Juror Gregory Botts
May 15 – June 24, 2015
For the past sixteen years the WCCA has hosted a juried exhibition featuring contemporary work from artists across the country. Each year’s contemporary exhibition has a different focus based on genre, medium, or both. The parameters are kept intentionally broad. This year the focus is painting and the juror is Gregory Botts. Botts divides his time between New York City and New Mexico. His paintings derive from an initial plein air experience. These adventures inform his studio paintings each year. He is interested in the abstract transformations a landscape painting takes once it moves into the studio environment. Botts has shown in New York City galleries for 35 years and recently in Santa Fe, at the Gerald Peters Gallery and David Richard Gallery. His work is in private collections and museums nationwide. He was elected a member of the National Academy in 1993.
Botts selected 68 works of art out of 187 entries for this year’s contemporary exhibition. The selected entries range from representative to narrative to abstract, and together they demonstrate how artists interpret similar observations in vastly different ways. What the artists of Contemporary Painting 2015 have in common is that they each use their art to construct a reality that is relevant to their individually-lived experiences. This exhibition is evidence that multiple realities can simultaneously ring true.
The contemporary exhibition juror also selects a handful of invited artists to exhibit alongside juried artists each year. The invited artists for 2015 are Betsy Chaffin (Spring Island, SC), Susanne Clark (Snowmass, CO), Sherry Cromwell-Lacy (Kansas City, MO), Aela Morgan (New York, NY), and Meredith Nemirov (Ridgway, CO).
The juried artists for Contemporary Painting 2015 are: Susan Delgalvis (Anchorage, AK), Mary Conover (Aspen, CO), Jocelyn Murray (Basalt, CO), Staci Dickerson (Carbondale, CO), Yidan Guo (Cedar City, UT), Carol Ann Rasmussen (Cedaredge, CO), Lindsey Claire Newman (Chicago, IL), Art Blom (Clifton, CO), Isabel Leonard (Colorado Springs, CO), Andrew Roberts-Gray (Glenwood Springs, CO), Joellyn Duesberry (Greenwood Village, CO), Josh Kuffel (Hoffman Estates, IL), David Young (Loma, CO), Matthew Addison (New York, NY), Kirk Shiflett (Olathe, CO), Chandler Thayer (Placerville, CO), Ping Zheng (Providence, RI), Edwin Werner (Ridgway, CO), Kyujin Lee (Washington, DC); from Denver, CO: Anders Englund and Shelley Hull; from Palisade, CO: Mary Mansfield and HL Weber; from Montrose, CO: Lewis Williams, Pat Jeffers, and Susan Thiele; from Fruita, CO: David Mosier, Deborah Cope, Suzanne Claffey, and Vera Mulder; from Grand Junction, CO: Alison Harris, Barbara Churchley, Bob Martin, Brooks Powell, Dan Logé, Diana Woods, Gayle Gerson, Geri Harris, Hayley Nikkel, Jerry Clifford, Jessica Scriver, Joyce Lee Petersen, Kay Crane, Louis Farlow, Marilyn Wilcox, Mary Ellen Andrews, Mary Kollman, Matthew Jones, Paul Tholl, Roger McCoy, Sandra Hoefner, Sarah Mah Withers, Steven Marshall, Sylvia Wilhelm, and Tré Anastasia.
Award Winners
Best of Show: Joellyn Duesberry, Gorge at North Clear Creek
1st Place: Ping Zheng, Untitled
2nd Place: Josh Kuffel, Lozenge Composition with Yo-Hue, Yc-t2 and Bc-t4
3rd Place: Chandler Thayer, Bottom Boughs of an Old Fir Tree
Honorable Mentions
Matthew Addison, Flatlined
Yidan Guo, Back to Then
Alison Harris, Let’s Play Dress Up
Shelley Hull, Panorama
Matt Jones, Enlightenment
David Mosier, On a Finnish Lake
Lindsey Newman, Creation Stories #1
Andrew Roberts-Gray, Abstraction #85