Story By: Grace Smith, Community Resources Editor
Photos By: Devin Van Der Lee
The first Monuments and Canyons Plein Air event took place in the Grand Valley in 2017 and has only grown since.
This year, over 20 artists spent a week painting the Colorado National Monument and surrounding areas in the plein-air style, with a portion of the proceeds from selling the works going to the Colorado National Monument Association. CNMA is a non-profit organization that works to preserve the area.
“Funds that we raise go towards any of the education services for parks service ranger programs, youth programs, junior ranger program, as well as NPS special projects,” said the current operations manager for CNMA John Lintott.
Lintott has organized this event for the past six years. He is also a local artist who has participated in the event.
“I’ve done plenty of plein-air events, and traveled everywhere in the four corners states to do these events,” said Lintott, “It was fun to finally be able to organize one here so that I didn’t have to go and I could just invite all my friends here to paint.”
“Our first show was mainly just people from around Colorado, and then word has spread and we get people applying from all over the county now,” said Lintott, “For me, the best part each year is being able to see what other artists’ translations are of this area.”
Each year the works are shown at the Carlson Vineyards tasting room on Main Street. However, for the past two years, the artists who are involved in the event have had the opportunity to take their paintings home to refine them and create studio pieces as a reflection of the time they spent in the area, before bringing them back to Grand Junction about five months later to be showcased at The Art Center of Western Colorado. The initial event this year took place in October, and the Monuments and Canyons exhibition opened at The Art Center on April 7 in the Jac Kephart Gallery.
“The Art Center’s mission is to help facilitate arts in the area, and this is something that has a lot of external exposure and something that definitely aligns with our mission,” said Curator of Programs and Exhibitions at The Art Center Matthew Jones.
“The arts and anybody in the area that is actively engaging with the arts, especially at that level, is something that calls for our support,” said Jones.
“Working with The Art Center has been wonderful,” said Lintott, also explaining how having a second exhibition allows the artists to create more profound works due to having time in the studio to reflect on their experience in the Grand Valley.
“It gives the public a second chance to view the work, but also gives the artist the chance to make choices about the painting,” said Jones.
“Grand Junction somewhat can be isolated in the sense that if there’s a bunch of comparable painting styles that are going on in the area, people can start to get stuck in that,” said Jones, “Bringing in talent from other places to paint increases our exposure of the kind of art people do in other places, and that drums up experimentation.”
“Bringing a group together like that, and also putting it at The Art Center, allows people to be inspired in new directions,” said Jones.
The Art Center is located at 1803 N. 7th St. It is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and anyone can visit the Monuments and Canyons exhibit until April 28th when the exhibition closes.
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