Gallery features work of Aspen Art Museum fellows

Anderson Ranch Arts Center’s Patton-Malott Gallery is showing the Aspen Art Museum Artist Fellows Exhibition, which features the work of the 2022 fellows Leah Aegerter, Kris Cox, Chris Erickson, Paul Keefe, Shawna Miller, and Ali O’Neal. The exhibition will run to April 28, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.

The Aspen Art Museum Artist Fellowship is a nine-month fellowship that provides a mentored, professional development opportunity for six artists each year, from emerging to established, working in the Roaring Fork Valley. The program provides recognition and support for artists interested in expanding their practice through exchange and mentorship through such opportunities as conversations with visiting artists and curators, presentations by museum staff, and facilitated studio visits with their cohort. Over the course of the fellowship, participating artists develop a creative project with the input of museum staff. This exhibition is the culmination of the 2022 Fellowship.

Aspen Art Museum Artist Fellows

Leah Aegerter is an artist working in object-based sculpture and installation. She lives and works in Carbondale and spends much of her free time exploring the mountains and deserts of the American West on foot and raft. Her work investigates her relationship to landscape and intimacy with material. She received a BFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2017. In 2022, she was named an Aspen Art Museum artist fellow.

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Kris Cox is a visual artist whose practice includes sculpture and constructed paintings. In early 2020, he designed and completed his studio and residence in Basalt. His most recent sculptures are assemblages of entirely upcycled objects from the Roaring Fork Valley. He received a BA from Claremont Men’s College in 1973 and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1977. His work is in the collections of numerous museums, and he has had 58 one-man shows.

Chris Erickson is a painter, sculptor and designer who emerged from the skateboarding and snowboarding culture of the 1980s. He received a bachelor degree in fine art from Fort Lewis College and then went on to study graphic design, receiving an Associates of Arts in graphic design and illustration from Platt College in Denver. The iconography and pure color depicted in his work blur the lines between fine art and graphic design. His work looks to explore the implications of an over-stimulated world and the effects this has on us as a society. He employs a proprietary technique to generate his images by the use of hand-cut foam core stencils and spray paint. His work has been featured in The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Aspen Sojourner, and Sunset Magazine.

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Paul Keefe lives in Basalt. His drawings, sculptures, and videos question the functions of value, beauty, and humor. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Colorado State University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Kansas. His works have been exhibited at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design and Lane Meyer Projects in Denver. In 2017, he participated in the Artist in Residence program at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Shawna Miller is a figurative oil painter living and working in El Jebel. Her current work focuses on the bittersweet beauty and weight of motherhood. She began oil painting six years ago and has studied in the studio of Michelle Doll in Hoboken, N.J. Shawna moved to the Roaring Fork Valley four years ago from Manhattan, N.Y., with her husband and two young children.

Ali O’Neal is a screen printer, designer, and textile artist and is currently pursuing creative endeavors through her brand, Thimble Fox, and as an independent artist. She uses her work in serigraphy and textiles as a platform for social and political commentary as well as to educate about the inequities of the textile fast fashion industry.

The Patton-Malott Gallery is a gallery space on the Anderson Ranch campus. Its contemporary and rustic ranch architectural elements provide the backdrop for rotating exhibitions throughout the year.

The mission of the gallery is to inspire creativity and critical dialog, engaging the regional community by exploring diverse histories within contemporary art. Based on a foundation of exhibitions that tie the gallery to educational programming at Anderson Ranch, our goal is to bring compelling exhibitions to the Roaring Fork Valley region. The gallery supports artists working with themes that affirm the trajectories of contemporary art as plural, unbounded by geographic, conceptual, and cultural limits. The gallery builds community through its programming, employing art as a vehicle for the examination, and transmission of contemporary experience.