Fort Lewis College's 60th Annual Student Juried Exhibition presents 52 artworks from Art & Design Department students with focus areas in drawing, painting, ceramics, sculpture, communication design, and printmaking. This exhibition is a celebratory culmination of a year of art making at the college, and presents the work of students who overcame the many challenges of the 2020-2021 academic year; highlighting their experiments, learnings, and successes through the selected works.
Selections for the exhibition were made with an eye for technical quality, sensitive and critical approaches to concept, avoidance of clichés, and especially for signs of the formation of a distinct perspective that eventually manifests as artistic maturity. This selection of artworks represents the diversity of students at Fort Lewis College and their hard work and dedication to developing their visual storytelling, mastery of technical skills required in the mediums they employ, and sense of self, vision, and imagination.
As a curator who works primarily with emerging and early-career artists, some just a few years older than those in this cohort, I’m consistently amazed by the ability of this very young generation of artists to break boundaries, shift paradigms, and create culture in an empathetic and inclusive way. The student artists represented in this exhibition are no exception, and I look forward to seeing the artwork they will make during the rest of their time at Fort Lewis College and beyond.
Thank you to all the students who submitted works for consideration, and to the Art & Design Department for graciously hosting me and presenting the 60th Annual Student Juried Exhibition.
Arielle M. Myers
Chief Curator - Union Hall, Denver, CO
Owner and Director - The Valley, Taos, NM
About the Juror
Arielle M. Myers is curator based in Taos, New Mexico and Denver, Colorado. Arielle earned her MA in Art History from CU Boulder, and has previously held positions at NINE dot ARTS, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, CU Boulder, and Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York City. She is a founding member of Union Hall, a non-profit arts exhibition space supporting emerging artists in the Union Station neighborhood of Denver, where she continues to hold the position of Chief Curator. In 2020, she relocated to Taos and opened The Valley, a contemporary art gallery presenting exhibitions of emerging and early career artists both local and national, with a focus on magic and mysticism, craft practices, and connection to place.