What is art? It’s a question that has kept philosophers busy for thousands of years.
Art can imitate the physical world or depict an artist’s inner thoughts and expressions.
Over the years, artists have tested the very notion of how we define art. It can be an expression of love, a political statement, an introspective journey or just plain head-scratching. Artists can use almost any material or medium – including light, sound and performance – to tell their stories.
Perhaps the better question is what drives artists to create?
It is this question that we seek to answer from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Powerhouse Science Center, where four local artists will share their stories before a live audience at Durango Diaries, The Durango Herald’s bimonthly storytelling series. The event is free and open to the public.
Artists who will speak include:
Sam Bridgham, aka The Lego Bomber, who has been leaving his small, discrete Lego creations in public spaces around town for about two years. When he’s not Lego bombing, he’s self-employed teaching kids robotics and Lego engineering. Lisa Pedolsky, who primarily focuses on hand-built functional ceramics, two-dimensional mixed media and hand-bound books. Her ceramics are made of terra cotta with visual and tactile depth developed through layering materials and carving into the surfaces.
Rosemary Meza-DesPlas, who is known for exploring gender, sexuality and identity issues through hand-sewn human hair drawings, water colors and on-site drawing installations. She parallels the themes in her artwork with written and spoken-word performances.Dan Groth, who fully developed his style of surrealistic pen-and-ink drawing upon sketchbooks, archaeological illustration and personal experience to create bizarre, disquieting but often humorous pieces. By 2011, he was creating large pen-and-inks with intense detail and a dizzying amount of dots – pieces that took up to a year to finish. Feeling unsatisfied with the meticulous black-and-white nature of his art, he moved to watercolors, which segued into collage, his current focus.
