Fine Arts Center

Misery
2023-10-18 19:00 - 20:30, 2023-10-12 19:30 - 21:00, 2023-10-15 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Denver) | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Misery follows successful romance novelist Paul Sheldon, who is rescued from a car crash by his “number one fan,” Annie Wilkes, and wakes up captive in her secluded home. While Paul is convalescing, Annie reads his latest book and becomes enraged when she discovers the author has killed off her favorite character, Misery Chastain. Annie forces Paul to write a new Misery novel, and he quickly realizes Annie has no intention of letting him go anywhere. The irate Annie has Paul writing as if his life depends on it, and it does.

Balloonacy
2023-10-28 10:00 - 11:00, 2023-10-29 12:00 - 13:00, 2023-10-29 16:00 - 17:00, 2023-11-04 14:00 - 15:00
Imagine a single balloon changing one person’s life forever. Balloonacy is tender, uplifting show for the little ones (and the big ones, too). Sweet, inventive and packed with physical comedy, this play explores the power of friendship and shows how, with a little imagination and acceptance, companionship is everywhere.
Performed on Saturdays at 10 a.m. & 2 p.m. and Sundays at 12 p.m. & 4 p.m.

In Conversation: Rosa Barba and Ann Reynolds
2023-10-28 11:00 - 13:00
11–12 p.m.: Coffee and snacks in the FAC Garden Lounge
12–1 p.m.: Talk in Dickinson Gallery (in “Agents of Care” space)
Please join us for a talk with art historian Ann Reynolds and the artist Rosa Barba, whose film Disseminate and Hold (2016) is on view as part of the Contested Terrains new media series in Lane West Gallery at the Fine Arts Center. The film brings together contemporary and archival footage of São Paulo to investigate how man-made geographies and landscapes intersect with political agendas and histories. Barba (teleconferencing in from Berlin) and Reynolds will discuss Disseminate and Hold, which was made for the 2016 São Paulo Biennial, the relationship between film and archive, and the artist’s process.
The conversation will be facilitated by Katja Rivera, Curator of Contemporary Art and JD Sell, artist and co-founder of Non Book Club Book Club (NBCBC). Coffee and snacks will be available in the FAC garden lounge before the talk. The event is organized by the Fine Arts Center Museum in collaboration with NBCBC.
Free and open to the public; registration required as seating is limited.
REGISTER
Rosa Barba is an artist and filmmaker who balances conceptualism with a distinctly personal vision in her work. She merges films, sculptures, installations, live performances, text pieces, and publications that are grounded in the material and conceptual qualities of cinema. She also creates installations and site-specific interventions to analyze the ways film articulates space, placing the work and the viewer in a new relationship. Her work has been exhibited internationally at prestigious institutions and biennials worldwide including Centre Pompidou, Paris (2023), Tate Modern, London (2023), Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2021/2022), Cukrarna, Ljubljana (2022), Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2017), the 56th, 53rd, 52nd Biennale di Venezia, Italy, and the 7th Beaufort Triennial, Belgium. In 2020, Rosa Barba was awarded the Calder Prize by The Calder Foundation. Her work is part of numerous public and private collections and has been widely published, most recently, in the monograph Rosa Barba: On the Anarchic Organization of Cinematic Spaces – Evoking Spaces beyond Cinema (2021).
Ann Reynolds teaches art history at the University of Texas at Austin. Her recent publications include essays on surrealist experimental film, queer aesthetics, Joan Jonas, Ruth Asawa, Jack Smith, and Zoe Leonard. She is currently completing a book entitled In Our Time, a history of intergenerational relationships among New York artists and writers circa 1940–1970 that were shaped by shared, if heterogeneous, commitments to Surrealism and its legacy, primarily through a love of film. She is also the author of Robert Smithson: Learning from New Jersey and Elsewhere (MIT Press, 2003).
Non Book Club Book Club (NBCBC) is a group of Colorado Springs-based artists, musicians, filmmakers, chefs, and creatives who come together each month to swap books, readings, playlists, and experiences. The mission of the group is to break down barriers and create an open and safe space for discussion and expression.

Día de Muertos Celebration
2023-11-01 16:00 - 20:00, 2023-11-02 16:00 - 20:00
Join us for a special community gathering for Día de Muertos, a celebration of life that demonstrates remembrance, love, and respect for those who have gone before us. Contribute to a community ofrenda, watch live music and performances on the mainstage theatre, engage with hands-on art activities, see ofrendas created by local school and community groups, and more!
This event is free and open to the public.
Learn More About our Día de Muertos celebration
Photo: Grupo Folklórico Sabor Latino of Denver perform during a Dia de los Muertos event at the FAC on Tuesday, November 2, 2021. Photo by Lonnie Timmons III / Colorado College.

FAC Member Tour: Theatre
2023-11-03 16:00 - 17:00
Meet Chris Sheley, the new Producing Artistic Director of the FAC Theatre, and experience a rare behind the scenes tour of our theater. Visit the prop room, costume shop, and backstage. Get a sneak peek of the scenic and costume designs in progress for Elf the Musical, and see behind the scenes balloon magic for Balloonacy.
RSVP for tourSpace is limited
Make a night of it! Stick around after the tour for our First Friday Art Party.

First Friday Art Party
2023-11-03 17:00 - 20:00
Join us for our First Friday celebration from 5–8 p.m. Enjoy the stunning ambiance offered by the FAC’s chic, historic venue.

FREE museum admission
Art in Deco Lounge by Adana Dysart
Music by Bryant Jones
Music by Grapefruit Moon
Drinks and snacks available for purchase
FREE downtown shuttle, THE ZEB, running along Tejon Street to downtown art galleries

Grapefruit Moon is a Manitou Springs-based band featuring Tom Tritsch and Jane Turnis on acoustic guitars and David Moorefield on bass. Their vocal harmony and crisp guitar work create a fresh sound merging contemporary folk, indie, alt-country, and pop with a tinge of blues. Grapefruit Moon performs upbeat crowd-pleasing tunes by Michael Franti & Spearhead, Tom Petty, Ryan Adams, Van Morrison, Vance Joy, The Civil Wars, Kacey Musgraves, The Paper Kites, Caamp, Avett Brothers, Tom Waits, Beatles, Portugal the Man, Talking Heads, Death Cab for Cutie, Grateful Dead, Donovan, The Band, Houndmouth, Paul Simon, and more.
Photo by Eli Epstein, @elis_lens.

Mindful Music: Series Two
2023-11-06 - 2023-12-31
Announcing Mindful Music: Series Two with Molly Lord, Creator of Tuned-In Productions and your facilitator.
Edie Carey, National award-winning, soulful contemporary/folk singer songwriter
Hazel Miller, Colorado Hall of Fame music icon; deemed “The Aretha Franklin of Colorado”
Jorma Kaukonen, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend with Jefferson Airplane, and highly respected interpreter of American roots music, blues and rock.
An inspiring pre-recorded online fun dive into what really happens when music crawls inside your mind. You’ll never listen to music the same again. Music lovers… get your feet propped, a cold drink poured, and the popcorn bowl filled. Prepare to leave the musical shallows for deep places you’ve never gone before.
Series Two provides four hours of intriguing “music and mind” education, insights, and music. Discover three secrets you never knew about the music you love, and three new intriguing interviews with national music artists who share their own insights and personal music.

Drawing Techniques: Exploring the Human Face
2023-11-08 13:30 - 15:30
Portrait drawing can seem like a challenging skill to learn since every face is unique and filled with detail but in this course, you will learn how to draw portraits down to the finer details! The instructor will guide you through each stage of drawing from proportion, structure, and how to draw facial features by drawing from real life. This class is for those who would like to build on their skills.

Ages 16-Adult

Artist Talk: Annalee Davis
2023-11-09 18:00 - 19:00
Please join us for a talk by the artist and writer Annalee Davis. Combining history, ecology, and cultural activism, Davis explores the extractivist plantation history of Barbados, where she lives and works. Her practice, which often engages community and collaborators, includes walking, writing, artmaking, growing plots, and more recently, embroidery. In this talk, the artist will discuss her process and recent projects, including A Garden of Hope (Barbados) and Pray to Flowers – A Plot of Disalienation (Sharjah, UAE). This event will take place in Taste Restaurant.
The event is free and open to the public, but RSVPs are encouraged as space is limited.
RSVP FOR THE talk
Annalee Davis is a Barbadian visual artist and writer whose practice combines history and biography in discussions of ‘post-plantation economies’ with cultural activism in the arts sector. Davis’ works explore Barbados’ transformation from a once biodiverse landscape to sugar plantations and more recently a tourism-dependent island, both arguably sectors of enclosure and exclusion. She understands the plantation as an economic model irrevocably impacting the contemporary environment whose historical legacy has been traumatically inscribed upon the landscape and its people. Working in her studio located on an operational dairy farm–once a 17th-century plantation–Davis exposes the poly-vocal narratives buried beneath the land. Drawing, walking, making (bush) teas, and growing living apothecaries, her practice suggests future strategies for repair and thriving while investigating the role of botanicals and living plots as ancestral sites of refusal, counter-knowledge, and healing. A Caribbean activist nurturing more equitable platforms for emerging artists, her work as the Founding Director of Fresh Milk, and co-founder of Caribbean Linked, Tilting Axis, and Sour Grass–promotes pan-Caribbean community engagement by working with artists across the multi-lingual archipelago. Collectively, they reinforce the healthy growth of contemporary visual arts in the region, by working with artists who often feel marginalized from mainstream society. Davis is a graduate of Fine Arts from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and The Maryland Institute College of Art, USA.
Solo exhibitions include Reseeding the Post-Plantation, Barbados Museum & Historical Society; re:wilding, Haarlem Artspace, UK; Heartseed, TEOR/éTica, Costa Rica; This Ground Beneath My Feet – A Chorus of Bush in Rab Lands, The Idea Lab, The Warfield Center, University of Texas, Austin, USA.
Current group exhibitions include:  Linhas Tortas, ”Mendes Wood São Paulo, Brazil;  Against Apartheid,  KARST, Plymouth, UK;  Seeds and Souls, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen. Recent shows include: Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present, Sharjah, UAE;  What’s on your Plate?, Hayy Jameel, Jeddah, UAE;  And if I devoted my life to one of its feathers?”, Kunsthalle Wien, Austria.
www.annaleedavis.com | @annalee.devere

Speed Up Your Drawing
2023-11-09 18:00 - 20:00
This class will emphasize speed and accuracy in your drawings including how to start drawings faster. Students will be pushed on speed earlier in the class and then can relax into a longer drawing in the second half of the class. No laid-back, leisurely drawing in this class. Standing is required to get an accurate drawing with speed and movement. Like athletics, quick drawing requires active body movement and the ability to move to get a better angle. Drawing faster requires repetitive practice.

Adults

Museum Free Day
2023-05-13 10:00 - 17:00, 2023-05-19 10:00 - 20:00
Museum Free Days are offered the second Saturday and third Friday of each month. See what’s on view in the museum
