Another View on Regional History & Potential

Can an artist make it out here in fly-over country? Those bi-coastal dealers and curators are too busy with their noses in their laptops to look out the airplane window. Nothing to see down here.

But Colorado artists have become well known in the art world. In the 1960s, Betty Woodman taught ceramics at CU Boulder. Every summer she had a garden sale of her pots. One day, she decided she was making art and began a long climb that culminated with her becoming one of just a handful of living artists to show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was the first living woman artist to do so.

Today, media artist Mark Amerika seems to spend more time on an airplane than in his CU Boulder classroom. He exhibits and lectures frequently in Europe, Asia and Australia. He’s always in touch with who and what’s going on in new media. The Denver Art Museum is becoming recognized nationally for its exhibits. The CU Art Museum was first in the nation to show Enrique Martinez Celaya and Tibetan Diaspora artists. Craig Ponzio’s collection of monumental sculpture is well known. Kent and Vicki Logan are recognized for their support of contemporary art and their cutting-edge collection.

It can be done. You’re not likely to be the next Marilyn Minter or Mark Bradford any more than you can be Beyonce or LeBron James, but we can grow satisfying careers and influential institutions here.

Colorado’s arts infrastructure is supportive. The SCFD sales tax adds over fifty million dollars annually to the arts in the seven metro counties. There’s nothing like that anywhere in the country. There are now more art dealers than ever before. Dealers do go to art fairs. They are on the web. The Denver Art Museum regularly hangs local artists with big-name international works. MCA Denver has solo exhibits by Colorado artists. The CVA is an excellent space. Under Blake Milteer, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center mounted several in-depth exhibits of Colorado artists.

Denver’s Rule Gallery cleverly opened an outpost in Marfa, Texas — a magnet for art mavens who come to see Donald Judd’s Chinati collections — and maybe Denver artists, too. Black Cube’s Cortney Stell brilliantly arranged to show Joel Swanson and Laura Shill in Venice during the run of this year’s Biennale.

That’s a lot of support. Still, Denver isn’t New York or LA or Berlin.

We all need to be part of the conversation.

What to do? Can we make Denver an art capital? I think so. Start with yourself. Did you see Joel Swanson at the MCA? Did you scratch your head? And Marilyn Minter? Your sort of art? How about Tony Ortega’s big painting at the DAM or Mary Ehrin’s feather pieces? Find other artists and art supporters who saw the same shows and talk about what you saw at your own “Cedar Bar” and thrash it out over some beers.

If enough of us begin to talk with each other about the art that’s out there at artists’ studios, galleries, and museums, then some very interesting conversations will take place. Connect and reconnect. Spread the word. Send those opinions out into the art world — to curators, gallerists and collectors. Through this communication, artists and their work will become a more central part of the larger regional community.

Denver can become its own “art capital.”

It starts with us.