In August, Cortez City Council paid $5,332 for four pieces of artwork, which now hang in City Hall.
The pieces were selected by the Cortez Public Arts Advisory Committee, chaired by Sonja Horoshko, after an invitation-only call for submissions and a juried selection. The purchase came in under the $7,000 budgeted by City Council and met the artists’ price, she said. Each was made by a Cortez artist who had loaned art to the city and will be added to the city’s permanent collection.
Horoshko, an artist herself, said she didn’t negotiate prices downward because the committee hoped to establish the value of art in Cortez without underpricing new acquisitions.
“The visual arts are a permanent aesthetic record of the city’s history,” said Fort Lewis College professor John Peters-Campbell, who in June completed a survey of artwork at City Hall, the Cortez Recreation Center and the Cortez Public Library. “Preference in acquisition should concentrate on residents or former residents of the region, as well as other artists whose work focuses on the region.”
Each piece represents a stage of water, and all were selected amid this summer’s drought, a process that Horoshko said highlights a subconscious aspect of art. Each provided personal accounts of the artists’ connection with Cortez.
Two of the artists, Barbara Grist and Keith Hutcheson, are retired arts teachers with a total of 60 years in arts education. Grist taught at what is now the Cortez Middle School, as well as Montezuma-Cortez High School and Southwest Open School. Hutcheson taught at M-CHS.
“I am pleased to be one of the artists in the City of Cortez permanent collection,” Grist said in a statement. “I applaud the city for realizing how the arts enrich lives and stimulate our economy.”
Jan Heyl, whose work depicts a snow scene featuring the San Juan Mountains’ Wilson Peak, moved to Cortez in 1984, along with the office of Colorado State University’s DARE to be You Program, which focuses on youth development and cultural competence.
Karen Kristin, whose architectural murals have been seen in St. Mark’s Square in Venice, Italy, and the Venetian Macao, a luxury resort in Macau, contributed a painting of the sky above Winslow, Arizona. The painting’s sunset hues complement the solid color fields of a triptych hanging nearby, each above the dais of City Hall’s council chambers.
“Although the sky is most often seen as a background to something else, I feel that enjoying the sky on its own is enough,” Kristin said in a statement. “The ‘something else’ beneath, within, or before is not necessary. The sky work creates a bond with the viewer.”
The history of the collectionBefore July’s call for art, the arts committee audited the city’s holdings to help guide the selection of artwork and create a record of the city’s holdings. The audit continues today, hindered by the scant record keeping in the early days of the city’s acquisitions.
Peters-Campbell initiated the cataloging process for the committee in June, when he completed a survey of all pieces on display in City Hall, the Cortez Recreation Center and the Cortez Public Library.
His findings showed that of the 35 artworks on display, only two were purchased. The rest appeared to be donated.
Since the survey, the committee has sought the public’s assistance as it attempts to glean information about the collection, artists, buyers and donors.
The committee created a Facebook page, Cortez Public Art, where members of the public can view displayed artworks and provide information to help document their histories.
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