Olivia Emmer/Photo courtesy
ArtWeek may be behind us, but that doesn’t mean there’s a lack of local art and activities for the public to enjoy before the summer ends.
In partnership with the Aspen Chamber Resort Association, the Red Brick Center of the Arts hosts its third annual Summer Celebration of Arts and Culture on Thursday from 4 to 6 p.m.
“For us, this is an opportunity to highlight the artists who have studios at Red Brick, as well as the nonprofits that have office space at Red Brick, and showcase their work in our gallery,” said Executive Director Sarah Roy.
The event will include art activities, demos and short performances by resident artists of the Red Brick. Local nonprofits will appear at various locations and perform throughout the evening. Guests are invited to interact with the artists, participate in art making and experience the vibrant arts and culture scene in Aspen. Festive drinks, appetizers, music, socializing and art tours in the gallery will round out the celebration.
An Aspen-based artist currently exhibiting her work at Red Brick is Lara Whitley“Field Signs” is an installation she constructed from camping tents crowdsourced from the community, a continuation of her practice of creating art from discarded antique materials.
“I’ve been working with centuries-old trash hauled from landfills for the last nearly ten years,” she explained. “The material this time is camping tents. With each material, I try to ask, ‘What is this trying to be? What life is left in this material to create a new story?’ In this case, it was flags.”
The installation consists of 60 flags designed with patterns and shapes from the nature that surrounds us. The community decided on the color palette largely based on donations.
“I started by taking inventory of the patterns I see in the upper Roaring Fork Valley,” she said. “It was very specific things like a lenticular cloud, a split picket fence, a snowflake, a boulder, an icicle, a river meander, certain constellations and then some more obvious or general things like sky and mountains, etc.”
She said there were several reasons behind her decision to make flags from the discarded tents.
“Part of it was a subconscious desire to work with a material that was lighter and cleaner than the super-dense and dirty materials from the old landfills,” she said. “But a few years ago, when I was working with Ajax at the Aspen Space Station and we were designing installations, I just had this urge: ‘I want to make flags.’ I had never made flags before. But I have experience. I grew up sewing, so it wasn’t exactly out of the blue. But it grew from there, from my curiosity: ‘What would that be like?'”
“Field Signs” will be on display at Red Brick through Labor Day and is just the beginning of a series she is working on, according to Whitley. As the location changes, so does the form and the work to create something site-specific. She also looks at the architecture and natural environment to create something that harmonizes with the space.
“These flags represent joy for me,” she said. “I see my work as a kind of transformation of waste into a place of contemplation. Most recently there was the Forest Spiral, an open-air meditation temple up in Beyul, which represented a very special kind of contemplation. But the flags displayed on the lawn at Red Brick are more playful, creating a backdrop of joy, which is its own form of contemplation.”
Sarah Girgis is arts and entertainment editor for The Aspen Times. Reach her at 970-429-9151 or [email protected].
