Gina Pugliese

Tag: Denver Art

  • Studio Visit with Esther Hz

    Curator and Artist Esther Hz Discusses Her Art and Soil In Her Studio In Denver’s City Park Neighborhood

    Esther Hz in her studio in Denver. Photo courtesy of the artist.

    Read my latest article for Southwest Contemporary about Esther Hz’s art practice, including her past as a farmer and recent biodynamic farm-inspired zoetropes for the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art’s exhibition agriCULTURE (on view until October 1st).

    “Celestial Beings” on display in the agriCULTURE show at BMoCA.

    Here’s an excerpt:

    Hz has always considered herself a practicing artist, but, as a former farmer, she found little time for art-making. Additionally, having attended a permaculture school in Eugene, Oregon, before urban farming at Produce Denver and then managing the urban Blue Bear Farm at the Colorado Convention Center, Hz remains passionate about agricultural work as an act of self and communal service—providing self-sufficiency and the opportunity to deeply nourish the masses. And, as Hz informed me, it all starts with good soil, the micro-biomes that line our digestive tracts, betraying where we source our food (which, under capitalism, is not necessarily where we live). 

    Hz and BMoCA’s curator, Jane Burke.

    Tones of spirituality, comedy, and healing emerge as powerfully legible focuses in Hz’s oeuvre. Occasionally working in the non-profit sector, including with girls and women from the foster care system, Hz has invited others to play with her in her studio, listening to their histories and visually replicating their stories into art pieces that might offer pathways to self-repair. 

    “Genesis”

    In her 2018 sculpture Genesis, Hz cast a young woman’s face in plaster, creating a visage in which oyster mushroom mycelium overtakes half of the head cast. Hz met this person, dealing with dying and deceased parents and substance abuse, through her non-profit work. Both Hz and this woman agreed that a mushroom mask justly represented her experiences. 

    “Many Eyes”

    Read the full article here. Check out more of my writing on Substack here. And visit my blog here.

    “Untitled”
    “Untitled”

  • Read about Denver’s Inaugural Month of Video in Southwest Contemporary

    At Denver Month of Video, Experience a Medley of Video Art, Exhibitions, Performance Art, and Untraditional Cinema

    Cadence Works” by Vanessa Renwick at Galapago Space curated by Maurice and De La Garza
    “Cadence Works” by Vanessa Renwick at Galapago Space curated by Maurice and De La Garza

    Here’s an excerpt from my article in Southwest Contemporary about Denver’s Month of Video, curated by Jenna Maurice and Adán De La Garza:

    Denver Month of Video will showcase a variety of video art and exhibitions with overlapping themes of Indigenous land and culture, social and environmental justice, and the contemporaneous “aliveness” of performance art. With the help of their vast network of video artist friends and various artist-run spaces and galleries throughout Denver, viewers can find MOV screenings and events in both “top tier” locations (such as the Denver Art Museum) and DIY warehouses, such as Glob. Other venues include Galapago Space, 17th Street “Storefront,” Denver Digerati, and the Daniels and Fisher’s Clock Tower.

    Jenna Maurice for Traverse exhibition at Union Hall curated by Esther Hz
    Jenna Maurice for Traverse exhibition at Union Hall curated by Esther Hz

    MOV’s itinerary kicks off this weekend with a showcase of Colorado-based video artists at the Denver Art Museum on July 1, 2023 with subsequent one-night screenings occurring every Saturday at various locations. Many other screenings and live performances will take place throughout July, including alumni work from Signal Culture, a global media-artist residency program that recently relocated from Upstate New York to Colorado. 

    New Red Order, "Crimes Against Reality" Exhibition at RedLine curated by Jenna Maurice and Adán De La Garza
    New Red Order, “Crimes Against Reality” Exhibition at RedLine curated by Jenna Maurice and Adán De La Garza

    “We hope that MOV will provide different access points to video-based work and a home for that work to be seen regularly in Denver,” say Maurice and De La Garza about Denver Month of Video, which may become a biannual event that recommences in 2025. By that time, Denver will certainly be hungry for more simultaneous introductions to video artists and the local art spaces that display their work.

    Nicola Fornoni for an exhibition at Understudy Gallery curated by Quinn Dukes
    Nicola Fornoni for an exhibition at Understudy Gallery curated by Quinn Dukes

  • The Secret Lives of Inanimate Objects

    A studio visit with Denver artist Alex Branch in her studio at the Evans School

    Currently, in Southwest Contemporary, you can read about my studio visit with Alex Branch.

    Here are some excerpts:

    If you mine the Internet for information about the interdisciplinary artist Alex Branch, you’ll learn that she grew up on an island off the coast of Washington, collecting Earth-worn objects washed to shore, pondering the odysseys they mutely contain. As we sat in her studio in the Evans School (in landlocked, water-scarce Denver), I brought up my knowledge of her poetic biography and geographical migrations. From Seattle to Chicago and New York, and artist residencies in Greece, Florida, Missouri, Nebraska, and New Mexico, Branch set an anchor near family in Denver two years ago, finding herself among a supportive art community. 

    As I considered Branch’s works-in-progress in her studio, I shared her curiosity about the metaphors enveloped in everyday objects, like messages inside ocean-dispatched bottles. Branch gestured to her water bottle on her desk, telling me that even newly manufactured gadgets hold secret narratives about their production. Contemplating the independent, non-ontological lives objects lead, we admired their fusion of organic and synthetic materials, the animal and mechanical labor involved in their development, and their unpredictable transformations with exposure to various physical and social environments.  

    [. . .]

    By the end of my studio visit with Branch, I felt like Alice in Wonderland, shrunk to fit inside my own glass bottle and swept away by the torrent of a meandering conversation. Traversing through themes of the natural, synthetic, and surreal aspects of our reality (shared with a multitude of entities we cannot fully control or communicate with) Branch ignited my wonder about a conscious world independent of us.

  • Southwest Contemporary Art Review on Sam Grabowska’s “Intake” at Denver’s Understudy

    Art review on Sam Grabowska’s “Intake,” an AI-generated art installation and psychotherapeutic shelter, at Denver’s Understudy gallery.

    Here’s an excerpt from my latest review:

    Pondering the word “intake,” the Oxford Dictionary states: “a location or structure through which something is taken.” Considering Grabowska’s academic background in architecture and cultural anthropology, their interest in shelter notably permeates their oeuvre as they take viewers, psychically or physically, into sculptural habitats. Furthermore, conceiving shelters as locations of curative safeguarding, Grabowska focuses on traumatized individuals yearning for salubrious intake beyond or adjacent to an inhospitable and overwhelming milieu.

    Read the full piece here.