Over 20 artists were on display at Nederland Community Center on Thursday, March 2, 2023. Artists of all types and of all ages showcased more than 50 pieces of art featuring traditional and surreal styles, from paintings to collage, watercolors to pastels, digital art and photography.

From 5 to 7 p.m. the halls of the community center became full of Nederland art lovers who poured over each piece that hung on the walls. For a suggested donation of $7 guests were given two drink tickets and a ballot which asked for each guest to vote for their top three favorite pieces of art.

Annie Thayer, who has coordinated Arts at the Center in collaboration with Arts Committee members and community center staff and volunteers for eight years, greeted guests at the entrance and showcased her own watercolor paintings.

Thayer’s work is inspired by the very nature around us. Her piece Chautauqua Wonderland, a mountain landscape beautifully layered with shades of browns, into blues, and fading into white, perfectly highlights her ability to capture a natural moment using her technique in real time to paint a scene intuitively.

An evening of the arts Skylar Abookire and Annabel Ivey treated the audience to their fantastic harmonizing and unique ukulele versions of 90s hits like “There She Goes” by The La’s.[/caption]

As you move down the hallway towards the back staircase a two-piece series of surreal oil paintings titled Black Egg 1 & 2 immediately strikes the viewer with a provocative journey into each of the two artists’ psyches. Artists Roxana Astemborski and John Shively delivered an impossible dreamscape that enticed the viewer into taking a deeper look into its fantastical imagery.

On the right wall hung five different pieces from five Nederland Middle-Senior High School (NMSHS) students. NMSHS senior Bella Manweller presented her colorful and creative digital art piece Shining Fish Tank; 17-year-old Clara Miller showed a provocative sci-fi influenced digital art piece titled Storm Watcher; 13-year-old Evelyne Stanton created the thought-provoking acrylic painting Joy; Nitzana Harkness displayed a striking acrylic painting of a beach landscape titled Ocean Stars; and 14-year-old Ivy Koltz showed an acrylic painting of a calm sunset titled Clouded Mountains.

Brent Warren presented a series of digital art birthday card parodies. Warren created his own humorous images from recolored and reconstructed stock photography.

Wine, hors d’oeuvres, and sweet treats were served while several music acts played upstairs in the meeting room. Evan Cantor of the CBDs, who also showed four oil paintings of idyllic landscapes, sang in his signature crooning style for the crowd. Noah Turner played masterful acoustic renditions of King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard and the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood.” And Skylar Abookire and Annabel Ivey wowed the audience with their harmonizing and ukulele stylings, nailing a unique version of Radiohead’s “Creep.”

Several more artists’ works were displayed through the upstairs hallway, starting with stunning photo collage pieces by Leslie Rothman. Rothman’s piece The Flatirons - B&W in Color perfectly encapsulates her unique style of recontextualizing her earlier photography work by deconstructing and altering photographs and then rebuilding them into a new collage.

Janna Butler showed Boulder, a delightful watercolor portrait of a charming golden retriever. Jeanne Benson displayed two colored pencil pieces, creating an incredible realism through tiny, delicate pencil strokes.

On the opposite wall John Mattson, a local author and photographer, displayed two paintings, an oil and an acrylic, of wonderfully textile natural rock formations juxtaposed under a bold, blue sky. Mattson also highlighted My Favorite Horse, a bright oil painting of the aforementioned horse standing “on the farm in North Dakota.”

Fourteen-year-old Lucas J Tober Frimel showed Beyond the Peaks and Spired Horizon, two watercolor paintings inspired by their journeys into the desert. The yellows and oranges of sand dunes and rocky pinnacles merge into blue skies and reflective pools of blue water, all of it radiating, shimmering like a heat mirage.

Prior winner at Arts at the Center Madeline “Maddie” Perry showcased five watercolor paintings, including cozy snowscapes and remarkable animal portraits. Perry’s Fine Fox spotlights the artist’s ability to create realistic texture and intricate expression through her use of watercolor.

Gretchen Acharya displayed six beautiful pastel works, including Campus Tree in May, which absorbed the viewer within the entwining vines of the tree, its branches imbued in lush greens and outlined by an otherworldly purple that causes the entire image to pop. Waving at the Beach features layers of blues, from playful and light to sinister and dark; Acharya’s twirling and swirling strokes of the pastels represent the movement of the waves crashing, rolling, and foaming.

Wolfy Wolf featured three paintings inspired by Nederland, including Map of Ned, a colorful and imaginative map painted for the 2018 and 2019 Frozen Dead Guy Days festival guide. Wolf’s dry brush and saturation techniques make his watercolors excel with a cartoon-like vibrancy. Map of Ned as well as Smurf Village and Look Up, which are both snapshots of Nederland life, all feature little hidden secrets and visual gags from the artist.

Astemborski showed another surreal piece in which different realms of possibility drip and flow into each other. Cycles and Seasons, a digital piece printed on metal, represents a larger view of the dreamscape depicted in Black Egg 1 & 2.

There were selections of three-dimensional art on display, including candle holders, bracelets, buckles, and rings made of iron by Rocky Stiers, and mixed media statuettes, dioramas, and aluminum sculptures by Melissa Getz.

Marc McClish displayed three absorbing “chromascapes,” which are gradients of colors created by long-exposure photography combined with steady, slow, and precise panning movement. Chromascape 015: Fall Colors at Los Lagos features energetic streaks of alluring colors at a glance, and deeper within reveals a sense of place that elicits strong emotions.

As guests complete the circle and come to the staircase that brings them back down to where the night began, they’re presented with three more pieces by Shively. Shively’s oil paintings, Crowned Orchid, Candy Land and Blue Ball Creation, depict otherworldly realms within the velvety and feathery textures of floral life that creates a stirring fervor within the viewer.

At the end of the evening Thayer addressed the crowd within the meeting room and first thanked those who contributed artwork and those who volunteered to help throw the event. Once all ballots had been received and counted Thayer then announced the winners of the evening.

McClish was awarded the “coordinators choice” award for his sleek and enveloping chromascapes. McClish studied at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California before being recruited to work in professional photography studios in New York City. After working in New York City for 13 years, much of that time spent in his own professional studio and meeting many influential artists in the field, McClish and his family moved to Boulder. For the past nine years McClish has focused on his career of architecture and real estate photography.

Leslie Rothman was awarded third place for her intricate and eye-catching collage work. Rothman began her art education in high school and studied fine arts in New York and Philadelphia; when she moved to Nederland in 1991 she became inspired as a photographer by the beautiful Peak to Peak wilderness. After a long break from fine arts, in 2017 Rothman discovered a new creative outlet in deconstructing her photography work and creating new pieces of art from them.

Gretchen Acharya was awarded second place for her bright and bold pastel work. Acharya states her goal as an artist is to utilize light, shadow, and texture to express the living energy within her subject and communicate it to viewers of her art. Acharya notes pastel as her preferred medium due to its “directness of execution, the unmatched brilliance and vibrancy of color, and its versatility and permanence.”

Thirteen year old Maddie Perry was awarded first place for her brilliantly subtle and understated watercolor work. After her diagnosis of dyslexia, Perry began dedicating herself to the medium of watercolor in 2019. Perry has since built a body of work that focuses on her love of nature and of animals, as she is on her way towards mastering the intricacies of capturing soulful expressions and emotions within her paintings. Summers on her grandparents’ dairy farm in Jarrettsville, Maryland, make for the perfect inspiration for Perry’s incredible talent.

Nederland’s history as a place for creative expression through art of many kinds is kept alive today by its young artists. These young talents are nurtured by dedicated and talented local community leaders and artists like Thayer and those on the arts committee. Events like Arts at the Center help artists feel validated in dedicating their hard work to the creation of beauty and love onto a canvas for all to see.