The tri-annual Art of the State exhibit returned to Colorado this year, setting up at the Arvada Arts Center and featuring 149 individual art pieces from 142 artists across the state. Art of the State 2022 is the fourth rendition of the show, filling three galleries and 10,000 square feet of the Arvada Center Galleries, which continues to spotlight and promote some of the best local talent on the art scene. As always, the show is an eclectic and diverse offering of artwork across multiple media including oil and acrylic painting, prints, drawings, woodblock, found objects, and more. Led by the vision of Collin Parson, the Arvada Center’s Director of Galleries, the show is beautifully curated with fellow jurors, Louise Martorano, Executive Director of RedLine Contemporary Art, and Ellamaria Ray, Professor of Africana Studies at Metropolitan State University of Denver. The three meticulously evaluated more than two-thousand submissions on the way to selecting this year’s featured artists.
As Colorado and the world emerged from two years of pandemic living, the art produced in the state was bound to evoke themes of the fractured state of the world and a desire to find beauty amidst the chaos. An obvious theme throughout this year’s show is one of disruption, with countless pieces and perspectives slightly askew, as if we’ve spent the past two years viewing the world from a distance, catching glimpses here and there of life but never fully connecting with anything or anyone. In pieces like Neil Corman’s “Balconies” and Chuck McCoy’s “Form One Configured,” viewers only get bits and pieces, odd angles and shifting perspectives, that offer hints of life and the world. A similar effect is found in Deborah Jang’s “We’re Not in Kansas Anymore,” which won the MeowWolf Award. The haphazard sculpture of wooden chairs, poles, and metal creates an intriguing spire in the main gallery.
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