Nature/Nurture
Chris Hassig
Nancy Lovendahl
Marsha Yi Robinson
October 12 – November 10, 2021
PRESS RELEASE
Skye Gallery is pleased to announce Nature/Nurture, a group exhibition by Chris Hassig, Strange Dirt and Nancy Lovendahl. Nature/Nurture will open on Tuesday, October 12th at 6:00pm and will be on view until November 10, 2021.
Nancy Lovendahl states “I was born and raised in the Chicago area and escaped what I anticipated would be a confining future to the vast open space of Colorado”. Following studies at The University of Illinois - Champaign/Urbana in ceramics, Lovendahl has expanded to making work for both inside and outside environments in ceramic, stone, metal and mixed media exploring issues of social division, perception and awareness. Her artwork can be found in private & public collections and museums such as The Smithsonian Institution in Wash., DC, The Keramikmuseum, in Westerwald, Germany and The National Gallery in Tbilisi, Georgia. She has won numerous monumental Art in Public Places awards nationally in cities such as Dallas and Denver. Nancy teaches and lectures in institutions such as The Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, China, Anderson Ranch Art Center and Nebraska Wesleyan University. She exhibits internationally and nationally with recent solo exhibitions at The Red Gate Gallery Residency in Beijing, The American Embassy, Belmopan, Belize and Denver’s Michael Warren Contemporary. Nancy lives in rural Old Snowmass, CO with husband, jewelry designer Scott Keating. She works in studios in Old Snowmass and Denver.
Chris Hassig grew up in Carbondale, CO with a pencil in hand. At the age of thirteen his fascination with maps fostered an idiosyncratic personal project to invent and map a fictional country he called Saiopor. The project continued in a secret notebook throughout his high school and college years, as the pages became ever more detailed, sophisticated, and palimpsestic. The ambition to fit entire cities within a 9x12 page incidentally honed a uniquely fine and miniaturized drafting technique, which he occasionally turned toward nature during backpacking trips into the Colorado and Wyoming Rockies.
An offhand sketch of a mundane patch of grass ultimately led him to more conscious art making. The new project used the commonplace subject matter of grass to delve into the complexity and inexhaustible detail of nature. As the ink grass drawings became a studio project and grew in scale, Chris came to view them through the lens of abstract pattern making rather than botanical illustration, although the subject remained clearly evident. The composition of the drawings evolved from simple horizons into geometric forms intended to revolutionize the aesthetic impact of the work from a distance. This achieved a simultaneous feat of calm minimalism and evolving complexity, depending on how close one came to the drawing. The drawings pointed a way forward from the ever purifying arc of minimalist art--embracing the complication inevitably discovered within apparent simplicity.
A printmaking apprenticeship at Mixit Print Studio in Somerville, MA in 2012, 2013 and 2014 finally cracked open the sketchbook and let its subject matter out into a more public format. One culmination of the apprenticeship was an ambitious 4’ x 6’ map of Ralesis, the capital city of Saiopor, composed of eight etched copper plates. During a 2016 printmaking residency at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass Village, CO, Chris expanded the map to 12 panels (4’ x 9’) and began developing a project to describe and illustrate the neighborhoods of Ralesis in an increasingly novelistic way. In 2019, Ralesis was further expanded to 24 panels (8’ x 10.5’).
Side projects with cyanotypes, painting, and collage during the Mixit apprenticeship allowed Chris to explore looser, more wabi-sabi processes that would find their way into both the drawings and printmaking techniques used on the maps. Chris also began using sewn elements in some of his printing projects as a way to reintroduce the direct hand into the work.
Recently Chris has been pushing his drawing practice beyond grass into a more abstract, evocative realm, using diverse mark making, watercolor, charcoal, and India ink to create horizontally banded drawings that simultaneously suggest strata, landscape, and atmosphere.
Marsha Yi Robinson is an artist based out of Denver, CO. Self taught and disciplined, her work is highly distinctive with a unique flare of grace and symmetry. She creates full and elegant botanical imagery embraced by bold designs. Her compositions combine both organic and disciplined properties allowing her work to possess a certain fluidity while still maintaining order and structure.
"In my process I set the intention for healing through the potency of plants and the natural world. In setting these intentions I hope the imagery I create is transformed into a visual almost physical form of plant medicine. I want to see my work heal."
