CENTER – This year’s Solstice in Center was an enlightening and creative experience. Alluvium Studio organized this imaginative event on Friday, June 21, and Saturday, June 22.
The event was held at two locations – the Center Motor Car Garage, 335 E. Third St, and Alluvium, 342 Worth St.
Artist Marie Bannerot McInerney spoke about her display, which was a large window covering, laid out with various holes for light to enter, and beautiful dripping textures, fluidly placed all over the window. On the floor near the window were large pieces of what looked like gold, with a black piece of a meteorite stone in the middle.
“Most of the art that I do, is finding ways of connecting to larger systems that we are always operating under. I think of our relationship to the natural world, and I think of our relationship to the cosmos and how they are interrelated. I can only speak for myself, but I find myself thinking of how we are related to the stars and the earth that is surrounding us. This particular work is an evolution of other work,” she said.
The first work she did was in 2017 at a gallery in Nashville, Tenn., and was like the display in Center.
“I created a cement textile that hung in a western facing window, that had little holes in it, that created apertures where light would come in as the sun set. This here uses buttermilk to frost the windows, which allowed me to create the drips you see in the window. This piece references erosion, and land, and reformation according to time, that’s what this piece is about,” she said.
McInerney said in working on the floor in front of the piece of art in the window, she could envision continental edges, or edges of land mass, that have similar references of left-behind shapes, with a direct connection to earth. The gold on the floor represented the earth, with a black piece in the middle.
“This piece here is a 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite,” said McInerney, referencing the black piece in the middle. “This side of it is crystallization of millions of years in our cosmos, and what the core of our earth is made of. There is something really grounding and connecting to this, and that’s why I placed it in the middle of the gold. This has a symbol of connective quality.”
McInerney, who is from Kansas City, said she was invited to the Solstice by another artist and was excited to attend and be included. McInerney is also a teacher at an art institute.
Artist Mark Cowardin was also at the Solstice event and had two large lit up sculptures in the main room at the Solstice event. The sculptures were made up of colored bars, and lights.
Cowardin said that the sculptures were clouds, but he enjoyed hearing people’s interpretations of what they thought his sculptures were.
“I have always been really interested in the connection between humans and nature. The idea of these clouds is that they are floating in the sky, but they are actually on scaffolding, which is something that is used to fix things, or the things we use to get higher up. There are lots of meanings in these pieces for me, but these are clouds. The colors also imitate the sunrise and the sunset, like the reds and the oranges and yellows in the sky,” he said.
Cowardin said that he has been an artist his entire life and he is also a teacher. He enjoys making big display pieces.
“One person thought that these were potatoes. Which, this is an agricultural place, so it's neat they thought they were potatoes, it’s relative,” he said.
Cowardin, who is from Kansas, said that he was invited to the event and brought others to the event to share their art.
“For me, one of the things I love about making art is conversations. I am excited that other artists also chose to come up from Kansa City to display their art too. While I have inspirations about what exactly these pieces mean, I try not to say exactly where they came from just because I want people to walk in and be in awe, and be inspired, and have conversations about what they think they are. That’s part of what I really enjoy about being an artist,” he said.
Throughout the Center Motor Car Garage there were other displays from artists, including a large blue banner made of plastic strips, and various other small paintings with skulls, people, and abstractly drawn items.
Alluvium Studio was also decked out inside, with artwork made by people who had visited during the event.
Alluvium owners Steve Huey and Krystal Anton were on site and Huey said that the turnout for the two days had been good.
“We have had a lot of people come in. There were many people who came in and created collages and we hung them on the wall. We are helping bring these people in here, with these artists,” Huey said.
Huey said this year they hit the jackpot because Cowardin brought many of his artist friends from Kansas City with him and made it a bigger event than last year.
“We have been here since 2019. This is the fourth year we have done this. Each year more artists show up. We are very happy to be here. This year we have engaged more of the locals too. There were a lot of people from Alamosa and Saguache here. Making sure they know what this is, and what we are bringing out here is exciting. The studio has been busy all day. It’s been good. We are very happy with the turnout,” Huey said.
