Past Exhibitions | Art Gallery | Fort Lewis College

I want to thank the students for submitting their work to the 61st Annual Student Juried exhibition. It takes courage to put your art into the world and it has been such a joy and privilege to organize the work in this gallery.  Each student has brought intrinsic value to this show, and, from this value comes a power that touches on the sweet line between fiction and reality. This is where art resonates, breathes and palpitates. Fort Lewis College’s Art and Design Department shows its commitment to exploring the future of culture through the art of today and we are here to celebrate and create community when it is needed most.  

This is a perfect exhibition. The combination of skill and experimentation shows a desire within each student and every piece both holds its own space and gives room to interact with its neighbors. This only happens when a fluid exchange of ideas between students and faculty is present. Larger themes within the juried exhibition rise to the surface revealing relationships between people and land, people and nature, nature and itself. Every single work exudes the authenticity of each students’ focused lens through which they see and exist within a world of enduring uncertainty - natural disasters, global pandemic, protests, and imperialism. This exhibition brings to light the need to make deeply and think even deeper.  

Many thanks to the faculty and staff at Fort Lewis College for welcoming me to jury this special exhibition. Your perseverance and generosity shows in the diversity artwork being produced here and I have no doubt the students will continue their creative lives as they move onward.  

Derrick Velasquez 
Artist and Co-Director of Friend of a Friend 

About the Juror:

Derrick Velasquez is an artist and exhibition organizer who lives and works in Denver, Colorado. He was a 2017 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors and a 2019 MacDowell Fellow. Derrick has served on the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs and the boards of Denver nonprofits Tilt West, Union Hall, and Minerva Projects. His most recent exhibitions include solo shows at The Herron School of Art and Design, The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Robischon Gallery, Pentimenti, and The Black Cube Nomadic Museum and group exhibitions at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Carvalho Park and Transmitter in New York, Derrick also runs Yes Ma’am Projects, an artist-run gallery in the basement of his Athmar Park home and Friend of a Friend, a new project space in the Evans School, a mostly vacant schoolhouse in Downtown Denver. He has organized exhibitions at the MCA in Denver, Trestle Gallery in New York, and has an upcoming curatorial project at Galerie Robertson Ares in Montreal.