Art of the State 2016 Jan 21 – March 27, 2016

The Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities is proud to present Art of the State 2016. This juried exhibition will showcase the quality, depth, and diversity of Colorado artists. Art of the State 2016 is the follow up to the critically acclaimed Art of the State: A Juried Exhibition of Colorado held in 2013. In its second iteration, Art of the State 2016 garnered 1,434 entries from 511 artists. Jurors Gwen Chanzit, Michael Chavez, and Collin Parson selected 148 works by 124 artists to represent art in Colorado being created by both emerging and established artists. The call for entry was open to all Colorado artists in all media. All three of the Arvada Center’s galleries, over 10,000 square feet, will be devoted to this celebration of art in Colorado.

Awards will be presented at the opening reception for Best in Show, 2nd and 3rd place, five Artistic Excellence Awards, as well as special awards from arts institutions throughout the state.

Participating artists

Patricia Aaron	Nathan Abels	Monica Aiello
Tyler Aiello	Jody Akers	Evan Anderman
Justin Ankenbauer	Nicole Banowetz	Libby Barbee
Andrew Beckham	Christi Beckmann	Terri Bell
Angela Faris Belt	Phil Bender	Regina Benson
Andy Berg	Brenda Biondo	Allen Birnbach
Susan Blake	Gregory Block	John Bonath
Tonia Bonnell	Michael Brohman	Teresa Brooks
Sharon Brown	Mark Bueno	E. Michael Burrows
Chris Campbell	Kellie Cannon	Katie Caron
Jaime Carrejo	Diane Cionni	Evan Colbert
Jodie Cooper	Monique Crine	Emmett Culligan
Heather Diamond	Rebecca DiDomenico	Rick Dula
Peter Durst	Lui Ferreyra	Kendra Fleischman
David Fodel	Jan Fordyce	Lili Francuz
Dylan Gebbia-Richards	Ron Gerbrandt	Jennifer Ghormley
Jason Lee Gimbel	Thane Gorek	Joshua Goss
Linda Graham	Robert Gratiot	Erica Green
Laura Guese	Theresa Haberkorn	David Hamann
Monroe Hodder	Hadley Hooper	Toby Huffman
Peter Illig	Marston A. Jaquis	Jennifer Jeannelle
Android Jones	Carla Kappa	Mike Keene
Siobhan Keleher	Rian Kerrane	Kathy Knaus
Xavian Lahey	Gay Lasher	Julie Leidel
Gayla Lemke	Bonny Lhotka	Andrew Libertone
Charles Livingston	Mark Lunning	Tim Main
Betsy Margolius	Patrick Marold	Suchitra Mattai
Susanne Mitchell	Lauri Lynnxe Murphy	Tony Ortega
Kelton Osborn	Dallas Parkins	Heather Patterson
Daisy Patton	Mark Penner-Howell	Jennifer Pettus
Laura Phelps Rogers	Don Quade	Sara Ransford
Louis Recchia	Ryan Rice	Craig Robb
Andrew Roberts-Gray	Chandler Romeo	Denis Roussel
Dayana Ruiz	Yoshitomo Saito	Mai Wyn Schantz
Thomas Scharfenberg	Naomi Scheck	Dave Seiler
David Sharpe	Paul Sisson	Kevin Sloan
Bob Smith	Sally Stockhold	Bernice Strawn
Mel Strawn	Meagen Svendsen	Kari Treadwell
Terrell Tumlinson	Gary Voss	David Wagner
Chinn Wang	Robb Watt	Reed Weimer
Jeff Wenzel	Jerry Wingren	Craig Wright

Ardy Zirakzadeh

Scroll down for exhibition images, or click "Photo Gallery" to the right to view all pieces in the exhibition

Jurors

Michael Chavez, Public Art Program Manager Arts & Venues City of Denver

Michael Chavez is a visual arts professional with more than 20 years of experience working in galleries, museums, and public art project management. Chavez manages the City of Denver’s Public Art Program, now in its 27 ^th year, which allocates 1% of construction budgets for new capital improvement projects undertaken by the city for the inclusion of public art. He also oversees Denver’s public art collection which includes more than 380 public artworks throughout the city and county of Denver. Prior to his current position, he has worked as a curator and exhibition designer in Colorado since 2004 with an emphasis on supporting Colorado artists and arts organizations. Chavez holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Kansas and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Wyoming.

Gwen Chanzit- Modern Art Curator, Denver Art Museum

Gwen Chanzit is curator of Modern Art and the Herbert Bayer Collection and Archive at the Denver Art Museum. She has organized exhibitions on artists ranging from Matisse and Bonnard to Dana Schutz. In 2011 she organized the major exhibition, Overthrown: Clay without Limits . Among recent projects are Figure to Field, Mark Rothko in the 1940s , Herbert Bayer: Berlin Graphics 1928-1938, Fracture: Cubism and After, JoanMiró: Instinct and Imagination , Starring Linda: A Trio of John DeAndrea Sculptures , Herbert Bayer: New York and Aspen Paintings 1938-1974 , and Gunther Gerzso: A Mexican Master.

She is organizing a large traveling exhibition, opening at the Denver Art Museum in June, 2016, Women of Abstract Expressionism .

Regarded as the world expert on internationally renowned Bauhaus artist Herbert Bayer (1900-1985), Chanzit regularly rotates installations of the Denver Art Museum’s Bayer Collection that now numbers more than 8,000 works. She has published four books and several articles and catalogs on this Austrian born Bauhaus artist who spent 28 years in Aspen.

Chanzit holds a Ph.D. in art history and contributes to future generations of museum professionals as director of museum studies for the University of Denver’s graduate program in art history.

Collin Parson , Exhibition Manager and Curator – Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities

Colorado native Collin Parson serves as the Exhibition Manager and Curator for the Arvada Center. An arts administrator, artist, curator, and designer, he earned his BFA in Theatre Design and Technology with emphasis in Lighting and Scene Design from the University of Colorado at Boulder and his Masters in Arts in Visual Culture and Arts Administration from Regis University in Denver.

Parson has had the privilege of jurying many art festivals and exhibitions throughout the region and has received many awards and critical acclaim for his curatorial projects such as Robert Mangold Retrospective , PERCEPTION: Color, Line and Pattern , Unbound: Sculpture in the Field , and rePOPulated: contemporary perspectives on pop art . His own artistic work involves the control of light and color to create vivid geometric light and space works. A former member of Denver’s historic Pirate: Contemporary Art and current artist-in-residence at RedLine Denver, he was awarded 100 Colorado Creative’s by Westword in 2013.

About the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities

The award-winning Arvada Center is one of the nation’s largest multi-disciplinary arts centers. Its diversity of arts and humanities programming is dedicated to engaging, challenging, and inspiring patrons.

The Arvada Center hosts three art galleries with a combined space of over 10,000 sq. ft. and an outdoor sculpture space. With an emphasis on exposing some of the region’s most deserving artists, the Arvada Center is committed to showcasing new and established talent. Press review and critic awards have made the Center a driving force in the regional and national art world. The ever-changing galleries offer a contemporary and often stirring look at a dozen exhibitions each year.

Beyond the galleries, the Arvada Center’s full-season professional theater is fully produced in-house and features talent from Broadway to Hollywood. Patrons enjoy several theatrical productions each season along with inspiring children’s theatre, concerts and dance. By creating an impressive line-up of national touring and local acts in its outdoor amphitheatre, the Center is also one of the region’s premier summer destinations.

Offering over 900 classes and camps in the visual and performing arts, the Arvada Center’s educational programming offers inspiring, art-based learning opportunities for 8,500 students of all ages annually. Its school-based programs are well known and respected by educators, and provide over 90,000 hands-on experiences with the arts each year, including 32,000 free or reduced price offerings.

The multi-faceted component of the Arvada Center is something special and gives all theatre, gallery, education and conference patrons a chance to be exposed to some of the region’s most significant art and artists.