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Artist Statement:
COLOR SPEAKS TO THE HEART
What’s behind the art?
Life is full of extreme riches
and loss. I’ve lived both in
full living color.
With all these experiences, I
choose to see the color, the
beauty, and the opportunities
in every day. I capture the
power of the ...
Further Information
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Artist Exhibitions:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Galleries:
Cottonwood Artist's Gallery &
Studios, Colorado Springs, CO
Cucuru Gallery, Colorado
Springs, CO...
Further Information
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Collections:
My work is held in numerous
corporate and private
collections in Louisiana,
Colorado, Kansas, Maryland,
California, Florida, and
Virginia and has been
exhibited in various locations
in Colorado and Kansas....
Further Information
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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9/15/07 - The Olathe News
News
Festival draws artists from outside Kansas
By Kristin Babcock/The Olathe News
Marie Baehr has traveled from Colorado to present her first outdoor art show at the Hidden Glen Arts Festival. Adjusting to showing in wind and weather, she said she is excited to see the big crowds and “lots of sales.”
“I have a lot of people ask me, ‘How can you part with (your art pieces),’” Baehr said. “But as an artist, what you are thinking about is how they are going to help you buy more paint. We’re always thinking about the next one.”
Attendance to her tent will support the continuing of her art, as well as provide encouragement for the work she loves.
“It’s even fun when people just come in and say, ‘Oh, I just love your work,’” Baehr said. “Not everyone can buy original art, but it’s always good to hear.”
Two years ago, she began painting full time after working a corporate job in Johnson County and is now “finally doing what she wants to do.”
Her work is mixed media. She used acrylic and oil paint along with paper to present a series of paintings. One she calls “Baba’s Garden” is a re-creation of her grandmother’s garden. She works to reflect feelings she has about home, such as what it feels like to return home after being overseas or the joy when friends gather in a kitchen for a party.
“As the piece is coming together, it takes on a personality,” Baehr said. “I know what I want in essence.”
So does Chris Coffey. He spends hours looking to capture that essence in his photographs. Coming from Ohio, he brings the work he created with his large-format view camera and self-printed films and negatives.
“Even the uneducated eye can recognize when light in a photograph is like no other time. There is just something familiar about it,” Coffey said. “It’s the expressions of moments you feel at no other time.”
While this is his first exhibit at Hidden Glen, it’s not his first time in the Kansas City area.
“Kansas City is a good place for me to go,” Coffey said. “Patrons seem to understand what they are looking for. You can tell a lot about the knowledge of artwork by questions people ask.”
Carol McCall is contributing for her fourth time in the Plein Air portion of the festival. She is used to answering questions about art, from those who come to watch her paint outside to when she displays her completed art. Along with other artists who have worked outdoors, she began painting the piece Aug. 25. This year her piece, “Woodland Chapel,” was painted in a wooded area of Cedar Creek. She used blues, yellows and greens to paint the way light reflected in the trees. The triangular elements make the painting look like a stained-glass rendering of the area.
“It’s a unique opportunity in Kansas City because there isn’t any other Plein Air painting event I know of,” McCall said. “I think it’s fascinating to a lot of people, and we like to have people discover painting and the joy of it.”
This is the 19th year for the festival. Organizer Denise Riedel said in addition to having many return artists, 51 artists are in the juried show for the first year, meaning “there’s a lot of art people have never seen before.”
“We want people to come out and just purchase high quality art,” Riedel said.
And if nothing else, McCall said, people can gain exposure to all kinds of artwork.
“We love to talk to people about art. ... There’s just a little bit of everything.” McCall said. “It’s just exciting with everyone seeing new work and saying, ‘That’s beautiful.’ You think that enriches their lives? You bet.”
The festival, located at Kansas Highway 10 and Cedar Creek Parkway, opens at 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday.
Copyright © 2007–The Olathe News – All rights reserved.
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514 South Kansas Ave., Olathe, KS 66061
Phone (913) 764-2211 -- Fax (913) 764-3672
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8/23/07 -8/29/07 The Colorado Springs Independent
A sticky situation
Coal tar leaves Cottonwood Artists' School, developers in limbo
by Anthony Lane
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Peggy Vicaro, left, with Kay Jeansonne, says the school ideally will stay put.
File Photo
Artistic value is closely tied to personal perspective.
For students, practitioners and administrators at Cottonwood Artists' School, on the southwest edge of downtown Colorado Springs, the coal-tar contamination under their home of 3 years invites a similar open-mindedness.
On one hand, they hope that a rising cleanup bill to remove the toxic sludge could scare away developers aiming to build a hotel on the site, along with condos and a parking garage nearby.
But toxic sludge also just sounds scary.
"Should we be drinking the water?" asks Peggy Vicaro, executive director of Cottonwood, a nonprofit that offers painting and drawing classes for hundreds each year while providing low-rent studio space for 43 local artists.
When Cottonwood moved into the city-owned former gas administration building in early 2004, the most immediate worry was a convention center planned for the site, which would have forced the school to search quickly for another spot.
Cottonwood got a reprieve when voters said "no" to the convention center, but the hotel development plan popped up this year, and again the school faced the prospect of homelessness.
Burial ground
Now coal tar seems to be gumming up the development plans for Palmer Village.
The tar is left over from a coal gasification plant on the site. New tests show the tar seems to be staying in the same place and away from America the Beautiful Park. But the tests also reveal a level of toxicity that could make it necessary to burn the stuff instead of simply burying it elsewhere, possibly multiplying cleanup costs.
The developer and officials from the city and the Colorado Springs Urban Renewal Authority met this week with state health officials to begin discussions about how much cleanup will be required for the project to go forward.
As part of the redevelopment of southwest downtown, the Urban Renewal Authority would buy from the city nearly nine acres in the area about $4 million, with additional cleanup costs for the gas building estimated around $500,000.
"The outstanding question is, "Is it going to cost more than a half million to remediate?'" says Chuck Miller, a consultant with the Urban Renewal Authority.
If the costs increase significantly, that could change some equations for Urban Renewal and the partnership between Nor'wood Development Group of Colorado Springs and Classic Homes, which planned to buy a large chunk of the property from Urban Renewal and then sell a slice to a developer for an Embassy Suites hotel.
The snag can be traced to the coal gasification plant, which operated at the site for about 40 years beginning around 1890. The plant, like more than two dozen others in the state, allowed residents to light and heat their homes with gas released from heated lumps of coal.
The sticky sludge left behind often contains benzene, which can cause cancer if it is breathed or ingested. But in the early 1900s, workers at the plant apparently didn't give much thought to just taking the sludge and burying it, putting it "out of sight, out of mind," in the words of interim Assistant City Manager Paul Butcher.
"Simply put, it came to the attention [of developers and Urban Renewal and city officials] that perhaps the issue is bigger than everybody thought," Butcher says.
Mark Walker, voluntary cleanup coordinator for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, says it is impossible to know at this point what steps will be required for development at the gas administration building to go forward. Once his department receives a formal application with details of the plan and the contamination, it will have 45 days to respond.
Fits and starts
Uncertainty of one sort or another has prevailed since Cottonwood started inhabiting the gas building, and its search for a permanent home has not gone smoothly.
Plans to relocate to the TRW building on North Nevada Avenue soured because of interest from a larger suitor — the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.
While the search for an ideal alternative continues, Vicaro said, the school is steadily growing, selling $45,000 of art already this year and now offering classes accredited by the UCCS art program.
Still, she admits, from a revenue perspective, the art school will always be a lightweight next to a 300-room hotel.
The uncertainty is hard for some of Cottonwood's artists.
"I do well with change, but not with indecision," says Marie Baehr, who uses mostly acrylics to paint landscapes and floral images in her Cottonwood studio.
Baehr describes her artistic development during 18 months at the school as "explosive," and she was prepared to move with the school to the TRW building when that was the plan.
Now, she wrestles with the uncertain future while hoping Cottonwood will stay in place, giving the arts a presence downtown and allowing artists to feel the buzz from downtown energy.
"My hope and dream is that this area would be an art community," Baehr says.
In 2006, the city cut off negotiations with the Depot Arts District Association as it planned to convert a neighboring building into studio space, galleries, apartments and a restaurant. The idea fizzled when the prospect of federal funding went away.
&<65532;
Marie Baehr, who works with acrylics, says she has had an “explosion” of creativity since she started keeping a studio at Cottonwood.
Photo By © L'Aura Montgomery
Vicaro is waiting to hear more about the contamination while hoping for reassurance that it poses no health risks for artists who practice and study there.
If it turns out the stuff is safely buried but just too costly for developers to deal with, she is clear about the school's ideal spot to carry on its work.
"We'd stay," she says. "We'd definitely stay."
— lane@csindy.com
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