Patterns of Consumption
April 1, 2022 - June 26, 2022
Plastic touches every aspect of our lives. It’s in clothing, housewares, toys, medical devices, vehicles, and infrastructure. It coats our walls, transports our water, encases our food, fills our cavities, even prolongs our lives. Yet the word “plastic” is equated with cheapness, both in quality of construction and value. Why? How has a material that in only seventy years has replaced all traditional materials in every application earned the reputation for being worthless? Shouldn’t it be the opposite? Shouldn’t it be revered?
Though much of the environmentally themed work we see that deals with plastic is about trash and guilt, the work of Kalliopi Monoyios seeks to reach people by embracing the complexity of our relationship with the material and speaking openly about it. By treating it with devotion, like the precious resource it is, she points a finger at consumerism as the root of our pollution problems, while honoring a material that makes modern life efficient and comfortable. Monoyios collects, washes, folds, and sews food wrappers into quilts that could be handed down through generations as heirlooms. She folds plastic into thousands of interlocking modular origami pieces while meditating on her wish for a solution to the plastic pollution problem in the tradition of senbazuru (folding 1000 origami cranes for peace). Creating beauty from a workhorse material that society undervalues and treats as disposable is an act of devotion and hope. Only when we fully appreciate how integral it is to our lives and our livelihood can we begin to change our attitudes about its value.
The body of work in this exhibit expands on Monoyios’s themes of surprising and quirky uses of plastic, all with the goal of inviting people to think deeper about their own relationships with the material. Featuring a combination of framed works, free-standing sculptures, large quilts, and installation, the exhibit combines single-use plastic food wrappers, PTFE dental floss, silicone contact lenses, and other surprising plastics (spoiler alert: chewing gum is plastic!) as fine art media. A small selection of familiar mass-produced items is also included in the exhibit in order to reveal the incredible versatility of this wonder material.
The exhibit will be open to the public in the Fine Art gallery at the Littleton Museum from Friday, April 1, 2022 - Sunday, June 26, 2022.
About the Artist:
Kalliopi Monoyios is a visual creative dedicated to communicating the wonder of the natural world to a wide and varied audience. After graduating from Princeton University with a degree in geology, she built her career as a science illustrator for the prominent paleontologist Neil Shubin at The University of Chicago. Her illustrations have appeared inside and on the covers of top peer review journals such as Nature and Science as well as in four popular science books, including The New York Times best-seller, Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. Illustrating for such diverse audiences taught her the value of having a large array of media at your fingertips — everything from traditional media, graphic work, fine art, cartoons, writing, and even performance can spread science far and wide. In 2011, she co-founded Symbiartic, a blog covering the intersection of science and art, exploring some of these broad-ranging scicomm/sciart efforts for Scientific American.
In 2019, she was elected President of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators, a group of professionals who communicate science through art. Now, driven by the conviction that science communicators operating in all spheres are a critical part of creating a scientifically literate public, she is developing new avenues of public engagement with science via her own art and curated exhibits.
Exhibit Events
Opening Reception
Thursday, March 31, 2022
5:30 - 7 pm
Come and celebrate the opening of this exhibit. 21+
Artist Talk
Saturday, April 2, 2022
2 pm
Join us for a gallery tour and artist talk with exhibiting artist Kalliopi Monoyios. She will share her inspiration and the process behind body of work, “The Plasticene.”
The talk will emphasize how her own artmaking gave rise to nuance in her understanding of our plastic problem and drove her to think deeply about the complexity of our current situation.
Light refreshments served.
Facebook Event
Permanent Exhibit
Littleton: Spirit of Community
This permanent exhibit depicts, through artifacts and text, the "Littleton Story" from its early beginnings to the present. Each case has a different focus and will guide you through the journey of Littleton through time.
škhé: it is said
Exhibit Dates: Friday, July 15 – Sunday, October 9, 2022
("škhé" is the sounds 'shh', then 'kay', pronounced together as 'shkay'.)
škhé: it is said is an early-career body of work by Denver artist Danielle SeeWalker, an enrolled Citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. SeeWalker works across disciplines to explore the intersections of Native American stereotypes, microaggressions, and colonialist systems, both historically and in contemporary society. Drawing on au courant color palettes, expressionistic art strategies, and her Lakota traditions, SeeWalker spins her work into a contemporary vision to elevate historical perspectives as told from the side not often heard.
“My work over the past few years has used the revealing aspects of American Indian history, as told from the perspective of a Native person, to demonstrate the profound impact it has had on our contemporary cultures today. In the current climate, where many believe history has no relevance, or believe Native Americans are relics of the past, I find myself continually returning to those aspects that are often hidden or misrepresented in the ’official’ recordings for posterity. In my multidisciplinary and diverse approaches to making art through installations, studio work, public street art, and curatorial work, I want the context of the work to leave the viewer with a thirst for wanting to know more about the truth or simply leave realizing a new perspective.” – Danielle SeeWalker
The title škhé is the Lakota word that translates to “it is said” or “so they say” and exemplifies the storytelling through SeeWalker’s work. Historical events, stories, ceremonies, and ways of life of the Očeti Šakówiŋ (Lakota/Dakota/Nakota people) have always been passed down through oral tradition by elders, community criers, and culture bearers. These stories have been carried down from generation to generation and many of them have been told to Danielle by her father or other elders in her community.
About the Artist:
Danielle SeeWalker is a Húŋkpapȟa Lakȟóta citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation in North Dakota. She is a mother, artist, writer, curator, activist, and businesswoman currently based in Denver. Her visual artwork often incorporates the use of mixed media and experimentation while incorporating traditional Native American materials, scenes, and messaging. Storytelling is an integral part of her artwork and pays homage to her identity as a Lakȟóta wíŋyaŋ (woman) and her passion to redirect the narrative to an accurate and insightful representation of contemporary Native America while still acknowledging historical events.
Alongside her passion for creating visual art, SeeWalker is a freelance writer and recently published her first book, titled “Still Here: A Past to Present Insight of Native American People & Culture.” She is also very dedicated to staying connected and involved in her Native community and is currently in her 2nd year serving as Co-Chair for the Denver American Indian Commission. Since 2013, SeeWalker and a long-time friend have been working on a personal passion project called The Red Road Project. The focus of the work is to document, through words and photographs, what it means to be Native American in the 21st century by capturing inspiring and positive stories of people and communities within Indian Country.
Instagram: seewalker_ART
Exhibit Events
Opening Reception
Thursday, July 14, 2022
5:30 - 7 pm
Come and celebrate the opening of this exhibit. No RSVP necessary. 21+
pARTy: škhé
Wednesday, August 24, 2022
5:30 - 7:30 pm
More details to come. We are working closely with the artist to plan activities that will familiarize you with her process and allow you to create a work of art.
Artist Talk: The Red Road Project
The Red Road Project with Danielle SeeWalker & Carlotta Cardana
Saturday, September 10, 2022
2 - 3 pm
Join us for a talk featuring visual artist Danielle SeeWalker and photographer Carlotta Cardana as they discuss their collaboration on The Red Road Project.
Since inception in 2013, The Red Road Project’s purpose is to document, through words & visuals, the inspiring and resilient stories of Native America. These stories, not often told, highlight the people and communities that are taking positive actions and demonstrating resilience. More often than not, we see a non-Native narrative reporting on what Indigenous cultures are or represent and this often leads to misconceptions and fueling of negative stereotypes and microaggressions. With the vast and complicated historical trauma that American Indian people have had to endure for centuries, the intention of the project is to redirect that conversation. It is important that The Red Road Project is a platform for Native American people to tell their stories of past, present, and future through their own voices and words. SeeWalker and Cardana believe that Indigenous knowledge and teachings can also suggest solutions to the issues we are facing collectively as humans – now more so than ever.
The title of this work comes from various Native American teachings that encourage one to “walk the red road”. When Native American people say they are walking the “red road” it means they are living life with purpose while on a path to positive change. This work illustrates how various American Indian tribes have had to overcome constant attempts of cultural genocide and acknowledge the residual scars of colonization, but more importantly, it brings forth the resilience, resistance, and revitalization of Indian Country today.
Nature’s Blueprints: Biomimicry in Art and Design
Exhibit Dates: Saturday, January 28, 2023 - Thursday, March 16, 2023
In an age of complex environmental challenges, why not look to the ingenuity of nature for solutions? The forms, patterns, and processes found in the natural world—refined by 3.8 billion years of evolution—can inspire our design of everything from raincoats to skyscrapers. This approach to innovation, called biomimicry, is becoming increasingly popular. Bird wings. Beehives. Porcupine quills. These have inspired design improvements that enable faster travel, safer buildings, and more precise medical equipment.
The exhibition Nature’s Blueprints: Biomimicry in Art and Design brings together art and design with environmental science using both scientific and artistic objects, as well as interactive learning stations. The exhibition is an adaptation of the High Desert Museum’s Innovation Lab: Design Inspired by Nature.
Biomimicry is not a novel idea; Gaudi and Da Vinci both took inspiration from nature. Modern science and technology, however, are rapidly expanding the types of materials and systems we can create. Similarly, the biological world has long served as a source of inspiration for artists. Biomimicry in art is not just painting or sculpting a flower. Rather, it is a process that entails exploring the material properties, cycles, and dynamics of nature, and how whole biological systems are structured—and putting that into works of art. Artworks and designs that are rooted in the laws and forms of nature can address pressing issues, such as conservation, sustainability, and environmental justice. They can also spark an interest in, and connection with, nature.
The intended takeaway messages of this exhibition are that nature is incredible, we can learn from it, and we can all be inventors. It also serves, indirectly, to highlight the importance of research. Our understanding of the natural world can lead to some extraordinary inventions that improve lives and reduce our impact on the environment.
