October is Arts Month in Colorado and the Pikes Peak region. In celebration, the Ent Center for the Arts at UCCS and the Galleries of Contemporary Arts have more than 20 performances, exhibitions and cultural events planned for the upcoming month.
Below, see five ways you can experience the arts this week.
Oct. 21: Fireside Dialogues with Erika Osborne, Artist
Starting at 6:30 p.m., an outdoor fire on the Ent Center for the Arts lower sculpture green will be lit by using wood gathered by the artists at Section 16, a burned area in Black Forest, Colorado. Each Fireside Dialogue is an opportunity for sharing knowledge, stories and wisdom about our regional forests, trees and woodlands.
The Oct. 21 event will feature Erika Osborne, whose artwork deals with cultural connections to place and environment. For the past 15 years, Erika has taught painting and drawing alongside environmental field courses such as Land Arts of the American West, Wilderness Studio, Place: Appalachia, Art and Environment and Cultural Extraction: Energy in the Humanities at Colorado State University, where she is a faculty member.
The Black Forest Institute is part of the wide-ranging exhibition The Space(s) Between, and is part of GOCA’s Art WithOut Limits Public Sculpture program.
Oct. 22: Live Concert with Ryan Flores
UCCS Downtown invites you to celebrate Arts Month with your friends at a live concert. Enjoy the unique talents of the one and only Ryan Flores, a local musician with a unique Czech Mexican musical vibe — or “Czech-Mex,” as he calls it.
The concert will take place from 5:30–6:30 p.m. at UCCS Downtown on Friday, Oct. 22. Registration is required.
Ongoing: The Windmill Project
The Windmill Project is comprised of 2,000 8-foot tall posts with wind-activated components that turn small generators powering LED downlights. When installed outdoors, the site-responsive sculpture illuminates the wind’s movement across the landscape and visualizes “a living body of light”. The Windmill Project has been extended and will now be on view through October 2022.
In addition to being part of Art WithOut Limits, curated by Daisy McGowan, the work is also connected to a larger project, The Space(s) Between, a multi-site exhibition taking place during the 2020–2021 season in collaboration with University of Denver’s Vicky Myhren Gallery and featuring outdoor artworks between Colorado Springs and Denver along the I-25 corridor.
Until Oct. 29: EPA: Environmental Performance Agency
On Oct. 1, visiting artist collective Environmental Performance Agency (EPA) opened its new exhibit at GOCA Downtown. The new exhibit, titled “Undesirable Plants Declare: A Participatory Public Review,” brings the Environmental Performance Agency’s work to the unceded territory of the Ute, Cheyenne and Arapaho Peoples, to investigate the diverse multispecies lifeways and teachings of spontaneous urban plants (aka weeds). Viewers will be invited to discover how to become present, grounded and engaged with the land around them.
The exhibition will be on view through October 29, 2021. Admission for all events and regular gallery hours is free and open to all.
Until Dec. 12: High + Low: D. Dominick Lombardi Retrospective
High + Low: D. Dominick Lombardi is a 45-year retrospective exhibition curated by T. Michael Martin, featuring 20 distinct chapters of the career of the artist.
A common thread throughout Lombardi’s work is his interest in blending qualities of highbrow and lowbrow art, and experimentation with various media. The exhibition begins with the Cyborgs, a science fiction based series depicting half human/half machine beings. It continues through his East Village days, his earliest forays into sculpture and kinetic art, and the repurposing of a multitude of found materials. A pivotal point in his art career was the Post Apocalyptic Tattoo series, which was prompted by his concerns for the environment and how it would impact our future. After the downturn in the economy in 2008, he began the Street Urchin series that focused on the marginalized victims of that era. Most recently he has explored the social issues of our time referencing the roots of human morality.
The exhibition is on view from Aug. 19–Dec. 12, 2021 at the UCCS Galleries for Contemporary Art.
October is Arts Month in Colorado and the Pikes Peak region. Each week, we’ll showcase some of the many opportunities to enjoy art, performances and cultural experiences through the arts at UCCS.