ICEBREAKER
ICE CUBE GALLERY
JANUARY 15 - FEBRUARY
20, 2010
Juror's statement by Michael Paglia.
Having a
taste for historic architecture, I've long
admired the handsome red-brick building that
houses the Ice Cube Gallery which looks like
a lost landmark from LoDo. However as
I drove up to the building this past Monday
in order to jury the Icebreaker show, I
wondered if there'd be enough material
submitted to do a credible exhibit. The
problem as I saw it was that the entries
had been limited to those with some
association to RiNo, and that seemed overly
exclusive to me.
As the
impressive show demonstrates, I was quite
wrong. Not only were there plenty of
worthwhile submissions, enough to put in
this large and impressive show, there were
at least twenty more pieces that did not get
in that could have been included had there
been more room.
I
accepted approximately one out of three
entries. And though I've been an art writer
for around twenty years (fifteen of them at
Westword) I was unfamiliar with more than
half of the artists who submitted or were
accepted for inclusion. This means that the
art scene is larger than I thought, since I
look at exhibits every week and I'm
particularly interested in local artists so
I'm aware of the efforts of many.
The
resulting show falls into two broad
categories: figuration and abstraction.
The display in the large and handsome space
has been installed so that the
representational pieces are on view to the
left of the entrance - and across the back -
while abstraction is displayed on the right.
In this way it actually functions as two
different shows.
Finally I'd like to thank Pat Aaron, Jean
Smith and Kathy Knaus, all of whom are
members of the Ice Cube co - operative, for
all of their work in facilitating the jury
process. I was exhausted when we were
finished, and since they did lots more work
than I did, I'm sure they were too.
end. |
