The Aspen Chapel Gallery’s next show, which opens Wednesday, is a photographic exhibition centered around life in the Roaring Folk Valley.
The title of the program is “here”. It features images from 12 local photographers documenting what life is like in the valley. The Chapel Gallery will host an opening his reception for participating artists from 4pm to 7pm on Wednesdays, and the exhibition will run until his 1st April.
This Chapel Gallery Show is in partnership with the Aspen Community Foundation’s Aaron Roberts Gray Memorial Scholarship. Established in 2015 in memory of Aaron Roberts-Gray, this scholarship helps cover college costs for boys’ seniors at Glenwood Springs High School. His 10% of sales proceeds and his 20% of sponsorships earned from the upcoming ‘Here’ exhibition will go to the scholarship fund.
Greg Watts, the show’s curator, said when gallery co-directors Tom Ward and Michael Bonds approached him about curating the exhibition, he said it was about living in the valley. He said he knew he wanted
According to Watts, the idea isn’t necessarily about the surrounding mountains or the skiing and hiking images commonly taken here, but about “how we live here” and this community. It focuses on what constitutes the
“I wanted to focus on how we live here, the buildings, the landscape and the social aspects. Where people live and gather and what they do,” Watts said. Told. “You know, this place is pretty diverse in terms of the types of people that live here, and we wanted to hopefully cover that.”
Watts explained that skiing and other mountain and outdoor recreation is a big factor in making the area a great place to live, but on the other hand, everyday life and the people who work and travel here , Up and down the valley, the scenery is different from time to time.
Mr. Watts, a photographer, has decided to put on an exhibition of all the photographs that the Chapel Gallery has not done in years. The curator explained that each participating artist would be given 10 feet of gallery wall space, and it would be up to the photographer to decide how many works to display in that space. Watts expected at least 50 to 60 pieces in total for this show.
Among the exhibiting photographers are several high school students, and Watts expressed the importance of representing the valley’s youth in the storytelling of “Here.”
Watts said that overall, the main focus is on people when it comes to the actual photographs featured in the exhibition.
One of the participating artists, Michele Cardamone, who has been a professional photographer in Aspen for over ten years and specializes in portraiture, has captured portraits of 15 longtime community members. The people Cardamom has photographed have lived in the valley since his 1970s and have helped shape Aspen’s character and values.
Cardamom’s portrait appeared in Here, as did photographer Molly Briggs, all taken at night in the valley. Apart from a handful of artists who have captured the people of this place, other exhibiting photographers have taken different approaches to documenting life here.
For example, Watts is an architectural photographer who has lived in Carbondale for over 20 years. His own work included in the exhibition focuses on how Carbondale’s structure has changed over time.
Watts has been shooting Carbondale for many years, so he explained how he was able to compile recent images and older shots of the town’s architecture to present the story in “Here.”
According to Watts, the show also features many landscape shots and images of places and moments in the canyon, such as the Glenwood Springs Amtrak station and summer rodeo events. According to the curator, one of the participating high school students took pictures of the back alleys of the valley, which you don’t usually see.
“Hopefully the whole valley is covered,” Watts said. “And that was my goal: how to document how people live here.”
Watts said he hopes the ‘Here’ exhibition will serve as a reminder to community members of the diverse life in the Roaring Folk Valley.
“In our busy lives, we don’t pay attention to the little things. The beauty of the medium of photography is that it’s easy to see that, in terms of attention to detail, it evokes memories.” There is also,” Watts said. “That was what I wanted and that was all.”
The “Here” exhibition opens Wednesday and runs through April 1 at the Aspen Chapel Gallery. The reception is free and open to the public on Wednesdays from 4-7 PM.