New Work for a New Season
/American Art Collector | March 2023
TWO COLORADO ARTISTS EXPLORE GESTURE AND FLOW IN EVERYDAY SCENES
By Meg Daly
As winter’s grip begins to loosen in the Rocky Mountains, a show of new works by Colorado artists Jane DeDecker and Nancy Switzer harkens the energy and light of early spring.
Loveland, Colorado-based DeDecker was named one of USA Today’s Women of the Year in 2022. She earned this honor for teaming up with Colorado lawmaker Jody Shadduck-McNally to erect a national monument to commemorate women’s suffrage. After years of building partnerships with prominent national leaders, the Women’s Suffrage National Monument will be unveiled in 2027 in Washington, D.C.
DeDecker’s sculptures have been commissioned by many notable venues. Highlights include Harriet Tubman at the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Arkansas; Albert Gallatin at the National Park Service in Friendship Hill, Pennsylvania; Emily Dickinson at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina; Amelia Earhart at the Earhart Elementary School in Oakland, California; and many more.
For the Claggett/Rey show, DeDecker has been working on themes closer to home. She will present a number of pieces featuring animals, which she says is a bit of a departure for her. Known for her historical figures—especially of pioneering women—DeDecker turned toward personal totems for this show. “I’m tapping into spiritual things,” she says.
Her life-size sculpture of a horse rolling on its back is DeDecker’s way of exploring the joy and risk of “putting yourself out there.” “You see how those big animals are vulnerable when they are lying there like that,” she says.
Her piece, Within Arms, exemplifies how a loose, gestural style can convey emotions. A teacher stands proudly and unafraid while students cling to her dress. The figure is gentle and protective. And yet, in today’s world, the role of teachers in protecting students carries dramatic risks. Within Arms provides a reflective counterpoint, made all the more powerful by the absence of facial details. This figure is “everywoman.”
In a different way, painter Nancy Switzer captures the everyday in her work.
“I’m exploring color transitions in paint using reflective or transparent objects—cans, glass, fish—to break up or bring together the shapes they create on the canvas,” she says.
It’s no small feat to capture the way glass tempers colors and warps the dimensions of whatever is in the background as one looks through it. Switzer uses the qualities of paint, “sometimes flowing, sometimes crispy,” to create the full effect of a glass object.
Both Switzer and DeDecker allow their medium to have a voice in their work.
“Jane is what I would call a painterly sculptor and maybe I’m something of a sculptural painter, as it feels I’m building these objects out of paint and Jane paints her sculptures out of clay,” Switzer says.
Claggett/Rey gallery co-owner Margaret DeDecker, agrees. “Switzer’s complicated application of color has a sculptural element while DeDecker’s figurative surfaces maintain a broad painterly stroke,” she says.
To see the very different mediums harmonize in this show is a rich experience for viewers, not unlike a glowing horizon hugging hillsides of soft spring snow.
Claggett/Rey will hold an opening reception for DeDecker and Switzer on March 11, from 5 to 8 p.m.