Art and Art History

For CU �Ǹ�Թ� alumni, art is a family matter

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 17:42:30 +0000

For CU �Ǹ�Թ� alumni, art is a family matter Rachel Sauer Fri, 09/11/2026 - 11:42

Rachel Sauer

In recent exhibits, renowned Colorado artists Tony Ortega and Daniel Salazar explore themes of Chicano experience, historical erasure, memory, mythology and the bonds of family

Tony Ortega and Daniel Salazar did not know each other growing up in Denver. They did not cross paths at the �Ǹ�Թ�, even though many steps on those paths were similar.

They finally met through Denver’s Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, when the organization invited famed Mexican sculptor Francisco Zúñiga to Denver and Salazar and his wife, Maruca, a CU �Ǹ�Թ� MFA alumna, hosted a reception.

Maruca Salazar (left) and Daniel Salazar (right) in a Museo de las Americas gallery with their recently ended exhibit “Accidentally on Purpose – Pasó lo que tenía que pasar” celebrating 50 years of their activism and art. Maruca is a former director of Museo de las Americas. (Photo: Tony Ortega)

“That was really an era that brought artists together,” Salazar says. “And that was really also part of what we were experiencing and practicing at that time, because we were very much directed toward organizing and creating work and creating community, something that continued from our experiences at CU of organizing, working together, creating opportunities to create work and exhibit work and just making that part of our lifestyle.”

So, Ortega and Salazar met, and in that meeting there was recognition—of the inspiration to create, of activism and organizing, of El Movimiento, of art informed and inspired by history and heritage, culture and identity and, perhaps most especially, family.

Always family—in the making of art, in its display, in bonds of both birth and choice that have woven a creative tapestry across decades and been given form in the recently completed exhibit “Accidentally on Purpose – Pasó lo que tenía que pasar” at Museo de las Americas in Denver, celebrating 50 years of Daniel and Maruca Salazar’s activism and art; and in “Tres Voces, Un Corazón,” currently showing at the �Ǹ�Թ� Museum of Contemporary Art.

“Tres Voces, Un Corazón” highlights the work of Ortega, his wife, Sylvia Montero, and their son, Cipriano Ortega. The exhibit, guest curated by Maruca Salazar, in part explores what is passed between generations and how even in families, identity does not have to mean identical.

And in both exhibits, themes of Chicano experience, Indigenous identity, historical erasure, memory, mythology, community and creating home—themes that in many ways began to find form for Salazar and Ortega as young activists and artists at CU �Ǹ�Թ�.

The path to CU �Ǹ�Թ�

Before they began to flourish as artists and activists in the Chicano cultural renaissance that grew in the 1970s, however, Salazar and Ortega were two kids growing up in Denver—six years apart in age but experiencing similar trajectories.

Let the muse move you

Cipriano Ortega and his band Los Lo Los will perform at the �Ǹ�Թ� Museum of Contemporary Art at 6 p.m. Saturday.

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Salazar was born in Denver in 1952 and Ortega moved to the city as a young child from Pecos, New Mexico, and both were Baby Boomers who navigated their Mexican heritage as American boys who loved to run around and play sports and get up to things in neighborhoods where many of the adults acted as auxiliary parents.

Salazar was in one of the first graduating classes from John F. Kennedy High School and studied at Pamona College in California before losing his financial aid and dropping out to pursue work as a real estate photographer. However, “my brother five years older than I was had attended CU, and I used to go and visit him and marvel at what college life was like there. I was very intrigued by the �Ǹ�Թ� scene in those days.”

Ortega, coming up six years later, remembers touring the CU �Ǹ�Թ� campus as a senior at East High School—inspired, in part, by a fascination with the football team’s lauded running back Bobby Anderson.

Even though Salazar and Ortega studied at CU �Ǹ�Թ� several years apart, they were there in the heady 1970s, when Chicano activism was gaining momentum and intensity on campuses across the United States. Both were involved with United Mexican American Students (UMAS) and the El Diario de la Gente student newspaper, and Salazar was an undergraduate student during the time of Los Seis de �Ǹ�Թ�—when, over the course of 48 hours in May 1974, two car bombs killed six people, five of whom were CU �Ǹ�Թ� students or alumni, who were involved in El Movimiento Chicano social justice movement.

Cipriano Ortega (left), Tony Ortega (center) and Sylvia Montero (right) at their “Tres Voces, Un Corazón” exhibit showing through Sunday at the �Ǹ�Թ� Museum of Contemporary Art. (Photo: �Ǹ�Թ� Museum of Contemporary Art)

Not long after the tragedies of those days, Salazar traveled to Xalapa, the capital of Mexico’s Veracruz state, to study. It was a strange time to be away from �Ǹ�Թ�, Salazar recalls.

“The aftermath of Los Seis and other events made things kind of tense, kind of heightened,” he says. “It was a period of a lot of political protest and activity, a lot of activism and organizing, so it was an interesting time to step away from what was happening in �Ǹ�Թ�.”

Several years later, Ortega also studied in Xalapa, a natural progression of his Latin American studies and, in a way, to “see how Mexican I was,” Ortega recalls. “I think both Daniel and I ended up finding out how American we were.”

While studying Spanish, anthropology, history and other subjects, both lived with local families and “really integrated into Mexican society,” Ortega says, experiences that have informed his and Salazar’s artwork in various ways—from occasional experiences of feeling very Mexican in the United States to not feeling Mexican enough in Mexico, to navigating and claiming their Mexican heritage while exploring their Chicano identities. And in Salazar’s case, the time in Xalapa included meeting Maruca, the woman who became his wife.

‘Let the muse move you’

After graduating CU �Ǹ�Թ�—Salazar in communications and Ortega in business Spanish and Latin American studies—both Salazar and Ortega pursued creative careers. Salazar worked in photography, journalism and filmmaking and Ortega, who earned an associate degree in fine art from the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in 1982 and his MFA from CU �Ǹ�Թ� in 1995, became a professor of fine art at Regis University.

And they both married artists and grew their artistic reputations in Denver’s vibrant arts community, so it’s only natural that art has been a language and lineage of family.

As organizers and activists, their art explores themes including immigration, gender roles, historical erasure and identity. And it has never shied away from topics that aren’t easy to face. “Accidentally on Purpose – Pasó lo que tenía que pasar” featured Salazar’s work Grand Poobah and Office Fairy Cut Through Red Tape, a digital photograph mural featuring a 1941 photograph of federal office workers to whom Salazar added a crown and fairy wings.

The piece was controversial enough when it was hung in Denver’s Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building that even The Denver Post editorialized against it on behalf of aggrieved government employees.

“Government employees didn’t like it very much,” Salazar recalls, “but I think most people’s experiences are with the red tape and feeling like they can’t do anything about it.”

“It’s meant as satire,” Maruca Salazar says.

And “Tres Voces, Un Corazón” includes Ortega’s work El Grito de Guadalupe, which portrays Our Lady of Guadalupe in a pose reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Beneath her on the floor is a sculpture of baby Jesus in a cage.

“To be meaningful, art should represent and reflect the time we’re in,” Ortega explains, adding that art also is a medium for exploring and understanding identity.

“Tres Voces, Un Corazón” also includes Montero’s series “Gaan”—collages showing different aspects of southwest Native dance and reflecting both her Apache heritage and her training with the Martha Graham Dance Company.

Tony Ortega notes that while each of the three artists in the family work on different levels of their Denver home, and while each has a strong individual artistic identity, the threads of family are woven throughout “Tres Voces, Un Corazón.”

In Cipriano Ortega’s installation Lo Lo House, in which he and his band Los Lo Los will perform at 6 p.m. Saturday, one of his poems scrolls down a wall: “To build a house, to build a home. To build a house. To build a home. Let the muse move you.”

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Maruca Salazar and Daniel Salazar, American Me, 2000, mixed-media installation (folkloric dresses and photography)

Tony Ortega, El Vez, 2019, etching and watercolor

Daniel Salazar (left) and Maruca Salazar (center) with Daniel's work Grand Poobah and Office Fairy Cut Through Red Tape.

Sylvia Montero, They Came by Ships, monotype and collage

Daniel Salazar, Westside Dreams (National Chicano Dance Theater), 1979, print on fabric

(Left to right) Tony Ortega, Anton, 2021, digital photo on papel amate; Tony Ortega, Cipriano, 2024, digital photo on papel amate; Tony Ortega, Cheyenne, 2021, digital photo on papel amate

In recent exhibits, renowned Colorado artists Tony Ortega and Daniel Salazar explore themes of Chicano experience, historical erasure, memory, mythology and the bonds of family.

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Top image: The pieces (left to right) Anton, Cipriano and Cheynne by Tony Ortega

Two artists walk into a palazzo…

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 23:07:55 +0000

Two artists walk into a palazzo… Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/31/2026 - 17:07

Rachel Sauer

CU �Ǹ�Թ� alumna Martha Russo and Professor Emeritus George Rivera currently are displaying art pieces in Venice, Italy, in an exhibit organized by the European Cultural Centre

Let’s wander, as the title of Martha Russo’s work might advise, to a bright, airy space in the Palazzo Mora in Venice, Italy.

There, on a short white platform, is “nomos (cube Venezia),” Russo’s three-dimensional piece sculpted from porcelain, paper clay, wood, metal and paper, among other materials. Its title is derived from the Greek root for “nomad” and can be translated as “to wander” and “to wonder.”

There are a lot of things to feel and question while observing this piece—in person or from every angle in photographs. Is it reaching for the viewer? Sending shoots and tendrils toward them? Does a brief glance from the corner of the eye reveal that it’s actually moving? Are its thousands of pieces a living ecosystem?

George Rivera (left) and Martha Russo (right) outside the Palazzo Mora in Venice, Italy, where their works are featured in the Personal Structures – Confluences exhibit on display through Nov. 22.

In a gallery next door, a different experience: 16 two-dimensional, 11x14 pieces tiled on a wall in an array of earth tones that speak of the Amazonian plants from which the inks were made.

And in the images themselves, a journey through the liminal space between consciousness and unconsciousness, shapes and figures whose meaning may depend on the viewer, giving rise to the title “Mutations: Subconscious Reality Imagery.” Artist George Rivera writes, “These images appear as figurations resembling reality but manifest themselves as completely different in form and color.”

Both pieces are featured in the Personal Structures – Confluences exhibit on display through Nov. 22 in Venice, organized by the European Cultural Centre (ECC) and held concurrently with the famed Venice Biennale international art exhibition. And both pieces have long roots that stretch to the �Ǹ�Թ�.

Russo (MFA’95), whose piece has been shortlisted for the ECC Awards that will be announced in November, is an art and art history alumnus who has shown around the world and who also teaches an interdisciplinary CU �Ǹ�Թ� course called Art, Design and Engineering, in which a cohort of upper-level art, environmental design and engineering students learn about sculpture and public installation.

Rivera is a professor emeritus of art and art history—a sociologist by training who pivoted to art and in 1996 became one of the founders, with several CU �Ǹ�Թ� colleagues, of the Artnauts collective, whose more than 220 participating artists, including Russo, have worked across art, activism, social practice, peace building and global issues around the world.

As for how their work came to be in a centuries-old palazzo in Venice, well, the art world is small, and it started with an interview.

Enjoying the physical challenges of art

In 2020, writer Ann Landi interviewed Russo for Sculpture magazine. By that point, Russo had grown an international reputation as an artist—showing around the world, known for large-scale pieces that blend media, particularly ceramics, and incorporate abstract shapes that reference the natural world, animal and human forms and fantastical imagery and imaginings.

"I really enjoy the physical challenges of my work,” Russo told Landi. “I also like the science behind it. I was a developmental biology and psychology major, and I had my eye on going to medical school or becoming a psychologist. I was drawn to the materiality and the chemistry of clay.

"nomos (cube Venezia)” by Martha Russo "explores how the abstraction of form, material and gravity couple with a cacophony of color and texture to generate openings for prolonged investigations and enticing a flood of interpretations," Russo explains. (Photo: Matteo Losurdo)

“I loved the idea that you could make clay do different things because of the molecular structure, and that structure made perfect sense to me because I was looking at molecules and thinking about how things generate in the body. The chemistry behind the glazes was also fascinating. To this day, I am drawn to those mysteries and all the infinite possibilities.”

Part of Russo’s interest in the mechanics of the body, she says, arose from a career-ending injury that took her from 1984 U.S. Olympic field hockey hopeful to a Princeton senior recovering from surgery and increasingly drawn to the physical nature of sculpture and ceramics.

In 1991, she and her husband, Joe Ryan, a CU �Ǹ�Թ� professor of environmental engineering, moved from New Jersey to �Ǹ�Թ�, and several years later Russo began her MFA studies. She taught for 20 years at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, growing her art practice and reputation at the same time and becoming known for her large-scale pieces incorporating hundreds or thousands of pieces that allude to natural forms.

Then came the interview in Sculpture magazine—not her first, but it was the one that caught the eye of ECC curators. They contacted her and asked if she’d be interested in showing in Venice, and they also looked into her colleagues and collaborators, including Rivera.

“Obviously you say yes when you get an invitation like that,” Russo says with a laugh. She immediately began envisioning what she would create for Personal Structures – Confluences.

Celebrate the Artnauts!

The exhibit "Rhizome: Origins" opens with a community celebration Thursday, Sept. 3, and honors 30 years of Artnauts.

Learn more

“I was thinking, ‘I’m going to make a cube, but I want to have four very different experiences on each side,” she explains. “Venice is the most visually stunning place, full of texture, full of color, full of exuberance, so I took all the greatest hits from all past iterations of ‘nomos’ and made a piece that’s very vibrant, colorful, lots of movement with the pieces. I also asked if I could have natural light in the gallery, and they really gave George and me such great spaces.

“They did tell me that outside the (gallery) window I would see a very recently renovated pink and white palazzo and they sent me a picture, so I made a bunch of pink pieces that, when you’re looking at my piece, you see that palazzo. A lot of the time you put up your work and you’re like, ‘I wish I’d done this, I wish I’d done that.’ This is one of the few times I said, ‘I think I just did exactly what I wanted to do,’ and I couldn’t be happier, honestly.”

In “Mutations: Subconscious Reality Imagery” by George Rivera, "images appear as figurations resembling reality but manifest themselves as completely different in form and color," Rivera says.

‘This is reality’

For Rivera, the road to Venice began in Glidden, Texas, where he grew up in poverty with a Mexican mother and a Mexican-American father. He was the first in his family to attend college, where he was able to name and study the disparities and injustices he’d grown up seeing. He pursued sociology, he says, because he wanted to understand racism.

After coming to CU �Ǹ�Թ� as a sociology faculty member, Rivera transferred to the Department of Art and Art History after disagreeing with how department decisions were being made, he says. He had studied Chicano art, but says he truly began to understand art as a force for activism, social practice and peace building when he was immersed in it.

In 1996, Rivera and colleagues Garrison Roots, Beth Krensky, Dennis Dalton and Luis Valdovino founded Artnauts, a collective that evolved over time into an artistic force that brings art into places fractured by violence, disaster or upheaval, Rivera explains. Artnauts shows frequently are comprised of two-dimensional prints that can fit into a suitcase on their way to places like Ukraine, Palestine, Colombia or the demilitarized zone at the North Korea-South Korea border.

“It’s the idea that art can be a language all people speak,” Rivera says.

In fact, the idea for “Mutations: Subconscious Reality Imagery” has as one of its roots an experience Rivera had while in Palestine with Artnauts: “We go to places where there’s been social trauma, where things have happened that represent the inhumanity of man against man. So, I was there staying at The Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem that is owned by Bansky, and it’s located right next to the Aida Refugee Camp.

“While I was there, Israeli forces shot gas cannisters into the camp, and I was inside the hotel and hotel personnel told me, ‘Don’t go outside because your lungs are going to burn and eyes are going to burn.' So, I went back to my room, and I had olive oil made by Palestinians and wine made by Palestinians, and I always bring some paper and some brushes with me, so I used the wine and olive oil and started making images. That’s when the idea occurred to me, to use something that’s indigenous to the area to paint with.”

So, when he later was in Colombia at El Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación in Bogotá and met a shaman of the Huitoto tribe who invited him into the Amazon rainforest, he learned about inks made from plants that grow there and since then has created a significant body of work with them.

Rivera’s work in Venice harkens to the Artnauts format of two-dimensional pieces that can easily be carried in a suitcase and is titled “Mutations” because, he says, he sees the pieces “as derived from the subconscious, and the subconscious to me is something that exists between consciousness and the unconscious. Right before consciousness enters in, the subconscious is trying to make sense of what it sees. It’s coming up with these images before it locks in and says, ‘This is reality.’

“To me, when I was in the rainforest that idea occurred to me, I looked at what was happening to the rainforest, and I was seeing these things that are not representations of what was in front of me; I was looking through a subconscious lens. That is when, to me, you turn to the spirituality of an object, of a people, you see the spiritual representations before we tell ourselves what reality is.”

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CU �Ǹ�Թ� alumna Martha Russo and Professor Emeritus George Rivera currently are displaying art pieces in Venice, Italy, in an exhibit organized by the European Cultural Centre.

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Top photo: European Cultural Centre

Exhibit celebrates 30 years of art not as usual

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 22:00:54 +0000

Exhibit celebrates 30 years of art not as usual Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/31/2026 - 16:00

Rachel Sauer

New CU Art Museum exhibit honoring the Artnauts collective opens with a public celebration from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday

In nature, rhizomes are plant stems that grow just beneath the soil surface, sending out shoots and sprawling root systems that can produce new plants. An expansive purple cluster of bearded iris, an early-spring patch of asparagus, a rustling stand of bamboo—all grow from the branching, interconnected system of a rhizome.

In art, rhizomes are collectives and communities that flourish in connection and collaboration, in exchange, in branching and spreading into new soil.

You're invited

What: Opening celebration for the exhibit “Rhizome: Origins," celebrating 30 years of the Artnauts

Where: CU Art Museum

When: 4-6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 3

Who: All are invited

Learn more

The Artnauts are a rhizome.

Founded in 1996 at the �Ǹ�Թ�, the Artnauts—a name that can be interpreted as “art not as usual” or as a play on the exploration and globe-circling of “astronaut”—are celebrating their 30th anniversary with the exhibit “Rhizome: Origins” officially opening Friday at the CU Art Museum.

A celebration of the exhibit and the Artnauts will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday at the museum, initiating a series of events through the fall semester that celebrate 30 years, hundreds of artists and almost as many exhibits in 27 countries that address themes of peace, human rights, climate, migration, cultural memory and other global issues.

The timing of the exhibit is perfect and poignant: George Rivera, professor emeritus of art and art history and a founder and longtime public face of Artnauts, recently announced that he is retiring from the collective for personal reasons and to make way for new leadership.

“(New leadership) already is having a great positive impact, as members are stepping up to acquire new exhibitions in new countries that we have not yet visited,” Rivera explains. “Wait until you see the new venues that they have planned for exhibitions. We need new visions that go beyond what I set up for us throughout the world. The mission will not change. That will stay the same. Just new places of ‘contention’ (as I call them) will be added to where we go with our vision for a better world.”

Rivera and other Artnauts will be featured in a documentary film about the collective, Art, Not As Usual: The Story of the Artnauts, scheduled for release this fall.

Art as connection

In fact, experiencing an Artnauts exhibit in the United States is something of a rarity. When Rivera and colleagues Garrison Roots, Beth Krensky, Dennis Dalton and Luis Valdovino founded Artnauts in 1996, an aim was to balance the aesthetics of art with its power to connect with people experiencing violence, oppression or disaster.

What else are Artnauts Martha Russo and George Rivera up to? Oh, only showing their work in Venice, Italy!

Ciao, amici!

It started simply if not easily, with Rivera cold calling galleries or schools in countries experiencing serious situations. Because of those situations, Artnauts exhibits needed to be two-dimensional and generally not larger than 8x10—a size that allows the work of 40 artists to fit in a carry-on suitcase.

Over three decades, more than 220 artists have contributed their work to exhibits in Bosnia and Rwanda, Colombia, Palestine and the DMZ between North Korea and South Korea—in all, 27 countries on five continents.

Though the points of commonality between the exhibiting country and the United States may not have been identical, Rivera says, Artnauts has always sought common themes, social issues and experiences.

For Martha Russo (MFA’95), who has been with the collective since 1996 and now serves as its board president, the Artnauts’ mission is about staying true to the essence of art. Its mission aligns with her ideas and beliefs about art and its ability to bring “us back to our rudimentary way of collecting information, namely, through the senses and the body,” she describes in her Artnauts artist statement.

Reflecting history and personal growth

In creating “Rhizome: Origins,” both Artnauts and CU Art Museum curators collaborated to envision an exhibit that reflects the history of the organization and reflects artists’ personal growth, says Hope Saska, CU Art Museum director and chief curator. Also uncommon for an Artnauts exhibit, quite a few featured pieces are three-dimensional, deviating from the idea of art that can fit in a carry-on suitcase.

In 30 years, more than 220 artists have participated in Artnauts exhibits, and they were invited to submit ideas for “Rhizome: Origins.” From these ideas, 22 artists’ work was curated for the exhibit, all of whom have CU �Ǹ�Թ� affiliation as faculty, staff or alumni.

The opening celebration Thursday will initiate a slate of events throughout the semester, including:

Artnauts at the CU Art Museum from 2-4 p.m. Friday, an event that will include making activity, artist-led gallery talks and an award ceremony for recipients of scholarships honoring past Artnauts.
Collective Visions: An Artnauts Panel Conversation from 1-2 p.m. Sept. 19 in room IB20 of the Visual Arts Complex, which will feature Artnaut founding members George Rivera and Beth Krensky, joined by Martha Russo, Pamela Beverly-Quigley and Eileen Roscina, in a discussion about the history and future of the artist collective.
Social Sculpture: Artnauts + YOU from 1-4 p.m. Nov. 7, an afternoon of hands-on artmaking activities, talks and art demonstrations with faculty and students from CU �Ǹ�Թ�’s Unstable Design Lab.
“Rhizome: Origins” closing celebration from 1-3 p.m. Dec. 12.

Thursday’s opening event will also celebrate the CU Art Museum’s sweet 16th birthday and CU �Ǹ�Թ�’s 150th anniversary.

Works by Daniel Henry and George Rivera from the Artnauts "Borderlands" exhibit at the Russian Society of Artists Exhibit Hall and Khabarovsk Academy of Art in Khabarovsk, Russia, in 2001.

"Impermanence #2" by Tsehai Johnson

"Lateral Inheritance" by Michael Dixon

"Healing Grounds" by Valerie Albicker, courtesy of the Sunflower Dreams Project and the artists

"Branching as Mapping" by Barbara Colombo

"Objectal Intent" by Heather Hanson

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New CU Art Museum exhibit honoring the Artnauts collective opens with a public celebration from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday.

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Top image: "Raw Spots" by Suzanne Faris

How does it feel to be alive? Art has answers

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 22:29:25 +0000

How does it feel to be alive? Art has answers Rachel Sauer Mon, 06/15/2026 - 16:29

Clint Talbott

CU �Ǹ�Թ� Professor Megan O'Grady's book fuses memoir and art criticism in ‘unusual and risky’ work that’s drawing fans and kudos

When it comes to art, your heart is as important as your brain. This is what Megan O’Grady feels.

She should know. O’Grady, assistant professor in art and art history at the �Ǹ�Թ�, is the author of How it Feels to Be Alive: Encounters with Art and Our Selves, published this year.

A former art critic at The New York Times, O’Grady calls the book “unusual and risky,” but the gamble seems to have paid off. The New Yorker chose it as one of the best books of 2026 thus far, and it has received a starred Kirkus review. Art and literary publications, from Hyperallergic to The Yale Review, have covered it, and a wide range of readers have found her approach to art “resonant in their own lives.”

Megan O'Grady, assistant professor of art and art history at CU �Ǹ�Թ�, is the author of How it Feels to Be Alive: Encounters with Art and Our Selves, published this year. (Photo: Thorsten Trimpop)

The book focuses on five works of art, which frame, reflect or distill chapters in her own life. She quotes the artist Barbara Kruger, who defined art as “the ability, through visual, verbal, gestural and musical means, to objectify one’s experience of the world: to show and tell, through a kind of eloquent shorthand, how it feels to be alive.”

O’Grady concurs, saying: “I have often been bludgeoned by art’s beauty, energized or pulverized by its emotional content, vacuum-sealed within its force-field. I’ve looked at it and thought, This is exactly what it feels like to remember someone I lost, or, This is what love is, a tenderness toward existence.”

Additionally, she contends, art “provokes unanswerable questions about how to live in a fragmenting society. It enacts transfers of energy, joy and defiance. It suggests new forms of connection and belonging.”

O’Grady is a critic and essayist and has also written for The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review and Vogue.

Recently, she answered questions from Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine. Her responses follows:

Question: How can a regular person have greater appreciation for art? Are there steps one could take?

O’Grady: In my view, your appreciation of art is no more or less refined as mine or anyone else’s. My book directly challenges the idea that one must be an expert to enjoy art, and I’m skeptical of approaches to art that feel precious or exclusionary. Part of being human is to look for meaning in life—and art is one mode of seeking.

How It Feels to Be Alive models a mode of looking at art as an intimate encounter, one that deploys—in my experience, anyway—not instantaneously, but over time, in different seasons of life: as teenager trying to figure out who I was, or in moments of loss—after the end of a long relationship, or after losing my home and everything I owned in a freak accident.

Art helped me think through becoming a parent, and the awareness that I had deeply implicated myself in our broken world. It changed the way I think about the natural world and the invisible histories written into the landscape. It made me look very clearly at people with very different experiences of American life than my own, and it challenged me to deal with some of my own unresolved feelings about all sorts of things: creating a home, the unconscious shame I had about my body, about materialism and guilt.

I’ve always been interested in art’s capacity to make us feel things, to challenge the way we see ourselves understand the world around us. This, to me, is why we need art—in any form, be it visual art, music, literature—and why we come to it seeking answers or solace or self-recognition or things we can't put into words.

Nan Goldin, Picnic on the Esplanade, Boston, 1973, cibachrome print. (Courtesy of Nan Goldin and Gagosian)

We live in an era that both fears and devalues art, that often treats it as a commodity, an artifact to categorize by medium and period, or to instrumentalize in displays of political dominance. I’m especially concerned by characterizations of art as elitist, decorative or superfluous, and we can already see the result of our educational systems’ deprioritizing of the arts and humanities in declining creative and critical-thinking skills.

We look at art with the same eyes we do everything else. What are you attracted to and why? Is there more to be learned from other works by a particular artist, or about the artists and the times they were responding to? Art is entirely subjective: It hits us all differently depending on where we’re at in life, our experiences and interests.

I encourage readers to seek out the art in their midst—this is what I try to do, anyway. Build it into your life; get on mailing lists. For those interested in visual art who live in the �Ǹ�Թ� area, the MFA show at CU Art Museum is a great place to see emerging artists addressing the issues of our time. There are exceptional art institutions as well as alternative art spaces across the country.

Question: Your book has elements of a memoir and elements of art criticism. In taking this approach, you share portions of your life that range from joy and pain and points in between. Can you talk about how such open introspection might help the reader understand art better—or feel it more fully?

O’Grady: Art is private in origin and public in expression—this is essential to its power. As an art critic for The New York Times, I found myself listening to artists’ stories, many of them intensely personal, and reflecting on everything that had led up to the creation of these charged objects we see in museums and galleries. The artists had risked a lot to make the work they did, and their trust in me was humbling. I began to think of the other side of the equation—what impact art had had in my own life, and what I was risking in my work as a critic.

Things were heating up in the world—a global pandemic, a turn toward fascist politics, race and gender-based violence—and I began thinking more about why we should care about things like art in times that often feel chaotic and cruel. Because I did care, even though so many things about our culture leads us to cultivate cynicism and self-interest. Being honest about these things is a risk; truth-telling is a risk. Because art both exposes and asserts cultural values, it can really upset people.

Agnes Martin, Friendship, 1963, gold leaf and gesso on canvas, 6 ft. 3 in. × 6 ft. 3 in. (190.5 × 190.5 cm). Gift of Celeste and Armand P. Bartos. (© Agnes Martin Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY)

These are the tensions that inspired me to write the book and that guided its structure. Honestly, we should all be taking risks right now.

Question: If a student asked you to list five works of art that conveyed how it feels to be alive, how would you answer?

O’Grady: We all have to find the answer to this for themselves. How It Feels to Be Alive tackles recurring themes in my life and in the lives of some of the artists I’ve known.

In the chapter on Agnes Martin, I’m thinking about connection and isolation, and the impact our friends have on us. A chapter that begins with Carrie Mae Weems’ “Kitchen Table Series” leads me consider the complexity of seeing oneself clearly when we’re so busy being seen. Kruger’s “Untitled (Your Body),” which kicks off chapter 3, was one of the first works of art that led me to understand what it meant to have a critical perspective on the world, and later, as a parent to a daughter, to confront my own internalized misogyny.

The great performance artist Pope.L, with whom I traveled to Flint, Michigan, to do a project involving the tainted water—we bottled and sold it as a Pope.L-branded art object to raise money for the people of Flint—challenged my uneasy feelings about home as troubling national or personal identity, the subject of chapter 4. The last chapter is about environmental artists and how they reframe our position on Earth, anchored by the largely overlooked land artist and monumental sculptor Beverly Pepper.

These are the major themes, but within each chapter, they become more complex, involving other artists and works. And they are certainly not the only themes in life—the book doesn’t try to be comprehensive. That would be impossible. Rather, it seeks to model a way of looking at art, encouraging others to seek out their own works of art in any form that are meaningful to them.

Question: You mentioned that you love your students, who are “less interested in making a mark than in leaving no trace,” a great line. Your writing (and good writing generally) is also a form of art. Do your students appreciate that, particularly in the TikTok era? Do you have a sense of this?

O’Grady: They all see reading and writing as essential to their creative process. My graduate students, MFA candidates in arts practices who are learning where they fit into larger conversations about representation and politics, use writing to refine the conceptual elements of their visual practice—that is, to better grasp and articulate a strong point of view, which involves a great deal of reflection and critique. We’re all asking ourselves what’s important in this moment in time in which our attention is fragmented and monetized and so much of what used to connect us feels broken.

Most of the artists I teach and write about in the book—Glenn Ligon, Barbara Kruger, Arthur Jafa, Trevor Paglen, Robert Adams, Imani Jaqueline Brown and Carrie Mae Weems, just to name a few—use text or narrative extensively in their art and/or have a writing practice complementary to their visual work.

Question: Beverly Pepper’s art, which forms the basis of a chapter in your book, was criticized with sexist tropes, but it reflects (or punctuates) the monumental scale of the landscape and the cosmos. Perhaps this question is outside the realm of how it feels to be alive, but your recounting of this episode spurs a question about how it feels to be a female artist in a male-dominated world. Or, more generally, how it feels to create art that is the “deeply rooted understory.”

O’Grady: Part of what thrills me about being a critic is looking at a single work of art over time and thinking about how it can reveal tremendous cultural shifts, and personal ones.

Art is private in origin and public in expression—this is essential to its power.

Pepper’s story, for me, is very much about how it felt to be alive as a discredited or overlooked artist—one who was making work that was by any measure groundbreaking and radical. It is dehumanizing not to be recognized for one’s work because of the body one is born into.

In the last chapter, I play with the idea of the anomaly—in art history, but also in the cosmos. Humans always center themselves, but what if, as Pepper and other artists have done, we centered the land instead, reframing our perspective? What if we are the anomalies? This is what art and art criticism does best: reframe and challenge our assumptions.

Pepper’s anomalousness is but one example of the many people left out of art’s dominant narratives. Art history is a set of stories that are continually being rewritten, in part because so many people were left out of previous drafts, or because considerations of their work were so essentializing. In the book, I argue that it is impossible to make art or behold it separately from the conditions of its making and beholding.

Question: In the chapter “Forces of Nature,” you ruminate on the landscape of Colorado, suggesting that remarking on its humbling effect is “cliché.” Can an observation or feeling that might be called a cliché be expressed in a way that is not cliché?

O’Grady: I certainly hope so! Art/literature/music show us this time and again—that the things others have experienced before us have the capacity to compel us anew via the human imagination. Life, at the end of the day, is a cliché. Behind human is a cliché. It has all been felt before—this is part of what makes art capable of transcending time and place—and yet there will always be more to think, to see, to say.

Question: You offer an extended meditation on Agnes Martin’s Friendship, particularly by the suggestion to approach her work “as you would cross an empty beach to look at an ocean.” That seems to suggest that we should have an emotional and intellectual receptivity?

O’Grady: Those are Martin’s words, not mine. She articulated this as an ideal—an ambition for her work. She was reaching the peak of her powers just as conceptual art, with its theories and manifestos, was beginning to dominate the conversation. Martin, who found solace in Christian and Buddhist thinkers, wanted something less intellectual from her work: to induce a particular feeling of infinitude, humility, wonderment and vastness in spectators.

In my book, I return a few times to Martin’s image of crossing the beach to look over the ocean. In her life, Martin had the experience more than once of coming metaphorically to the edge of the shore, or precipice, in her life—as, perhaps, we all have, in our own ways, when we’re at loose ends. It is both exhilarating and terrifying to look into the great beyond, and she confronted this to a degree that perhaps no artist has before or since.

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CU �Ǹ�Թ� Professor Megan O'Grady's book fuses memoir and art criticism in ‘unusual and risky’ work that’s drawing fans and kudos.

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Claes Oldenburg, American, born in Sweden (1929–2022); Coosje van Bruggen, American, born in the Netherlands (1942–2009). Shuttlecocks, 1994, aluminum, fiberglass-reinforced plastic, paint, 230 9/16 × 191 7/8 in. (585.6 × 487.4 cm). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. (© Estate of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Image courtesy of Nelson-Atkins Digital Production & Preservation)

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Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Shuttlecocks, 1994, aluminum, fiberglass-reinforced plastic, paint. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.

Preserving the spaces that shaped O’Keeffe’s iconic art

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 14:00:50 +0000

Preserving the spaces that shaped O’Keeffe’s iconic art Rachel Sauer Tue, 04/21/2026 - 08:00

Cody DeBos

CU �Ǹ�Թ� MFA alumna Giustina Renzoni considers how to share space and preserve history as director of historic properties at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

In Abiquiú, New Mexico, vast mesas sprawl beneath an expansive blue sky. Among them sit the adobe walls of a home once inhabited by one of America’s most iconic artists. The interior is painted with light and characterized by quiet restraint reminiscent of the natural features outside.

It is here, in the home of Georgia O’Keeffe, that Giustina Renzoni helps visitors see both the artist’s work and the world that shaped it.

“When I first encountered Georgia O’Keeffe’s home in Abiquiú, what struck me immediately was that it wasn’t just her residence. It was also a remarkable example of vernacular adobe architecture with nearly 200 years of history before she purchased it,” Renzoni says.

Giustina Renzoni, CU �Ǹ�Թ� MFA alumna, is the director of historic properties at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in New Mexico.

Now, as the director of historic properties at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Renzoni’s day-to-day work involves a careful balance of sharing the space with visitors while also preserving the structure and its layers of history.

A path shaped at CU �Ǹ�Թ�

Renzoni’s path to her current role began with a long-standing interest in the relationship between art and environment.

“I’ve always been drawn to the intersection of art, history and place,” she says. “Over time, I became especially interested in how artists’ environments shape their creative work.”

After studying art history and visual culture and gaining early experience working in museums, she pursued a Master of Fine Arts at the �Ǹ�Թ�.

“I chose CU �Ǹ�Թ� because it offered a program that encouraged interdisciplinary thinking. I was interested in exploring art history alongside visual culture, often through sociohistorical frameworks,” Renzoni says.

She also calls out the collaboration required when working in a museum and recalls how her time at CU helped hone these skills.

“My time at CU helped me develop the ability to think across those disciplines and see how they all contribute to interpreting art and history for the public. That interdisciplinary mindset has been incredibly valuable in my role at the O’Keeffe Museum.”

How place helps us understand art

At the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Renzoni oversees the preservation and interpretation of the Museum’s historic properties—O’Keeffe’s home in the village of Abiquiú and another at Ghost Ranch. The Abiquiú home welcomes thousands of visitors a year, while the Ghost Ranch home is currently closed to the public, awaiting renovations and preservation work Renzoni will head. Her work bridges scholarship and public experience, ensuring the physical spaces connected to O’Keeffe’s life remain protected while also giving visitors a chance to experience them.

Much of her work is rooted in a simple, but powerful, idea: To understand an artist, one must understand where and how they lived.

“Seeing the places where artists lived, the landscapes they looked at every day, and the objects they surrounded themselves with can reveal dimensions of their work that aren’t always visible in a gallery setting. For me, those spaces create a kind of context that brings the artwork to life,” Renzoni says.

The Abiquiú patio, bedroom and zaguán of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. (Photos: Krysta Jabczenski/© Georgia O'Keeffe Museum)

Though the art may be stunning, viewers can’t see the full picture when it is hanging on a featureless white wall.

“Historic spaces show the relationship between creative work and daily life. You see what an artist chose to keep around them, how they organized their studio and how the landscape shaped their perspective,” she says.

For Renzoni, one of the most compelling ways to explore that connection is through her recent exhibition, Artful Living: O’Keeffe & Modern Design, which is currently on view at the museum’s welcome center in Abiquiú.

“The exhibition explores how O’Keeffe transformed her traditional adobe home in Abiquiú into a distinctly modern living environment through furniture, textiles, and design objects,” Renzoni says. “What I find fascinating is that the house itself becomes a kind of three-dimensional expression of her artistic vision.”

Balancing preservation with public access

Preserving this one-of-a-kind environment, however, comes with challenges.

“The biggest is balancing preservation with access,” Renzoni says.

Historic homes like O’Keeffe’s weren’t designed for a steady stream of visitors. Even small interactions can cause lasting damage.

“Things like light exposure, temperature changes and foot traffic can all affect fragile materials,” Renzoni notes.

In Abiquiú, where O’Keeffe’s home is built from earthen adobe, those concerns are even more pronounced. Still, ensuring public access is essential.

“The goal is to create thoughtful ways for people to experience [these spaces] without compromising their long-term preservation,” Renzoni says.

Doing so requires careful coordination across disciplines, from conservation and collections management to education and visitor engagement.

“In a gallery, the artwork is often isolated from that context. In a historic home or studio, you begin to see how art, environment and personal life were all intertwined.”

Reinterpreting O’Keeffe’s legacy 40 years later

Renzoni’s work feels especially timely in 2026, which marks the 40th anniversary of O’Keeffe’s death. Decades later, the artist’s work continues to resonate with audiences around the world.

“I think O’Keeffe resonates because her work feels both deeply personal and universal,” Renzoni says. “Her paintings of New Mexico, in particular, capture a sense of space, light and stillness that many people continue to find compelling today.”

Visiting the places where O’Keeffe lived can also reshape how people understand her work.

“Seeing those environments helps visitors understand that her work was deeply rooted in direct observation and in her relationship with the land,” Renzoni says.

Standing in Abiquiú, visitors witness how the scale of the sky, the geometry of adobe walls and the contours of the surrounding cliffs influenced an icon of American art, grounding her paintings in lived experience.

In the end, the spaces Renzoni preserves offer more than a glimpse into O’Keeffe’s life. They let visitors connect to O’Keeffe’s work on a deeper level, granting an understanding of how her work took shape that can be found nowhere else.

“In a gallery, the artwork is often isolated from that context,” Renzoni says. “In a historic home or studio, you begin to see how art, environment and personal life were all intertwined.”

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CU �Ǹ�Թ� MFA alumna Giustina Renzoni considers how to share space and preserve history as director of historic properties at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

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Top image: Abiquiú sitting room, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (Photo: Krysta Jabczenski/© Georgia O'Keeffe Museum)

Artist encourages talking with your mouth full

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:06:15 +0000

Artist encourages talking with your mouth full Rachel Sauer Fri, 04/17/2026 - 15:06

Alvin Gregorio (seated, black cap) leads an art project during a recent Talk With Your Mouth Full event at which he was the featured artist. (Photo: Alvin Gregorio)

Kayleigh Wood

As the featured artist at a recent Black Cube event, CU �Ǹ�Թ�'s Alvin Gregorio emphasized how getting primal and getting to know each other—and yes, sharing meals—makes better people

Alvin Pagdanganan Gregorio understands the value of a shared meal. The �Ǹ�Թ� professor of drawing and painting and associate chair for art practices was the recent featured artist and host of Talk With Your Mouth Full, a series of free, artist-led community potluck brunches organized by Black Cube, a nomadic art museum based in Englewood.

Artists invited to host Talk With Your Mouth Full select one ingredient for a main dish prepared by a local chef. Participants are encouraged to bring a dish as well, although it is not required, nor must it include the selected ingredient. After food and conversation, the artist leads a simple activity with the aim of fostering discussion.

For Gregorio, the choice of ingredient was simple: “Immediately I thought of ube, which is the purple yam of the Philippines,” he says. “It’s one of the most striking colors in Filipino food.”

Alvin Pagdanganan Gregorio, a CU �Ǹ�Թ� associate professor of art and art history, was the featured artist at a recent Black Cube Talk With Your Mouth Full potluck event, which featured ube cheese pandesals. (Photo: Alvin Gregorio)

To take on the challenge, Black Cube enlisted the help of Cakeheads Bakery, a family-owned Filipino American bakery in Centennial that created ube cheese pandesals: deep purple bread rolls filled with melted cheese and topped with golden breadcrumbs.

The artistry of the pandesals parallels Gregorio’s art, which features vibrant, eye-catching palettes and diverse textures. Through an unrestricted practice transcending any one technique, material or form, Gregorio creates drawings, paintings, installations, sculptures, performance and audio pieces that explore immigration, family, war, spirituality and defense mechanisms.

Sharing meals, lowering your defenses

Talk With Your Mouth Full addresses an assumption to which Gregorio is particularly adverse: the role of food in the studio and museum space (or lack thereof). Generally, exposing art to food and drink can threaten the quality of the work or destroy it entirely.

Yet Gregorio welcomes food in both the studio and his classroom. “I’m into [the potluck], much in the same way I am in class,” he says. “I want people to eat. As long as you clean up after yourself, I want you to eat in class too, because then you know you’re at home and safe. You’re in a place where you [can] put your guard down.”

In addition to allowing his students to eat in class, Gregorio aims to incorporate shared meals into his teaching practice. “College students aren’t great at feeding themselves,” he says. “Even the best of us get busy, so that’s one of things I want to include in the classroom. If there’s a 12-12:30pm break between all of our classes, then, all right, [every] Wednesday, let’s see everyone. Let’s do a community meal. When you start feeding people, people are like, all right, these people do care about me.”

In the classroom, Gregorio says he’s “trying to do it the right way, you know, where people aren’t being vulnerable [with] people they don’t trust.” Many art classes at the �Ǹ�Թ�, including Gregorio’s, hinge on portfolio-building and periodic critiques, which are structured opportunities for a student’s peers to evaluate and analyze their work and share feedback, often requiring a degree of vulnerability from the student.

He sees shared meals as a tool to ease the pressure of critiques and to build trust, because “eating with other people is grounding, talking about things you love is grounding… It’s kind of hard [to] keep your guard up when [you have] powdered sugar all over your face.”

Caring for the person–not just the portfolio

As art practitioners rely heavily on critiques to improve, Gregorio insists that the most important aspect of his teaching practice is earning trust from his students by prioritizing their safety and comfort. “That has to be first,” says Gregorio. “If we’re talking about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, at the bottom there’s safety . . . If people don’t feel safe there (in the classroom), then they can’t get to the top, and the top is generosity and creativity.”

To encourage trust, Gregorio gives social homework, or what he calls “fake homework.” These “fake homework” assignments range from suggestions to hang out with a peer over the weekend to long-term collaborative assignments that occur during class, like starting a “band” with a group of peers, carefully curating a vibe and designing an album cover over the course of a semester. Gregorio also often assigns “docu-buddies,” which are groups of peers responsible for photographing each other’s work in progress throughout the term.

"Plush Safe, We Think," by Alvin Pagdanganan Gregorio, mixed media on paper

While these simple, unserious social assignments may seem menial, Tyson Tieu, a senior in the Department of Art and Art History and a former student of Gregorio’s who attended Talk With Your Mouth Full, says he misses the social activities. In most studio art classes, Tieu says, “you’re in your own little bubble, like you’re doing your own thing and you’re at your table, whereas with Alvin, it could be annoying, but, yeah, he does force to you to, like, get up and move and work outside your comfort zone… if you’re [having] art block or something, it just helps you get your hand moving.”

Gregorio says, looking back, “It’s always been that first—people. I’m [only] able to get [my students] to trust me when we’re doing really hard things if I earn it along the way. . . . So then, if I say something that I need to say to make the work better, it’s a little bit easier for people to accept, because I earn the trust through caring for the whole person rather than just the portfolio.”

‘Art shifts the vibe’

The same ethos of security and companionship helped Gregorio shape his activity for Talk With Your Mouth Full, for which he was intent on addressing the current moment: “I didn’t want to do anything so escapist. I wanted [to] acknowledge that [we’re] living through a weird time.”

For his exercise at Talk With Your Mouth Full, Gregorio started by admitting to his audience: “I hate violence, I hate war . . . I hate Donald Trump and all that he stands for . . . One of the things I hate about right now is [that] I’m living in a time where I feel like there’s a lot of hate in the world, and it’s f***ing exhausting.”

To combat this exhaustion, Gregorio reorients his mindset by wishing the person or thing that angers him well. He asked his audience at Talk With Your Mouth Full to do the same thing, first by offering his own example. “Hi, Donny,” he said to President Trump, “I wish that something great would happen for you today, so that you can have what I have. So that you can feel love in your life that I have. I hope that someone does something for you today.”

Alvin Gregorio (seated, black cap) leads an art project during a recent Talk With Your Mouth Full event at which he was the featured artist. (Photo: Alvin Gregorio)

For Talk With Your Mouth Full, he prepared print outs of his own work for participants to collage onto manilla envelopes he’d spray painted and signed, in the hopes that they could make something beautiful and flip difficult things into positive ones, in collaboration with others, during a time of tension and political unrest. “It’s just to try to remind people that art can help change perspective,” says Gregorio.

Before beginning the art activity, Gregorio explained the significance of the manilla envelopes: to pay for his undergraduate degree, Gregorio worked early mornings as a janitor on his college campus. During his shifts, he plucked used manilla envelopes and other discarded material found in the trash cans of professors and faculty members, a foundation which he transformed into some of the first works he ever sold.

A thread through Gregorio’s work is using art to address difficult things head on and “shift the vibe.”

As the grandson of a Filipino World War II guerrilla sniper, Gregorio spent most of his life hating the soldiers that came to the Philippines and killed his family. Eventually, he says he realized how exhausting that was. “Instead of expelling their ghosts,” Gregorio says, “I want to enlist them. And I think to myself, like, hey, they’re just f***ing teenagers too, [and] their government forced [them] to go to another country and do these things. They're just working-class people, too. So, I started to think, hey, instead of hating the Japanese that came to my village– those soldiers were just like my grandfather. They were sent to do something they couldn’t handle.

“Then I found in my practice that I could truly change my perspective, change my life. I don’t have to hate anymore. I like using art to think of a different way, like, hey, I genuinely want the offspring of those people to [be] happy and safe and peaceful.

‘The best part of my week’

In 2015, Gregorio was diagnosed with Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP), a rare autoimmune neurological disorder affecting the myelin, or protective covering, of peripheral nerves, preventing them from conducting electricity in the way they should.

“Every Friday, Mary [Gregorio’s partner] gets my shots,” Gregorio told his Black Cube audience. “Three [shots], and it lasts three hours. And it’s the worst part of my week, and I’ve been doing it for 10 years.

“I want you all to consider the power we have in reframing the things that we do, and [how] art does that,” Gregorio tells the Black Cube audience. Asking them to hold him accountable, he says, “from here on out, I want you to remind me that [these shots are] the best part of my week. That is the part of my week that helps me be [around] for our continuum… So in front of you all, I’m going to try to change that.”

“I could do the opposite and just talk s*** on everything,” he says, admitting that it would probably be easier. Sharing his mother’s advice, he says, “If you’re not going to do it out of love, don’t do it. And growing up, I was like, are you trying to tell me that I have to be in a good mood about all the things that I have to do? And what I realized is that what I [think] she’s saying now that I look back, is like, if you could figure out how to find the good in it, it’s going to be better for everybody. You’ll enjoy it, the product will be better… that’s art, right? Trying to shift the perspective. Like, hey, you have the ability to shift your perspective… we have the power to reimagine the way we see things.”

At Talk With Your Mouth Full, in his classroom and his day-to-day life, Gregorio says, “I hope to remind people that creativity is an awesome tool. Art is an awesome tool.”

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As the featured artist at a recent Black Cube event, CU �Ǹ�Թ�'s Alvin Gregorio emphasized how getting primal and getting to know each other—and yes, sharing meals—makes better people.

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Top image: Alvin Gregorio (front row, black cap) with attendees at the recent Talk With Your Mouth Full event organized by Black Cube

When napping in nature becomes art

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 23:55:15 +0000

When napping in nature becomes art Rachel Sauer Thu, 03/05/2026 - 16:55

“The project has some heavier personal meanings for me, but I also think it touches on broader themes of loss related to landscape in the 21st century, whether that’s the precarity of protected lands or ongoing threats from climate change,” says Rick Silva (MFA ’07) of his new video art piece, Dirt Nap.

Cody DeBos

CU alum Rick Silva finds meaning in the stillness of the natural world

Rick Silva (MFA’07) is lying still in the frame, perched on a rocky outcropping overlooking azure ocean waves. He’s sound asleep.

That’s one of 46 places you’ll find him taking a snooze in his new video art piece, Dirt Nap.

As he describes it, “Dirt Nap is composed of one-minute excerpts from 46 naps Rick Silva took in nature across the Western United States between September 2024 and January 2026, sequenced in the order they were recorded.”

The project’s structure is simple, almost stubbornly so. But the simplicity of one-minute naps, repeated 46 times, has a way of becoming something else—a question that challenges notions of patience and what it means to rest.

Taking a rest

The project began in 2024, a time marked by both grief and physical strain for Silva.

“My uncle-in-law died in a ski accident the previous year, and that late summer we hiked into the Grand Tetons to spread his ashes,” he recalls.

That same summer, Silva was dealing with severe migraines that forced him to retire to a dark room, sometimes for the entire day, just to ease the pain.

“The idea for Dirt Nap emerged during a lull in the pain of a migraine,” he says.

From the start, Silva knew the project needed to unfold over time. As the idea of deliberately resting in nature took hold, he started thinking of locations. Some had personal meaning. Others he hadn’t yet experienced but wanted to.

“There was a balance between planning and spontaneity throughout the process. I created a loose set of rules around framing and duration, then pushed against those rules through location, weather and light,” he says.

The title carries its own gravity. Often a dysphemism for death, the phrase “dirt nap” invokes images of a body being returned to the ground for its final rest.

Silva acknowledges the double meaning.

An ‘in-action’ sport

Prior to Dirt Nap, Silva spent years immersed in outdoor action sports culture, especially snowboarding. Video is a powerful medium for showcasing the pulse-pounding motion and spectacle of athletes carving through exotic terrain at high speeds.

CU �Ǹ�Թ� alumnus and artist Rick Silva created his video piece Dirt Nap from 46 naps he took in nature across the Western United States between September 2024 and January 2026.

Dirt Nap inverts the formula.

“There’s definitely a connection between Dirt Nap and that lineage of sport and nature filmmaking,” Silva says, “except here I’m doing ‘nothing’ in the landscape. It’s a kind of in-action sport focused on recharging and recovering.”

For Silva, shooting videos lying down instead of airborne while capturing exotic vistas across the Western United States is something of a return to his roots.

“My MFA thesis work at CU was a video art piece in which I filmed myself in nature, sort of DJ-ing various landscapes,” he says.

A CU foundation

Silva traces much of his foundational approach to filmmaking to his time in CU �Ǹ�Թ�’s MFA program.

“I was exposed to many different approaches to working with moving images, including experimental film, video art, performance and new media,” he says.

Just as influential was the support he received along the way.

“My professors encouraged me to follow my own path through those techniques and conceptual strategies, especially around time, presence and process.”

That trio anchors Dirt Nap.

“I think meaning emerges through the variation and duration of the project. It’s a very simple act, but multiplied to this extent it becomes something more epic, or perhaps absurd. I hope viewers oscillate between those readings,” says CU �Ǹ�Թ� alumnus Rick Silva.

Silva also found inspiration for the meditative quality of his footage from artists like Roman Signer and Ana Mendieta. While filming, he learned about the early works of Laurie Anderson, another artist who captured herself napping in public.

“I’m a longtime fan of her work and felt connected to her through our napping projects,” he says.

For current students, Silva offers some practical advice rooted in his own trajectory.

“If you can make it financially feasible, I highly recommend taking on an ambitious, self-driven creative project during a summer break.”

He points to an example close to home.

“The creators of South Park made Cannibal! The Musical during a summer break while they were students at CU.”

Ambitious early projects, he says, often echo through the careers of their creators for years.

Learning to look longer

As for Dirt Nap, the cumulative effect of 46 one-minute excerpts challenges viewers with one request: patience. It’s a hard ask in a world consumed by short-form videos and a never-ending tide of “the next big trend.”

Silva often finds himself returning to a quote from composer John Cage: “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”

“That quote took on even more meaning for me during this project, which was both born from and made within that zone of observation and reflection,” Silva recalls.

While appreciating Dirt Nap, viewers start noticing the little things. The flicker of shadows across Silva’s face. The rhythm of his breathing. Grass, trees and water responding to the wind. From one minute to the next, a person lying down outdoors runs the gamut of looking peaceful to looking exposed.

What first appears to be “doing nothing” becomes a sustained practice of attention born from grief and structured by repetition. The act is quiet, even vulnerable, and for Silva, it’s a reminder that nothing is ever truly still.

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CU alum Rick Silva finds meaning in the stillness of the natural world.

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All photos courtesy Mario Gallucci

Scholar studies humanity through skin and ink

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 17:51:52 +0000

Scholar studies humanity through skin and ink Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/29/2026 - 10:51

Chris Quirk

In his new book Indigenous Tattoo Traditions, CU �Ǹ�Թ� alumnus and Tattoo Hunters host Lars Krutak highlights traditional techniques that sometimes date back millennia

Lars Krutak is not the kind of scholar who is content to simply write about his field. Krutak, a 1993 �Ǹ�Թ� graduate in art history and anthropology, is an internationally recognized researcher of the history and culture of tattoos and has about 40 of them himself. He even went under the knife for his research—a scarification ritual of the Kaningara people of Papua New Guinea, during which an elder made more than 400 incisions in his skin.

CU �Ǹ�Թ� alumnus Lars Krutak (left) has studied with indigenous artists around the world, including Pius (right), one of the last Makonde tattoo masters of Mozambique. (Photo: Lars Krutak)

“That technique of incision tattooing where they cut you to create a scar and then they rub in the pigment is by far the most painful,” he says. “You're getting cut open like a piece of chicken, and then you're just bleeding all over place. It's hard.”

It’s one of the traditional techniques described in his recent book, Indigenous Tattoo Traditions: Humanity through Skin and Ink, lauded as a best science pick in the journal Nature.

The author of four books on tattooing and host of the Tattoo Hunters series on the Discovery Channel, Krutak became fascinated with the art and custom of tattoos 20 years ago. After completing his bachelor’s degree at CU �Ǹ�Թ�, Krutuk began work on his master’s degree in anthropology and archaeology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “I moved there in January of 1996,” he says. “When I got off the plane it was minus 55 degrees.”

Krutak was walking across the Fairbanks campus one day and saw a woman with three chin tattoos. “I didn't have any tattoos. I didn't know anything about tattoos. I didn't know indigenous people had tattoos,” Krutak recalls. “I could recognize that she was indigenous, and I got to know her later on, but that moment opened my eyes.”

His scholarly interest piqued, Krutak began digging through the university’s archives and extensive collection of artifacts. “I quickly realized that basically every indigenous society across the circumpolar north, from East Greenland to Siberia and seemingly everywhere in between, had a tattooing tradition at one time or another, but almost all I could find were records from 100 years ago and a few things from the 1950s.”

Krutak resolved to change that. “My main goal when I started doing this research was to preserve a history. No one in academic circles seemed interested in studying indigenous tattooing,” he says. “There were a lot of stigmas attached to tattooing at that time, and there are still some to this day. But I always felt that this was a significant part of the world's cultural heritage, and it was vanishing rapidly around the world, with no one going out there to document it.”

Permanent records

After learning about the tattooing tradition of the Yupik people of St. Lawrence Island in the northern Bering Sea, Krutak wrote to village councils and received permission to visit. What he found was that tattooing was on the wane among the Yupik, with just a small number of women who were in their 80s or 90s sustaining the custom.

In his recent book Indigenous Tattoo Traditions, author and CU �Ǹ�Թ� alumnus Lars Krutak highlights work from indigenous artists around the world.

But he also found that the tradition went back about 2,000 years. The Yupik had, for two millennia, created anthropomorphic dolls, carved out of walrus ivory, that most likely represented ancestral personages. And the dolls had careful renditions of Yupik tattoos.

The significance of tattoos, for the Yupik people and for other cultures across the globe that Krutak has since visited—more than 40 to date—can be widely varied.

“If there is something that needs to be permanently recorded, tattoos can do that,” he says, adding that a tattoo can function as a record of hunting prowess, tally enemies killed in warfare or identify a person as a member of a particular clan or family. There are tattoos that denote a rite of passage, tattoos that invoke ancestral spirits and tattoos that relate to medicinal purposes, Krutak says.

One important meaning that bearers of tattoos have cited, across many cultures, is to identify the person in the afterlife, he says. In the case of the Yupik people of St. Lawrence Island, there are tattoos to help ancestors recognize the person so they can enter the sanctity of the afterlife. “I've been told, by many elders, that they would not be recognized as a true person from their culture without certain tattoos,” Krutak says. “This is one of the most common beliefs and purposes for tattoos across the indigenous world.”

‘Ancient marks of humanity’

What began with that serendipitous moment in Fairbanks has turned into a lifetime pursuit and a synthesis of two threads of Krutak’s interest that he cultivated at CU �Ǹ�Թ� as an undergraduate: art history and anthropology. “I had two very formative professors,” he says. “Roland Bernier encouraged me to explore more deeply the connection between anthropology and art history, hence my double major. John Rohner was in charge of the museum studies program and introduced me to what a career in the museum field would look like.”

In some of Krutak’s travels, including his experience with the Yupik, he has encountered some of the last people in the culture who had or could share the history of tattoos in their culture, which increases his sense of urgency. “I firmly feel that indigenous tattooing deserves our attention, because it speaks volumes about what it means to be human,” says Krutak. “I think we can learn a lot about each other by studying and appreciating these ancient marks of humanity.”

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In his new book 'Indigenous Tattoo Traditions,' CU �Ǹ�Թ� alumnus and 'Tattoo Hunter' host Lars Krutak highlights traditional techniques that sometimes date back millennia.

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New exhibit celebrates ceramics at CU �Ǹ�Թ�

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 23:09:59 +0000

New exhibit celebrates ceramics at CU �Ǹ�Թ� Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/27/2025 - 17:09

Myers Berg Studios, United States, …in plain sight, 2025, ceramic, maple, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec.19, 2025. (Photo Rachel Sauer; © Myers Berg Studios)

Rachel Sauer

Opening Sept. 5 at the CU Art Museum, ‘Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020’ focuses on themes including the environment, domesticity and rituals of home and material connections

The joy—and sometimes frustration—of ceramics may be found in its contradictions: its fragile strength, its rough refinement, its elastic rigidity. Drop it and it might shatter, or it might survive millennia.

“It’s a material that’s about so much transformation,” says Jeanne Quinn, a �Ǹ�Թ� professor of art and art history. “It goes from being very plastic and malleable to something that’s more like stone. And embedded in ceramics is all kinds of material meaning. Our students who are trained in ceramics are really trained to dig into technical mastery with the material but also dig into how you find meaning in the material itself, how you’re using the material as metaphor.”

For students in the CU �Ǹ�Թ� ceramics program, the material also represents connection to an artistic lineage that has grown in breadth and renown through successive cohorts. It is a lineage nurtured by ceramics faculty Quinn, Scott Chamberlin and Kim Dickey, who have been teaching together and broadening the program for 25 years.

It is the length of those associations, in fact, that planted the seed of what has grown into the exhibit “Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020,” kicking off with an opening celebration Sept. 4 at the CU Art Museum and opening to the public Sept. 5.

“CU has a really long history of investing in ceramics and having a very strong ceramics program,” Quinn explains. “Kim (Dickey) had this idea that it’s our silver anniversary of teaching together, we have this incredible group of alumni, so many amazing artists who have come through, as undergrads, as post-bacs and as grad students, so we should create an exhibit to celebrate that.”

A ceramic tradition

CU �Ǹ�Թ� has long championed the arts and supported artists, including ceramic artists who have created a student-focused program that prioritizes learning, technical mastery and artistic exploration. The ceramic program was significantly bolstered by Betty Woodman, an internationally renowned artist whose 2006 retrospective show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City was the first such show by a living female ceramicist, and who taught at CU �Ǹ�Թ� for 30 years.

Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020

What: The CU �Ǹ�Թ� ceramics program is celebrating its history with faculty Scott Chamberlin, Kim Dickey, and Jeanne Quinn. To honor the achievements of artists who graduated from this program, faculty curators are partnering with the CU Art Museum to present a retrospective exhibition.

When: Opening celebration Sept. 4 from 4–6 p.m.; exhibit opens to the public Sept. 5-Dec. 19. There will be an all-day symposium celebrating the exhibit Sept. 5.

Where: CU Art Museum

Learn more

Chamberlin was a colleague of Woodman, and Quinn was a student of both Woodman and Chamberlin before joining the ceramics faculty in 1997.

“In this program, there is a real commitment to ceramics and its incredibly rich history,” Quinn says. “Every civilization from the beginning of time has had ceramics, so it’s an incredible kind of medium to work with and have the opportunity to reference all that. But I also feel like we have a very non-dogmatic approach to teaching—there’s so much history, but also so much space for experimentation and invention.

“Ceramics is a very demanding material. Anybody who’s ever sat down and tried to throw a pot on the wheel realizes oh, you don’t just toss this off. Every step requires real skill, real technical skill, but we’ve worked to build a program where students receive this amazing education in learning how to learn and learning how to grapple with the material and how the material can offer so many different avenues of expression.”

Erica Green, a post-baccalaureate student in the program between 2011 and 2013 and one of the exhibit’s 30 featured artists, credits the ceramics program’s emphasis on exploration with helping her forge her path as an artist.

“Ceramics is always my first love, but the nice thing about this department is you’re encouraged to follow the idea and not just the material,” Green says. “One of my professors in the program suggested I set clay to the side and focus on fiber and being more in tune with the material.”

Green’s work in the exhibit, “California King,” centers on a bed covered in a blanket of knotted felt and wool-blend fibers. “I work a lot in knots as a metaphor for mending and repair and healing.”

Artist Lucero Aguirre, who earned an MFA in the ceramics program, created the quilted tapestry “Mije” to include thousands of iridescent ceramic sequins—bringing together “the spaces of brownness and queerness in its sequined message,” Aguirre explains. “The term ‘mije’ is a gender-neutral version of the often-used Spanish term of endearment ‘mija,’ or daughter.”

In transforming “mija” into “mije,” Aguirre considers the “affective labor of navigating brownness as a queer subject. The piece responds to the way that intimacy is often gendered in Mexican and Latine spaces, leaving queer Latine bodies at once inside and outside.”

Erica Green assembles her work "California King" (2022, knotted fibers on mattress) for the "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020" exhibit opening Sept. 5 at the CU Art Museum. (Photo Rachel Sauer; © Erica Green)

‘You can do anything with clay’

Quinn emphasizes that even though the exhibit celebrates the ceramics program, it also includes textiles, video works, photography, live performances and other media. “(The exhibit) runs the gamut of materials, but the unifying piece is that you can see that sense of commitment to the craft, to really handling a material with authority and also expressing something beyond the material.”

The hardest part, she adds, was choosing exhibit participants “because we’re in touch with all of these alumni, we’re following what they’re doing, they’re sending us updates.”

At the same time the exhibit participants were being chosen, Quinn and her colleagues were working with CU Art Museum staff to envision and plan the exhibit—a time-intensive but rewarding process, says Hope Saska, CU Art Museum acting director. Saska also partnered with Quinn, Dickey and Chamberlin to organize an all-day symposium September 5 celebrating the exhibit; it will include performances, conversations and in-gallery artist talks.

“You say ceramics and people have this idea of, ‘Oh, you’re making pots on the wheel,’” Quinn says. “And ceramics certainly fits in this kind of lane, that is absolutely part of what we teach. But you also have an artist like Casey Whittier, who made thousands of ceramic beads and then strung them together into this gorgeous textile piece that hangs on a wall. Casey has taken ceramics, which you might think of as fixed and static, and then created this piece that hangs and moves and is as much a textile as it is ceramics.

“So, we want people to come to the exhibit, and especially we want students to think, ‘Oh, you can do anything with clay.’”

Lucero Aguirre, mije, 2024, handmade and lustered ceramic sequins, thread and batting and fabric, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer; © Lucero Aguirre)

Linda Nguyen Lopez, United States (1981), Gummy Worm, Ombre Dust Furry, 2021, porcelain, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer, © Linda Nguyen Lopez)

Joanna Powell, United States (1981), Flower Vessel no. 1, 2019, earthenware, majolica, gold luster, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo Rachel Sauer; © Joanna Powell)

Sandra Trujillo, United States (1967), Mosaic - Yellow, 2024, Mexican Smalti (glass), Wedi (polystyrene board), wood, steel, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer; © Sandra Trujillo)

Julie Poitras Santos, United States (1967), The Conversation, 2019, single channel video, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer; © Julie Poitras Santos)

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Opening Sept. 5 at the CU Art Museum, ‘Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020’ focuses on themes including the environment, domesticity and rituals of home and material connections.

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Matthew McConnell, United States (1979), Didn’t Miss a Thing, 2023, dark stoneware, twine and twist ties on steel panels, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo Rachel Sauer; © Matthew McConnell)

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Top image: Matthew McConnell, "Didn’t Miss a Thing," 2023, dark stoneware, twine and twist ties on steel panels, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer; © Matthew McConnell)

From war zones to new worldviews

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 13:30:00 +0000

From war zones to new worldviews Rachel Sauer Thu, 07/17/2025 - 07:30

Cody DeBos

After two combat deployments in Afghanistan, undergraduate Benjamin Blume is eager to share is unconventional educational path with fellow veterans

When Benjamin Blume talks about hiking through the Swiss Alps or photographing the stars above the Australian Outback, he does so with the same clarity he once brought to combat patrols in Afghanistan.

It wasn’t long ago that Blume, now a double major in astronomy and photography at CU �Ǹ�Թ�, was in a very different place.

While studying abroad may not seem like an obvious next step for military veterans, Benjamin Blume (here at Stonehenge in England) is adamant that it should be. (Photo: Benjamin Blume)

“I had two combat deployments to Afghanistan that were long and stressful,” says Blume, who served in the U.S. Army from 2010 to 2016. “But the friends and (almost all) the experiences I got out of it, I wouldn’t trade for anything.”

Blume grew up in West Houston before being stationed at Fort Carson upon joining the Army. After leaving the service, he came to CU �Ǹ�Թ� in 2022 seeking both a new academic challenge and a return to the Rockies.

Inspired by Star Trek: The New Generation and Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk podcast, Blume found himself drawn to astronomy.

But photography, an integral part of his journey while participating in seven study-abroad programs and getting passport stamps from 30 countries, led him to add a second major in art.

Blume’s path is unconventional, but he’s eager to share it with fellow veterans.

A shift in perspective

Blume’s first study-abroad experience came in 2016 while studying international business. When given an opportunity to join a month-long, intensive German language course in Leipzig, he jumped at the chance.

“I had only been out of the Army less than a year before my first two trips abroad, and wow did my view of the world change,” Blume says.

After years in the military, Blume says his worldview had narrowed. Deployments and Army training had conditioned him to be guarded and wary in unfamiliar environments. While these traits served him in uniform, they became barriers as he transitioned back into civilian life.

After years in the military, Benjamin Blume says his worldview had narrowed. Deployments and Army training had conditioned him to be guarded and wary in unfamiliar environments. (Photo: Benjamin Blume)

“It took me a few weeks being in another country to truly start breaking out of this thick shell I had been in for so long,” Blume says. “But once I started getting out of this mindset, I was able to truly see the world in a different light.”

From that moment on, Blume didn’t look back.

He enrolled in study-abroad programs in Australia, Switzerland, Japan, Germany, the UAE and New Zealand. Some opportunities came through his university, others entirely from his own initiative.

Blume immersed himself in local cultures, connected with fellow students from around the world, and found solace in outdoor adventure.

“I try to do things that (my younger brother and the friends I’ve lost) would have enjoyed,” he says. “Doing this helps keep me connected to their memory and also process the losses.”

Hiking the Swiss Alps, photographing historical landmarks, eating camel burgers and even tubing down an underground river lined with glowworms in New Zealand became part of Blume’s new chapter.

A message to other veterans: Just go

While studying abroad may not seem like an obvious next step for military veterans, Blume is adamant that it should be.

He says, “Many veterans have a hard time breaking out of a certain military mindset or lifestyle where that is their sole identity. This makes it really hard to open up to new things, people and cultures.”

Blume credits his upbringing for his own open-mindedness but says many veterans could benefit from the opportunity to step outside their comfort zone.

Benjamin Blume's many study abroad experiences have included New Zealand and a visit to the Shire. (Photo: Benjamin Blume)

“When we go abroad in any capacity, we should go with an open mind and try to learn, connect and understand other people without judgment or feeling like we are better than them just because of military service,” he says.

One of his favorite talking points when speaking to other veterans? The GI Bill.

“There are currently 83 countries that have schools that take the GI Bill,” Blume says. “Almost all schools have a study abroad office that is a wealth of knowledge and support.”

“Filling out a few applications, renewing your passport and buying a flight are well worth the fully funded education and adventure of studying abroad,” he says. “It’s one heck of an opportunity for veterans to explore the world after serving their country.”

‘You never know until you try’

At CU �Ǹ�Թ�, Blume is one of just a few veterans in his science and art classes. Though the coursework is rigorous, he says he’s found his passion and a sense of belonging.

He also uses his rich life experiences to empower those around him.

“I feel like having the life/world experiences I’ve had and being older gives me an opportunity to mentor others. I try to be one of the hardest workers and set an example for younger students,” Blume says.

He’s also grateful for CU �Ǹ�Թ�’s Veterans Bridge Program and the campus Study Abroad Office, both of which he credits with making his latest academic journey possible. “The CU �Ǹ�Թ� Study Abroad Office is the perfect place to start and get the ball rolling,” he says.

When he’s not focused on combining his love for science and art into a future that includes astrophotography and even more travel, Blume continues to be a passionate advocate for study abroad—particularly for his fellow veterans.

“Joining the military isn’t for everyone, but after getting out as a veteran, why not continue seeing the world? Even if you aren’t going to school, travel is its own adventure and has opened my mind to everything there is to see and do,” Blume says.

“Oh, and it’s even better when it’s pretty much all paid for,” he adds with a smile.

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After two combat deployments in Afghanistan, undergraduate Benjamin Blume is eager to share is unconventional educational path with fellow veterans.

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