[By Kathryn R. Burke | Montrose Mirror | September 23 2024]

Let me start with this: Cheri Isgreen is the most creative person I know. When it comes to visual arts, she does it all—sculpture, painting, weaving, ceramics, and mixed media—using components and combinations in ways you’ve never imagined.

That’s the key to her work: Imagination, believing the impossible. Which is the magic behind her September exhibition at Space to Create in Ridgway. “Believing Impossible Things” runs through September 27^th. 

Next month, she will hang a new show, “Mixing it Up” with new artwork. It opens October 4th and runs until October 20th. The focus will be on mixed media with works ranging from fiber art, ceramics, and painting. Cards and scarves featuring her artwork will also be available.

During both months, Cheri is also a Working Artist at Space to Create. Friday-Sunday, she sets up a portable studio, makes art, gives demos, and answers questions. “People can come see my art, but they can also watch me making it,” she explains. “Visitors enjoy seeing the process behind the artwork.”

The day we visited, she was working on a Flamenco dancer—swirls of color & motion—a dance that tells a story. (In the background, shaded but still discernable, the guitarists that accompany the dance.) “I am a narrative artist,” she says. “I like to tell stories. I paint people and horses, telling their story – like the Flamenco dancer I am working on here. But landscapes tell a story too…especially when they are about my travels.” Her imaginative landscapes reveal sensations of time and place, personal experiences to share with the viewer.

What it all boils down to is creative energy, endless imagination. Cheri’s September show was inspired by a quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland where the Queen says: Why I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Well, so does Cheri: “I wake up in the morning and just imagine impossible things. Then, when I see the limitations, I strategize how to transcend them. I know the art rules, and I am constantly pushing the boundaries. As I make art, I strive to be Alice Through the Looking Glass, where everything is ‘as different as possible.’”

Take Cheri’s dream horse sculptures. Whimsical, magical, fantasy creations. Mounted on a wooden base with tree limbs for legs, DreamHorses are a fusion of fire and earth with sculpted ceramic or bronze forms.  “I see my horses as a process of metamormophis, with each fanciful horse arising from a tree.”

With a fired ceramic body seamlessly fused to flammable wooden legs, the process seems impossible.   How do you do that?  Wood burns!  “It took us me 10 years to perfect the process,” she says, “and it’s still evolving.” Now she’s found a way to cast her horses in bronze, including tree limbs as legs.  Where does the wood come from? Pruned trees on her own property. And the wood base? “I repurpose old wood,” she says. “No trees are harmed in the creation of my DreamHorses process.

Mixing It Up will open October 4th with a reception from 5- 7:30 PM during Ridgway’s First Friday Art Walk. The show will run through October 20th. “I will be present Friday – Sunday from 10 am – 4 pm as a working artist, answering questions, and telling stories.”

Cheri also accepts commissions and enjoys collaborating with collectors to recreate a memory, enshrine a place, honor a loved one, or immortalize a beloved pet. . See her work at Cheri Isgreen Fine Art. https://www.cheriisgreen.com/

Life’s short; collect originals.

Kathryn R. Burke is an artist, educator, author, and publisher. Visit her website to see more about Cheri Isgreen and other artists. https://kathrynrburke.com/writer/art-artists/