CHANDLER: Show explores narrative work

Mary Voelz Chandler

Published January 4, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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A color film still from Brent Green's 2006 Paulina Hollers. Green uses line-based backgrounds along with furnishings and props that he carved from wood.

Jill Hadley Hooper's 2005 Saturn Killing Time, Venetian plaster, ink, paint and toner.

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Sometimes shows fall into place in the most congenial way, as is the case with "Story."

Opening Thursday at the Center for Visual Art as part of the wave of exhibitions poised to kick off the second half of the season, this trio of shows began as something different.

When Metro State drawing coordinator Sandy Lane landed Brent Green for an instructional visit to campus, she asked CVA director Jennifer Garner if she'd be interested in showing some of Green's animations.

The answer was a quick yes, not surprisingly. Green's quirky films carry the strong sense of being handmade and rely on content that examines slightly off-kilter situations.

These became the core of an exhibition that centers on the narrative, a conceptual foundation that led CVA to invite two Colorado artists grounded in different mediums but whose work gravitates toward the idea of telling a story or, more accurately, asking a viewer to build his or her own tale based on cues from the art.

Jill Hadley Hooper and James Surls certainly hold their own here.

The first is represented by lushly textured paintings - paint, ink and toner on Venetian plaster - that follow one of the big rules of art: that work should ask as many questions as it answers. Denver-based Hadley Hooper may be a driving force behind the RiNo Arts District, but she is first an artist, adept at weaving suspense into works such as Gretchen Insofar and Saturn Killing Time.

Surls, Texas-bred but now living in Carbondale, shows exuberant suspended sculptures as well as a scattering of works on paper that speak in the same symbolic language.

Beautifully carved pieces such as the imposing Seven and Seven Flower and the lyrical On Being and Flag demonstrate his way with wood.

The three chapters of "Story" are installed as if separate shows, though Hadley Hooper's paintings do round a corner from the space at the gallery entry, leading into a back area that becomes Green's territory. He is showing several films, a wall of projections that could be called an animated mural, as well as drawings that form the foundation of his work. Surls' giant sculptures fill the space toward the left-front side of the gallery.

The bridge here is Green, whose films link drawing and dimension, with line-based backgrounds featuring furnishings and props he's carved from wood.

In the case of the centerpiece here, Paulina Hollers, that includes a fantastical recollection of an Appalachian house, where Paulina lives until her son is killed, and she follows him to hell to bring him back.

In another, Walt Whitman's Brain, the poet's center of knowledge is harvested by scientists bent on studying it, until fate intervenes.

Green was in the gallery in late December, tweaking the electronics involved in screening his films and projecting moving images.

"I was 25 and I didn't go to college. I was pretty much unemployable," he said. "I was obsessed with literature."

Stories turned to film. Then Creative Capital awarded him a $25,000 grant, offered an entree to Sundance, and the rest is history. Or, better put, his story.

Mary Voelz Chandler is the art and architecture critic. Chandlerm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2677.

Story

* What: Work in a narrative style by Brent Green, Jill Hadley Hooper and James Surls

* When and where: Opens with a reception 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, through Feb. 23; Center for Visual Art, 1734 Wazee St.

* Of note: Brent Green will speak at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 30 at the center and at 7 p.m. Jan. 31 at St. Cajetan's on the Auraria campus

* Information: 303-294-5207; www.mscd.edu/news/cva

in the galleries

WinterWest

* What: The inaugural hook-up between the National Western Stock Show's Coors Art Exhibit and Sale and the Denver Art Museum's Petrie Institute of Western American Art

* When and where: Saturday through Tuesday, Denver Art Museum's Lewis I. Sharp Auditorium in the Hamilton Building and National Western Stock Show Expo Hall, 4655 Humboldt St., third floor

* The split: The academic component - the museum's symposium "Heart of the West: New Art/New Thinking" - is 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, with speakers including Emily Neff, curator of American art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and B. Byron Price, director of the Russell Center, University of Oklahoma.

The collecting side, organized by Coors Western, begins at 2 p.m. Monday, with talks by painter Len Chmiel and noted Santa Fe gallery owner Gerald Peters. Then, Tuesday, the annual Red Carpet Reception opens at 5:30 p.m. That event kicks off the show, which is open to the public from Jan. 12 through 27.

* Cost: Symposium tickets range from $55 for the general public to $10 for students students. The Coors Western lectures are $35 for the pair, and the reception is $150.

* Information: Denver Art Museum, 720-913-0147, denverartmuseum.org/heartofthewest, and Coors Western 303-299-5561, nationalwestern.com/nwss/specialevents/coors.asp/

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