How time was place to wonder… features a selection of works on paper by twenty-two international artists from the collection of JoAnn Gonzalez Hickey. The exhibition highlights the ever-evolving potential of contemporary drawing through a variety of techniques. Paper becomes a space for contemplation and experimentation, where freedom is given form, and ideas are developed and processed. There is a simplicity, immediacy, honesty, playfulness, and vulnerability.

Presented in the Colorado Mountain College Vail Valley research library, a library that has fully embraced the future, replacing stacks of books and dusty pages with the endless offerings of new forms of knowledge production and dissemination, the exhibition reminds us that we have not yet relinquished the tactile and physical tangibility of paper as a material from which to retrieve and relay information. Forced to reconcile our potential future loss of the tangible in our technological age, here we are given a chance to enjoy the palpable surface of paper against the ephemera of the digital image. Contrasting new sources of information consumption with an old source, the exhibition extends notions of perspective beyond the realms of the physically-seen in unpredictable ways, evoking place as both a physical site and as a condition of being. In the act of browsing, allow the creative process at work to be visualized. Find yourself. Lose yourself. Take this as an opportunity to slow down, connect to this moment, and embrace time as a place to wonder…

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The JoAnn Gonzalez Hickey Collection is a significant collection of contemporary works on paper with over 400 international early-to mid-career contemporary artists represented in the collection. While the collection initially focused on abstract works over time it has been extended to challenge traditional notions of drawing. Part of the mission of the collection is to promote a deeper understanding of the nature of works on paper, all the while exploring the question, “what is drawing?”.  SYZYGY has been established utilizing the collection for scholarly investigation. SYZYGY is a curatorial and study platform that extends the collection as a resource available to graduate-level students for research and project development including studies in specific art genre, studio art, poetry, and creative writing, curatorial practice, and neuroscience.

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How time was place to wonder… is curated by Mardee Goff and presented at Colorado Mountain College Vail Valley, Colorado. 

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