Artists

Local Denver Artists

I’m thrilled with the participation of leading local artists in the Denver metro area. These artists have won numerous awards and are leaders in the creative community. Some of their art hangs on the walls of the Denver Art Museum as well as in the homes of savvy and appreciative collectors.

You can learn more about each of the artists below with some bios and artist statements. Some links as well. Contact me and I’ll lead you to them.

Hadley Hooper

Hadley Hooper is an artist and illustrator whose work has been seen in a variety of publications including Harper's, The New York Times, and Time Magazine among many others. She has illustrated book covers for Harper Collins, Viking, Random House, Delacorte Press and Penguin. Among the titles are 'My French Whore' by Gene Wilder and Cynthia Ozick's 'Heir to the Glimmering World’.

Her work has been recognized in American Illustration, Communication Arts and the Society of Publication Designers. In 2006 her work received a Silver Medal from the Society of Illustrators. She is represented by the Marlena Agency (www.marlenaagency.com).

Hadley, a leader in the Denver arts community, co-founded the River North Art District, “Where Art is Made”. She was awarded the Westword Mastermind Award for Visual Arts for her trailblazing leadership on behalf of the RiNo Arts District. In November 2008, as part of the Denver's 150th birthday celebration, she was honored as one of Denver’s Top 150, which celebrates 150 Denver citizens “doing something extraordinary and bettering the City for generations to come”

www.Hadleyhooper.com

Sharon Feder



A Colorado native, Feder paints abstractions of nature and architecture. The tension between her materials and her spiritual influences charge the work while resisting the typical sentimentality of such studies. Seeing her daughter's devotion to painting as a child, Feder’s mother arranged for her to begin private lessons which led to her studies with Colorado artists Ed Marecak and Mark Zamantakis at a time in her life where their influences not only were deeply rooted but have manifested into her own style.

A master colorist, Feder recalls, “I remember a day in Denver as a child, walking across a park in the early morning when the colors were at their saturated peak. I realized at that moment, with a force that shuddered through my body, that no one would ever see the world exactly as I saw it.” To this day as she applies paint and scrapes it away from her substrate, Feder remains true to that epiphanic day as a child.

Her work has evolved from decades of technical experience as a set designer, muralist, and studio artist. Feder’s commissions include murals and paintings for dozens of private and public collectors both nationally and internationally.

www.sfeder.com

Sharon Brown

Artist's Statement: The human presence is a constant in my work. Often beginning with old snapshots, candid photos of family, friends and strangers, I try to capture slices of time, evocative moments. I'm fascinated by what home photographers inadvertently catch: images that are often casual and non-reverential, the subjects captured without their masks on, the scene not lit or staged. The results are situations, faces and places that resonate with viewers, reminding them of the life they really led instead of the stories they created about their pasts.

Perhaps my interests in family images and portraits of people in unguarded moments come from growing up with a father, a grandfather and a brother who were psychiatrists. Perhaps my desire to draw and paint was formed by a mother and her three sisters, all of whose artistic talents were enthusiastically encouraged by their mother. In any case, I grew up surrounded by art and conversations about people, and I have been drawing people since I could hold a crayon. After college, art took a back seat to other career and family demands, but at the age of 40, I returned to it full time. I haven't looked back since.

www.patternshopstudio.com

EricZimmer



Eric Zimmer is a New York trained artist whose work is in numerous collections including the Denver Art Museum. He now lives in Denver, and has recently illustrated a children’s book entitled “The Turtle and the Deep Blue Sky”. You can purchase Eric Zimmer’s illustrated children's book “The Turtle and the Deep Blue Sky” here:
Buy “The Turtle and the Deep Blue Sky” at Tattered Cover

www.ericzimmerillustration.com



Matt Holman



Matt was raised in Washington, D.C., and moved to Colorado when Dick Lamm (D) was still Governor. For over six years, he has drawn the comic strip "Stateside" for the Colorado state government newspaper, "Stateline." His art consists mostly of cartoons and drawings, and he is currently working on two short-story comic books: "A White House Christmas Carol (In which George Bush discovers the true meaning of Christmas)"; and "The Accordion," the story of a Spanish musician who comes to the United States during the Great Depression to pursue his dream. Matt's three-dimensional artwork includes birdhouses, which have been displayed at the Denver Botanic Gardens, and mechanical boxes, one of which was shown at the Pirate Gallery; although he really has no business using power tools.

Tracy Weil

Painting for over 20 years, Weil's work is distinctive for its bold use of color. Unabashed and expressive, Weil's zest for people and life emerges clearly in bright works thick with paint. Along with showing his own work, Weilworks exhibits both established and emerging regional artists, offering a broad range of challenging and contemporary work.

Tracy is a recipient of the Mayor's Design Award for 2006. The Mayor's Design Award celebrates design in all its forms: bold, humble, gritty, polished, contemporary and traditional. The 2006 MDA recognizes sixteen projects that have made a contribution to Denver's imaginative new design and architecture. The category Weilworks has been honored with is Home is Where the Art Is. This category highlights extraordinary contributions to the residential environment. An infill project that reflects the style and personality of the homeowner and respects the neighborhood fabric.

Tracy is co-founder of River North Art District.(RiNo)

Weilworks would like to thank Mayor Hickenlooper & the City of Denver for this great honor and all those who helped make it happen. weilworks.com

Bill Amundson

Bill Amundson is a Denver based artist who works in the "Suburban Regionalist" mode, a style devoted to capturing and celebrating the true American scene rather than the idealized version so often pictured in the art of our time. His work reflects an interest in the contemporary landscape, particularly as reflected through such distinct American staples as the subdivision, the chain restaurant, retail franchises, interstate travel, SUV's and the ubiquitous cell phone. His work has been described in various publications as "ironic, compulsive, sweet, irreverent, whimsical, fanatical, hysterical and banal," which leads one to question the veracity of the publishing world.

Bill was born in Stoughton, Wisconsin, a small Scandinavian farming community in the southern portion of the beer and cheese state. He attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison from 1971-1975, at which time he was awarded a B.S. Degree in Art, deemed appropriate by all who knew him well. He settled in Colorado in l978, but still spends a substantial period of time each year on the road in search of subject matter, both appropriate and otherwise. He has exhibited extensively throughout Colorado and the United States for over 25 years, and his work is owned by a wide variety of individuals and organizations nationwide and throughout the world, including the Denver Art Museum.

www.amundart.com

Morgan Lehman Gallery

Katie Taft



Katie Taft is an artist working in Photography and Sculpture living in Denver, Colorado. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Marylhurst University in Portland Oregon in 2001 and has been making art in an attempt to better understand the world and people around her since. Her work deals with universal stories such as myth, folklore, philosophy and religion, and how these kinds of stories manifest themselves in our modern lives.

Taking inspiration from individuals around her as well as the symbolism of animals she creates figures composed of human and animal attributes. Once completed she takes what she calls her Imaginary Friends out into the world to bring them to life with the aid of her trusty camera. When the right place is found and the light is right, the emotional qualities of these creatures awaken to bridge the gap.

In the past few years Katie has shown throughout Colorado, Portland, Oregon, Ohio University in Athens, Ohio and Santa Fe, NM. She is represented in many private and public collections in the US and received Westword's Mastermind Award in 2006.

www.katietaft.blogspot.com

“The reason I chose the Herbert Bayer sculpture is his longstanding involvement with the Colorado Art world. He was a member of the Bauhaus and moved to Aspen in 1946. The DAM has the largest collection of his work. Also I remember the sculpture from my youth, I grew up in Boulder and we had a good family friend in Colorado Springs. When we would drive down to see him I would see and enjoy the sculpture.

Articulated Wall: Designed by Herbert Bayer, the 85-foot tall sculpture is recognized as one of Denver’s major landmarks. The original developer of the Denver Design Center first saw the articulated wall in Mexico City and decided it would be a perfect landmark for the Denver Design Center. The original sculpture was built for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and stands approximately 60 - feet tall. The original artist, Herbert Bayer, was commissioned to build the sculpture exactly like the original, only taller! The sculpture was completed in 1986 and stands 85-feet tall. Shortly after its construction, the “Articulated Wall” was donated to the Denver Art Museum as a part of its three-dimensional outdoor sculpture collection.

Articulated Wall Photo on Flickr

Lauri Lynnxe Murphy

Artist Statement:
My work has long been engaged with the ability to connect disparate, sometimes random elements to create meaning and narrative. Since I deploy a wide range of mediums and methodologies in creating my work – juxtaposing realism and abstraction, found objects and tightly painted elements – I gravitated naturally towards the grid as a superimposed organizational structure. However, the grid has its own art historical baggage, and I found that over time it became restrictive – rather than freeing me to explore as many directions as my short attention span could take me in, it locked me into an uncomfortable modus operandi whose formal demands superseded the content, narrative, and materials that my work was primarily concerned with.

My attempt to escape from the self-imposed straight-jacket that the grid had unwittingly fashioned took me in two directions: scatter-shot compositions of square panels and circles. However, neither solved my quandary. The scattered compositions, while interesting, were still painted on squares and rectangles, and thus inherently suggested the grid; while the circles were disappointingly flat and dimensionless. The solution lay somewhere in the middle, by using a scattered composition comprised of rounded, 3-dimensional organic forms. This approach has taken my work into a direction that is difficult, if not impossible, to categorize. No longer strictly painting, and yet not sculpture either, it exists in a hybrid form that continues to evolve without any rigidly overlaid organizational formations. Each “painting” is formed from a pre-determined cluster of individual parts that can combine in unending variable formats and arrangements.

The formal concerns in my work remain the same, but are freed by using a clustered, free-floating format. As before, I am creating artwork that mimics both language forms and societies – each element representing a word or phrase that, combined in concert with others, evokes a more complex or meaningful idea through it’s interaction while still able to stand on it’s own. As the arrangement of the parts is not meant to be permanent, but to change with each successive installation, the work is highly dependent on a careful balance of compositional components. When the work is installed by someone other than myself, it is as if we are engaging in a collaboration, and the installer is free to make their own sequential and aesthetic decisions, entering into a conversation that can re-occur indefinitely.

Lauri is received Westword's Mastermind Award in 2005 - the first year of the award.

Shs is represented by:
+ Gallery, Denver
www.plusgallery.com

Brayham Contemporary Art, Toronto
www.brayhamcontemporaryart.com.com

Artizen Fine Arts, Dallas
www.artizenfinearts.com

http://www.lynnxe.com
www.lynnxe.com

Rachelle Erickson - Logo Pin Design

Rachelle has been designing for over 15+ years. Logos, websites, catalogs, illustrations, photography and much more. You can view some of her samples at www.RachelleErickson.com

Some of her top clients include EltonJohn Aids Foundation, Hallmark, Disney, and Microsoft.

She also has a passion for photography,and will travel to capture your special wedding day.You can view some samples at www.PhotosByRachelle.com. Rachelle is a huge dog fan,and enjoys her beagle Sunshine.

www.PhotosbyRachelle.com