and rebirth.

As a sculptor and interdisciplinary artist, “and also a nature geek—I’m really interested in the idea of this physical sculptural performance in the sky,” Dierks explains. “They’re stunning, the patterns are beautiful, the way that they change is really gorgeous, plus there’s something about the idea of moving intuitively as a group that I think as human beings we don’t have or we’re not comfortable with. This society of beings is so in sync with one another that they can move as a fluid unit, and it’s also performance and also art.

If you go

What: "The Tender Hand of the Unseen" immersive video installation

Where: D&F Tower, 1601 Arapahoe Street, downtown Denver

When: Evenings through June

Learn more

“As an artist and educator, particularly in the classroom I really encourage my students to get in touch with their intuition and develop spiritual understanding of who they are. For me, as an artist, there’s something about looking at big flocks of birds that gets me in that state. We’re all so comfortable looking at screens, for example, but as a society we’re not really encouraged to just look at sky. (This piece) is an excuse to encourage people to look at sky, even though it's a screen that is sneakily subverting that tension.”

A 140-foot canvas

Public, site-specific art and installations are defining aspects of Dierks’ practice for their ability to foster healing, stillness and growth, she explains. So, when a friend told her about the Night Lights Denver program, she contacted the curator, David Moke, with her idea for a large-scale installation focused on starling murmurations.

When her proposal was accepted, the work of art began. The murmuration she recorded in Michigan didn’t work—there were a lot of trees in the way—so she worked with footage shot in the Netherlands that would be crisp and clear when projected onto the side of D&F Tower, a 140-foot canvas.

Molly Valentine Dierks' immersive video installation "The Tender Hand of the Unseen" will show on D&F Tower in downtown Denver through June. (Photos: Molly Valentine Dierks)

She manipulated and sculpted the footage on her computer, then did test projections from the parking garage near the tower that houses the Night Lights Denver projection center.

“I would bring a thumb drive with an hour-and-a-half of tests, and I just sat there and took a bunch of notes to figure out the best settings,” Dierks says. “(The footage) was taken at different times of day and in different weather conditions, so I could start to see that if the background was too dark or too blue or too purple, I couldn’t see the starlings as well as I wanted.

“I played with timing as well, slowing the footage down in spots and thinking about grains of sand or sand in a timer. I was looking for crescendos—not just contrast and brightness, but does it feel like a piece of music?”

The tender hand

The name of the work is a line from the poem “On Pain” by Kahlil Gibran, which also says:

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

“We all go through difficult times: we go through grief, we go through breakups, and I found poetry kind of a resting spot for me,” Dierks explains. “I could read a poem and get outside the nuts and bolts and bureaucracy of everyday life and get to the heart of what I feel, after a while I started naming my pieces after lines in poems that spoke to me about certain stages in my life.”

In describing the work, Dierks wrote, “The work is my way of confronting a socially fractured landscape, where screens more frequently mediate our understanding of self … overshadowing more embodied connections to each other and the natural world.”

The piece is Dierks’ first large-scale projection, and although there’s really nowhere to hide with a 140-foot public canvas, Dierks says she wouldn’t want to. “There’s something really nice when you install in public, outside of the art world, (where) people don’t have to go to a gallery … I prefer it in a lot of ways.

“(D&F Tower) is in this beautiful area on 16th Street and there’s a park so people can walk around and look at it. When I did the first test last August, I could see people stopping and looking at it, looking at these beautiful formations, these birds in flight—just taking that moment to stop and look.”

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‘The Tender Hand of the Unseen,’ an immersive video installation by CU Boulder artist Molly Valentine Dierks, is featured through June on D&F Tower in downtown Denver.

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Art and transformation are inherently connected, prof says

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 16:02:54 +0000

Art and transformation are inherently connected, prof says Rachel Sauer Tue, 04/08/2025 - 10:02

Bradley Worrell

For artist and professor of printmaking Melanie Yazzie, making art is about much more than creating something aesthetically pleasing

For Melanie Yazzie, professor of art practices and head of printmaking in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado Boulder, art and transformation are intrinsically connected.

That’s because she describes her art as being much more than just about creating aesthetically pleasing work—it’s a medium for sharing social, cultural and political experiences shaping the lives of native peoples in the United States and beyond. Her artwork—which takes the form of paintings, printmaking, sculptures and ceramics—is shaped by her personal experiences, as well as events and symbols from her Diné (Navajo) culture.

For Melanie Yazzie, a CU Boulder professor of art practices and head of printmaking in the Art and Art History, art and transformation are intrinsically connected.

“I think when you’re really digging deep inside yourself and you make a work about something that’s really important, maybe it’s a certain theme you are trying to get across, when someone else sees it and gets it and is affected by it, that’s when you really see the power in artmaking,” she says. “It can transform you as the maker and also the person who sees it.”

Yazzie says her artwork follows the Diné dictum “walk in beauty”—the idea of creating beauty and harmony. “There’s always positive and negative in the world, a sort of yin and yang. In Navajo culture, walking in beauty is really about walking a balanced path and trying to stay in a positive frame of mind,” she explains.

That doesn’t mean avoiding controversial subjects in her art, but she says it does color the approach she takes.

“When I was younger and in grad school, I made artwork that was very much in your face,” Yazzie says. “And in a sense, I was preaching to the choir. People who understood what I was saying would stay and listen, but what I realized with that work was that the people I wanted to reach dismissed (my work) as just, ‘she’s an angry woman or she’s an angry person of color.’”

Today, much of her work straddles the line between abstractionism and representationalism, with recurring motifs of abstracted animal and plant forms, as well as people—notably women—who are rendered in a spectrum of colors. Yazzie says casual gallery viewers have described some of her paintings and prints with words such as “beautiful” and “whimsical” and even “silly.”

For those willing to inquire, however, there are deeper meanings to many of her works, which can tackle such serious issues as the horrible treatment of Native Americans in boarding schools run by the U.S. government from the 1880s to 1920s or the unsolved murders of indigenous women today.

“In a sense, it’s like using honey to draw people in and then educating them,” Yazzie says of her artwork today. “It’s a much slower path, but I’ve seen it over the years making bigger strides than when I was shouting ‘injustice.’”

Particularly with her earlier works, but even in some cases today, Yazzie says some people who “very rigid” in their views don’t appreciate her art. While it’s not always easy to hear, she credits her upbringing on the Navajo nation in northeastern Arizona with keeping her grounded and confident.

“Since a very young age I was brought up among Navajo people and around really strong women role models. That was my foundation,” she says. “So, when people were sometimes rude or racist, I would think back to my grandmother, who only spoke Navajo, and she would explain (their outlook) to me by saying people will sometimes act like bad children, and they don’t understand how to behave, so you have to show more patience with them and have a kind heart.”

Sharing personal experiences

Artwork has allowed Yazzie to tap into and share deeply personal experiences, such as a series of paintings she did after she was first diagnosed with Type II diabetes and was for a time at risk of losing her eyesight. Those paintings were notable for featuring small numbers in “thought bubbles” in the background of various works, capturing her blood sugar highs and lows on a given day.

Yazzie says gallery patrons who are diabetic oftentimes picked up on the hidden numbers. She has enjoyed talking with them about why her numbers were particularly high or very low in certain paintings.

“I think when you’re really digging deep inside yourself and you make a work about something that’s really important, maybe it’s a certain theme you are trying to get across, when someone else sees it and gets it and is affected by it, that’s when you really see the power in artmaking,” says Melanie Yazzie (with her sculpture "Strength from Within"). (Photo: Melanie Yazzie)

“That type of conversation is something that you can only have with someone who understands that illness. And it was beautiful, because for the people who saw the work who were diabetic, it was like a secret language between us,” she says.

She adds, “People sometimes make diabetes like it’s something shameful, but when we talked about it in a public setting, they (patrons) felt embraced and included. That artwork is about creating a space of healing and acceptance.”

And while she is proud of her Navajo cultural heritage, Yazzie says she takes pleasure in the fact that she makes art that people would not normally expect from an indigenous artist.

“I think there are stereotypes of what people—even in my own Navajo community—would classify as being Native American artwork, and I think a lot of times I go against that,” she says, noting she generally eschews paintings of pottery work, tepees or male warriors on horses. “And I think that’s one of the things that makes my work really strong is that it’s unique and different and not fulfilling stereotypes about Native American artwork.”

Through the years, Yazzie’s art has been featured in more than 500 group and solo exhibitions around the world. Her work can always be found at the Glenn Green Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Just as being an artist can bring transforming knowledge to others, Yazzie says artists need to be open to transformation in their own work and how it is presented. She learned that lesson for herself recently, when people who follow her work asked if she could make her art more accessible, which led her to a new direction as an artist.

“I’ve started doing jewelry pieces and scarves. That idea came from collectors and others who were saying, ‘I have one of your paintings or prints and I wish I could carry it with me when I’m going to see the doctor or because I’m having a hard time now,” she says. “In the Navajo tradition, jewelry is worn for protection and to bring about good things. So, this came about from people who say my work brings them hope.”

Balancing the best of both worlds

Yazzie says she’s been creating art for as long as she can remember. Still, her career path wasn’t always set in stone. Her parents, who were both educators, encouraged her in her formative years to follow their path, as they had some concerns about whether being an artist was a viable career.

“In any community, it’s really a struggle to make a living as an artist, and so I think they were just worried about that,” she says. For a time, she seriously contemplated becoming an English or Spanish teacher, but eventually decided to pursue a career in the arts, a decision she says her parents ultimately came to appreciate.

“My father would always tell me, choose something that you are really passionate about and that you love. And many people say that: that if you do something you love it never really feels like work. That was my experience. I just found that artmaking and being in the artist community really fed me in ways that other things didn’t.”

Today, as a professor at CU Boulder, Yazzie says she is able to combine the best of both worlds as an artist and an instructor.

“Being a professor and helping students share their stories and experiences is deeply rewarding,” she says. “I think it’s wonderful to be able to help create a strong human being who is speaking their truth through their artwork.”

Even for CU Boulder students who have no interest in pursuing a career in the arts, Yazzie strongly encourages them to take classes that engage their creative side.

“My advice would be: Take an art class, a writing course, a music class, or anything in the creative realm,” she says. “It opens up parts of you that help you see the world in a more well-rounded way, and I think that is the power of a liberal arts education.”

"Remembering Brittany"

"Growing Stronger"

"She's Singing"

"Simon Joe Benally is Looking for a Rich Girlfriend"

"Speak Truth"

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For artist and professor of printmaking Melanie Yazzie, making art is about much more than creating something aesthetically pleasing.

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Notre Dame cathedral rises from the ashes

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 15:38:23 +0000

Notre Dame cathedral rises from the ashes Rachel Sauer Tue, 12/03/2024 - 08:38

Doug McPherson

Five years after a devastating fire, CU Boulder Professor Kirk Ambrose reflects on the significance of the renowned cathedral’s Dec. 7 reopening

When University of Colorado Boulder Professor Kirk Ambrose thinks of the famed cathedral Notre Dame in Paris, his mind goes back to when he lived near the site while researching European art and architecture.

He’d make a point of walking past the church every morning―repeated encounters that made him appreciate how much the building is part of the life of the city.

Kirk Ambrose, a CU Boulder professor of classics, notes that since its beginnings, Notre Dame has been the center of Paris.

He recalls that there was a regular vendor who sold pet birds in the cathedral’s shadow.

“I relished the entanglements of soaring towers and buttresses vis-à-vis these caged flying animals,” says Ambrose, whose great aunt was married in Notre Dame. “In other words, Notre Dame offers a lens through which one can understand Paris. This notion is underscored by the vista from its towers, which offer unparalleled views of the city.”

Ambrose, a professor in the CU Boulder Department of Classics who studies and teaches the art and architecture of medieval Europe, says from its beginnings in the 12th century, Notre Dame was at the center of Paris. (It is literally the city’s center: In front of the church, a small plate engraved with a compass is known as “point zéro des routes de France,” which marks where all distances to and from Paris are measured.)

Five years after the April 15, 2019, fire that collapsed the cathedral’s famed spire, consumed its wooden roof and heavily damaged its upper walls and vaults, Notre Dame is set to reopen to the public Dec. 7, with the first mass held the following day.

In his public remarks following the fire, French President Emmanuel Macron said, “Notre-Dame is our history, our literature, part of our psyche, the place of all our great events, our epidemics, our wars, our liberations, the epicenter of our lives.”

In the more than 800 years since its first stone was laid, Notre Dame has not only come to symbolize Paris but become one of the world’s great buildings. When it burned in 2019, people around the globe mourned, and its reopening is garnering international celebration.

An 800-year history

Throughout its multi-century history, Notre Dame has not been stagnant, but has reflected the shifting currents of culture, Ambrose says.

“This was the seat of the bishop of Paris and was a stone’s throw from the king’s residence,” Ambrose says. “Given these royal associations, there were many renovation campaigns to keep the building looking stylish, in line with the latest building trends.”

During the Middle Ages, the streets surrounding the cathedral were home to bookshops, ivory shops and other niche workshops. “The towers of the cathedral loomed large, both physically and conceptually, over these artistic activities,” Ambrose says.

After extensive renovation following a devastating April 2019 fire, Notre Dame will reopen to the public Saturday, and the first mass will be said Sunday. (Photo: Stephane De Sakutin/Getty Images)

The height of Notre-Dame de Paris's tower is 226 feet, and its spire is 315 feet. Until the Eiffel Tower was completed, Notre Dame was the tallest structure in Paris.

Historians note that the cathedral was an easy target during the Napoleonic Wars, when it took such a pummeling that officials considered razing it. To boost awareness for the church and revive interest in Gothic architecture, the renowned author Victor Hugo wrote the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in 1831.

Ambrose says Hugo’s novel made the building a vivid character for readers’ imaginations. The book was met with immediate success, and in 1844 King Louis Philippe ordered that Notre Dame be restored.

“By the way, Hugo was friends with many of the leading architectural historians of the day,” Ambrose says. “Thanks largely to Hugo, the building was subsequently the subject of films, of garden sculptures, of gargoyles, etc.”

But five years ago, all of Notre Dame’s beauty and history was nearly lost. According to news reports, a fire broke at about 6:20 p.m. April 15, and in fewer than two hours, the spire collapsed, bringing down a cascade of 750 tons of stone and lead. It’s been speculated that the fire was linked to ongoing renovation work, but officials have yet to name a definitive cause. By 9.45 p.m., the fire was finally brought under control.

Saturday, the cathedral will reopen following a restoration supported by about 340,000 donors from 150 countries who contributed almost $1 billion.

Might Notre Dame become even more popular after the fire and subsequent restoration? Ambrose says there’s reason to believe it will.

“As a medievalist, I can say that fires often make buildings more popular,” he says. “The great cathedral of Chartres [a Catholic cathedral in Chartres, France, much of which was destroyed by a fire in 1194] leaps to mind as a comparison. In medieval lore, fires were often interpreted as expressions of divine will; that’s to say, they were interpreted as commands to make a building even more splendid.

“In the case of Notre Dame, the fire will, I believe, also make us appreciate this remarkable monument all the more, not taking this historical legacy for granted.”

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Five years after a devastating fire, CU Boulder Professor Kirk Ambrose reflects on the significance of the renowned cathedral’s Dec. 7 reopening.

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Top photo: notredamedeparis.fr

Artist transcends traditional notions of Native American art

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 19:02:33 +0000

Artist transcends traditional notions of Native American art Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/09/2024 - 13:02

Clint Talbott

Whether in a somber performance in the National Portrait Gallery or in her wry takes on Native humor, Anna Tsouhlarakis follows her heart

Anna Tsouhlarakis was a self-described “math and science nerd” in high school, even representing the United States at the International Science and Engineering Fair in her senior year. But while studying at Dartmouth College, she took classes that interested her, particularly studio art and Native American Studies.

“That’s where my heart was—and still is,” Tsouhlarakis says. Math and science nerds might not be expected to love art, but following her heart—and contravening stereotypes—was a wise choice.

In recent years, Tsouhlarakis’ art has appeared as a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and New York City’s Independent Art Fair, and it has appeared in Switzerland, Greece, Canada and in dozens of venues in the United States. In 2023, she performed and exhibited her work in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Anna Tsouhlarakis' "She Must Be a Matriarch" sculpture, part of the "Indigenous Absurdities" exhibition. (Photo: Wes Magyar)

Just as she broadened the notion of what might interest a budding scientist, she now transcends stereotypes of what constitutes Native American art. Tsouhlarakis, an assistant professor of art and art history at the University of Colorado Boulder, works in sculpture, installation, video and performance and is of Navajo, Creek and Greek descent.

At the National Portrait Gallery, her work drew on those strengths and backgrounds. There, she performed and showed Portrait of an Indigenous Womxn [Removed], which commemorated murdered and missing indigenous women and girls.

In 2018, the Urban Indian Health Institute released an extensive study on missing and murdered indigenous women. As of 2016, there were 5,712 reports of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women, but only 116 were logged into the Department of Justice’s database, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

“I knew there was nobody more important that I could highlight in terms of their story,” Tsouhlarakis observed. Her work featured missing-person posters of indigenous women. In a video recording of one performance, she carries a sculpture topped with a poster seeking information about Kaysera Stops Pretty Places, who was murdered in 2019 in Montana.

Tsouhlarakis notes that most of her art is not activist, but rather expands upon long-held expectations of Native American art. Her father is a Navajo silversmith, and she grew up going with him to art markets, shows and galleries.

“There was this expectation of Native art to always be beautiful, and for the aesthetic to be very perfect and for it to be very serious,” she observed, adding that she rebelled against those expectations.

Performance of Anna Tsouhlarakis "Portrait of an Indigenous Womxn [Removed]" (2023) at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. (Photo: Matailong Du/courtesy Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery)

“I want to make things that question that expectation of Native American art, and for me, humor does that as well.” That humor was evident in her 2023 exhibition titled “Indigenous Absurdities,” at MCA Denver.

Tsouhlarakis, who is the mother of three young children, described a key moment in which Native humor seemed an obvious way to frame Native art. While at a powwow in Montana, she overheard two Crow women conversing.

“One said, ‘You never come by to see me,’ and the other responded that she didn’t know where she lived,” Tsouhlarakis told a New York writer. “Then, one said that the other didn’t ever call them, and she said: ‘Well, you don’t even have a phone.’ Then they just burst out laughing—like almost falling off the bench.”

Such everyday observations underlie textual work like HER FRYBREAD ISN’T THAT GOOD and HER BRAIDS ARE ALWAYS TOO LOOSE. Humor, Tsouhlarakis noted, is a good coping mechanism in times of hardship, which Native communities know very well.

Tsouhlarakis’ art has been recognized and supported by a host of organizations. This year, she won a Corrina Mehl Fellowship from S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, and she’s also been recognized with more than two dozen other awards and fellowships. Also this year, she has artist residencies in New Hampshire and Maine.

In addition to her BA from Dartmouth, Tsouhlarakis holds an MFA from Yale University. She joined the CU Boulder faculty in 2019.

Top image: Performance of Anna Tsouhlarakis' "Portrait of an Indigenous Womxn [Removed]" (2023) at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. (Photo: Matailong Du/courtesy Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery)

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Whether in a somber performance in the National Portrait Gallery or in her wry takes on Native humor, Anna Tsouhlarakis follows her heart.

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