Be sure to visit the Library during the First Friday Art Walk for live music, local art displays and sales, and children's crafts. November's Art Walk will feature artists Blaise Simonelli and Grace Gee. Live music will be performed by Izzy Fincher. Families and children are invited to make adorable scarecrows and button acorns!
Blaise Simonelli is an abstract expressionist painter, who works with acrylics and a variety of mark making tools. Her work portrays subtle movement with an emphasis on space, oftentimes creating an ethereal feel. The paintings generate a soft yet provocative mood, through color and texture. Inspired by intuition and the unknown, Blaise pursues tones and placement in her paintings, in attempt to depict the vastness of life, both the seen and unseen. She strives to harmonize quiet and bold space in her work, as representations of dichotomies and balance.
Born in southwest Florida, Blaise moved to Boulder, Colorado in 2011. In 2018, she toured her first Open Studios exploring different artists and art forms in the community. She immediately found the palettes and easels of local painters nothing short of romantic, and longed for the experience of creating art herself. In 2019 she began painting at home. Since her onset, she has cultivated her own sense of preference and style of painting, but continues to experiment and learn each time she shows up to the canvas. For Blaise, painting abstract is an enchanting and profound experience, that she finds both humiliating and liberating.
Grace Gee’s healing art expresses the outermost edges of the innermost condition of being human. She creates art that challenges the mind and nourishes the spirit while providing avenues to engage in a changing consciousness. Her art holds space for vulnerability to exist.
She is the owner of Healing Grace Studio and works in a variety of media including sculpture, fiber, artist books and installation. Her art practice includes producing social healing art events for all ages since 2003. Her unique approach to life, art, and healing is strongly informed by her BA in Psychology and an MA in Conscious Evolution. She has exhibited across the US, in both group and solo exhibitions. Her award-winning work has brought her invitations to exhibitions, artist residencies, interviews and publishing.
Grace is Chinese Canadian now residing in Louisville, Colorado. She has lived and worked in Canada, the US and Hong Kong and has traveled widely in Europe and Asia. Her work is influenced by her bi-cultural upbringing and is strongly rooted in spiritual growth, healing, and transformation.
Izzy Fincher is a classical guitarist based in Colorado. Through her lyricism and passion for musical diversity, Izzy is establishing herself as a versatile performer of underrepresented, contemporary and traditional repertoire. Izzy is currently attending CU Boulder on a full scholarship. Recently, she received the Mu Phi Epsilon Foundation’s Gerke Collegiate Award, CU Boulder’s Outstanding Junior Award and the Presser Foundation’s Undergraduate Scholar Award.
Additionally, join Grace for collaborative art-making with personal expression and share stories for Bubbling Up, a large free-flowing wall installation that will be featured in 2023. She will be at the library with bubbles and response cards on the following dates:
- Friday, 11/4 5 - 7 PM
- Tuesday, 11/8 3 - 6:30 PM
- Wednesday, 11/16 3 - 6:30 PM
The full exhibit of Bubbling Up will be on display on the second floor of the library next April.
