Date/Time
Date(s) - February 27, 2025
5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Location
Organ Recital Hall, University Center for the Arts
Kim Abeles Artist Talk
Presented in conjunction with Community Smog
Organ Recital Hall on Thursday, February 27 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., reception to follow in the museum
Kim Abeles will present an artist talk in conjunction with Community Smog, a collaboration between Abeles and Northern Colorado community members.
Community Smog is presented in collaboration with the Center for Environmental Justice, the Department of Atmospheric Science, and Poudre School District. Support for this exhibition and related programming is provided by made possible through the City of Fort Collins Fort Fund, the City of Fort Collins Cross-Sector Impact Grant, the FUNd Endowment at CSU, and the Lilla B. Morgan Memorial Endowment, which works to enhance cultural development and the arts at Colorado State University. The related project, “Air Quality Thru the Arts,” is made possible by support from the Environmental Protection Agency, Colorado Creative Industries, Arts in Society, and EcoArts Connections.
A reception will follow. Free and open to all!
Join us also for a special Family Day event in collaboration with the Department of Atmospheric Science, the Center for Environmental Justice, and Powerhouse Energy Campus on March 1. Now with extended hours!
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kim Abeles is an artist whose artworks explore biography, geography, feminism, and the environment. Her work speaks to society, science literacy, and civic engagement, creating projects with science and natural history museums, health departments, air pollution control agencies, National Park Service, and community organizations.
In 1987, she innovated a method to create images from the smog in the air, and Smog Collectors brought her work to international attention. Projects funded by National Endowment for the Arts involved a residency at the Institute of Forest Genetics where she focused on Resilience; and Valises for Camp Ground: Arts, Corrections, and Fire Management in the Santa Monica Mountains in collaboration with Camp 13, a group of female prison inmates who fight wildfires.
Permanent outdoor works include Walk a Mile in My Shoes, based on the shoes of the Civil Rights marchers and local activists; and, Citizen Seeds, six sculptures along the Park to Playa Trail.
She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, California Community Foundation and Pollack-Krasner Foundation. Her work is in public collections including MOCA, LACMA, California African American Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, and National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. Abeles’ journals, artists books and process documents are archived at the Center for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art. She is Professor Emerita at California State University Northridge.
On view in this exhibition are also Zoë’s Highchair (Forty Days of Smog) and table settings created in smog, Smog Translations of idyllic landscapes, World Leaders in Smog, the installation Waiting/Watching, and ancillary works from Sky Patch, Sky Leaves, and Mountain Wedge, which speak to the environment, civic engagement, and science literacy. Also on view are Presidential Commemorative Smog Plates, a body of work that has been on the road since 1992, most recently at United Nations Headquarters in New York in 2024.
SUPPORT
Community Smog is presented in collaboration with the Center for Environmental Justice and the Department of Atmospheric Science at CSU, and the City of Fort Collins and Larimer County.
Support for this exhibition and related programming is provided by the City of Fort Collins Fort Fund, the City of Fort Collins Cross-Sector Impact Grant, the FUNd Endowment at CSU, and the Lilla B. Morgan Memorial Endowment, which works to enhance cultural development and the arts at Colorado State University. This fund benefits from the generous support of all those who love the arts. https://president.colostate.edu/lilla-b-morgan-endowment/.
The related project, “Air Quality Thru the Arts,” is made possible by support from the Environmental Protection Agency, Colorado Creative Industries, Arts in Society Grant, and EcoArts Conections.
Join us also for a special Family Day event in collaboration with the Department of Atmospheric Science, the Center for Environmental Justice, and Powerhouse Energy Campus on March 1. Now with extended hours!