Steamboat Pilot & Today

Photo Gallery

September show at Artists' Gallery of Steamboat

Opening with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, Artists' Gallery of Steamboat presents a show featuring woodworking by Matt Graves, photography by Judy Jones and paintings by Joyce Lee Petersen.

Steamboat Springs — Photographer Judy Jones has been chasing horses for three years for her latest series of work.

Focusing on mustangs for their freedom, Jones found the animals in Colorado, Wyoming, North Dakota and New Mexico, and captured them running, resting and nuzzling.

Photos from her search are on display through September at Artists' Gallery of Steamboat. The show - which also features paintings by Joyce Lee Petersen and abstract woodwork by Matt Graves - opens with a free reception from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday. The event is part of First Friday Artwalk.

"The mustangs, they're not pretty in a lot of cases," Jones said, describing the frequent wounds and markings she found on the horses. "I had to look far and wide for the pretty ones." By slowly introducing herself to each herd, Jones was able to get close enough to photograph the animals without startling them.

"They just looked at me with curiosity. They didn't seem terrified," she said.

Joel Schulman, of PhotoGraphicsArt, suggested printing the photos on a satiny material; four of those prints are hanging from the gallery ceiling for the September show and are featured with several more mustang photos.

Also hanging from the Artists' Gallery ceiling is a wooden fish sculpture. It's the second piece of its kind by Matt Graves, a Routt County native who makes furniture and crafts art from beetle-kill pine and aspen trees.

For the fish, Graves carved a head and fins out of aspen, then carefully twisted long, thin pieces of the wood to form the sculpture's curved body, he said. Graves' portion of the gallery's September featured artists show also includes a medium-sized abstract sculpture and a chair made of beetle-kill pine.

Sticking to the show's theme of earthy images, Craig-based painter Joyce Lee Petersen called on her years living in the Southwest for a series of vividly colored water-media paintings.

"I've always been attracted to the Southwestern culture, and I like the spirit. : You can feel the ancients there," Petersen said. Several of the works include images of ancient people, she said. The subject for each painting is taken from Petersen's imagination - with about seven decades of art experience, she doesn't use source material, she said.

Jones, Graves and Petersen are featured at Artists' Gallery through the end of September. Look for a complete listing of First Friday Artwalk events in the Explore Steamboat section in Friday's Steamboat Today.

- To reach Margaret Hair, call 871-4204 or e-mail mhair@steamboatpilot.com.