EXHIBITION DETAILS
Air of the Ancients
January 20 - April 1, 2023
Reception January 20, 2023 6 PM MT
Virtual Artist Talks March 11, 2023 2 PM MT
In partnership with Artworks Center for Contemporary Art
310 N. Railroad Avenue
Loveland, CO 80537
Featuring the work of Angela Faris Belt, Natascha Seideneck, and Melanie Walker
Air of the Ancients statement
The air we breathe is the air of the ancients. Constants of air, dirt, fire, and water have cycled through natural processes for time immemorial. In recent times, two hundred years give or take, humans have invented and introduced previously non-existent materials, chemicals, nanoparticles, and forever chemicals that have irreparably changed the elements and the environment.
Angela Faris Belt, Natascha Seideneck, and Melanie Walker’s work explore nature and the continuum of what was, is, and most importantly, what will be. We are in an uncertain new era of imbalance that we have created and now struggle to bring back to balance.
While we continue to breathe the air of the ancients, most of us are questioning the future of the planet and ways of life, cycles of nature, and what we knew as constants that are no longer.
Hamidah Glasgow
Angela Faris Belt is a visual artist whose work studies relationships between humankind and the more-than-human world. Influenced by nature writers, a unique multi-cultural heritage, Buddhist philosophy, and a lifetime spent in nature, she uses photographic media because its physical makeup mirrors nature itself— sensitivity to light, energy and time, metallic and chemical interactions, viability and expiration—and its inherent ability to simultaneously record and infer. Her work utilizes the entire range of photographic media from historic to digital; media is chosen to underscore or mirror the concepts regarding nature in each body of work.
Angela’s work has been widely exhibited in prestigious juried and invitational exhibitions including Corden/Potts Gallery, San Francisco; BJ Spoke Gallery, NY; Arvada Center for the Arts, CO; The Dairy Center for the Arts, Boulder, CO; Foreman Gallery, NY; and University of Notre Dame’s Photography Gallery. Her work is held in collections including Kaiser Permanente, Reynolds & Reynolds, the Crowne Collection, Chicago; and the Smithsonian Museum. She is represented by Michael Warren Contemporary Gallery in Denver.
Angela lives in the mountains of Colorado’s Front Range, alongside neighbors of elk, deer, fox, coyotes, bears, and mountain lions. In addition to her artwork, she is Program Chair of the Studio Art & Art History Departments at Arapahoe Community College. In her off-time she builds stone walls and participates in bark-beetle mitigation efforts.
Natascha Seideneck is from Germany, grew up in England and lives in Denver, Colorado. She holds an MFA from Tufts University and is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Metro State University of Denver. Natascha exhibits her work extensively and has produced numerous site-specific artworks, often collaborating with artists, designers, and architects. Her work is interdisciplinary, often engaging in experimental processes that integrate still and time-based visual technologies. In particular, she is interested in how land is surveyed and surveilled within historical and contemporary contexts
Melanie Walker has been a practicing artist for over 50 years. Her expertise is in Melanie Walker is a mixed media artist invested in ideas. She has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally and has work in more than 200 permanent collections including the Smithsonian, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson. Her approach to materials includes photographic media, alternative processes, digital art, sculpture, installation, fiber art, printmaking, costume design and public art. She has received numerous grants and fellowship including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship, Polaroid Materials Grants and an Aaron Siskind Award.
Beneath a sheltering sky
Our ancestors watched the skies. They used the sky as a way to monitor change, from solstice to solstice, to navigate their way through time and space. Some think that clouds are the shared collective breath of the ancestors. Clouds make the atmosphere tangible, visible.
Throughout this pandemic I have thought a lot about the sky as a place of refuge and the atmosphere as a collective space. Do we inhale the same air the ancestors once inhaled? Does air have a life span? The air we all breathe, a shared breath, standing together, lifting each other up. It is my place of hope.
Installation:
