MONTECARLO
MONTECARLO is an artist collective.

This group of artists engages each other in the traditional ‘artist collective’ definitions by critical analysis of respective works, projects, and potentials; as well past and future collaborations. Concurrently MONTECARLO exists as a fluid and familial structure to foster inspiration and support outside the scope of artistic practice. While there have been many past projects and collaborations, this exhibition will be the first to wholly engage the scope of the collective including individual works, collaborative works, and works created specifically during the time the collective will be together in Steamboat Springs. MONTECARLO is comprised of Siobahn Feehan, Kate Learson, Park Myers, and Vannessa Goglietino.


MONTECARLO has a lonely hopefulness. The artists of MONTECARLO, each in their own capacity, will be exhibiting new works concerned with a certain experience of youthful flux, where establishment of personal and artistic placement, limits, and orientation are a hopeful attempt to overcoming the obstacle of restlessness and uncontrollability. This exhibition will feature video installation, sculpture, collage, and works on paper.

Siobhan Feehan presents over, under, through, a work discussing placement in three translated forms.  These works will manifest themselves as installations which directly utilize the the Eleanor Bliss Center for the Arts at the Depot as a unique substrate for the display of the artwork; i.e. using the historical coal storage basement for a video installation and creating artworks directly on the surface of the Main Gallery walls. Part one, over, is a collection of mountaineer’s self-portraits at various points during their climb up Mount Blanc. The majority of the photos are taken at an angle in which the viewer cannot see how much vertical distance the climber has gained or must reach. As such, the images are placed within a large graph at the assumed mark in their journey utilizing literal increments such as “a little bit” and “almost there”. Part two, under, is a video installation presented in the basement of the Depot, directly under the gallery space. An antique coal miner’s helmet projects video, from the headlamp, appropriated from books showing interiors of ancient cave drawings. The peephole view mimics a flashlight beam used as the source of light in cave exploration and coal mining expeditions. Part three, through, mimics a tourism desk where you might often find guides, local attraction advertisements and maps. through, uses the same guiding elements but without the hope that a direction or physical destination will ever be reached. These three works together create a disorienting translation of placement and the process of overcoming obstacles.

Kate Learson will be showing works in which she creates a constant notion of aspiration that, for the artist, has inevitable confinement, or a feeling “limitless in chains.” In a video installation utilizing sculptural objects as well as the less confined medium of a fog machine she creates a work in which a tiger is in the act of leaping through hoops, however frozen in motion the tiger never makes its way back to the ground and away from his trick. Her other works will also playfully, yet profoundly discuss the way in which certain systems can hinder beauty and experience due to there inexplicable dimension. This is the case in a series of diagrammatic posters in which Learson has created false and seemingly nonsensical transportation maps similar to bus routes or train schedules, as a contribution to Siobhan Feehan’s work through.

“If you have ever sat in front of a blank sheet of paper you know what a soulless bitch she can be.” Vannessa Goglietino created a series of ‘collages’ for this exhibition titled “left for dead”. In a limited and somewhat post collegiate anxious state Goglietino turned to a more basic level of artistic practice. Extracted from vintage encyclopedias, magazines, and anything that had plenty of visual information Goglietino began to assemble her “left for dead” series. As there are only two or three images in each collage and each work lacks a title the work holds a visual simplicity. Though, each collage has the capability to create a narrative, create a dichotomy, and perhaps tell a joke. It is this process of revelation she has left in the mind of the viewer. Much of the imagery employed by the artist seems to be unremembered or frankly outdated to a point without reference. Both in process and in existence there is a quiet anxiety, while simultaneously it is the very creation and finalization of the work that establishes hope and revitalization.

Park Myers, from the position of Artistic Director and Curator at SSAC, and from the view point of Diagrammatic Director of MONTECARLO, will be engaging in the exhibition as an organizer and designer. While his role exists less in the exhibition of his own artwork, he will be including three new works that explore the psychological and physical understanding of spatial experience. In addition he will be exhibiting 1 work of appropriated material that was given as a gift to the collection of MONTECARLO which can be seen as a title work referencing the manifesto and scope of the collective.

Collaborative works created in Steamboat Springs will include site specific works that engage the gallery and historical space that is the Eleanor Bliss Center for the Arts at the Depot, a community bake sale benefiting SSAC, and a form of a ‘tourist information center’ stimulated by Feehan’s through with contributions from MONTECARLO. This will be space in which the public can peruse, take, and purchase a wide array of materials (small works, maps, readings, mix cd’s, etc.) that are mined from the artistic practices of MONTECARLO.

For more information on these artists, our artist members, and the Steamboat Springs Arts Council please visit steamboatspringsarts.com or call 970-879-9008. The Steamboat Springs Arts Council is a 501 c (3) organization.