Happy International Artist Day!
I’ve never lived anywhere with a prolific art scene, so I took advantage of Denver’s while I was visiting, and went to the Sante Fe Art District. I went on a Friday, which turned out to be a decent day to visit, since a lot of the galleries and studios are not open most of the week. I would definitely recommend looking up gallery hours before planning a visit.
I highly enjoyed strolling down the Sante Fe district and visiting galleries, and I found a few artists I really like.
I grappled with the ethicality of posting pictures of someone else’s artwork here and on my bookstagram, but I concluded that if I do it the right way, it can only bring them more recognition. (By the way, I’m not profiting off this monetarily.) I’m only going to post one (or a select two) picture of an artist’s work, and I’m going to provide links so you can check them out yourself.
If I were a kindly grandma, I would say that I was really impressed with the customer service at the Artists on Sante Fe gallery and studios. If I were one of those peppy optimists, I would say, “OMG, they were so nice!” Unfortunately, right now, I can’t seem to conjure a happy medium, but you get the idea. One of the artists, Chris Jezzini, found out I like to do portraits, and she unlocked the upstairs gallery for me to see Yuta Okkotsu’s artwork, since he only shows the first Friday of every month, and I went on the second Friday. Cue the gushy “OMG, so nice!” I don’t have a picture of her work, and she doesn’t post a lot of it on her instagram, but she’s a super sweet person if you want to check her out on instagram: chrisjezzini2849 or on the gallery website.
Anyways, check out my favorite of Yuta’s work: “Georgia.”
There is so much expression in the eyes and the mouth. He really brought her to life. I also really liked “Alison,” so go to his insta to check it out.
Another artist I really enjoyed was James Garnett. I don’t usually gravitate towards pottery, unless they are portrait sculptures, but a lot of James’ work is very aesthetically pleasing.
Finally for the first gallery, I was attracted to Susan Helbig’s more monochromatic, less colorful works. She mainly paints abstract, and I was drawn to the seeming visual simplicity of some of her pieces.
There were plenty of beautiful works in the Grace Gallery, including a lot of gorgeous photography, but one artist stood out to me: Christopher Schranck. He’s a mixed media artist who finds objects and incorporates them into his artwork. I couldn’t decide which piece I wanted to show you, so here’s two out of his vast array of artworks:
I was fascinated by the amount of texture Carrie MaKenna built up on her canvases. It adds an entirely new element to her work. It’s not pictured here, and I don’t remember the name of the painting (I couldn’t find it on her website either), but it had a feather on it that I could have sworn was made out of acrylic, dried, and glued on the painting. I could be wrong, because there was a group of people nearby, and I’m socially awkward, and didn’t want to linger and start a conversation, so I moved on quicker than I wanted to. As someone who has experimented with how to use dried paint chips, I was very interested in her work.
Artemesia was my favorite gallery that I visited. I loved almost every piece that I saw. It may be the smallest gallery on this list, but it definitely has high-quality exhibitions.
One of the artists that kept attracting my eye turned out to be the owner of the gallery: Jeffrey Harrison. It was hard to decide on one painting to post; I decided on this one because it was the best picture I personally was able to take. But I was amazed by how he captured movement in his oil painting “Arianrhod.” It never ceases to enthrall me.
As is the case with most paintings, Bill Bate’s looks better in person, since it really catches the light in a gallery. But the picture is still really cool.
Links to Bate’s work:
Street Art
I went to the Sante Fe Art District hoping for galleries open to the public. When I went, every gallery I went into was free, but I would’ve gone simply for the street art. Here are some of my favorites.
I hope you enjoyed some of these artists! If you did, go give them some love on their social media, and I hope you have a fantastic Artist’s Day!
