Rosie Carter and David Butler have collaborated and created an exhibit of 2- and 3-dimensional art at Olio restaurant and gallery in Mancos.
About 20 pieces cover the walls, with eye-popping images of carefully painted birds in relationship to marvelous recycled metal pieces. Carefully crafted magpies, road runners, ravens and rare birds find homes in wildly twisted wire and oddly familiar machine parts, the kind of happy accidents artists hope for.
Carter’s recent residency as an artist at Mesa Verde National Park resulted in refined pen and ink drawings, displayed on gravel screens. A landscape close to home becomes a source for new flights of fancy. Are we viewing an explosion of stars, or bees, or as suggested in the title, whispers?
When creative thoughts take flight, shows like this come into being. This is art to be experienced and enjoyed. Butler has a large piece on one wall, that from a distance seems to be a hazy blue sky with a tangle of metal floating across like a piece of farm equipment cast aside in an empty field, a landscape and memory that we all share.
“Careless Wind,” composed with pen and ink, acrylic on paper, baling wire and a found fender, represents the artists’ kit. All these old rusted, painted objects imitate the natural world and become settings for ideas, demonstrations of the reality that as humans we need to make things, we need to have beauty and order in our daily lives. The addition of wired electric lights adds whimsy.
Friends and colleagues at the exhibit opening exchanged comments such as “surprising and imaginative” and exclamations about the “details, the ordered tiles, the beautiful birds.”
Olio is a restaurant – a place we come to eat and enjoy food and wine. We need to digest and process this art as well. The atmosphere at the opening was lively, with people engaged in conversation and with the art on exhibit. We are lucky to have innovative and talented artists such as Rosie Carter and David Butler in our community.
Oilo restaurant is at 114 W. Grand Ave. in Mancos. It is open Tuesday through Saturday at 5 p.m. Reservations are required.
Janet Lever-Wood, of Blue Heron Pottery and Sculpture, is an artist who lives and works near Mancos. She occasionally shows her work at Olio restaurant.