Art Gym Denver presents Four Elements featuring Randy Burns and Leon Loughridge. Join us for the opening reception on Thursday, June 14, 5-8pm to meet the artists. There will be a live dance performance presented by Phannie Haver at 6:15pm. Free and open to the public. On display June 14 to July 6, 2018.

Four Elements brings together the metal and fire of metalsmith Randy Burns with the wood and water of print maker Leon Loughridge.

At the core of Randy Burns’s exhibition are six brooches created in a series using the same design but different metalworking techniques. “Most artists work in a series, making a design several times,” he says. “I had never disciplined myself to do that and wanted to do a series.”

Burns began his formal training with apprenticeship in the late 1960s, working his way up from the polishing room. He alternated hands-on trade experience with BFA classes, finding that together they provided everything he needed. He graduated with a BFA from Colorado State University and later an MFA from the University of Oregon.

Burns also worked in academia, teaching at the Oregon College of Arts and Crafts, in Oregon State University’s continuing education program, and as jewelry faculty for Arapahoe Community College. In retirement he focuses on his own designs and is the metalsmith and lapidary steward at Art Gym Denver. Randy Burns will give an Artist Talk about the techniques used in his six-piece series onSaturday, June 16 from 2-4 p.m.

Leon Loughridge will exhibit woodblock prints and folios from his book “Gorge Songs: Artistic impressions of the Rio Grande Gorge in woodblock and poetry,” a collaboration with Beat poet John Macker. The book is composed of eight hand-bound folios, each containing hand-pulled prints of his woodblocks.

Loughridge’s woodblocks begin by creating watercolor sketches of the wild shapes and dramatic values seen as he walks the gorge. The gorge, he says “is humbling. It has stood there for many civilizations and will be there after ours.”

Growing up in Pojoaque, New Mexico, Loughridge learned to admire the mystique of the gorge. He graduated from the Art Institute of Colorado and embarked on a self-study of the European masters while stationed in Germany. Loughridge spent much of his career creating and restoring frames for museums and collectors. He now owns Dry Creek Art Press and pursues his own art in earnest.

Meet Leon Loughridge and hear a presentation about his work on June 15 at 6-8 p.m.