Exhibition Opening: Sticks & Stones Public Reception

Sticks and Stones opens June 15 at Heights Arts and is on view through July 29. This summer exhibition showcases the amazing relationship between artist and nature. Contributors include Andy Curlowe, Ryan Dewey, Jeanetta Ho, Kevin Kautenburger, Steven Mastroianni, Freeland Southard, and Olga Ziemska.

Curator Bill Schubert described his thought process behind the exhibition’s title: “Humankind’s relationship with sticks and stones is fundamental. Sticks and stones were our first tools, our first weapons, and the materials we built our first dwellings of. All over the world and for thousands of years, people have been using stones to grind grain into flour and then baking their bread over burning sticks. The history of art also begins with sticks and stones. The first known drawings were drawn on the stone walls of the Lascaux caves (1700–1500 BC). What did these ancient ancestors use to mark these stone walls? Sticks? The giant heads of Easter Island (1200–1499). The great totem poles of the native North Americans (1700s to present). And eventually the work of the Land Artists and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970). Whether totally transformed, like the massive stone that Michelangelo turned into David (1501–1504), or not transformed at all as with Andy Goldsworthy’s Oak Branches (1990), a piece that consists of painstakingly arranged branches that are otherwise unaltered, sticks and stones are the stuff of art. These seven great regional artists demonstrate that eternal truth.”