Daryn Whitmoyer
Guests view art on display at The Lincoln Center Gallery Oct 10. The art gallery showcases the personal artwork of six artists who are creating art to enrich local public spaces.
Fort Collins is a town abundant with art and creativity. Its many murals, painted electrical boxes, pianos and sculptures add depth and brightness to walls, the streets and structures that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Yet, behind each of these pieces lies much more than what meets the eye. Art in Public Places not only adds beauty and character to an area; it acts as means for deep artistic expression, builds on an area’s culture and community, and serves as activism for various social and global issues.
On Oct. 10, several artists from The Lincoln Center’s Art in Public Places exhibit gathered to present their pieces and answer questions from community members in attendance. Artists Allie Ogg, Stephen Shachtman, Todd Kundla and Gregory Fields were among those in attendance, guided in presentation by Ellen Martin, the Art in Public Places’ department head.
Muralist Allie Ogg described a piece she created inspired by her Queen of the Night plant. She said cuttings of the plant had been passed down for multiple generations, and a unique quality of the plant is the infrequency of its blooms. Ogg shared that the plant only bloomed twice this year and once last year, but the occurrence of the blooms came at an important moment for Ogg, who said she was dealing with personal struggles at the time.
“It felt like my ancestors were telling me that it would be OK,” she said.
While Ogg’s art always centers on a creature or figure, Fields prefers a more untethered focus, working mostly with steel and ceramic to create intricate, abstract and textured pieces. He presented a large steel sculpture filled with ceramic details and explained how the piece, “Source,” alludes to the feminine and masculine aspects of biological creation while also representing his own fascination with the natural environment.
Kundla, who similarly prefers abstract works, discussed how he works to “create symbolic gestures that take people out of their everyday life to make them think about something more.”
“To instill a feeling in someone is one of the most powerful things you can do, so I try to do that with my heart,” Kundla said.
For many artists, the personal impact of their art spans further than just the finished product; Shachtman discussed how much of his enjoyment with public art comes from the problem-solving facet of creating pieces.
“You’re constantly putting together a puzzle or taking it apart — putting it together in your mind’s eye,” Shachtman said.
Aside from means of self-expression and joy, Art in Public Places is also something that can ignite aspects of community building and culture.
“Every city or municipality may have their own structure of how they view or implement public art, and Fort Collins has its own identity,” Fields said. He went on to say that the way in which a place implements its art can bring forth its own “city-specific culture or creative identity.”
Fields expanded on this idea by discussing a collection of pieces he made for the town of Erie, Colorado, which represent the canary birds that were used in the town’s historical mines. In regard to this project as well as others, Fields talked about the importance of connecting a town’s past to its present in order to build community and culture.
“I find a lot of power in creating connection to the past, present and future,” Fields said.
Another piece that highlights parts of a community’s culture is the “RingFall” sculpture, a collaborative effort by Todd Kundla and several other artists. The piece consists of a series of steel rings, each 18 feet in diameter, cascading off several grain silos in Fort Collins.
“The goal was to give a nod to the past and acknowledge the agricultural history that was the foundation of this whole region,” Kundla said, emphasizing the ways in which appreciation of a community’s history can draw people closer together through a shared past.
Even before a piece is finished, the act of creating art can engage the community in powerful ways. Ogg shared a memory of an interaction she had while painting a mural, describing someone who had brought her a rose that he picked as a “thank you” for her work with the mural.
In addition to adding to one’s community, creating art for public places can be a form of activism when based in a specific cause. Several artists at the presentation said their pieces are rooted in concern for the environment or society and expressed a desire to make an impact on these fronts.
When asked if any pieces had a particular impact on her, Ogg talked about a mural that she did for the Greeley WeldWalls Mural Festival that depicted a swift fox and a burrowing owl.
“They’re both threatened species, so for me that piece was a symbol of hope for our future,” Ogg said.
“We have animals and creatures that live all around us that are severely threatened by our very existence,” Fields said. “I love to sculpt endangered species with the hope that someone seeing them might get interested.”
Though often observed in passing glimpses while stopped at a streetlight or walking through a park, Art in Public Places is something that contains more depth and significance than initially meets the eye.
Whether it’s the artists’ creative expressions, the community it’s contributing to or the social or global issues it stands for, public art contains an abundance of meaning and is something to be thoroughly appreciated.
Reach Addie Mitchell at entertainment@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.