Somewhere in the Future I am Remembering Today
Letitia Quesenberry: Somewhere in the Future I am Remembering Today
David B. Smith Gallery
1534 Wazee Street, Denver, CO 80202
August 8-September 25, 2020
Admission: Free, on view online and by appointment. Contact the gallery to schedule an in-person visit.
Review by Mary Voelz Chandler
Now that museums and galleries are slowly re-opening in the metro area, for those of us who love to view art we can visit in abundance—by appointment. Actually, it’s a good move for visitors since art spaces are less crowded, allowing more time to study each piece.
A visit to view Letitia Quesenberry’s work at David B. Smith Gallery is particularly appealing. This is one of her few exhibitions west of the Mississippi, and she brings with her the unusual ability to create a different world. Recently, she received a 2020 Southern Prize and a grant from the South Arts program as one of the nine winners who submitted works for an exhibition in Columbus, Georgia. Her work is all about space, color, and light.
Letitia Quesenberry, As of Yet 73, 2020, polished plaster, panel, paint, resin, film, and Plexiglas, 17 x 14 x 1 inches. Image by Matthew Pevear, courtesy of David B. Smith Gallery.
While earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of Cincinnati, Quesenberry focused on drawing and printmaking. Later, she made a major shift to include color. And when she says it was a major shift, it was a major shift to a pursuit that involves works of light that rely on film, gels, paint, and plaster (and many other mediums). Many of her works have “frames” that follow the same dimensions of Polaroid photographs.
Letitia Quesenberry’s series Darker, 2020, variations using panel, plaster, coal slag, paint, resin, film, mica, and Plexiglas, 25.5 x 21 x 2 inches each. Image by Matthew Pevear, courtesy of David B. Smith Gallery.
Polaroid was the magic camera that became popular in the 1960s: a photograph would emerge and you could view it right away. Quesenberry’s frames are polished plaster, creating a cradle to hold the many layers she uses to create imaginative images. Her work takes time because there are so many steps to achieve what she wants to accomplish. She also has experimented with many mediums, including coal slag—“so shiny and so black”—to add texture and mica dust, which responds to light while also soaking it in. For a while, she was using wax to protect the surfaces of each work, but now she has turned to resin.
Think of this as a step into The Twilight Zone: During the past six months, many of us have been feeling anxious because we do not know how the virus and economic worries will play out. Being careful, being vigilant—that’s what we do. But viewing Quesenberry’s pieces offers comfort. Part of that is the mix of light and color, which reaches into the brain and the heart, finding genuine well-being.
We spoke last week. I was in the David B. Smith Gallery sitting in front of a laptop and she was in her studio in “Portland”—one of the oldest neighborhoods in Louisville, Kentucky. She gave me a FaceTime tour of her studio filled with light, saws, light tables, pieces of film that have been cut for other projects, and components that will, in the end, become fully realized works.
In the gallery, there are several series that flow together, but in different directions.
Letitia Quesenberry, BLSH 3, 2019, panel, lacquer, Plexiglas, film, and paint, 53 x 15 x 4 inches. Image by Matthew Pevear, courtesy of David B. Smith Gallery.
Light is her true calling. Some works are light boxes that are pieces in the Hyperspace series fueled by LED’s. But she also creates more subtle pieces, like the BLSH series, in which she layers colored film upon colored film with the purpose of developing something totally ephemeral.
Letitia Quesenberry’s Hyperspace series, 2015-2020, variations using panel, plaster, Plexiglas, film, resin, and LED. Image by Matthew Pevear, courtesy of David B. Smith Gallery.
In the gallery’s project space, there are more than half a dozen of the Hyperspace pieces. The room is dark, but it becomes hypnotic as the flamboyant colors—from blazing fuchsia to sky blue to sunny orange—at times move but a viewer can barely see the changes. She notes in her statement “Using LEDs, I build geometric boxes and room-sized installations where layered concentric bands of color film change hue in an unpredictable motion. The combination of semi-opaque layers illuminated by slowly changing lights creates a pulsing visual effect.”
The BLSH series is even more difficult to achieve because there is no artificial light involved. The numerous layers of colored film asks us to look more deeply and study more carefully as we peer into each work. Again from Quesenberry’s statement: “The BLSH series takes the form of the light boxes, but instead uses reflected color and depth rather than light itself for an overall more subdued effect.”
An installation view of Letitia Quesenberry’s exhibition Somewhere in the Future I am Remembering Today at David B. Smith Gallery. On the left is the series As of Yet, 2016-2020, variations using polished plaster, panel, paint, resin, film, graphite, spray paint, Plexiglas, mirror, glitter, and wax, 17 x 14 x 1 inches each. Image by Matthew Pevear, courtesy of David B. Smith Gallery.
Smaller pieces in the As of Yet series—almost two dozen—appear in a broken grid, with works where the layers of film seem to be moving, but they are not. And a new series called Darker almost devours light because of the use of coal slag and is deeply relevant to the many months this year that did seem darker. The series began because “It was anxious. There were trepidations about the future.”
But the next day after we talked, Quesenberry wrote this: “My interests are very much rooted in extolling the beauty of what can’t be known (which seems like most things). Destabilizing perception through explicit subtlety is my chosen course of expressing these ideas.”
That sums it up, since beauty eventually is evanescent.
Mary Voelz Chandler writes about visual arts, architecture, and preservation. She held the position of art and architecture writer for many years at the former Rocky Mountain News in Denver. She has completed two editions of the Guide to Denver Architecture and was a co-author of the 2009 book Colorado Abstract with Westword critic, author, and historian Michael Paglia. Along with numerous awards for her writing, Chandler was honored by the Denver Art Museum in 2012 with the Contemporary Alliance “Key” Award, and received the AIA Colorado 2005 award for Contribution to the Built Environment by a Non-Architect.
