Mesa State College- Grand Junction, CO Academic Classroom Building

Budget, $93,000
Seven artists installed works throughout the facility in 2009

The Academic Classroom Building is 80,000 sq. ft. and houses the Business School and Teacher Education programs.  It includes classrooms, lecture halls, a conference room and faculty offices.  The building has wide corridors, in a serpentine shape, which extend the learning environment after the classes are over. 

Rambouillet Creek, Pike’s Peak, Grand Mesa, and Headwaters of the Colorado
Matthew Chase-Daniel, 2009
The artist in his series of photo-assemblage captured the elongated experience of seeing. He photographs groups of moments of time, selecting the most essential details of a place and creates works of art that draws on the traditions of photography, painting and cinematography. The collection of images takes place in the field. He often returns repeatedly to a certain place, waiting for a particular convergence of elements such as light, tides or weather. He then edits the photographs that flow together to express the original experience of seeing a place through time.

Colorado Colors
Mark Ditzler, 2009
Six glass wall panels, the “Colorado Colors” were designed after the artists’ visit to the Grand Junction area where he explored the Colorado National Monument and saw the colored rock formations. The oranges, reds and ambers of the rock began the inspiration for the color palette of the panels and he added the greens and blues of the fertile grand valley and then a purple panel reflective of the fruit trees and wine industry. The panels are include large twisted canes (latticino) and small detailed cross sections of glass (murrain) there are glass  “twists” and “threads” shaped from small gather of hot glass formed in a torch. After firing the back is coated with a silvering solution to help reflect the light.

Grand Valley Vision
Dianna Fritzler, 2009
The creation of “Grand Valley Vision” began with the artist by laying down the basic shapes of the multi-layered background over a red underpainting. In sketching the foreground, she tapped her visual memory bank of the varied landscaped of Grand Valley. Glowing red rock, deep blue mesa, rolling fields and luscious vineyards all step forward to provide an endless array of painterly possibilities.

The Riverfront and Audubon Trail; Hawthorne Park; Lincoln Park; Serpent’s Trail on the Monument 
Gayle Gerson, 2009
The collages consist of computer-manipulated photos, tissue and other painted papers and newsprint. Although the images are based on local scenery, the collages do not depict with any degree of accuracy a particular scene in any of the sites. Rather they give the illusion of a real place. She has embedded little jokes and quirks into the collages.

Of Stones and Water
Christian Quintin, 2009
In this sky and landscape, a large and deep river reflecting a cloudy sky flows through a desert scene of fantastic rock formations, some reminiscent of women figures, a kaleidoscopic view of what the artist felt in the years he spent exploring the often splendid and arid land of the  southwestern United States. The sedimentary formation in the center of the painting is homage to the city of Grand Junction and its magical Book Cliffs Mountains.

Things Are Looking Up and Leap of Faith
Jim Rennert, 2009
Leap of Faith is a sculpture consisting of a plate of aluminum used as a back drop for a bronze sculpture of a figure in the process of making a long jump. This piece goes to the heart of the entrepreneur. It not only takes ideas and ingenuity to start or run a business, but there comes a point of commitment which has to be taken in order to move forward. This piece capture the moment of commitment.

Things Are Looking Up depicts a man in a suit juggling several different sized balls. We all have “balls in the air” that we constantly trying to manage.

The Bubbles, Rain, Katahdin Spring, Thurstons, and Jonesport Deep Tide
Judy Taylor, 2009