STUDIO FOR ARTS + WORKS
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
& STATEMENTS
Learn more about SAW and its current and
past resident artists at sawcarbondale.com
or follow on Facebook and Instagram @sawstudio
LEAH AEGERTER
Leah Aegerter is an artist working in object-based sculpture and installation. She lives and works in Carbondale, CO, and spends much of her free time exploring the mountains and deserts of the American West on foot and raft. Using a combination of digital fabrication techniques and traditional processes in materials such as wood and steel, her work investigates her relationship to landscape and intimacy with material.
Leah received a BFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2017. In 2022 she was named an Aspen Art Museum Artist Fellow. She has participated in the National Park Service residency program at Grand Canyon through Grand Canyon Conservancy.
@leahaegerter
ERIC ANGUS
Eric was born and raised in Aspen. He received a BFA in Integrated Arts from The University of Colorado at Boulder, and an MFA in Studio Arts from The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC. He runs anthropocene skateboards and angus studio out of his studio space at SAW. anthropocene skateboards is a low impact skateboard company, focusing on hand shaped boards finished with ecologically conscious products, rather than toxic lacquers. angus studio focuses on design, fabrication, and installation, producing objects and furniture from concrete and wood, as well as providing art handling, installation, and consultation.
@anthropocene_skateboards
@angus_studio
LARRY COHEN
Larry, a Colorado Native, developed a love for pottery studying with Toshiko Takaezu while earning an Economics Degree at Princeton University. Business School, a Commercial Career and Family delayed a return to Ceramics until moving full time to the Roaring Fork Valley in 2006. Locating in Carbondale and guided by Alleghany Meadows and Sam Harvey I was introduced to Anderson Ranch and Doug Casebeer becoming a Workshop Junky. Having a studio space at and joining the SAW Community provides me the opportunity to make Ceramics to go out into the world.
Namaste
BRIAN COLLEY
Brian has been the Gallery Manager at Carbondale Arts since the fall of 2014 and enjoys working with and meeting new artists in the Roaring Fork Valley and beyond. He also co-hosts the weekly "Express Yourself" radio program on KDNK, as part of the Carbondale Creative District. Brian is an independent artist and has had a studio at SAW since 2013, he co-founded the Roaring Fork Drawing Club in 2017 which still meets weekly, and has been an active member of the Carbondale Public Arts Commission since 2020. Brian enjoys playing ukulele, the singing saw, and his grandfather’s violin, plus Nordic skiing in winter and pickleball and river trips in summer.
@brian.colley
LISA ELLENA
Lisa moved to the Roaring Fork valley in 2010 to participate in the artist-in-residence program at the Carbondale Clay Center, and set up her studio first at the old SAW location on Euclid Street. The new space on Buggy Circle provides the perfect environment for her to produce functional ceramics and encaustic paintings.
Lisa has been teaching ceramics at CMC Aspen since 2015, and also teaches periodically at the Carbondale Clay Center. She earned her MFA at San Diego State University, and BFA in River Falls, Wisconsin. Lisa’s recent solo exhibitions have been at the ArtShare Gallery in Glenwood Springs, and at Franklin College in Indiana. Her work can be found regularly at the Carbondale Arts shop known as the Artique in the Launchpad, the Carbondale Clay Center sales gallery, or at SAW.
CLARISSA FORTIER
Clarissa Fortier is a landscape painter whose work reflects a decade of exploring the rocky landscapes of Colorado and eastern Utah. An avid rock climber, she paints the places in which she climbs. From the sandstone cliffs of Bears Ears National Monument to the deep abyss of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, her paintings exist in an ongoing dialogue of the importance of conserving wild places.
Clarissa grew up in New York City; but it was her summers in Bar Harbor, Maine, that led her to love wild open and undeveloped landscapes. She attended Oberlin College in Ohio, where she studied studio art and environmental studies. Upon graduating, she moved to California and then to western Colorado, during which she pursued opportunities as an environmental educator for youth, as well as artist-in-residence stays in northern California and Zion National Park.
Clarissa strives to make paintings that are about more than the aesthetic beauty of a landscape. Painting can be a way to draw attention to a place or a subject, calling it out as significant in more than one way. One of her recent series uses images from various wildfires throughout Colorado and blows them up into large-scale paintings, abstracting images of smoke plumes and fiery skies. Paintings do not exist in a vacuum; but rather, can occupy a space where landscape beauty can come into dialogue with ever-present environmental issues today.
@thepaintedlandscape
KAITLYN GETZ OZMINKOWSKI
Kaitlyn Getz Ozminkowski is an artist living in Carbondale, Colorado and working for artist Allegheny Meadows as well as the Artstream Nomadic Gallery. She holds a BFA from Ohio University and a Post-Baccalaureate from Pennsylvania State University.
Before moving to Colorado she was previously a Program Assistant at the Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Maine as well as an Educational Assistant at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. Her work has been exhibited nationally as well as internationally at the International Ceramics Studio in Hungary.
She can now be found at the Studio for Arts + Works, inside the Artstream, or out climbing rock and ice.
kaitlyngetz.com
VANESSA GILBERT MEREDITH
Vanessa is owner of Modern West Floral Co, a small cut flower farm located in Silt, Colorado. She grew up in Kettering, Ohio and received her Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. She received an ASLA Honor Award for her thesis, Homegrown: A Residential Guide to Edibility and has practiced landscape design in Tucson, AZ and the Roaring Fork Valley. She also has a Permaculture Design Certificate from the Permaculture Institute and studied under Scott Pittman. She spent 3 seasons studying and working at Sustainable Settings Ranch and has experience in grass fed dairy production and regenerative vegetable production. She combines her design background, plant knowledge and farming experiences to grow and create floral designs that reflect the seasonal and native aesthetic of Colorado.
Artist Statement:
I want to be like a bee that helps share the beauty and bounty of flowers and plants. Beauty has already been created; we are just the hands that help assemble and spread it. We want each arrangement to be a slice of a season, capturing the bounty of the moment.
modernwestfloral.com
JIM HARRIS
"I guess I’ll have more time for art now," I tried joking as paramedics lifted the backboard. For a decade I’d been making my living in the mountains, first as a hawk biologist, then teaching wilderness skills, then traveling the world documenting expeditions. But now I was on the way to a hospital in Chilean Patagonia and I couldn’t feel or move anything below my sternum. My vertebra had been crushed and I was paralyzed.
In the years since that accident I’ve experienced an improbable rebound. I progressed from hospital bed to wheelchair to walker to crutches to cane. As recovery slowed, my focus shifted from regaining mobility to rebuilding a sense of identity and purpose. Where my attention once pointed outward towards incredible places and the people, I’ve had to learn to turn that observation inward. That inner terrain is convoluted, rugged as any place stamped in a passport.
Topography of the self is almost inscrutable. Weather builds and breaks, casting shadows over the range. Storms give the landscape scale and depth as shadows slide over folded terrain.
@perpetualweekend
CHRIS HASSIG
Since I was a kid I’ve had trouble holding a pencil and not using it. One thing leads to another. I ended up making some pretty big drawings and started calling myself an artist. Maps of imaginary places, close investigations of grass lawns, abstractions of landscape, geology and atmosphere–I have shown much of this work in Carbondale Arts exhibitions. I’m interested in too many things to stick to a “brand”, but viewers might often identify a distinct hand and propensity for hidden detail. Although drawing is the foundation of my practice, I am open to defining much of my life as an artistic opportunity whether that be in printmaking, architecture, skiing, dancing, writing, musical exploration, involvement with town governance, or other pursuits.
I received a B.A. in Architecture and Environmental Studies from Middlebury College in 2009 and apprenticed in printmaking at Mixit Print Studio in Somerville, MA over a number of years between 2012 and 2019. I was an artist in residence at Anderson Ranch in 2016. I was on the KDNK Board of Directors from 2017-2022, including stints as secretary and vice-president. I was elected to the town Board of Trustees in 2022 with a goal to help lead the town’s efforts to protect and nurture the Carbondale Creative District. SAW is dear to me as a tentpole of the Creative District, a true creative community, and a scaffold for supporting artistic expression. In recent years I’ve become less focused on the solitary pursuit of my own artwork and more interested in artmaking and creativity in the context of community.
@chrishassig
REINA KATZENBERGER
Reina, a local artist and designer, is a native of the Roaring Fork Valley. In 2002 she received her BA in Humanities from University of Colorado in Boulder, where she also studied painting, drawing and art theory. After living and doing design work in Los Angeles and New York City for 4 years, she returned to the valley where she now lives and works.
In 2014 she opened the max.ink/project shop in Carbondale and enjoys offering a variety of design and development services now including a full range of letterpress and custom print services. Her work ranges from graphic and digital arts to painting, drawing, print and mixed media installations. The positive and inspiring response from the community not to mention the testimonials from students inspired the move to launch the Shop as a non-profit in 2022.
theprojectshop.org
PAUL KEEFE
Paul Keefe is a conceptually based artist currently living in Glenwood Springs, CO. His drawings, sculptures, and videos are concerned with themes of value, humor, and time. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Colorado State University, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Kansas. In 2017, he participated in the Artist in Residence program at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and was awarded a fellowship from the Aspen Art Museum in 2022.
@meesterpaulkeefe
SIMON KLEIN
Simon Klein is an artist based in Carbondale Colorado. He loves to collaborate with artists and those who don't consider themselves to be artists all the same. His work began with photography in the darkroom but expanded to include many forms of time-based media. He enjoys writing mantras that shouldn't be repeated, baseball, and eating whole cucumbers late at night. He has a radio show titled Us in Flux Sunday nights from 9–11PM on KDNK where he often does live mixing. Simon thanks Carbondale Arts and anyone and everyone for the
opportunity to be able to do things like this.
@psymonspine
SAVANNA LABAUVE
BIO
Savanna is a southern gal from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she grew up behind the counter of her parents’ retail store filled with local art, imported furniture, home decor, and more. After finishing her BFA in Ceramics and Painting from Louisiana State University, she moved from cajun country to the Rocky Mountains of Carbondale, CO where she was an Artist in Residence at the Carbondale Clay Center 2017-2019. Currently, she is focused on her studio practice at Studio for Arts & Works in Carbondale, CO where she continues to investigate the power of multiples, explore material combinations, and develop a language of mark-making.
STATEMENT
Pulling from my background in painting and drawing, my current work focuses on the power of multiples: pattern, rhythm, and repetition. Ranging from sculptures and installations made from copious amounts of ceramic parts to embellished functional ware, my exploration is centered on components as marks. All together, the multitude of "marks" make up a drawing or mural through physical pattern and surface design.
@savannalabauve
ALEXANDRA MALKIN
A graduate of the prestigious Sotheby’s Institute of Art where she obtained a Masters in Contemporary Art, Malkin also holds a BS in Design and Merchandising from Drexel University, PA and is a trained metalsmith and ceramic artist. In addition to her artworks Malkin is working on a jewelry and eco loungewear fashion collection, both of which take their creative cue from her surrealist signature and knowledge of art history.
Malkin grew up in New Jersey and began creating and designing from a very early age, the artist spent her lunch breaks in the art studio at high school drawing, creating pottery and designing jewelry which she sold to friends out of her backpack. This inherent creativity, entrepreneurial spirit and a passion to work with her hands and not be confined to a desk that has shaped her success in the art, fashion and design world.
@house.of.zandar
ALLEGHANY MEADOWS
Biography:
Alleghany Meadows received his BA from Pitzer College, Claremont, CA, and his MFA from Alfred University. He studied with Takashi Nakazato, Karatsu, Japan, received a Watson Fellowship for a year field study of potters in Nepal, and was an artist-in-residence at Anderson Ranch. He has presented lectures, workshops and been a visiting artist at art centers and universities nationally and internationally, including Penland, Alfred, Kansas City Art Institute, RISD, Archie Bray, Haystack and UGA Cortona, Italy. He exhibits widely and is the founder of Artstream Nomadic Gallery and Studio for Arts and Works (SAW). His work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Long Beach Museum of Art, and the Huntington Museum of Art, WV, where he was honored with the Walter Gropius Master Award.
Artist Statement:
My investigation is a search for beauty. It is an active search for emotion, feeling, content and form in objects intended to be held in the hand. My work is intimately connected through size, form and surface to the human body, to culinary rituals, to history and to our culture. I wish to make work which inspires creative decisions in actions such as preparing a soup or arranging a moment for tea.
I am fascinated by ways which my work can affect time and experience. Perception of the world is an evolving process directly linked to experiences. We experience the world through our senses. Memory and my understanding of memory are connected to sensuous experiences. A new cup becomes familiar as I learn its subtleties, its pace and rhythm, its weight and balance when full. Each experience of having tea engages my senses. Through time and use, the cup acquires a patina of memory which reflects back these experiences.
Repetition and rhythm in my studio process are similar to autumn leaves on the forest floor, tracks of a bird in wet sand, ice crystals on a frozen stream -- such patterns, although composed of repetitive elements, continually change without exactly repeating themselves.
@alleghanymeadows
KAZUMICHI NAKAHARA
Japan-born, Seattle-raised, now Carbondale, Co resident. My work is a representation of my upbringing as a graffiti writer since the age of 13, then turned his knowledge towards the abstract with mixed media. Started out as a vandal, visualizing and learning color concepts that provoked the eye as well as paint dripping from tags on a metro bus in Seattle. The exploration of my mediums are same inks and styles I would use when tagging, from dark black inks dripping to ineligible typography. Also of use of manga and comics from 90’s as a background base in the paintings.
I credit my mother Matsuko Nakahara as the artist who has had the most influence on me. Other influences include Yves Kline, Jackson Pollock, Joan Mitchell, Ushio Shinohara, Damien Hirst. Graffiti writers like Dkae, Shane, Kaws and many other as well. Growing up reading and watching cartoons and anime helped me learn About horizon and point of perspective. Biggest accomplishment is a personal exhibition in 2020 at the Vera Project, and doing murals in Chinatown Seattle for "International Model Toys", a small business located in Seattle.
@official_kazumichi
SHAWN O’CONNOR
Shawn’s a photographer. Originally from a small northern Michigan town, he found photography through the nights of the city lights of Detroit. Part self taught, part learning the tricks of the trade while assisting automotive photographers of the Mad Men era. Eventually finding his way to the Roaring Fork Valley in 2001, Shawn found inspiration in the mountain lines. Currently, Shawn works in the commercial and editorial photography fields, and every once in a while finds pretty ideas to photograph.
@shawnocphoto
ALI O’NEAL
Ali is a screen printer, designer and seamstress, and is currently pursuing creative endeavors through her brand, Thimble Fox. She uses her work in serigraphy and textiles as a platform for social and political commentary, and to educate about the inequities of the textile fast fashion industry.
She grew up in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, spending her days meandering through the overgrown Christmas tree farm and catching bluegill from the pond. Her first creative forays began in elementary school, where she painted portraits of her second cousin's ephemeral partners. She attended Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota, where she graduated with a degree in Environmental Studies and Spanish. Thereafter while in the Peace Corps in Ecuador, she melded her affinity for creativity and the environment, and painted a series of environmentally themed community murals. After nearly a decade working as an Environmental Educator, she transitioned into creating full-time.
@thimblefox
RAI OMRI
Rai Omri (they/she) is based Carbondale, Colorado and currently works as Community Programs Coordinator at the Aspen Art Museum. Originally from St. Louis, she graduated from Colorado College in 2016 and has since studied at The Art Students League of New York and Gage Academy of Art in Seattle, where she studied alla prima portraiture and figure drawing and painting from life. In 2020, she completed a residency at Elsewhere Studios in Paonia, Colorado, and later joined their Board of Directors. She enjoys working in charcoal, graphite, and oil paint, as well as various printmaking methods, and looks forward to experimenting with other media in 2023.
@raiomri
NORI PAO
Nori Pao is an interdisciplinary artist based in Colorado whose work explores themes of time, memory, identity, the unconscious, and our relationship to the intangible. The foundation of Pao’s practice lies in developing ideas through intense material exploration and collaboration. Employing a variety of methods and mediums—ceramics, sculpture, drawing, storytelling, photography, and video—Pao uses landscape, location, and ritual to reference the self.
@nori_pao
ANDREW ROBERTS-GRAY
Andrew Roberts-Gray is an artist whose layered work references a number of discreet cultural
traditions including science fiction, the history of the painted landscape, and the development of
the thinking machine. His studio is located at SAW, (Studio for Arts and Works) in Carbondale,
Colorado. He enjoys the art mentoring process as well as collaborating with other artists. His
studio work involves practicing brushwork, material experimentation, printmaking, the
metamorphosis of mistakes, and research. Mr. Roberts-Gray is represented by Michael Warren
Contemporary in Denver, Colorado. He lives with artist Annette Roberts-Gray in Carbondale,
Colorado.
@andrewrobertsgray
MILA ROSSI
I’m a mixed media artist living in Carbondale, Colorado. I photograph textures in nature—lichen and moss growing on rocks along mountain trails and streams, for example—then transfer the photographic images onto canvas and layer the images with heavy body acrylic paint.
I find my inspiration in nature. My artistic process begins by looking for interesting textures, colors and patterns. I capture a magnified image and, up close, the familiar becomes new, abstract and magical. Lichen or moss transforms into an aerial view of a forest or appears like an underwater landscape. With the richness of paint, the images come alive with tactile layers and amplified colors.
Visit me in my studio at SAW or online at artbymilarossi.com.
TRAE STORY
Bio:
Trae Story (b. 1995) is from St. Paul, Minnesota. In 2018 he received his BFA from St. Cloud State University. From 2018-2019, Trae attended Montana State University as a special student, and attended Colorado State University as a post-baccalaureate in from 2019-2020. Trae was a resident artist at the Carbondale Clay Center from 2020-2022, and currently resides in Carbondale, Colorado.
Statement:
I am interested in making art without prescriptive expectations. My artwork serves as a corollary to censorship, by seeking to change the way people understand an issue or situation for the purpose of changing their actions and expectations. I attempt to circumvent this problem by avoiding initial confrontation, which happens through multidimensional transmutation of my upbringing, cartoons, folktales, and pop culture into abstracted objects. My work references issues and preconceptions about the nature of black people. Black people are lauded for their perceived tendencies and natural physical abilities far more than their intellect and diligence – a recurring theme in the perception of the black body. Stained porcelain, which is known historically for its whiteness, is used with molds like a thick paint. Molds of found objects, hand carved models, and 3D modeled printed objects allow me to repeat forms and symbols that emphasize importance, progression, or redundancy. I am curious about the idea of the "takeaway", where the viewer can walk away with a fragment of a larger whole, like a physical adage. I utilize the ceramic ability to mimic other materials, and take fragments from source material to deceive the viewer and trap them into a dialogue about the topics of my work.
@traestory
COLE SYMANSKI
I stumbled upon ceramics while plodding toward graduation in high school. Inspiration from the work of Tom Coleman convinced me to try hard despite initial struggles on the potter’s wheel.\
Ceramics has been an on-again off-again affair for me since -- career and other hobby pursuits often take precedence.
We Carbondale artists are extremely fortunate to have a space like SAW (and potters the Carbondale Clay Center) to work. This is especially true for my work. When making, I am most engaged with one-off works made on the wheel in multiple pieces and subsequently altered (carved, handles added, sculpted). This kind of work is referred to as “Thrown and Altered”.
My process involves the following: 1) 2 initial thrown pieces that are relatively symmetrical. The second is made without a bottom. After it has set up somewhat, this second piece is inverted and “stacked” on top the first. 2) The two pieces are joined securely on the wheel. 3) The volume of the now-stacked form is filled out by “shaping” on the wheel. 4) Sculptural aspects are added to the lowest regions before the clay becomes too dry…
@skeemakes
CATE TALLMADGE
"I have always been a maker. Whether it's painting, drawing, weaving, embroidery,
botanical sculpture, cooking, or picture framing I am always working on something. I
get antsy if my hands aren’t busy, if there isn’t paint under my nails, pencil shavings in
my hair or stray threads stuck to my clothes.”
Born and raised on the Western Slope of Colorado, Cate Tallmadge spent most of her formative years in idyllic Carbondale. In the early 2000s a big city life and art school beckoned. She moved to Chicago and enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating in 2006 with a BFA in Fiber and Material Studies. She spent the next seven years in Chicago. In 2013 she could no longer ignore the siren song of the mountains and was soon Colorado bound. At first the move back home was just going to be a pit stop on the road to some new place, but Carbondale soon became a lasting stop and Cate can’t imagine living and making work in any other place.
Her current practice includes several disparate techniques, particularly handweaving and painting. She continues to work in each media independently but she is also trying to combine these into one cohesive output. She has been experimenting with using her handwoven textiles as grounds for realistic landscape and botanical paintings while selectively preserving areas of the original textile. Pushing the dichotomy between what is perceived as fine art versus craft, and the importance of one over the other.
@ctallm
ADAM TING
Bio
Adam Ting is a half-Chinese farmer and ceramic artist. He has been farming in the RFV for five seasons working for farms such as Wild Mountain Seeds, Two Roots Farm, and began his own farm, Green Boat Gardens, in 2021. He takes a particular interest in cultivating crops relevant to the Chinese diaspora as a means to reclamation. The majority of his ceramic work is based in wheel thrown pottery, continuously refining each component of the pot to subtly influence function. Recently he has been working with locally harvested wild clays and takes joy in existing with a ‘do it yourself’ attitude. He enjoys spicy food, fine tea, and most particularly walking through his gardens eating peas.
Statement
I explore the relationship of objects and sustenance. I am interested in the way that water and food are transformed into libation and a meal. The objects I create and the vegetables I grow search to enhance my communion with the landscape I navigate.
@greenboatgardens
HANK WEAVER
Hank Weaver is a fabricator, designer, and intermittent artist, based in Carbondale, Colorado. He aims to create spaces and objects that prioritize function and ergonomics, while leaving room for form and whimsy. Hank’s designs are typically inspired by salvaged materials. He is intrigued by the secret histories of objects, and takes satisfaction in highlighting the physical marks of their past journeys. While currently focused on the third dimension, Hank is slowly nudging the pendulum back to his first love of oil painting. If not re-organizing his milk crates, Hank can be found in a river, up a creek, or on a couch watching Internet people build things.
MEGAN DENEV WUSSOW
Collection Statement
For the last ten years I have had my design studio at S.A.W. In this time, my growth, my learning, my expansion, my contraction, my setbacks, and my successes have all led me to the human I am today. “Ten Years in Turquoise” is a statement in adornment about my evolution. It is a testament to the commitment I maintain to continuously speaking my truth through my art.
I am grateful for SAW, Alleghany, and all of the other artists, past and present and future, for holding a creative space. I am grateful to Carbondale for connections, community, and HOME.
DeNevDesigns.com