Adjacent to the entrance of the Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center sits a clean white room with a wall of glass, open to the coming and going of the art and knowledge that permeates our community from the outside world. Standing for InterDisciplinary Experimental Arts, Colorado College’s I.D.E.A. space “[goes] beyond being a white square,” and in a small space creates “thoughtful connections between the disciplines [of Colorado College],” says Assistant to the Curator, Bridget Heidmos.
Continuing until May 7, I.D.E.A. space is home to “Atomic Landscapes,” a multi-media exhibition depicting America’s development of nuclear weapons and the effects nuclear testing has had on the environment of the West and Southwest. Calling “America’s nuclear story […] one of the most closely guarded secrets in history,” curator Jessica Hunter-Larsen carefully strung this visual journey together in order to investigate “the role of science in the development of human culture,” and “incorporate our nuclear history into our personal, cultural, and political narratives.”
On the surface, a desert is a desert, but what came before it, and why is it the way that it is? Atomic Landscapes gives us a blink of understanding that although something may—in this case, literally—radiate below our visible capacity to see, does not mean it does not exist. This “ironic collective amnesia,” as Jessica articulates in her description of artist Eric Lopresti’s work, is slowly brought out of the darkness by eerily colorful images of bomb-induced craters in the vast desert, stained with radioactive materials that still linger in our landscapes. Artist Jeremy Bolen, prominently featured in the exhibit, creates his art upon what he defines as “an attempt to observe invisible presences.” By relaying film exposed to radioactive materials and the Rio Paguate River over beautiful prints of Southwestern landscapes, he unnervingly exposes his viewers to the worlds around us that we cannot see.
An exposer of these “invisible presences,” I.D.E.A. space, Bridget continues, is the voice of culture that “[this artwork] is either speaking to or coming from,” and thus “makes unique connections” between seemingly disconnected facets of our world, such as bombs and art. And these connections exist everywhere, from the quiet yet persistent effect the Manhattan Project continues to have on our present world, to I.D.E.A.’s upcoming exhibit, IntellectuAle Adventure: Craft Brewing + Design. Through this exhibition, Bridget, along with students Kristi Murray and Abby Portman, explored “the line between design and fine art” through the lens of craft brewing. As I.D.E.A. is the space where a silenced atrocity of our country’s history is somehow integrated with Colorado’s unique plethora of craft breweries, art is the string that unites all facets of our culture if we let it. Craft beer in Colorado is not just beer, but rather an industry “where they really prize innovation and creativity” through “beautiful labels [representing a company’s] aesthetic,” and a very intentional depiction of “themes from the region or community,” explains exhibit collaborator Kristi Murray.
So “what goes into creating a space in terms of telling a story?” Bridget asks. Make the I.D.E.A. space part of your academic experience at CC in order to begin to answer that question for yourself. Art and stories are everywhere, in the smallest and seemingly mundane and habitual aspects of our lives. Something is to be learned from every pile of rocks next to a river, and from a bottle thrown into a recycling bin. Stories are everywhere when we allow ourselves to see from the angles of the seemingly disconnected.
