Interesting article on Louis Cicotello. I hope some in the CSprings area will take in the exhibit.
http://www.csindy.com/colorado/a-true-human-being/Content?oid=2425099
‘A true human being’ by Bret Wright
Louis Cicotello Retrospective Opening reception Thursday, Feb. 2, 5-8 p.m.; show runs through March 29 GOCA 1420 at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, 1420 Austin Bluffs Pkwy. Free, for more information, call 255-3504 or visit galleryuccs.org
CICOTELLO as MENTOR: Artist Talks All held at GOCA 1420 at 7 p.m. Holly Parker & Kevin Thayer, Monday, Feb. 13 Sean O’Meallie & Andrew Tirado, Thursday, Feb. 23 Jason Chase & Chris Weed, Thursday, March 8 All lectures are free and open to the public with a pre-reception in the gallery lobby starting at 6:30.
Louis Cicotello was never content to stay in one place. As an artist, he created work that shifted and changed over time. As a professor and department chair at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, he was highly involved across campus, often helping design sets for TheatreWorks productions. And when he wasn’t doing all that, he was hiking, climbing and canyoneering.
“It’s really hard to define him simply,” says local artist and friend Sean O’Meallie. “He had a deep impact on so many people. Just being around him sharpened my thinking, by being exposed to the way his brain worked.”
The 70-year-old Cicotello died in a rappelling accident in the mountains of Utah last March. Now, the Galleries of Contemporary Art (GOCA) at UCCS will celebrate Cicotello’s life well-lived with a retrospective, following the late artist’s visions from his first funky and skillful Plexiglas creations of the ’70s, to the subtle political and social narratives of his later collage and sculpture work.
“Louis had a voracious appetite for culture and for looking at human trajectories,” O’Meallie says. He had a knack for picking out patterns in society, but his pieces reflected more bemusement than cynicism. As GOCA curator Daisy McConnell puts it, “There’s a lot of Dada in his work,” referring to the post-World War I “anti-art” movement in protest against the rigidity of the art and literary worlds.
… (article continues at the link)
http://www.csindy.com/colorado/a-true-human-being/Content?oid=2425099
Tom