Featuring artists Libby Barbee & Nicole Banowetz and farmers Mark DeRespinis of Esoterra Culinary Garden & Mark Guttridge of Ollin Farms. Moderated by Justin Veach, Longmont Museum.

Join us for a conversation with artists and farmers featured in our “agriCULTURE” exhibition as they recount what they learned from working together and the surprising connections between farming and the creation of art.

Free reservations recommended.

Make a Reservation, or call 303-651-8374.

Libby Barbee

Libby was raised on the southeastern plains of Colorado and currently lives in Denver, CO. She received her MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. She completed her undergraduate studies at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO; receiving a BFA in painting, a BFA in Art History, and a BA in French Language.

At the root of Libby’s art, lies a fascination with the emotional, psychological, and cultural implications of place. She is fascinated by the human ability both to manipulate and be manipulated by an environment; and revels in the often confusing and multifarious mix-matches of meanings and associations that cling to particular places. From interactive sculptures to images of western landscapes constructed from fragments of cultural debris, her work explores the dynamics that emerge from the interstices where people and place collide.

Much of Libby’s work explores the historical relationship between Americans and their environment, and is specifically engaged in an examination of the American frontier myth and the mediating role it plays in the relationship between American identity and the American landscape. Through various media and forms, Libby’s artwork explores the contemporary political and social implications of frontier myth, and imagines the western landscape as both a culture-defining myth and as a thoroughly domesticated and culturally constructed space.

Nicole Banowetz is a Denver sculptor who makes sewn inflatable sculptures and delicate assembled forms. Her artwork addresses vulnerability and struggle. She empowers objects through embellishment, building up protective layers, which with time become destructive. Her forms move freely between growth and decay blurring the distinction between decoration and disease. Nicole’s work is inspired by the natural world. She addresses human qualities while using the imagery she finds in the animal, plant, mineral, and bacterial worlds. She has made installations inspired by bacteria, parasitic fungus, viruses, radiolaria, rotifers, horses, and rhinos. All these forms she recreates in soft inflatable sculptures, which she designs and sews on her sewing machine, sometimes adding illumination from within so that the forms glow at night, and other times adding delicate sculpted porcelain forms which balance within or on top of the inflatable.

Nicole graduated from Colorado State University in 2004 with a BFA in sculpture. She has also lived and worked internationally creating and / or showing work in India, Italy, Ireland, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Taiwan, and England. Nicole has shown in the Biennial of the Americas, The Museum of Outdoor Arts, the Arvada Center, Ironton Gallery, OpenART, Pirate Contemporary, Gray Contemporary, Saginaw Valley State University Art Gallery, and the Kreuzburg Pavilion. She is in the permanent collection of the Denver Children’s Museum and the Denver Zoo in the US, The Amsterdam Light festival’s Light Art Collection, and Kids Awesome Museum in Taipei, Taiwan.  

Nicole has completed residencies at the Center for Creative Activities in Ustka, Poland a part of the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art‘s artist in residency program, the NCCA Art Residence in Kronstadt in Russia, and in Berlin the GlogauAIR artist in residency program and  the Institut für Alles Mögliche residency program. She also participated in the Denver Children’s Museum residency program, making a large inflatable series of sculptures inspired by childrens’ drawings of microscopic creatures. She recently completed large inflatable light installations for both the 2016 and 2017 editions of the Amsterdam Light festival, and showed in the OpenArt biennial in Orebro in 2017. Nicole completed the AARK Archipelago Art Residency in Korpo Finland and created a new work for the the Environmental Art Exhibition Barfotastigen (Barefoot Path.  She was also in residence with Breckcreate in Breckenridge in preparation for her work in the Breckenridge International Festival of the Arts. Her most detailed installation to date, “The Incubation Effect” was displayed at the Denver Art Museum in 2018-2019. 

Mark DeRespinis returned to the front range to start Esoterra Culinary Garden after developing a farm at the world renowned Ojo Caliente Mineral Springs resort in northern New Mexico.  We are here to build long term relationships with the most innovative and quality-focused food enterprises in the region.

Mark Guttridge is co-owner of Ollin Farms in Longmont. Together with his wife Kena, they have been growing produce for the Longmont community for the past 16 years. Through their CSA programs, farmstand, food access partnerships and regenerative farming research, Ollin Farms keeps Mark and Kena, their four daughters, as well as around 20 employees busy planting, weeding, harvesting and distributing produce in an effort to provide the healthiest food possible to their community. Besides growing vegetables, Ollin farms focuses on educational classes, field trips, and paid high school internships, all aimed at connecting youth to the land, teaching them to follow the patterns of nature in an effort to create the next generation of healthy eaters and responsible land stewards.

Thursday Nights at the Museum

The Longmont Museum exhibits and galleries are open until 9 pm on Thursday nights. Unwind after work with a beer or glass of wine and create art in one of our adult Art & Sip classes or join us for a Thursday Nights at the Museum program to see a movie, catch a great band, or hear extraordinary people talk about issues of importance to Boulder County and beyond. Many of the programs take inspiration from our current exhibition “agriCULTURE” Art Inspired by the Land.

We hope to see you on Thursday nights this fall.

Other Museum Events and Performances

Check out Longmont Museum Presents for additional performances, or see other concerts or films this fall.