Fine Arts Center

Square Plates and Mugs
2022-09-23 09:00 - 12:00 (America/Denver) | Bemis School of Art, 818 Pelham Pl, Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Classes for ages 16-adult. Get square! Explore the exciting possibilities of building square plates and mugs. Learn to handbuild with soft pre-textured clay slabs using flat patterns that fold up into 3-dimensional forms to create dynamic and self-expressive plate and mug sets. Glazing for textured surfaces will be taught. Supplies will be provided.

FAC Member Tour: Breathe into the Past: Crosscurrents in the Caribbean
2022-10-01 12:00 - 13:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Join Katja Rivera, Curator of Contemporary Art, for a tour of our newest exhibition, Breathe into the Past: Crosscurrents in the Caribbean. The twelve featured artists in this exhibition hail from the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, coastal Colombia, and beyond. Their artworks offer insights into the complex histories that have influenced the present—sometimes on grand scales, at other times in subtler yet still undeniable ways.
Not a member? Sign up now for as little as $5 a month!
Register for OCT. member Tour
We ask for your precaution when visiting this exhibition. Many of the works are fragile and some contain explicit material, including references to violence, sounds of gunfire, nudity, and images of self-harm. Please be mindful of your needs when entering the space. A printed list of mental health and other related resources will be available.

Action/Abstraction Redefined tours
2022-10-08 14:00 - 15:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
In celebration of CC Homecoming & Family Weekend, join Learning and Engagement Intern Katie Norton for a tour of Action/Abstraction Redefined. Action/Abstraction Redefined is the first major traveling exhibition that analyzes modern Native American art from the mid-1940s through the 1970s that was inspired by Abstract Expressionism, Color Field, and Hard-edge painting. Discover how the artists in this exhibition, including George Morrison, Fritz Scholder, and T.C. Cannon, challenged stereotypical expectations of Native American art by experimenting with American modern art movements combined with art influences from their own cultural heritage.
Action/Abstraction Redefined is organized by IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM. Action/Abstraction Redefined was co-curated by Dr. Lara Evans, Professor of Art History, IAIA Research Center for Contemporary Native Arts Director; Tatiana Lomahaftewa-Singer, curator of collections, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts; and Dr. Manuela Well-Off-Man, chief curator, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts.
Support for this exhibition and its national tour is provided by Art Bridges.
Image: Mike Medicine Horse Zillioux, (Akimel O’odham/Cheyenne/Pawnee), The Day Jackson Pollack Became Christian (detail), 1974, acrylic, rawhide, salt on canvas, MoCNA Collection P-22

Recon Watchmen Raku Press Mold Masks with Visiting Artist, Virgil Ortiz
2022-10-10 12:30 - 2022-10-14 15:30 | Bemis School of Art, 818 Pelham Pl, Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Using visual storytelling and sculpture, you’ll learn about the central cast of characters from Virgil Ortiz’s screenplay Revolt 1680/2180 and how they shape the fantastical world he’s creating through clay and multimedia art. Ortiz takes the participants of this workshop on a journey through the processes he used to create his latest characters—the Recon Watchmen. Using a raku clay body, press molds, and as many hand-carved details and embellishments as wanted, you will create your own version. Supplies and raku firings will be provided.
Level A – All levels welcome. Ages 16-Adult

Free Art Car Painting Events
2022-10-15 09:00 - 12:00 | Bemis School of Art, 818 Pelham Pl, Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Have you ever seen an art covered car driving around town and wished you could create mobile art? Well now’s your chance to learn the steps to creating art on wheels with Cheyenne Teague! Come paint a car with us — all supplies provided!
The first morning session will help prep the car for spray painting, and the following morning session and both afternoon sessions will be focused on painting the car. Join us for one session or all of them!
Event is free but registration is required. Space is limited.
Dates & Times
Saturday, Oct 15, 9 a.m.–12 p.m. and/or 1–4 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 16, 9 a.m.–12 p.m. and/or 1–4 p.m.

Yoga at the FAC
2022-10-15 10:30 - 11:30 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Join teacher Amanda Smolinski from Soulshines Yoga for a one-hour yoga class in our beautiful glass-walled Smith Family gallery. Participants are invited to stay and enjoy the museum for free after class. All experience levels welcome.
Please bring your own mat. Water is allowed during class, but not in the museum galleries. Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Fine Arts Center (you’ll also have the option to donate at class).
SPACE IS LIMITED, PLEASE RSVP

FAC Happy Hour at Bell Brothers Brewing
2022-10-19 17:00 - 19:00 | Bell Brothers Brewing, 114 N Tejon St Suite 100, Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Join us for the next stop in our new FAC happy hour series celebrating the “liquid arts.” No formal programming involved, just a casual gathering of FAC supporters getting out to socialize in new and different venues across our beautiful city. Highlighting local bars and restaurants in town, we hope to see you at Bell Brothers Brewing downtown.
FAC members and theatre subscribers will receive $2 off their first drink.
No RSVP needed. Event location: 114 N Tejon St Suite 100. We’ll also be handing out museum admission passes, so bring a friend! Stop by the FAC table to say hi!

Libation Lecture: Dancing Paintings
2022-10-20 17:30 - 18:30 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Dancing Paintings: An Interactive Guide to Abstract Expressionism
The lecture coincides with Action/Abstraction Redefined, an exhibition currently on view at the FAC.
For many years I had a secret: to understand works of art, I would have to dance them. Discreetly, of course, or risk being thrown out of the museum. Years later, I was surprised to learn that I am not alone: many art theorists, philosophers, and psychologists have investigated in detail how our instinctive physical responses to works of art provide us with critical information about what we see. In this gently interactive session, I will share some of the theories and practices that explore how leaning into this innate intelligence of our bodies can enrich our viewing experiences of art.
Drink: Tequila Sunrise
Lecturer: Jessica Hunter, Ph.D., Associate Director of Creativity & Innovation at CC
Bar opens at 5 p.m.
Tickets: $15 ($10 FAC members) includes your first drink
Libation Lecture Tickets

Songs from the Border
2022-11-03 19:30 - 21:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Featuring the creator and performer of Where Did We Sit on the Bus?, Songs from the Border is a limited run concert of original music about immigration, identity, and where we belong, starring Satya Chávez and Brian Quijada.

FAC Member Tour: Chicanx Landscapes
2022-11-05 12:00 - 13:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Join Michael Christiano, Director of Visual Arts and Museum and Mariana Rodríguez, feminist poet and translator for a tour and poetry reading in Chicanx Landscapes. Rodriguez, who teaches in the Spanish Department at Colorado College, will read selections from her own work and others that relate to the art on view. The exhibition explores landscapes as a system of ecology, history, culture and belonging from a Chicanx perspective with new works presented by the interdisciplinary artist collaborative, Desert ArtLAB. Desert ArtLAB is an interdisciplinary artist collaborative co-directed by April Bojorquez (she/her) and Matthew Garcia (he/him) whose work promotes Indigenous perspectives on ecological practice and climate change.
Not a member? Sign up now for as little as $5 a month!
RSVP for tour

Yoga at the FAC
2022-11-06 10:30 - 11:30 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Join teacher Misty Banta for a one-hour yoga class in our beautiful glass-walled Smith Family gallery. Participants are invited to stay and enjoy the museum for free after class. All experience levels welcome.
Please bring your own mat. Water is allowed during class, but not in the museum galleries. Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Fine Arts Center (you’ll also have the option to donate at class).
SPACE IS LIMITED, PLEASE RSVP

Converging Journeys: Thomas Blackshear, Dean Mitchell, and Ezra Tucker
2022-11-09 19:00 - 20:30 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Join us for an intimate discussion between Thomas Blackshear, Dean Mitchell, and Ezra Tucker as they discuss their creative practices, which move across design & illustration, commercial, and fine art. Their careers have spanned more than four decades and are marked by a commitment to creative exploration as well as charting new pathways for artists of color in historically white industries.
Event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP

Known for his dramatic lighting and sensitivity to mood, Thomas Blackshear has produced illustrations for advertising, books, calendars, collectors’ plates, greeting cards, magazines, postage stamps, and national posters. His clients range from Disney Pictures, Lucasfilm, and Universal Studios to International Wildlife and National Geographic magazines. He has illustrated thirty United States postage stamps and a commemorative stamp book titled I have a Dream. In 1995, he created Ebony Visions, which has been the number-one-selling Black figurine collectible in the United States for the past twenty years.
His recent Western Nouveau paintings have been featured on the covers of Art of the West magazine and Western Art Collector. In 2020, Blackshear was inducted into the Hall of Fame for the Society of Illustrators.
Dean Mitchell is proficient in watercolors, egg tempera, oils, and pastels. During his four-decade-long career, Mitchell has become well known for his figurative works, landscapes, and still lifes. At the age of twenty-three, he became the youngest artist ever accepted into the National Watercolor Society; just five years later, he was admitted into the American Watercolor Society. He holds numerous gold medals from these and other prestigious painting associations worldwide. His awards now number in the hundreds, and his work is featured in museums, corporate, and private collections throughout the country. The New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman praised him as a “modern-day Vermeer.”
After thirty plus years of illustration and commercial art success, Ezra Tucker embarked on a fine art career, determined to create his own style of artistic beauty in both the portrayal of wildlife and historical personalities and events surrounding the settling of the American Western Frontier. This 18-year journey has proved fulfilling and rewarding to his artistic vision and ambitions. Tucker is widely admired for his paintings that portray wildlife, notably mammals but also birds as well as historic scenes.
The Black Experience in the history of the American West has been untold by the historical record and visibly absent from many of our nation’s museum collections. Tucker’s historical paintings pictorially tell the stories of people of African descent: cowboys, bronco busters, Pony Express riders, Buffalo Soldiers, Black Seminole Scouts and other Americans.

This program is presented in partnership with Broadmoor Galleries and Jewelry Company.

The Reminders with CC songwriting students
2022-11-11 15:00 - 17:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
A musical collaboration between CC Mobile Arts, CC Music Department, and the Fine Arts Center, featuring a full set by The Reminders and fresh collaborative songs created by CC students. Students’ songs are musical settings of text written for this project by persons incarcerated at the Woman’s Ward at El Paso County Jail.
The performance will be held in the Fine Arts Center’s Music Room. Free and open to the public.

Crafts + Cocktails
2022-11-17 17:30 - 18:30 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
A fun filled evening of crafting awaits! Instructor Sophia Hanna will provide supplies and step-by-step instructions to create your own snow globe, just in time for Winter! Turn plain mason jars into sparkling snow globes filled with whimsical holiday figurines and miniatures. Space is limited so grab a friend and buy your tickets today!
Cash bar available. Attendees will receive free admission to the museum from 4-5 p.m. the day of the event. Bar will open at 5 p.m.
FAC members: $20
General admission: $30
Buy tickets

Redefining Native Art: Conversations of Contemporary Native Art with Anna Tsouhlarakis and Melanie Yazzie
2022-12-01 18:00 - 19:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Join the FAC for a critical conversation about redefining perspectives and perceptions of contemporary Native Art. In conjunction with the exhibition, Action/Abstraction Redefined, artists Anna Tsouhlarakis and Melanie Yazzie will share their perspectives as artists, educators, and activists of what Native Art is, isn’t, and can be in our contemporary world. This conversation will be facilitated by Learning & Engagement Intern, Katie Norton ‘24.
Event is free and open to the public.

About the Panelists:
Anna Tsouhlarakis
Navajo + Creek + Greek
Anna Tsouhlarakis works in sculpture, installation, video, and performance. She received her BA from Dartmouth College with degrees in Native American Studies and Studio Art. She went on to receive her MFA from Yale University in Sculpture.
Her work has been part of national and international exhibitions at venues such as Rush Arts in New York, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Crystal Bridges Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, the Heard Museum, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Tsouhlarakis has participated in various art residencies including Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Yaddo, and was the Andrew W. Mellon Artist-in-Residence at Colorado College for the 2019-2020 academic year.
Tsouhlarakis lives and works in Colorado.
Melanie Yazzie
Dine
Melanie Yazzie is Professor of Art Practices and Head of Printmaking at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado. Her works belong to many collections such as: the Denver Art Museum, Anchorage Museum of History & Art, the Art Museum of Missoula, the Institute of American Indian Arts, the Kennedy Museum of Art and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and in countries such as, New Zealand, France, Russia, Canada, Estonia, Northern Ireland, Korea, China, United Kingdom, and Australia. She is known for organizing print exchange projects that connect communities across the world. She makes prints, sculptures, paintings, does surface design and jewelry design. She has been represented by the Glenn Green Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico since 1994.
Katie Norton ‘24
Katie Norton is a Junior at Colorado College studying Museum Studies and Anthropology with a focus in archaeology. In her work at the FAC as the Action/Abstraction Redefined Learning & Engagement Intern, Kaite has led tours, created learning objectives, organized a virtual exhibit, and works to connect people with resources relevant to contemporary Native Art.
Katie comes to Colorado College from outside of Cleveland, Ohio. In her spare time, she likes to travel around Colorado and enjoy the beauty of the state.

Top image: Mike Medicine Horse Zillioux, (Akimel O’odham/Cheyenne/Pawnee,1952–2020), The Day Jackson Pollack [sic] Became A Christian (detail), 1974, Acrylic, rawhide, salt on canvas, MoCNA Collection (P-22), Gift of the Artist

It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play
2022-12-01 19:30 - 21:00, 2022-12-04 14:00 - 15:30, 2022-12-07 19:00 - 20:30 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
See this beloved American holiday classic come to life on stage as a captivating 1940s radio broadcast. With the help of a virtuosic, tight-knit ensemble that embodies a few dozen characters and live foley artistry, the story of idealistic George Bailey unfolds as he considers ending his life one fateful Christmas Eve. This holiday season, join us for a story of hope, faith, and the power of community.

FAC Member Tour: The Insiders
2022-12-03 12:00 - 13:00 | Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
Join us in the FAC’s Deco Lounge for a tour of the new exhibit The Insiders, a group show featuring none other than the FAC’s own patron experience staff and artistis! The artists will guide you through the exhibit, elaborating on their individual pieces and their own artistic practices. Get to know our staff a little better and learn about their art!
Not a member? Sign up now for as little as $5 a month!
RSVP for tour

In Conversation: Alexis Pauline Gumbs
2022-12-05 16:00 - 19:00 | Cornerstone Arts Center, 825 N. Cascade Ave., Colorado Springs, CO, 80903, United States
“Made the World by Breathing:” An Oracle Ceremony | 4 p.m.
Alexis Pauline Gumbs in Conversation with Professor Heidi R. Lewis | 5 p.m.
Join this virtual talk and workshop with Queer Black Troublemaker, Feminist Love Evangelist, and aspirational cousin to all sentient beings, Alexis Pauline Gumbs.
Poetry reading by Desiree C. Bailey | 6 p.m.
Q&A with Desiree C. Bailey, Facilitated by Professor Lisa Marie Rollins | 6:30 p.m.

Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all life. She is/they are the author of several books, most recently Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals and the co-founder of the Mobile Homecoming Trust, an intergenerational experiential living library of Black LBGTQ brilliance.
Desiree C. Bailey is the author of “What Noise Against the Cane” (Yale University Press, 2021), which won the 2020 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and was longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and the International Dylan Thomas Prize. Desiree is from Trinidad and Tobago, and Queens, New York. She is the Writer-in-Residence at Clemson University.

This event is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Breathe into the Past: Crosscurrents in the Caribbean.
Thanks to a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, this event is free and open to the public. Refreshments provided.
