The pandemic provided inspiration for Anderson Ranch Art Center’s outdoor exhibition “Sculpturally Distanced,” which featured 17 works of art scattered throughout the Snowmass Village campus this summer. As part of the art institution’s newest outdoor exhibition, six Roaring Fork Valley artists decorated trees around the facility for an artful take on more traditional holiday aesthetics.
“Anything that we can do outside with visitors where we can be safe and distanced we’re going to do,” said Anderson Ranch’s Studio Coordinator of Sculpture Zakriya Rabani of the impetus for the project. “In the call we put out to artists, we mentioned that it doesn’t have to be holiday themed, it was just a chance for them to come out and decorate a tree. We chose those words strategically.”
Hannah Stoll is one of the local artists tapped for the project. She twisted balloons into different shapes and covered them in paper mâché for her installation called “Molecule Tree.” She painted each sculpture and hung them from pine branches. Stoll said the ornament-like results incorporate her interest in biology and celebrate “the beauty of our tiny components, and the indispensable scientific research that allows us to use them to fight for the health of our communities." And, according to Stoll, it’s fun to look at.
“I wanted something that would be eye catching and sort of joyful,” she said. “I didn’t even plan for this but they kind of took on a sparkly, Mardi Gras float aesthetic.”
The exhibition is running in tandem with an outdoor light display that will illuminate campus with 20,000 lights each afternoon at 4 p.m. as part of Snowmass’s “Luminescence” light display, a ScholARTship Art Sale. The sale features hundreds of pieces by local and Ranch-affiliated artists that can be purchased right off the wall, and proceeds benefit Anderson Ranch’s student scholarship fund. Anderson Ranch Arts Center is open to the public Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
