Aspen Art Fair 2025
JAMES SURLS, Derrick Velasquez, Marsha yi robinson (STRANGE DIRT)
July 29 - August 2, 2025
HOTEL JEROME
330 E Main St
Aspen, CO 81611
James Surls is an internationally celebrated artist and a Carbondale, Colorado local. His sculptures, drawings, and prints reflect his masterful artistic sensibilities combined with his deep relationships with natural forms. Surls considers himself a “being of the woods” and believes that every tree has a spirit that lives within it. In Surl’s practice, disembodied eyes and dreamlike, figurative forms allude to the subconscious and the artist’s beginnings in Neo-Surrealism.
Derrick Velasquez’s work spans painting, sculpture, and installation. His unique wall forms are meticulously layered vinyl strips paired with hardwood shapes. Each composition ties fine art and the natural world together with elements that simultaneously reference drooping rainbows or brushstrokes suspended in time. Velasquez’s work encourages engagement and appeals to viewers’ visual and tactile senses. In his practice, he explores the relationships between gravity and shadows, and subsequently creates pieces that invite viewers to question their perceptions of space, shape, and function.
MarSha Yi Robinson (Strange Dirt) is a self-taught artist from Seoul, Korea. Robinson was raised between New York City and Los Angeles and currently resides in the Southwest United States. Her hand-drawn artworks, primarily created with India ink, feature intricate floral and geometric structures. Each composition depicts the dynamic tensions found in binary relationships, such as feminine/masculine, hard/soft, and organic/synthetic. Her paintings challenge commonplace notions of floral beauty, expanding botanical aesthetics and concepts into more diverse and nuanced territory. Since 2014, Robinson has adopted the pseudonym Strange Dirt for her fine art practice.
Each of these artists explores the intersections of ecology, human engagement, and visual perception. Additionally, all three possess technical mastery in their chosen visual media. From intricate botanical drawings to sculptural forms and layered abstractions, each artist brings a uniquely local yet deeply resonant voice to the fair. Presented together, their artwork creates a dialogue between craft and material, inviting reflection on how art shapes our understanding of the natural and built environments we inhabit.
