Every art scene has them — those quiet, dependable artists who never achieve much visibility yet produce high-quality work year after year.
A prototypical example in this region is Golden sculptor Carley Warren, who is featured through July 31 in her latest solo exhibition at Artyard.
Although the indomitable 79-year-old has four works in the Denver Art Museum collection and was included in the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver’s massive 2006 showcase of Colorado’s top artists, she remains little known here or beyond.
As Warren is quick to confess, most of the fault is her own.
“I’m the world’s worst at promoting my work,” she said. “I think about it, but I can’t seem to do it.”
Her low profile certainly cannot be attributed to the quality of the work, which for 35 years has consistently displayed a sophisticated combination of intelligence, inventiveness and technical skill.
After focusing on acrylic for the first nine or so years after she earned her bachelor’s degree from the Metropolitan State College of Denver in 1975, she switched to wood, and it has been her mainstay since.
Fresh vision
Though Warren’s ever-varied abstract works are not radically groundbreaking, they always exude a fresh, inventive vision, with a strong sense of form and an instinctual understanding of materials.
This latest series of 13 wall sculptures is probably not among her strongest bodies of work, but the pieces nonetheless bear many of the qualities that distinguish her pieces, and they have a simple, understated appeal of their own.
Surely among the most minimalist creations of her career, each is a slight variation on the same motif — two sets of overlapping circles displayed one atop the other. Each of the circles is partially open or incomplete, hence the show’s title, “Incomplete.”
One tip of each of the open circles is adorned with a modest shape, such as an arrow or a V. This bare-bones decoration — the only element that really varies among these pieces — is the same in the four circles in each set.
“The incomplete circle is what most of us contend with every day,” Warren writes in a statement accompanying the show. “Efforts and attempts of daily activities remain unfinished, inadequate, miscommunicated, less than perfect.”
Much of the look of these pieces derives from the central technical question she had to answer in constructing them: “How am I going to make a circle out of a piece of wood? I’m not going to bend it.”
Warren started experimenting — first sketching and then arranging and rearranging paper cut-outs until she found a solution.
Each of the circles, which are about 23 inches across, is composed of 22 to 24 virtually identical elongated trapezoids — each cut from pine, carefully sanded and coated in a clear, hand-rubbed finish.
They are glued together to form a precise form that is obviously not completely round but comes surprisingly close.
“I think craftsmanship is important,” she said. “It is to me.”
In her 3 1/2-decade career, Warren has never achieved the recognition she deserves. She, like several other area artists with similar records of accomplishment, is overdue for a retrospective. Unfortunately, no museum or other art space appears interested — at least for now — in taking on such a task.
Unfazed, Warren continues to do what she has done for much of her life: She returns to her studio at least four days a week and just keeps working.
“Sometimes, it’s not easy,” she said. “It takes time. I mess around and make mistakes and start again. I get discouraged, and, then, finally, something will develop and I work it through.”
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
“INCOMPLETE.”
Art. Artyard, 1251 S. Pearl St. An exhibition of 13 minimalist, wood- constructed wall sculptures by Golden artist Carley Warren. Extended through July 31. 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. Free. 303-777-3219 or 303-777-6793 or .
