Press release
Red Brick Center for the Arts kicks off public art pilot on July 26
Artist Ana María Hernando presents a site-specific installation at Rubey Park and Sister Cities Plaza
Aspen, CO – The Red Brick Center for the Arts (RBCA) is thrilled to announce the pilot program of the city of Aspen’s Public Art Plan with the launch of My Longing Doesn’t Quiet / Mi añoranza no se calla by artist and 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellow Ana María Hernando.
The site-specific installation opens at Rubey Park and Sister Cities Plaza in downtown Aspen on Friday, July 26.
The RBCA welcomes visitors to a visual and auditory experience — both sculptural works and poems written and recorded by the artist in English and Spanish — while visiting the transit hub, waiting for a bus, picking up a WE-cycle or passing through the Cooper Avenue pedestrian mall.
The public artwork is free for viewing 24/7; it runs through Sept. 15.
“I find inspiration in the beauty that surrounds us and in the determination and buoyancy of others,” Hernando said. “The medium for this speaking is textiles.” Sarah Roy, RBCA executive director, said the city is honored to feature Ana María Hernando and share her work with the community.
“Through her ebullient work, Ana María invites viewers to experience joy and reminds us of our capacities for kindness and resilience,” Roy said. “Her installation also sparks reflection on our relationship to the natural world, as expressed through her material choice of tulle fabric, which will change shape and mood with the weather. The themes of universal human experience and our connection to the natural environment resonate with Aspen Public Art's mission to celebrate community building and the surrounding natural beauty.” To launch the new Aspen Public Art Plan, the RBCA commissioned an artist to create and install a work of public art and community engagement serving local residents, transit riders, and visitors at Rubey Park Transit Center in downtown Aspen.
The criteria were: create a bilingual project that celebrates the diverse community of transit users; be participatory in nature; and add visual art to the Transit Center area. Following a public call for artists and RFQ process, the commission was awarded to multidisciplinary artist Hernando, an Argentine/U.S. painter and sculptor known for her monumental installations made of tulle — a soft, lightweight netting fabric — transforming the traditional feminine textile into organic and abstract sculptures in built and natural environments.
In the artist statement for her recent public art installation at Madison Square Park in New York, she said: “Installing tulle sculptures outside brings the work in full conversation with the elements, to be fluid amid the inevitable changes, with a sense of surrender and curiosity about how the work might be transformed. It opens a true relationship with the will of the outdoors. For me, this is the most vulnerable part of the project, and its beauty and wildness.”
Hernando centers her work – including the sculptures and poems of My Longing Doesn’t Quiet / Mi añoranza no se calla – on the notion of abundance, representing “the unstoppable force that transforms living things and moves them forward.” Her joyful accumulations of tulle, with their innate responsiveness to color and light, invite conversations: with the vibrant blues and greens of Aspen’s summer, with the natural world, and, she hopes, with one another. For the Aspen project, Hernando has created a dynamic piece that responds not only to the Rubey Park facility and nearby Sister Cities Plaza, but also to Aspen’s colors, light and diverse community. The project consists of four parts:
● Two tulle sculptures at Rubey Park:
○ A 70-inch diameter disk over the south entrance of the transit center
○ A 60-foot ribbon that hovers over the bench seating on the south side of the facility
● Three tulle “clouds” mounted on poles at Sister Cities Plaza, ranging from 5 to 9 feet in diameter
● Eight poems written and recorded by the artist in English and Spanish, which can be listened to on mobile devices via QR codes on posters throughout the sites (linking to www.redbrickaspen.com beginning July 26) At the heart of this project — and all of Hernando’s artmaking — is this intention, which relates directly to the use of abundance in her work.
“We are thirsty for a wild kindness, desperately in need of simple beauties, to be nurtured with goodness, to awaken from darkness,” she said. “We may move through our world with an anxiety for endings, yet as I consider this installation, I hope it can inspire us to stay nourished by life’s force, to not abandon dreams, to remain graceful in the heart and innocent enough to fall in love.”
My Longing Doesn’t Quiet / Mi añoranza no se calla is presented by the Red Brick Center for the Arts and the Aspen Public Art Plan, in partnership with the city of Aspen Transportation Department and the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority and with in-kind support from Stutsman Gerbaz Earthmoving. A portion of this installation — the three clouds at Sister Cities Plaza — first appeared as To Let the Sky Know / Dejar que el cielo sepa, which was originally commissioned by Madison Square Park Conservancy, New York, and was first exhibited in Madison Square Park.
About the artist:
Born in Argentina, Colorado-based artist Ana María Hernando is a multidisciplinary artist, a painter and a sculptor who loves fabrics, threads and words. In addition to the 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellowship, she was the 2020 Prix Henry Clews in Sculpture awarded by La Napoule Art Foundation, with a one-year residency and solo major show at their Château in France. Other solo exhibitions include MCA Denver; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; Oklahoma Contemporary; CU Art Museum with a catalog; Marfa Contemporary; Denver Botanic Gardens; and Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.
Her work was included in Narrative Threads at the Moody Arts Center, Houston in 2023. In 2018, filmmaker Amie Knox released Undomesticated, a documentary about her work. She was the 2022-2023 S*Park Resource Artist at Denver’s RedLine Contemporary Art Center.
Nominated by Nora Burnett Abrams, executive director of MCA Denver, she represents Colorado in the 2024 Women to Watch exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. She received the First Prize for the Biennial of the Americas 2021.
In 2023, thanks to a Boedecker Path to Excellence Grant and a Boulder Arts Commission Community Grant, she presented Making a Mountain, an evolving empowering performative installation with the community at Dairy Art Center, Colorado. Madison Square Park Conservancy commissioned her for a solo show, To Let the Sky Know / Dejar que el cielo sepa, to inaugurate the twentieth anniversary of their public art program in January of 2024.
More can be found at www.redbrickaspen.com.
Red Brick Center for the Arts has been Aspen’s creative hub since 1994, supporting a thriving arts scene and offering opportunities for art-making and other creative engagement. The art center features a gallery with rotating exhibitions, youth and adult art classes, resident artist studios, nonprofit working spaces, and free public events. Red Brick believes through creative expression, collaborations, and shared experiences a community can thrive. More information can be found at www.redbrickaspen.com.
In development since 2022, the Aspen Public Art Plan is the City of Aspen’s vision, goals, and best practices for incorporating art into our public spaces. The mission is to create community by connecting people to each other and to place through art experiences that build upon Aspen’s legacy of innovation, creativity and spirited independence. More information can be found at www.redbrickaspen.com/aspen-public-art-plan.
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For more information, please contact:
Sarah Roy, Executive Director, Red Brick Center for the Arts
Phone: 970-366-2579
Email: Sarah.roy@aspen.gov
Carolyn Sackariason, Communications Coordinator
Phone: 970-319-2791
Email: carolyn.sackariason@aspen.gov