Fine Arts Center

Of Spacious Skies: An Audio Play Anthology Series
2020-09-17 | FAC Digital, CO, United States
Using the Golden Age of Radio Plays as the jumping off point, our intrepid team of artists, has created 12 weekly episodes of a series which highlights the past, present and future of Colorado Springs, with Pikes Peak as our center point. While it is best to experience the series as released, and recognized as a complete omnibus, each 15-minute episode can be listened to individually and in any order.

Virtual: Beyond Reality
2020-09-26 13:00 - 14:30 (America/Denver) | Virtual
Are you feeling a little tired of strict realism in your paintings, but just don’t know how to break away? In this virtual course, you will be lead through exercises designed to bring more abstraction, excitement, & passion to your work. This course includes live Zoom class sessions & pre-recorded content. Adults

Arts Month Theatre Showcase
2020-10-11 14:00 - 15:00 | Virtual
In celebration of Arts Month 2020, the Colorado Springs theatre community has come together as the Theatrical Response Team to present a Virtual Theatre Showcase on Sunday, Oct. 11 at 2 p.m. — streamed live on YouTube — to officially kick off Theater & Film Week! This free, community event will feature great local talent from:

Fine Arts Center Theatre Company
Dragon Theatre Productions
Craft Production Resources
Springs Ensemble Theatre
Theatreworks
The Millibo Art Theatre
Theatre ‘d Art
Theatre Across Borders

We are excited to partner with the Theatrical Response Team, who is making it possible to stream this from Zoom to Facebook in a live performance setting!
Learn more about the Arts Month Theatre Showcase

Libation Creations: Fall Edition
2020-10-14 17:00 - 18:00 | Virtual
New artmaking happy hour series!
Jasmine Dillavou photo by Adam Williams
Usher in the new season with artist Jasmine Dillavou and bartender Ric Bascobert whose autumn-inspired creations will help bring the cozy sense of fall into your home.
Step 1: Ric will walk you through mixing your own craft cocktail/mocktail, The Fallen Apple, in a live step by-step demonstration
Step 2: Yummy drink in hand, follow along with Jasmine as you create an original, textural fall landscape using ink, leaves, and paper
Step 3: Incorporate your new works into DIY home décor. Sit back, sip and admire.
This is a live event and participants are encouraged to ask questions along the way.

Register for Libation Creations: Fall Edition
FAC Members $5; Non-members $10
List of drink ingredients and art supplies provided upon registration. We’re keeping it as simple as possible.
For questions about accessibility or to request accommodations, please contact Kim Sweeney at ksweeney@coloradocollege.edu. Requests should be made at least one week in advance of the event.

The Grasshoppers | Buntport Theatre
2020-10-17 - 2020-10-18 | Legacy loop, 1800 Recreation Way, Colorado Springs, CO, 80907, United States
As a companion to their recent 3×3 Project Rocky Mountain Locusts, the Denver-based Buntport Theatre Company has created a live, socially distanced accompaniment called The Grasshoppers. It is a mini drive-in, live theater experience (a.k.a a short play performed outdoors while the audience remains in the safety of their cars).
Performances take place 5 times each day on Saturday & Sunday, Oct. 17 & 18. 11 a.m., 12:30 p.m. 2 p.m., 3:30 p.m., 5 p.m.
Venue: Legacy loop
1800 Recreation Way
Colorado Springs, CO 80907 United States
The Grasshoppers is a short, funny twist on a nature documentary, featuring four giant grasshoppers (spaced safely apart from each other). It’s not too much of a spoiler to divulge that ensemble members Erin Rollman, Erik Edborg, Brian Colonna and Hannah Duggan all will be wearing green grasshopper costumes sewn by Rollman, who is also a Buntport co-founder.
Audiences will be given a small sanitized speaker for their car (like an old timey drive-in!). It will be a no contact hand off.

Please do not come to the show more than 15 minutes before it starts.
Do not come in a car with people that you have not already been quarantining with. One person per car is also fine.
Remember: you’ll be sitting in your car and it might be hot out. Bring something to drink!
Masks will be needed if you plan to roll down your windows during the show because cars will not be six feet from each other.
Can I ride my bike? Yes, you are welcome to ride your bike to the performance! Because we are set up for a drive-in experience, no seats are provided (though you are welcome to bring a lawn chair or blanket). If there are multiple people in your party, please reserve enough parking spaces to accommodate your entire group (no more than four people per parking space). We also ask that you wear a mask.

The show runs 36 minutes and contains some strong language.
TICKETS ARE REQUIRED and donation-based. Donate what you can, based on the number of audience members in your car. If you are suffering financially right now, as so many people are, then come for free! There are very limited spots, so reservations are necessary.

Reserve your Tickets here
Photo by Ellen K. Graham

The Arts & Social Action | S̵t̵o̵p̵RESIST(ing)/Start RECLAIMIMG: Eight Minutes and Forty-Six Seconds of JuJu
2020-10-29 18:30 - 20:00 | Virtual
Mountain Time
StopRESIST(ing)/Start RECLAIMIMG: Eight Minutes and Forty-Six Seconds of JuJu is a powerful collaboration between Colorado College Professor Michael Sawyer and Grammy Award-winning musician Nicholas Payton that layers actual recorded interactions between Black citizens and law enforcement with an original musical score. The resulting experience is one of beauty, pain, critical importance, and most importantly, reclamation.
The FAC will present a live stream of the piece, followed by a panel discussion.

Register for the experience & discussion

Michael Sawyer
Michael Sawyer is Assistant Professor of Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies and the Department of English at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was recently appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor of English and the Fine Arts at the United States Air Force Academy and is the Founder and Director of the Africana Intellectual Project at Colorado College.
The Africana Intellectual Project spent the last three years exploring the sonic realm with the series curated by Sawyer, “Black Art(s): Radical Potentialities” featuring artists like Pharoah Sanders, Talib Kweli and the first US performance of Nicholas Payton’s Black American Symphony with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic. His sonic installation, (Stop)Resist(ing): Eight Minutes Forty Six seconds, continues the exploration of the radical potential of sound by interrogating the sensory space of police violence.
Sawyer has published two monographs. The first, An Africana Philosophy of Temporality: Homo Liminalis (Palgrave Press: 2018) was nominated for the American Philosophical Association’s 2019 First Book Prize. He recently published Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X (Pluto Press: 2020) that theorist/poet Fred Moten endorsed by saying: “In its careful analysis of his radical and exemplary practice in word and deed, Black Minded doesn’t give Malcolm X his rightful place in the canon of political philosophy so much as raise political philosophy to a height it never dared to reach by requiring and allowing it to ground with our brother. Michael Sawyer has written a powerful and necessary book”.
Professor Sawyer holds a B.S. in Political Science from the United States Naval Academy and Master’s degrees in International Relations from the University of Chicago’s Committee on International Relations and in Comparative Literature (African American, French, and German) from Brown University. He completed his PhD in Africana Studies at Brown University in 2015.
Nicholas Payton
Grammy Award Winning Multi-instrumentalist, composer and trumpet master, Nicholas Payton is one of the most important artists working and recording today. A virtuoso before he was out of high school, his talent and skills have earned him praise and accolades and ensured his place in musical history. Spanning a multitude of musical genres, Payton has composed and arranged, performed and recorded with his own groups in many settings, including solo, duo, trio, quartet, quintet, sextet, 21-piece big band, as well as his 2012 full orchestral work The Black American Symphony.
Payton is the president of his own successful independent label Paytone Records. The latest project is the Afro-Caribbean Mixtape where he seamlessly merges contemporary music, African rhythms, and the voices of historical figures with a performance and execution that is unmatched.
Payton was born into a musical family in New Orleans, Louisiana. He showed talent for music at a very early age. He received his first trumpet at age 4 and by age 9 was sitting in with local bands including the Young Tuxedo Brass Band. By the age of 12, he was a member of the All-Star Brass Band that performed and toured extensively. As he developed and studied, Nicholas successfully learned how to play several instruments. In addition to being an accomplished trumpeter, Nicholas plays piano, bass, drums, tuba, trombone, clarinet and saxophone, et al. During his high school years, Payton attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts to study with Clyde Kerr Jr. and after graduation attended the University of New Orleans where he studied with Harold Battiste and Ellis Marsalis, among others.
Payton has toured the world with Ray Brown, Elvin Jones and lists significant collaborations including Trey Anastasio, Ray Charles, Daniel Lanois, Dr. John, Stanley Jordan, Elvin Jones, Roy Haynes, Joe Henderson, Zigaboo Modeliste, Marcus Roberts, Jill Scott, Clark Terry, Allen Toussaint, Chucho Valdes, Dr. Michael White, Nancy Wilson, and many more. He recently produced a brilliant Tribute to Ella Fitzgerald for the gifted singer Jane Monheit. He is credited on over 140 recordings as a composer, arranger, special guest or sideman.

Now. Here. This.
2020-11-20 - 2020-11-26 | Virtual
FAC Theatre School Benefit Performance.
11 Students. Guest Appearances. 60 Minute Virtual Musical Performance.
The show follows the evolution and adventures of a group of friends as they journey through time — from the present to the past and back again. They share their stories about friendship, hoarding, hiding, laughing, living, dying and middle school in an attempt to step directly into that elusive “present moment.”

Same Old New School: A Conversation on Graffiti & Street Art
2020-12-03 18:00 - 19:00 | Virtual
Same Old New School is a weekly podcast from Chicago’s Vocalo, hosted by FAC Director Idris Goodwin and Kevin Coval. The show examines the intersections of Hip Hop with culture, politics, fashion and more.
In this live special edition, Goodwin and Coval bring together a panel of artists and thinkers to talk about graffiti and contemporary street art and their historic influences civically, politically, and creatively.

Papel Chicano Dos: Works on Paper from the Collection of Cheech Marin
2020-12-04 10:00 - 2021-08-07 16:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Experience artworks from 24 established and emerging Chicana/o artists created from the late 1980s to present day from the collection of Cheech Marin.

Holiday Cabaret
2020-12-17 - 2021-01-03 | Virtual
The FAC Theatre Company is packaging up joy and merriment and sending it your way in our 2020 Holiday Cabaret!
From our homes to yours, we’re bringing love, light, laughter, and a few surprises direct to your kitchens and living rooms for the FAC’s 2020 holiday production.
Grab your crew, a warm beverage, and a cozy chair and settle in for over a dozen unique acts from FAC Theatre Company favorites and their families in this special holiday season experience!

Sweet Land: A New Opera by The Industry
2020-12-17 - 2021-01-25 | Virtual
Despite stellar reviews and sold-out performances, the world premiere of experimental new opera Sweet Land was forced to shut down two weeks ahead of schedule due to COVID-19. Fortunately, a final performance was captured on film to preserve a new work the Los Angeles Times called “opera as astonishment.”
The Fine Arts Center Museum is pleased to provide access to this streaming version free of charge (first come, first served; 200 access codes available). Tickets to view the filmed performance have been made possible by the generous Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant for Southwest Art and Culture.

Creating Sweet Land: A Conversation with the Artists (Pt. 1)
2021-01-05 18:00 - 19:00 | Virtual
The FAC will host two conversations with the artists behind Sweet Land, both moderated by Raven Chacon (the first Mellon Foundation Artist in Residence at the FAC).
Panelists: Cannupa Hanska Luger, Du Yun, and Raven Chacon (moderator)

Creating Sweet Land: A Conversation with the Artists (Pt. 2)
2021-01-07 18:00 - 19:00 | Virtual
The FAC will host two conversations with the artists behind Sweet Land, both moderated by Raven Chacon (the first Mellon Foundation Artist in Residence at the FAC).
Panelists: Yuval Sharon, Douglas Kearney, Aja Couchois Duncan, and Raven Chacon (moderator)

Arts & Social Action: The Raid
2021-01-14 18:00 - 19:00 | Virtual
Join us for a community talkback and Q&A with Idris Goodwin and Tiffany Nichole Greene moderated by Dramaturge Julia Felise Dubiner.

Cleo Parker Robinson dance: The MOVE/ment
2021-01-18 13:00 - 17:00 | Virtual
The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College celebrates 50 years of Cleo Parker Robinson Dance. In honor of the 2021 Martin Luther King Day Celebrations, we are honored to share this recording of “The MOVE/ment,” a work inspired by a trip to Montgomery, Alabama by members of CPR Dance. It is a piece about the Civil Rights Movement that invites us all to ask what Civil Rights mean to us in the present day.

3x3 Projects: Proposal Submissions
2021-01-27 - 2021-03-05 | Virtual
Nine projects will be funded in the amount of $3,000 per project. Funds awarded will be inclusive and project teams will decide how to divide them accordingly. In the future there may be an opportunity to apply for additional funding to adapt these digital projects into physical experiences at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. Apply now!

A Deep Dive into the Work of Floyd Tunson
2021-02-04 13:00 - 14:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Focusing on a recent acquisition and other works by Floyd Tunson, Collections and Education staff at the FAC Museum will be leading in-depth experiences for students with Tunson’s work throughout the month of February. These engagements will focus on preservation, care, and representations of cultural identity and social histories within Tunson’s work. In pursuit of building community with higher education students, this experience is offered to all students currently enrolled in college or university. (Must present valid school ID at check-in.)
As an artist from Colorado and a previous exhibiter at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, Tunson explores concepts of cultural identity, American social history, pop culture, and the human condition. Tunson says that from one direction he sees “the terror of chaos, man’s inhumanity to man, mortality, and the unknown. From another direction, the human condition seems like a magnificent, orderly evolution of extraordinary beauty” stating that the totality of his work reflects his “quest to comprehend and express these forces and their interconnectedness.”
Students, space is limited — reserve your spot now!

First Friday with FAC Director/DJ Idris Goodwin
2021-02-05 21:00 - 22:30 | Virtual
Join us for a virtual DJ set brought to you by the FAC, CC Mutual Aid, and the Chinook Center of Colorado Springs. Sponsored by CC’s Alumni and Family Relations.
FAC Director Idris Goodwin will host as DJ for a lively night of dancing! The event is FREE for all participants, with a suggested pay-what-you-can donation to Colorado College Mutual Aid and/or the Chinook Center.
The Chinook Center is a Colorado Springs grassroots community that supports people and organizations working for social, economic, and environmental justice in the Pikes Peak Region. Please note that a donation to the Chinook Center is processed separately from your event registration. Make a donation to the Chinook Center.
Please RSVP by Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021

Celebrating Fifty Years of Cleo Parker Robinson Dance
2021-02-09 18:00 - 19:30 | Virtual
Join us for this conversation with the celebrated, Denver-based choreographer Cleo Parker Robinson as the FAC celebrates fifty years of her esteemed dance ensemble. Using the universal language of dance to honor the African Diaspora, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance explores the human condition, champions social justice, unites people of all ages and races, and ultimately celebrates the complexity of life through movement. Moderated by FAC Director, Idris Goodwin, this discussion with Robinson and her team of creatives will shed light on their recently released video of “The MOVE/ment” as well as their longer history of black arts production both in Colorado and beyond.

Libation Creations: Valentine Edition
2021-02-11 17:00 - 18:00 | Virtual
Artmaking Happy Hour Series
Celebrate love! Back by popular demand, artist Linda Sagastume and mixologist Angelina Rice bring you romance-inspired creations to liven up this year’s Valentine’s Day. Whether you typically revel in or avoid the holiday, this event will hit you in the right spot — just like Cupid’s bow!
Here’s what to expect-
Step 1: Angelina will guide you through mixing a delicious Valentine-inspired Pomegranate Rose Champagne cocktail in a step-by-step demonstration, live from her winery, Mesa Winds, in Hotchkiss, Colorado.
Step 2: Drink in hand, follow along with Linda as you create a beautiful Valentine heart garland. You can add your own unique touches using scrapbook paper, vintage book pages, sheet music and more.
Step 3: Sit back, sip, and admire your artwork.
This is a live event and participants are encouraged to ask questions along the way. List of drink ingredients and art supplies are provided upon registration.
FAC Members: $5; Non-members: $10
Register for the Libation Lecture
