Spring Rendezvous

Ceramist  Don Reitz
Painter Brigitte Bruggermann
Sculpture Dana  Kleinman

Also featuring
“Stories”:   Mel Strawn Solar Prints for the  International Month of Photography
Photography today represents a fractured postmodern pluralistic culture. Mel Strawn, DU Professor Emeritus University of Denver and quintessential avant-garde leader and pioneer in creating digital imagery and manipulating form. Strawn expands the processes of making pictures into a series of artistic operations each expanding the viewer's visual dialogue using photography as a tool.

Gallery Group Show

“New Beginnings”

“FRANK SAMPSON: New Paintings”

One of Colorado’s most highly regarded and accomplished painters, Frank Sampson is now 84 years old.  Exuberant and engaging, Sampson’s mystical paintings are influenced by the old European masters such as Brueghel, Goya, and Bosch.  Professor Emeritus University of Colorado Boulder where he taught painting for 30 years, Sampson is excited about this new body of work.

"Abstract Merge"

Mel Strawn

Professor Emeritus and past Director of the School of Art at the University of Denver, Mel Strawn holds an MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts including work with Richard Diebenkorn and Sabro Hasegawa, one of the first "abstract" Japanese artists. With a fifty plus year career in painting, drawing, printmaking, and digital imagery, Strawn is a popular icon in Colorado's art history with his evolving artistic process. He has been a leader in the acceptance of digital imagery as fine art. Bold, vibrant and confident, the dramatic pattern paintings of Mel Strawn are grounded in line, plane, form and color with stunning visual impact. The oil paintings "Negentropy" and "Series Last", were part of a 14 year investigation and invention of complex shape structure compositions using only four shapes. Abstract art is indeed alive and well in the ingenious hands of artist Mel Strawn. Color this show a must for your summer pleasure.

"Whisper"

Painters Amy Solomon, Robert Livsey Wells, and Ruth Todd.

“Threads”

“Threads” is the first exhibition of 2012 at The Sandra Phillips Gallery and features the works of established and popular artists Irene Delka McCray and Barbara Groh.  This body of work focuses on the importance of line in artistic practice, and how it can be manipulated to represent something very personal to the artist, like Groh’s meditative line drawings, or how it can be worked into something more tangible, like McCray’s realistic paintings and drawings of fabric.  On a more conceptual level, “Threads” also represents the personal connection shared between these two women and how their lives have been woven together through their artistry.  Although both artists exhibit very personal and divergent styles, the joining of their work will bridge the gap between concept and execution, and reveal to the audience how the simplicity of  line and the connections among artists can create an energetic and holistic collection of artworks. Dianne Vanderlip curator emeritus Denver Art Museum described  Irene Delka McCray as "the best figure painter in the region". 

Irene Delka McCray and Barbara Groh both earned their MFA in 2000 from the Vermont College of Norwich University.  McCray currently teaches at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in Colorado, which is where Groh earned her BFA in 1995.  Irene has been showing her work since the 1980s and is in the collection of The Denver Art Museum.  Barbara has been exhibiting since the 1970s and her work is held in the collections of the Burchfield Art Center of Buffalo, NY, Colorado Bank Shares, and Piton Oil Corporation.

“Touch the Earth”
Featuring artists Anna Kaye and Lorelei Schott

The profound drawings of  Anna Kaye and her time-lapse video explore wildfires in our Western coniferous forests.  Both Kaye & Schott created new works focusing on natural materials, drawing their inspiration from the earth to create  elegant abstract and realistic pieces.    Anna Kaye and Lorelei Schott  will give an informal talk about their  artistic process Wednesday, Nov. 9, 6 pm as part of the Denver Arts Week celebration that week. 

Virginia Maitland: Conversations in Color

“Virginia Maitland: Conversations in Color” will exhibit new paintings by the artist, as well as two important paintings from the 1970s that have never been exhibited.  The experience of light and space in nature plays a significant role in her work as an abstract expressionist and color field painter.  Maitland received her degree from the distinguished Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1968 where she studied painting in the academic tradition.  She was also heavily influenced by cutting-edge American abstraction, surrealism, and pop art, and by artists such as Kandinsky, Gorky, early Frank Stella, Turner, Miro and Ernst. 

Kyle MacMillan, fine arts critic for The Denver Post, praises Maitland for her ability to express the “ideal balance of freedom and structure.”   This exhibition offers the viewer a glimpse into her evolving ethereal style, which focuses on the extraordinary marriage of color and form.  Maitland’s nonrepresentational imagery illustrates how art can address our intellect and emotions without interpretation. 

Masters of Clay

DON REITZ
JOHN BALISTRERI
YOSHIRO IKEDA
CARROLL HANSEN
MAYNARD TISCHLER

The exhibition will include the work of five acknowledged masters of contemporary ceramics whose works are included in major collections and museums throughout the world. Don Reitz is one of the world's most important and influential living ceramic artists. Each is at the forefront of contemporary clay today.

Frank Sampson: NEW Paintings

One of colorado's most highly regarded painters, Frank Sampson is now eighty- two years old, vibrant, prolific and excited about this new body of work. Sampson's work is influenced by the old European Masters - his beautiful surfaces are legendary. Mystical and engaging, figures and animals are almost always in the compositions. Sampson taught at the University of Colorado Boulder from 1961 to 1990 and served as instuctor/mentor for some of the area's most
accomplished painters.

“Paper How Street It Is”

Artists united by their common interest in working with  paper  basing their work on personal perceptions and a broad range of references.  Dave Phelps' mass produced bar codes look like elemental yet beautiful brush strokes creating an interesting dialogue.  Also exhibiting Mel Strawn, Dave Phelps, Mike Foran and Paula Gabriel with works on paper.

Year in Preview

Lorelei Schott, Irene Delka McCray,Virginia Maitland, Frank Sampson, Margaret Kasahara

NEW WORK  ANDREW SPEER 
ABSTRACTION  ANIA GOLA-KUMOR

Two dynamic painters working in contemporary abstraction  each revealing their personal visual language and a  powerful use of paint.

Kumor is an influential professor Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, and Andrew Speer former chair of the painting department professor emeritus Metropolitan State College of Denver.  Kumor earned her MFA from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Art and also attended the College of Art & Industry in Moscow.

“Speer serves up  mystery of a different kind. Rather than snatches of narratives he constructs compositional accumulatons that become intriguing, if elusive visual puzzles.” 
Kyle MacMillan Denver Post Fine Arts Critic

"Natural Encounters" Margaretta Gilboy, Anna Kaye, Lorelei Schott

"Natural Encounters" presents three remarkable artists exploring the ecological truism that everything is connected pushing the envelope in their approach to the two-dimensional quality of a painted surface. 

Margaretta Gilboy’s paintings are unmistakable in technical vigor, expressiveness,  great intuition and originality.   Artist Lorelei Schott, burying canvases in the soil to soak up debris and minerals,   expresses a keen philosophical  sense of humanity which exudes from her work.  The flawlessly executed drawings of Anna Kay captures the essence of nature and the conceptual experience of forest fires. Three extraordinary artists, and an exhibition not to be missed!

“Like Nowhere Else” Amy Solomon and David Griffin

For artists Amy Solomon and David Griffin landscape painting  is a metaphor for the sensory world.  Griffin’s paintings represent the landscape as an assembled kaleidoscope of experience, memory, and expectation whereas Solomon is seduced by the intricate beauty & mysterious allure of nature. Their work is an exploration of the physical world with  many layers of reality intertwined.

“Do Not Cry Over Spilled Dreams: Portrait of a Consumer” Patricia Tinajero installation artist

The sculptural installation Do not cry over spilled dreams are a series of structures made out of milk cartons, newspaper, handmade cotton paper from recycled blue jeans, and linen..  They are inspired by quilting techniques and approached from the tradition of salvaging and using all remains from materials, which makes this process significant & effective in terms of how recourses are used. 

"Looking Back to Now"

Irena Delka McCray