Linda Reed loves nature – and capturing it in porcelain earned her two first-place awards in the annual Arapahoe Community College Art Students’ Exhibition.
Reed, 55, is a computer programmer/analyst who had never studied ceramics before she began taking courses in the medium six years ago at the Littleton campus.
Reed plans to trade in her cyberspace job someday and become a studio potter. Her award- winning ceremonial bowl, “Maturescence,” was hand-thrown, hand-carved, assembled, bisque- fired, glazed and high kiln-fired.
“I like natural things and very organic shapes,” said Reed, whose porcelain rendition of a horse also won a first-place award. “It helps me see things in a different light.”
The juried exhibit can be viewed through April 14 at the Colorado Gallery of Arts on campus, 5900 S. Santa Fe Drive.
“The art department at Arapahoe Community College has a great reputation in the Denver metro area,” said exhibit judge William Sutton, chairman of the department of fine and performing arts at Regis University, where he is also an associate professor of art.
When Stephan Plant was asked by his sister- in-law, Erin Gorman-Shore, to create a portrait of her as a gift for her husband, Chris, Plant obliged.
Plant’s ink work, featuring 884 small squares on Bristol paper, earned the 40-year-old best of design and a second-place award.
Plant, a retired chiropractor, studied art in high school and became serious about the subject over the past two years.
“I like to catch the energy of people and their spirit,” he said.
The works in the exhibit were judged on skill, technique, aesthetics and presentation.
“I looked for passion that went beyond classroom assignments and spoke of the immediacies of experience and the mysteries of living in the world,” Sutton said.
The exhibit is the school’s largest art show each year.
Artists can sell their featured work, with the gallery getting 35 percent of the proceeds to help keep the student-art program running.
When Judy Williams, 59, isn’t painting, she volunteers at Ecumenical Refugee Services. She began taking color and photo courses at the college five years ago.
Williams proudly stands next to a vividly colored oil painting of her two grandsons, Jacob and Jesse.
“I can take my time and be real detailed,” she said. “I enjoy the process, and oil lets me do that.”
Staff writer Annette Espinoza can be reached at 303-820-1655 or aespinoza@denverpost.com.
