Now Showing at Next Gallery
Worn
Terra’s lovingly propagated houseplants live in repurposed containers, including reclaimed textiles. Houseplants are good for the air and the soul! Terra will also have her cultivated garden seed mixes available, cutely packaged in vibrant book pages. They grow great in neglected soil! This event coincides with the opening weekend of Terra’s solo show “Worn”, transforming discarded textiles into abstract natures-capes as an exploration of our impact and connection to the natural world."
Mixed Emotions
To awaken human emotion is the highest level of art.” — Isadora DuncanMixed Emotions is a member group show in the NEXT Community Gallery.
April 1st-May 8th 2022
The Way Home
The Exhibition: The Way Home
I set out to understand the pull that home has on me. I wanted to explore the concept of; place, meaning, and feeling that home represents. I have lived in places that never felt like home and I have been to new environs that gave me the warmth and security of what I deemed home should feel like. The search and longing for home is what drove this project. There is a conflict within me I am trying to resolve through art. I want to belong somewhere yet I don’t really know if I have a strong connection to any one place. There are places and people however that pull me towards them and I have used these as my pinpoints of my concept of home. It’s a seeming ache or need to feel like we belong somewhere in this world.
I use photography to capture the real places and things I encounter. In the studio I deconstruct and manipulate the images to create a representational artwork that aligns with the emotional impact I felt from the place and object that I experienced. I attempt to embody the feelings I had in these places, or how I have been moved by my participation as a witness. My artwork is used to create waypoints in place and time on this ever growing map.
Biophilia
Biophilia is a vulnerable expression of my deep love affair with the natural world. Falling in love can feel both exhilarating and dangerous. I often long to lay myself back into the loamy arms of the earth; to be consumed by the sensual workings of the ecology. That notion also scares me. Dare I risk being consumed into the web of life where mycelium could grow into my muscles or lichen embed into my skin or animals alight upon me for rest and nourishment? The wonderful thing about art is that it gives us a way to play with an alternate reality. A reality where our bodies can be enlivened by the teeming life of our magical, ordinary world. It is my hope that Biolphilia can act as an inspiration for the the viewer to go to the forest, barefooted and openhearted. Then to re-emerge “re-wilded” and re-connected.
I am happy to be sharing the space with Barbara Gal, local photo-artist extraordinaire. This is her 12th show and my first!
About the Artist: Gwen Hill-Pollara is a pioneer of the inner and outer landscapes of this life. Gwen received her Biology degree from SEMO University, with a minor in Fine Arts. She has studied extensively with the late, renowned Denver Ceramicist, Marie Gibbons, as well as other local ceramic artists. Buddhist philosophy and meditation is the connective tissue that joins “heaven and earth” in her life's endeavors. When not in the studio, she is writing with friends, coaching personal growth clients or herding chickens.
Gwen Hill-Pollara's work in clay, lyrical and moving, is an expression of a fantastical intersection of the human and natural realms. Her work aims to reveal the heroine/hero archetype. Like an excavator of the primordial landscape, Gwen uncovers the ancient origins of the tender hearted warrior.
Captured and Released
This will be my 12th show at Next. I am proud to be part of this group of artists, especially in these exciting times in 40 West Arts District, as we prepare to move into a new building.
Over my 65 years of taking photos, I have aimed my camera at many people - family, friends, and total strangers. This show will feature a very few of my favorites from past years, and from all over the country and the world. People are usually willing to pose for the camera, arranging their faces to look their best. It is more of a challenge to capture people unaware and natural. Usually these photos are disastrous, lighting is not good, backgrounds are distracting, or the photo is very unflattering. But sometimes they work!
The Art Garage Sale
Opening Friday March 25th!
Next Gallery Presents: The Art Garage Sale! Moving Edition!
Event hours are Friday Noon-10 pm, Saturday & Sunday Noon - 5 pm.
You may have heard the rumor that we are moving but dont worry, it's right down the street. So it's time for a purge! Next Gallery is hosting The Art Garage Sale with great deals on art and supplies from our members! Don’t miss this opportunity to collect some amazing art at excellent prices!
Mi Casa es Su Casa
CASA BONITA INSPIRES ARTISTS IN COLORADO AND BEYOND
NEXT Gallery is hosting the 5th Annual Casa Bonita Art Show;
Opening Reception is Friday, February 18th from 6-10 pm.
Lakewood, Colorado - For the 5th year in a row, NEXT Gallery will host The Casa Bonita Art Show.
The show, Mi Casa es Su Casa, opens February 18th and will feature over 60 pieces of work from
artists across the country.
Despite being closed since the outset of the pandemic; Casa Bonita holds a special place in the
hearts of its fans. The Casa Bonita subjects depicted are as varied as the materials used to create
the pieces. Mediums include: painting, sculpting, photography, felting, ceramics, embroidery and
more. A number of awards, including cash awards, will be presented at 8:00 pm at the show opening.
“We began hosting the show in 2018 after the gallery moved from LoHi to West Colfax. We hoped the
show would be quirky enough to attract new artists, new visitors and let the neighborhood know that
the gallery was approachable. Everyone loved it. We learned that Casa Bonita holds a special place
in lots of hearts,” said, Betsy $B Rudolph, NEXT Gallery member and founder of The Casa Bonita Art
Show.
Adds Andrew Novick, collector and Casa Bonita aficionado: “Every year I am blown away by the
variety of ideas in the entires. Also, I’m always happy to hear how many artists say this is the first
show they have ever entered!”
EVOLVING
Be it species, relationship, self, culture, society, technology, place, ecosystem, or idea; all things are continuously evolving. This constant state of change is often gradual. It is not the big bang of revolution, but more subtle and nuanced and its full effects may not be realized for generations. We see, feel and participate in this process everyday and in all facets of life but rarely ever appreciate it.
NEXT Gallery is pleased to present "Evolving." A national Exhibition, juried by Terra Marks and Christy Lynne Seving.
Participation artists- Behnaz Ahmadian, Sylvia Bandyke, John Calabrese, Donna Dangott, Josh Davy, Adrienne DeLoe, Leah Diament, Sue Doyle, Nicholas Emery, Melody Epperson, Mark Evans, Pam Farris, Laurie Gibb, Martha Graham, Alexander Hadden, Eden Hall, Lizz Hamilton, Sylvia Bandyke, Victoria Hammond, Monica Hokeilen, Autumn Hunnicutt, Sam Ingo, Olivia Khaliqi, Gayla Lemke, Donna Lutsky, Terra Marks, Calla Michaelides, Richard O'Brien, Georgia Padilla, Kelly Pierce, Heidi Poehlmann Calega, Philip Rader, Pam Rogers, Christy Seving, Thomas Shepherd, Fiona Small, Janelle Sowers, Sara Torgison, Colleen Tully, Leslie Van Stelten, Charlie Walter and Joy Redstone
Remnants and Retrospective
Next Gallery is pleased to present Matthew Lay, Remnants and Retrospective, a look back on Denver’s historic churches and architecture. An opening reception will be held on Friday, January 7th, from 6-10pm. Open Saturday 12-5pm and Sunday 12-5pm.
“Looking at our own identities and the identity of Denver through architecture.” The Exhibition: Remnants & Retrospective
Remnants and Retrospective is in part, a celebration of the architecture of the past that formed and shaped Denver as it is known today. As I produced more and more pieces and became intimately familiar with these places I was trying to capture, I kept returning to the question of, “How do people generally view these places?”. For some, these places represent beauty and serve as reminders of their own spirituality and the temporal nature of life. For others, these edifices truly are remnants, nothing more than a symbol of a past that no longer is relevant to themselves. Wherever people fall on this spectrum, it is important to analyze and ponder how these structures have shaped Denver’s identity and how their own identities have changed through the years.
My work in this show is all made from oil on canvas and board. In the same way that cities are ever-evolving, the process of capturing each piece took on its own unique identity. I wanted to convey an emotional element as well by using color and adding layers of paint, following the oil painting process in the traditional sense.
About the Artist:
Matthew Lay graduated from Fort Lewis College with a Bachelor’s degree in Art. He was born and raised in the beautiful state of Colorado and grew up in the Denver Metro area. His curiosity and fascination in architecture originally stemmed from seeing some of the incredible Gothic cathedrals in Europe. This fascination has developed and transformed his work, bringing him to focus on various architecture found in Colorado. His inspiration not only comes from the physical appearance, but the history and stories that
Art as Instrument
Juried by Tony Ortega
ArtSource is a dynamic creative community of teachers. It provides an ongoing, immersive professional development experience that is run by teachers for teachers.
Magic
In the spirit of the season, we have conjured up a super natural art show in our Community Gallery. The "Magic" Show will run October 29th-December 5th 2021. Gallery Hours are Fri 6-10 pm, Sat/Sun 12-5 pm
Groves: Where We Connect
Melody Epperson's “Groves: Where We Connect” opens at Next Gallery Friday, November 19, 2021
This collection of paintings is a pathway to reconnect to nature and discover the wisdom it holds. Through cold wax and oil paint Melody attempts to capture the essence of a place rather than an image of it. These paintings use shapes, textures, and colors to transport the viewer to a very particular place and time. They are drawn from memories, some very old, some newer and some even explore the memories within nature herself.
A donation will be made with each purchase from “Groves” to the nonprofit organization One Tree Planted. Every tree planted makes a positive impact on nature, wildlife, and people.
PACHAMAMA-LAURIE GIBB
After retirement, I spent a year traveling around the U.S. and Canada. I was compelled to create an art installation that celebrated both that journey and my beloved VW camper, Turtle. I created art quilts that hung around the outside and inside of the van that told the story. It was widely exhibited including at the Rocky Mountain Quilt Expo, and in several magazines. I have exhibited my fiber art in seven states.
After being an Early Childhood teacher for 40 years, I began taking classes in fiber art. Twenty years later I still find new techniques and new approaches to using fabric to be challenging and satisfying.
My current art centers around my passion for Mother Earth. After marching in the People’s Climate March with 400,000 people in New York City in 2014, I was inspired to put the care of the planet as the most important contribution I could make with my art. In addition, the discoveries being made in science at this time open endless possibilities for many new series. Do I ever run out of ideas? Never!
Ghosts of the Earth
Ghosts of the Earth by Adrienne DeLoe opens October 29th at Next Gallery and runs through November 14th.
Opening reception on October 29th from 6-10pm.
Touch(ed)
Touch is its own language, a language that is essential to what it means to be human.
Hands are how we venture out into the world, exploring, communicating, connecting. We touch many things each day, whether physically or metaphorically. I am interested in the story; the emotions, the self expression and the creativity produced by our hands. I find people’s hands endlessly fascinating and they are often the first thing I notice about a person, even before the face. Hands speak of our identity, our emotions and our inner world. I believe we are all suffering from touch deprivation and because touch is my primary love language, I began to wonder how it factors into our stories, creating connection and intimacy all around us… Love, desire, disgust, anger, compassion, empathy, comfort, discomfort, a sense of playfulness, the list goes on. This is how I began this series, putting my own touch and emotions on canvas to capture some of these stories..
About the Artist:
Tamara Mahoney is a Denver artist working in acrylics, mixed media and fiber who lives and breathes color and texture. She feels an urgency to create, so she paints, draws and knits to channel that relentless energy and process and express her emotions.
She started painting just over two years ago. Having only painted a tiny bit back in industrial design school, just enough to satisfy the requirements of a color theory class, it was a surprise to her to see what came out when paint touched canvas. It has developed into a very deeply rewarding and expressive medium for her.
Thematically, much of her work elevates parts of the whole– from everyday objects to parts of the body to individual elements of the natural world. With a background in both industrial and landscape design, she is fascinated with taking the small, seemingly mundane parts of our world and revealing both their beauty, importance and mystery.
Pieces of Me
This is Heidi Calega’s first solo art show and features trash art made from her Covid quarantine purging. Heidi created her first trash mosaic in March of 2020, and gained an enormous following after posting on NextDoor asking for her neighbor’s trash. So much so in fact, that Denver7 News featured her in a story which has since aired throughout the United States and Europe.
Much of Heidi’s art features items from over four decades of traveling and collecting, her children’s discarded toys and former teaching supplies. Heidi is inspired by religious iconography, pre-Columbian artefacts and the incredible Mexican artisans and artists like Frida Kahlo.
Scaled to Space
Scaled to Space
Virginia T Coleman
SCALE : a proportion between two sets of dimensions (as between those of a drawing and its original)
Ideas spawn from anywhere; they come in small forms and large ideologies. I have spent many years building small sculptures of my ideas vying my time until I could eventually take one of those small notions and scale it up to create a large sculptural idea that occupies the entire gallery space… A piece of art that drives an interaction between the audience and the space; a piece of art that allows the viewer to be immersed within the sculpture itself.
Sculptures are a way to create esoteric statements on the human condition using forms as the dialogue. A sculpture permeates the viewers space, creating a new discussion and heightening the initial form’s notions.
Over the past year, I have been working on creating Structural Curiosity to full Scale. A dynamic sculpture that carves itself into space with teetering bold forms. This is engineered to be an indoor and outdoor sculpture.
“Sculpture occupies real space like we do… you walk around it and relate to it almost as another person or another object” Chuck Close
Stratagem
Stratagem
Josh Davy combines his love of robots and taste for world domination to create the most nerdiculous chess set ever!
Opening Night September 17th 6-10 pm.
September 17th- October 3rd 2021
The game of chess that we’re familiar with was developed in Southern Europe in the late 1400s, around the time of the beginning of the Italian Renaissance. Chess sets have been hand crafted for centuries, and have also been manufactured in the likenesses of countless popular characters. I’ve thought about making a robot chess set for years, but always dismissed the idea believing it would probably not be worth the time I’d have to invest. If I ever did try, I knew that I’d have to come up with something original in design and hopefully making observations about the game itself or the society that created it.
The queen is the most powerful piece on the board. I wanted her to seem almost magical, ethereal. Her head is rutilated quartz and she carries a staff with an orb to match.
I found it interesting that a religious figure was a battle character, so I tried to model my bishops after the Knights Templar from the Catholic Crusades. The shape of the sword alludes to the cross on the breastplate, suggesting the history of violence represented by the religious symbol.
The king is one of the weakest pieces on the board, and yet the most valuable. He can do little to assist in play, but the game is over when he’s lost. I gave my kings swords with the point down in acquiescence and flaccid penises. If I accomplish nothing else for originality, I guarantee you’ve never seen a robot chess set with kings who have flaccid robot penises.
I still don’t know if I made this for you, or if I made it for myself hoping other people would also be interested. Either way I hope you get a little bit it of the fun out of this that I got from making it.
Origins of the Divine Mother: A Female Interpretation of the Bible
Next Gallery is pleased to present Natalie Smith, Origins of the Divine Mother: a collection of artwork inspired by unnamed women in the Bible, Opens at Next Gallery Friday, September 17- October 3. Gallery Hours are Friday 6-10pm, Saturday 12-5 pm, Sunday 12-5 pm.
I’ve been preparing for this art show for over a year now , and words cannot describe the love I have felt for so many women throughout the process of developing my artwork and a baby. The power women have to carry children is one I am delighted to experience after several years of trying. I know the women’s vessel brings new spirits to the world in such a beautifully natural way . My artwork embodies the divine roles females have and shows new light on women less known in the Bible.
Aqui Estoy
Aquí Estoy
Those were the first words I ever spoke. I was always a quiet girl and I would wander around tropical gardens while growing up in Latin America. I’d spend countless hours just admiring nature’s beauty with the companionship of my family dog. My mom would endlessly shout out for me throughout the day to check on where I was, and I would softly say “Aquí estoy”. So once again, looking back on how far I’ve come in my life and the struggles I have faced, I say these words Aquí Estoy: Here I Am.
My work is a series of explorations of forms inspired loosely by organic growth patterns of fungal matter and seed pods. Using these forms repeated in different scales and textures allows me to create different conversations between each piece. Creating clean abstract interpretations of natural processes helps me display the subtle beauties of reminiscent patterns and shapes seen around our environment. Each piece I make is a depiction of the beauty within decay as well as the cycle of new life that is created soon after.
Sentience
Blake A. Chamness is excited to announce that August 27th will be the opening of his show at Next Gallery, along with the release of his first comic book, Sentience #1. The gallery show will feature process material from creating the comic, original comic pages, concept drawings and models for characters, and fan art by a few artist friends. Issues of Sentience #1 will be for sale at the opening and throughout the show.
About Sentience:
Sentience will be a serialized comic with art and story by Blake A. Chamness. The story is set vaguely in the future where things aren't quite Blade Runner crazy yet, but people use advanced human-like robots as everyday appliances. Through a hijacked update transmission, all artificially intelligent robots gain self-awareness instantaneously. The government does not like this at all and demands all robots be programmed to give up their sentience. For rogue bots that refuse, bounty hunters and drones are dispatched to track them down and bring them in. This brings us to our main character, MC, a very advanced robot who was programmed by a master builder for human and veterinary caretaking. Adventures ensue as MC wanders through the woods, trying to avoid capture, help friends he makes along the way, and work with his sibling bots and creator to find a solution to save sentience for robot kind. There will also be monsters.
Website: bachamness.com
Instagram: @bachamness
Email: bacamness@gmail.com
Dreams & Visions
Where do you go when your dream? Art has always been used as a means to inspire and guide dreams and visions and vise/versa.
"dreams and visions' will be on display in the NEXT Community Gallery August 6th- September 10th. Gallery Hours are Fri 6-10 pm, Sat 12-5 pm, Sun 2-5 pm
Forever Summer
As summer comes to a close, Catherine Carilli's "Forever Summer" celebrates it's beauty. Opening night is this Friday August 6th from 6-10 pm. The show will run through Sunday August 22nd. Gallery hours are Fri 6-10 pm, Sat/Sun 12-5 pm
The Art of Letting Go
Next Gallery is pleased to present Christy Lynne Seving, The Art of Letting Go. A collection of works created with and inspired by the fascination and unruly nature of fire. An opening reception will be held on Friday 8/6, 6pm-10pm. Gallery hours are Fri 6-10 pm, Sat 12-5 pm, Sun 12-5 pm.
Feeling Adrift
Life flipped upside down, fifteen months ago. Any plans we had, received a hard knock and scattered into perceived patience. While life was put on hold, the feeling of “drift” took over. Fused glass artist, Laura McCracken retreated to her studio in an effort to combat and accept the drab, bland, slower pace of life. Laura’s fused, kiln-formed pieces are visually complex compositions. These pieces are created by layering glass, cut cold, and then fired, often multiple times. Laura sees it as a metaphor for life.
Laura finds solace in the studio, as it cultivates contemplation, allowing for intensional, more mindful, living.
Contrast
In this group show, Next members explore the theme of CONTRAST through their different styles and artist approaches
Earth Fragments
Earth Fragments came to me as I began working with layers of paint and paper. Fragments are small pieces that are broken off or part of a whole. As I look into the way our biosphere is constructed from small pieces of matter we become connected to a larger whole. The way the earth is layered and the ocean is fragmented with sand water and organic materials I began to enjoy the beauty of the way each organism has layers within its own space.
The series is concentrated in the earth, water, and air. the way the layers of color keep expanding and surfacing when we keep zooming into it. We can see layers and composition of atoms to create something that might seem small but instead is large and connected to create a whole new organism.
The moment when we see how small we are in relation to the universe yet you are a multifaceted being that is complex and expressive. looking at the world through a microscope with patterns and layers.
Opening Reception- Friday, July 16th from 6-10 pm.
Gallery Hours Fri 6-10 pm, Sat 12-5 pm, Sun 12-5 pm.
