ALTOGALLERY

Opening Reception: May 3 (6 - 10 PM)

Drink + Draw: May 16

 

 

ABOUT
DYLAN GRIFFITH
Dylan Griffith is a painter, illustrator, and zinester. Born in Arizona, Dylan moved to Denver in 2017. He has since been working on building a style of work rooted in Southwestern Mysticism.

Reminiscent of psychedelic and pop art styles, Griffith’s work bursts with colorful, symbolic motifs relevant to his region of origin. Wide-eyed, whimsical, funky figures slink their ways through cosmic desert landscapes, inviting viewers on a journey of weird enlightenment. Marked by a heavy use of halftone patterns and a comic book-like graphic sensibility, Griffith’s work, while young and contemporary, feels pretty cozy in the dreamy realms of decades past.


MAX KAUFFMAN
Best known for his outstanding post-apocalyptic folk tales, Max Kauffman is an artist who doesn’t fear taking risks or traveling the longer road to get to an idea for his work. Kauffman’s paintings shift deftly between abstraction and figuration by blurring the distinction between real and imagined, conscious and unconscious. The suggesting and exploding forms presented in his amazing body of work invite the observer’s own imaginative references and conjure the joyful mess of living.

Max’s pieces encompass a sense of uncontrollable chaos and a folkloric approach to their subject matter. He investigates how we draw comfort from inanimate objects and habitats that we occupy, letting them shape us. Kauffman was born in 1981 in Chicago and grew up in South Bend, IN. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics, with a minor in Anthropology from Arizona State University in 2004. He has participated in many solo and group shows across the United States as well as Italy, Canada , Mexico, and Israel. His work has been featured in publications like Boom,Vice, Beautiful Decay, Its Nice That, and Supersonic Electronic, to name a few. Max has collaborated with Mountain Dew, Nike, and Arbor on projects, and has written for Hi Fructose on and off since 2008. He currently lives in Denver with his cat daughter, Lady Drew.


DOUGLAS SPENCER
Doug Spencer (b. 1980) is a self-taught artist living and working in Denver, CO. His current work focuses on using natural elements such as smoke, pulverized mica and iron oxides to create surreal images and landscapes with innovative techniques and always a touch of the absurd.


MICHAEL STRESCINO
b. 1984 Tacoma, WA. Living the first four years of his life in Hawaii, Mike’s family relocated to Colorado, and he grew up and went to school in Pueblo. With the exception of a few more years in Hawaii during his early 20’s, Mike has resided in Colorado, now living and working in Denver.

Drawing became part of his life early and has remained constant since. Through many different life phases, trying to paint like an Impressionist as a kid, writing graffiti as a teenager, printmaking in college and zigzagging through mural painting, oil painting, digital illustration and now tattooing, drawing persists as the foundation. At heart Mike considers himself an illustrator first.

Over the past ten years Mike has done a lot of traveling, in the US and abroad, which has lead to significant hours in sketchbooks. Drawing and painting in a sketchbook subsequently became his favorite place to work. This combination has gradually lead to his current approach to art making which, no matter the medium, is
essentially visual note taking and journaling. Connecting separate observations and blurring the lines. Creating a timeline of work reflecting a lived life is the overarching goal of Mike’s creative process.

The paintings done for “Places Inside of Places” are of people and places from Mike’s recent travels to South Asia overlapped with observations from home, attempting to capture the blur of memory during daily life.

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