Unfettered Recognition Coming to East Window for Disability Pride Month

To commemorate Disability Pride Month this July, Visual Artist and Disability Advocate Alex Stark (he/him) is bringing Unfettered Recognition to East Window Gallery in Boulder, CO. This exhibit features disabled artists from all over the Front Range and was carefully curated by Stark himself. This much-anticipated show opens in July and will run through August 2023.

Alex Stark is a disabled, queer artist, curator, and founder of Rare Visions Gallery Project, located in Boulder, with ties to the Chicago arts scene as well. Alex received a Bachelor of Fine Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 2016. Stark works as an advisor in the Disability and Learning Resource Center at SAIC.

He began the Voices Embodied series, in which selected works focus on a relationship between disability, the body, and identity. Stark has exhibited in Chicago at LV3 Gallery, Roots and Culture Gallery, and Carrie Secrist Gallery, as well as in New York City at Chashama Gallery. Appearing in the 2019 School of the Art Institute Biannual Magazine and the 24th issue of Posit, Stark has also spoken at Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, Arts of Life, and Artist Communities Alliance.

People with disabilities make up the largest, most expansive, minority group, crossing lines of age, ethnicity, gender, race, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status. The selected Boulder and Denver area artists’ works for this Disability Pride Month event are bold and emphatic as well as delicate and contemplative. Together, they embody a range of perspectives and representations acknowledging that disabled folks are integral to all communities.

There are nine different artists who are displaying at Unfettered Recognition this July. Each artist offers up a variety of experiences centered around disability, including grief and empowerment. Each artists’ piece is displayed in such a way as to promote mutual support and the strength of shared stories. Each piece featured as part of this exhibition explores the connection of community as well as the physical, emotional, and psychological experiences related to living with a disability. These works are all a collective communication of how vulnerability co-exists in tandem with strength, a perfect sentiment during Disability Pride Month.

Visitors to Unfettered Recognition can also view pieces from Hannah Thomasson, Javier Flores, TM Spring, Hannah Leathers, Moose Cain-Rodenfels, Frances Joy Bradbury, Alexandria Hamm, Milena Brown, and MG Bernard.

This collaboration culminates with an opening reception scheduled for July 7, 2023 from 7:00-9:00 p.m. at the East Window Gallery location in Boulder. A special performance by MG Bernard is on July 28, 2023 from 7:00-9:00 p.m. A closing reception with an in-person Artist Talk with Stark will take place on August 18 from 7:00-9:00 p.m.

Find out more about some of the artists who are showing at Unfettered Recognition.

Francis Joy Bradbury (she/her)

In 1956 Joy celebrated her 11th birthday sitting in a bar watching a gecko fall from the Saigon Majestic Hotel’s high ceiling into a customer’s cocktail glass. A life lived in diverse settings combined with traversing a wide range of experiences can be seen in Bradbury’s exploration of many disciplines and her eclectic image making.

Bradbury first exhibited in New Mexico at the Taos Library. In Colorado she’s shown at Denver Outsider Art, Fort Collins Center for Fine Art Photography, Longmont Firehouse Gallery, and Westminster Rodeo Market Community Art Center. Boulder County exhibits include Dairy Center for the Arts, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, and Boulder Public Library Maker Made Shows, amongst others. In 2023 Bradbury celebrated the release of her book The Art of Frances Joy Bradbury with a signing party at East Window Gallery.

Hannah Thomasson (she/her)

Raised in Central Texas, Hannah Thomasson found herself reflecting the values of her environment and aggressively opposed the fine art. After entering college and feeling grossly out of place and unfulfilled, she quickly transferred to Bowling Green State University to formally pursue abstract painting. As a young up-and-coming artist, Thomasson had pieces featured with Bowling Green Arts Council and at Dorothy Uber Bryan Gallery in Bowling Green, Ohio, but has since expanded to the Red Door Gallery and the Presidential Suite Gallery in Toledo, Ohio.

Currently based out of her small apartment off East Colfax, the variance of day-to-day life on Colfax greatly influences her work. While she has no direct mission to challenge, the disconnect between her hand and her goal creates conversation around the deeper meanings of the subject. In turn, she uses these moments of disconnect to fuel conversations surrounding climate change, capitalism, and burnout.

Moose Cain-Rodenfels (he/him)

Occasionally staring into the rising sun shining over the Yampa Valley, Cain-Rodenfels sits atop a large rock eagerly sketching the shapes of the sunspots in his vision. Born in early May of 2003, he was seldomly seen without a crayon, marker, or pen in hand, with his childhood obsession being prolifically creating as much art as his little hands could muster. This obsession followed him into his teens, when he began experimenting with combining ink work with the ever-expanding horizon of digital work. His first exhibiting series titled Visions showcased in a solo exhibition in his senior year of high school in the spring of 2021.

Now based in Lakewood, CO, Cain-Rodenfels continues to explore themes of sight, vision, and perspective in his most recent series titled Sjón, which is derived from the Icelandic word for sight. The body of works depicts various visual impairments and conditions represented as planets, moons, or other celestial bodies to allow the viewer to traverse and explore a solar system of vision that may differ from their own. Vertigo, a piece from Sjón, will be exhibited at Unfettered Recognition later this summer.

Tammi Spring (she/her)

Spring creates pictures and images to illustrate love; the love of nature and connection with spirituality, revealing the whimsical, and bridging healing and survival stories. She is a survivor of cancer, sexual assault, and domestic violence, living with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). After a near-death experience in 2013, Spring returned to this life committed to the path of art and storytelling.

Her artwork has been in more than 35 exhibits and shows from 2013-2023. Most recently, she appeared at a poetry reading at East Window in November 2022 and as a featured artist in the Joysome! show for the 2023 Month of Photography in partnership with East Window and the Dairy Arts Center. Visual storytelling through photographic art is the core of my featured presentation at the upcoming International Association of Near-Death Studies (IANDS) annual conference. Spring is now producing a writing and visual project, “Thank You for Being,” about my near-death experience.

Hannah Leathers (she/they)

Holding a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art and a Master’s in Art Education from the University of Georgia, Leathers is an interdisciplinary artist originally from Atlanta, currently working in painting, drawing, and tattooing. Now residing in Denver, her process includes queering bodily forms and motifs as a way to process emotions, experiences, and bodily trauma. Using a stream-of-consciousness drawing practice, Leathers records emotional and traumatic experiences. “Creating original marks and drawings through movement makes my identities and trauma more visible to me, and more abstract… and that feels good,” says Leathers.

Mary Grace (MG) Bernard (she/her)

Bernard is a transmedia and performance artist, educator, advocate, and crip witch. Her practice finds itself at the intersection of performance art, transmedia installation art, art scholarship, art writing, curation, and activism. Exploring seemingly separate fields like the material and immaterial realities of disability, the living dead, queerness, cyborgism, crip time, post-humanness, spirituality, madness, care, dependency, and the boundaries between the personal and political spheres of existence, she seeks to dissolve binary thinking while converging otherwise-invisible communities and their stories.

Alexandria Hamm (she/her)

Based out of Westminster, CO, Alexandria Hamm is a fine artist and digital illustrator. As a mixed media artist, Hamm specializes in abstract acrylic painting and collage. Hamm is the owner of illustrated goods company Majestik Magnolia, whose designs have been featured in Uppercase Magazine. She makes work to inspire others to embrace, celebrate, and connect with themselves and one another, especially amid challenges. Her paintings translate experiences of questioning identity and living with chronic illness while exploring themes of community, healing, and the joy of journeying.

East Window is an independent arts organization owned by Todd Edward Herman that is dedicated to promoting and developing original art and performance by emerging and underrepresented artists from around the world. Please visit the East Window website to view details on upcoming exhibitions and hours of operation.

Featured image credit MG Bernard