Grass/Roots

Grass/Roots: William Sutton & Jon Horvath


Exhibition Dates: March 18 – April 28, 2016
Opening Reception & Artist Talk with William Sutton & Jon Hovarth: Friday, March 18, 6 – 8 pm; Talk will begin at 6:15 pm.

Free and open to the public

Location: CPAC, 3636 Chestnut, Denver, CO 80216

The Colorado Photographic Arts Center is pleased to present “Grass/Roots,” an exhibition featuring the work of Boulder based photographer William Sutton and Milwaukee based photographer Jon Horvath.

Through their images, both artists celebrate the beauty and complexities of the American West, while simultaneously examining their relationship to its changing landscape. In his award winning work, Colorado photographer William Sutton captures the monumental size of the Wyoming grasslands, creating panoramic images that invite the viewer to enjoy the extraordinary beauty of the Great Plains, and to reflect on its value and the importance of conservation. While Sutton’s work takes a direct look at the land, Horvath’s photographs consider how the American West has shaped our cultural identity, focusing his lens on recording the hopes, dreams and aspirations of a rural town in Idaho. The images act as a microcosm, representative of a larger part of the country’s experience with its own mythology. Together, both photographers elicit questions about the environment while pointing toward a renewed interest in beauty and connecting with the landscapes we inhabit.

William Sutton Bio

William S. Sutton lives in the mountains west of Boulder, Colorado and is a Professor at Regis College in Denver.  He was born in 1956 in Toledo, Ohio, and received his B.F.A. and M.F.A. from the University of Colorado in Boulder.  In 1981 he was awarded a major fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.  His photographs have been exhibited widely and are in the permanent collections of numerous institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the Denver Art Museum, the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Princeton University Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, Arizona State University, University of Colorado, Colorado Historical Society, University of Chicago, and others.  In 2013 he published his first monograph with GFT Books, At Home in the West: The Lure of Public Lands.  From 2012 – 2014 he collaborated with Michael Berman and Frank Goodyear on the Wyoming Grasslands Photographic Project.  In 2015 he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

Jon Horvath Bio

Jon Horvath’s interdisciplinary practice adapts systems-based strategies to photography, performance, and new media works. His work is influenced by American literature, pop culture, and his interest in the unfixed nature of a photographic experience. Horvath received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2008, and a BAS in both English Literature and the History of Philosophy from Marquette University in 2001. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in venues including: The Print Center (Philadelphia), FIESP Cultural Centre (Sao Paolo, Brazil), Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, Newspace Center for Photography (Portland), the Haggerty Museum of Art (Milwaukee), INOVA (Milwaukee), and the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography. His work is currently held in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Haggerty Museum of Art, and is included in the Midwest Photographers Project at the Museum of Contemporary Photography.  Horvath is the recipient of a 2015 Greater Milwaukee Foundation Mary L. Nohl Fellowship for Established Artists and also a 2015 Critical Mass Top 50 Finalist.  In 2011, he was a US Winner of the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward Emerging Photographers Competition. Horvath currently teaches in the New Studio Practice program at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design.

Read about Horvath’s This is Bliss

http://www.jonhorvath.net/this-is-bliss

Read about Sutton’s project Wyoming Grasslands

http://www.williamsuttonphotographs.com/wyoming-grasslands.html

See William interviewed on Onward and TIME about his Guggenheim Fellowship

http://time.com/3817823/newly-named-guggenheim-fellows-reflect-on-landscape-photography/

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