Featuring:
Lee Heekin
Derrick Breidenthal
Kellie Cannon
Karin Schminke
Don Quade
Norman Epp
Bonny Lhotka

Opening: Friday, May 20, 2016, 5-9 pm
First Friday Reception: June 3 & July 1, 2016, 5-8 pm
On view through: July 8, 2016

This group exhibit explores seven artists’ perceptions of altering natural experiences, all achieved and conveyed through a variety of mediums and stylistic approaches.

Lee Heekin’s current body of work explores the human instinct to categorize visual stimuli. Her prints and wooden frameworks are made up of different compartments using 100-year-old barn wood. These natural compositions are connected to our perception of time through material and how we psychologically perceive and attempt to measure time. Lee Heekin’s boxes dissect space and time creating windows to the unknown. Some boxes overlap or are blurred while others are separated into discrete compartments.

Derrick Breidenthal will be exhibiting paintings that focus on the romantic recall of nature coupled with the agitated reality of the natural condition. His use of abstraction paired with realism is used to emphasize both sentimentality and reality. Drawn to a comparison of what he hopes for and what he knows to be true, this combination creates a tension that drives his work.

Kellie Cannon’s new series explores the dual ideologies of permanence and mutability using steel plates shaped by the elements to create images. The plates are largely crafted by the processes of decomposition and oxidation where the rust and the altered surface of the plate become the matrix for ink. As a juxtaposition, ruled lines are imposed on the organic forms to provide order or disorder, depending on your interpretation.

Karin Schminke has been led to larger works cut from plywood and metal through experimentation with laser cutting. The screens reflect her interest in natural processes such as flow, growth or synergy, and use a vocabulary of forms based on her drawings. Light plays a critical role as the screens are installed floating several inches in front of the wall to allow the art to interact with its own cast shadow. The complexity of the resulting interplay is reminiscent of direct experiences of nature as both the changing light of the day and the position of the viewer effects what is seen.

Don Quade’s most recent body of work focuses on the perception of time through the subtle shifts in environment that culminate in distinct seasonality. Through use of color and composition Don’s paintings evoke a sense of the timeless beauty found in the landscape. It is Quade’s intention of engaging the viewer to use their personal experience to draft conclusions on the vast cyclical disparities found in nature.

Norman Epp’s sculptures work the merging of divergent natural forces representing steely rigid human intentions, and persistent organically flexible energies of various earthly elements. These faces of human perception intend to subtly energize timely currents affecting Creation of Nature’s contemporary state of being.

Bonny Lhotka’s work features the photograph as solely an ingredient. The beauty of nature is never-ending, timeless and repetitive, yet continually changing. Capturing a moment with a camera and simultaneously experiencing her entire surrounding allows her to add layers of mental snapshots of a place in her work that the camera alone cannot capture.

An opening reception will be held on Friday, Friday, May 20, 2016, 5-9 pm at the gallery in the Prado building on 11th & Cherokee Streets in Denver’s Golden Triangle Museum District. The reception is free and open to the public, and the artists will be in attendance.

The exhibition is on view through Saturday July 8, 2016 during regular gallery hours: Tuesday-Saturday,
11am-5pm, and First Fridays, or by appointment. For further information call 303-355-8955, or visit: www.walkerfineart.com.

Walker Fine Art is a member of the Golden Triangle Museum District and the Denver Art Dealers Association.

The gallery is located just blocks from the Denver Art Museum in the Prado building on 11th Avenue and Cherokee Street.