Pulling through
Studio & is back with new show ... COVID hair and all

There’s no doubt, with the pandemic, presidential election and racial unrest, we’ve all been through a lot in the last year. 

Since its last show nearly a year ago, Main Avenue’s venerable contemporary art gallery Studio & was forced to close down, only re-opening in March. And in that time, co-owner Tim Kapustka, whose COVID hair has even his closest friends doing double takes, yearned for the day when the gallery could once again hold its lively, well-attended and sometimes boisterous openings. 

Well, that time has come.

This Fri., May 14, Studio & opens its first show in 11 months, “Through,” featuring the work of 28 artists from near and far, many Studio & show regulars.

“I’m really looking forward to having people back, and this show is going to be a celebration of that,” said Kapustka.

In keeping with the times, the show will be a socially distanced affair, with only eight masked attendees (or however many San Juan Basin Health Department deems is allowable on opening day) in the studio at once. Everyone else can (carefully) congregate outside in the gallery’s parking lot, where there will be live music, refreshments and, of course, lots of catching up to do.

“I can already feel what the camaraderie is going to feel like,” said Kapustka. “So many people have been starved for social interaction.”

As for the show’s theme, Kapustka is the first to admit it was a bit of a no-brainer.

“I don’t want to say ‘low-hanging fruit’ to discredit it, but we’ve all kind of been in a semi-shared experience, separately,” he said Monday in what also happened to be one of this writer’s first in-person interviews in a year. “It was a huge blanket event. This is really something that touches us all. I like the commonality of that.”

As with Studio &’s past “challenge” invitationals, artists are given a theme word and asked for their interpretation. Past shows’ topics include “Year,” “Bound” and “24 Durango.” Of course, there is no right or wrong answer – or no rock-solid definition of the word “through” (or threw, if you want to get really crafty) – because that’s where the real artistic magic happens, according to Kapustka.

“It’s a simple word, but there are three or four rich interpretations, which is always the aim with these things,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Here’s your parameters. How are you going to bounce around in here?’ It’s a challenge in its simplicity.”

Although he said there is an embarrassing wealth of local artistic talent to call upon for the gallery’s shows, he chose to invite former Studio & members and longtime4 

exhibitors, like Scott Dye, Shay Lopez, Clint Reid, Minna Jain and Jeff Madeen.

“This time, what I wanted to do was reach out to Studio & alumni. I think of those people in particular – and all the artists in the show – as the & family,” he said.

While some of the artists in the show live in Durango, many have moved away, broadening the show’s perspective even farther. For example, Jain moved back to her home of Minneapolis about a year ago, just a few blocks from where George Floyd was killed. Her triptych of stark cyanotype prints on cotton fabric with embroidery, titled “It’s Loud Here,” were taken during the armed military occupation of the city in May 2020. 

“It’s crazy; this was our country last year,” said Kapustka, looking over one of Jain’s three pieces, of a Black Hawk helicopter swooping down over the city. “It looks like Kosovo.”

Many of the pieces reflect the darkness of the past year – like Crystal Hartman’s “Hive,” which at first glance appears to be a whimsical sketch but upon closer inspection is a pile of skulls and bones. However, others are more nuanced or upbeat, like Tony Holmquist’s abstract intaglio (engraving), “Port Clyde Cyclegraph,” or David Butler’s space-age sculpture, “Retrolux Rocket.”

But one thing all the works have in common: they chronicle the last 365 days, which is the beauty of the show, Kapustka said. “We experienced it differently, but we all have a larger frame of reference to talk about it,” he said.

As for Studio &’s own experience making it “through” the pandemic, Kapustka was overwhelmed with appreciation for support from the community over the last year.

“People really stepped up to support us in COVID,” he said. “People we really didn’t know came out of the woodwork to ask ‘how do we help?’”

To pivot during the new normal, the gallery put its offerings online and also started selling gift certificates, which proved to be quite popular and helped keep the studio afloat.

“This community is special,” said Kapustka. “The validation in a really tough time – it’s so humbling and will propel us through.”

For more, visit Studio & on Facebook or go to www.anddurango.com.