Art & Place is an evening celebrating the beauty of visual art and the formative power of place.
Tonight is hosted by Sacred Place, a nonprofit organization committed to cultivating love for our neighbors and neighborhoods. We create content and convene conversations about the critical need for the integration of person and place.
Please explore our website to learn more, subscribe to our newsletter, or financially support our nonprofit work.
Our hope is this evening inspires and encourages you to love the people and places around you.
All blessings.
Artists
For all inquiries about purchasing art, contact artists directly.
All art is sold by the artists. 100% of the proceeds go directly to the artist.
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Kristen Abbott
Kristen Abbott is a mixed media painter and textile artist based in Boulder, Colorado. Her practice moves between abstract painting and cyanotype textiles, shaped through an experimental, process-driven approach.
In her cyanotype work, sunlight acts as both collaborator and catalyst, imprinting organic forms onto hand-coated fabrics such as linen, cotton, and silk. Abbott often reworks these surfaces with additional materials, building layered compositions that shift with the viewer’s perspective and gradually reveal new details over time.
Guided by a philosophy of “joyful experimentation,” her work embraces unpredictability and reflects an intuitive dialogue with place, light, and material, inviting viewers into quiet moments of reflection and discovery.
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Adam Anglin
Adam Anglin is a fine artist and musician with a background in graphic design living and working in Denver, Colorado. I am a self-taught landscape painter who connects synthetic and natural forms in purposeful dissonance for those who long for beauty in a world that is too often satisfied with distraction. I use vibrant color-field compositions overlaying western landscapes and interwoven perspective lines to move the viewer between worlds.
The synthetic forms found in my work are a way to communicate inorganic realities. You might think of these things as distractions or noise. It's not meant to say that these things are bad, it's just that they exist. They can interfere with our desire to be more grounded or connected to nature or one another.
With a background in graphic design, all of my works start digitally in the composition phase before moving into painting. This process allows me space to consider the composition and color relationships that will best serve the piece. Using mixed media on cradled wood panel.
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Kim Morksi
Kim Morski is a printmaking artist living and working in Colorado, recognized for her work in printmaking, book arts, and participatory public projects. After becoming a mother in 2017, Morski’s work shifted from an emphasis on large-scale prints with political themes, to more personal work exploring moments of quiet boredom, seasonal rhythms, and transcendence in the ordinary. The smaller scale of her reduction prints and drawings reflects the intimacy of maternal experience, as well as the margins of life where she makes time to create.
Morski’s works are held in the collections of Washington University in St. Louis, the Joan Flasch Artists Book Collection at SAIC, the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, The University of Denver, and MIT.
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Jennifer Freeman
When people ask me when I started painting, I honestly can’t remember ever not painting. Born into a very artistic family, with a prolific painter for a mother, I just assumed everyone took a set of watercolors and paper wherever they went. This wonderful habit that was instilled at an early age caused me to slow down, notice and look for beauty. As a result, all my life I have journaled with a brush instead of a pen. I find it helps me stay in moments longer and reflect on memories more vividly.
When I paint, I try to leave room for the viewer to bring his or her story to the artwork. Thus, my art is simple and minimal. I contend that less is more…more peaceful…more imagination stimulating…more fun!
It never occurred to me to put my work “outside” of my journals until I visited India and Africa. Seeing firsthand the poorest of poor prompted me to find a market for my small works and donate any profit to the brave and selfless people I met in my travels who are transforming lives. If I can use my gift to enable others to use their gifts in making the world a better place by reversing the poverty cycle, it is immensely gratifying.
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Kim Rivera
Kim emphasized in printmaking at the University of Colorado Boulder and graduated with a degree in Art Practice and Psychology in May of 2018. Through studying psychology she gained an insight into how people process and interact with the world around them. In contrast, her faith gave her a deeper appreciation and a new perspective of beauty and creation.
As an artist, Kim desires to create work that brings forth truth, conveys emotion, and challenges the viewer to reflect on the art. We live in an ever-evolving world filled with distractions, a need for efficiency, and conflict. Our relationships and appreciation of the world around us have been altered. Kim creates because art is universal, relational, and evocative. Art forces us to pause and contemplate what is immediately in front of us while guiding us to a deeper truth. Through art, we can foster community, form a newfound appreciation of the world and people around us, and prompt change through beauty.
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Shannon Allyne Thomas
In January 2023, Shannon began sketching flowers in her journal and dabbling in watercolors. She had yet to take an art class, but art was a way to express herself, play, and take her creative side more seriously. Shannon's kitchen counters quickly became cluttered with art from her newfound love. She started casually sharing her art online and the response was surprising and incredible. Others wanted to purchase her pieces and began requesting commissions.
Shanon Allyne Art was born in 2023, and today she remains focused on creating paintings coupled with writing that inspires and transforms its viewers. Shannon is married to Matt, and they have 4 children and reside in Evergreen, Colorado.
Prayers
Visio Divina is a prayer practice in which God speaks to us through what we see. In Latin, the words “Visio Divina” mean "holy" or "divine" seeing. I have appreciated this prayer practice for several years, using art. However, it can also be applied to everything we see in the created world, whether grand or tiny. Visio Divina can usher us into a new experience of God.
You are invited to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and listen.
When we wake into God’s vast creation,
May we listen and pay attention to what we hear:
birds chirping, water running, wind rushing—
but also what we don’t want to hear:
traffic, construction, alerts, and alarms.
Creator God,
May those whose work is making theatre
Be seen as valuable and meaningful.
May we hold the art and skill of telling stories
An essential aspect of our society.
May the stories that unfold on stage
Cultivate empathy for others:
For suffering and solidarity in community,
For the brokenness and brilliance of humanity.
Father in Heaven,
We pray for our neighbors
Whose work is manual labor.
We pray for their body.
Give them the endurance, health, and strength
This hard work requires.
God,
Who created the twinkling stars
And the warmth of the sun,
The mountains majestic
And the turquoise ocean,
Practices
I would like to suggest collage as a practice to be present to God, to yourself, and others. It’s an opportunity to bring out all your kindergarten skills: cutting, gluing, and arranging. It’s surprisingly peaceful and fun and doesn’t require any refined artistic skill. Invite a family member, a neighbor, or a group of friends to join you.
The practice began with a question. “What can we do to share the Easter story with people in our neighborhood?” Mark Grapengater had recently moved to the Hampden Heights neighborhood, but in the Spring of 2020, navigating the early days of the pandemic, a neighborhood gathering on Easter Sunday was unlikely. Mark considered the art installation, Stations in the Street, “I think this is something we can do.”
Live music uniquely connects us to both people and place. It’s a communal experience that not only creates a connection between artist and audience, but those in the audience to one another. Shared music has been central to civilizations for both ceremonies and celebrations. Among the earliest expressions of humans, shared sounds formed communal bonds and reinforced beliefs. In a cultural moment where AirPods and headphones isolate and insulate us with sound, the practice of listening to live music invites connection, creation, and celebration.
During the holiday season, sometimes the best thing you can give your friends and neighbors is…less. Not a Christmas party, not even a Christmas gathering—just a few hours to pause, wrapped in a bit of lightness and brightness. That’s how our tradition of “Christmas Cheer To-Go” began.
Puzzles are a creative way of slowing us down. They invite us to look closely, be patient, and appreciate the process. In the season of Advent—a season marked by anticipation and the spiritual work of waiting—a puzzle can ground us in an embodied practice. A puzzle is a practice that reminds us that the process is as essential as the completed product.
Role-playing, commonly associated with acting and theater, can be a powerful tool for cultivating connection and understanding with our neighbors. Through the practice of creatively entering an imaginary situation, we can begin to build the necessary skills to respond to challenging interactions.
As I was growing up, the smell of turpentine and the whir of a sewing machine filled my senses. My mom was an artist and my husband David’s mom was a musician. His home was alive with the beautiful sound of Bach flowing from his mother’s piano. Being raised in creative homes, we learned the value of both artist and art.
Places
The artist’s studio is a sacred place. For Kim Morski, her studio is a product of decades of dreaming and the patient process of collecting printmaking equipment. Kim’s studio is outside her back door in a detached garage in the Harvey Park South neighborhood. It is a nexus of community and creativity, a place of artistry and generosity, home and hospitality.
For centuries, stained glass windows have been synonymous with sacred places. They are ornate creations of color and light. Stained glass windows are created by craftsmen for cathedrals and chapels to transform sunlight into a “divine light,” inspiring reverence and worship, contemplation and compassion.
A jazz club is a sacred place. The roots of jazz music are imbued with the reason why these soulful and stirring music rooms matter. Jazz has been called an American institution. It was birthed in Black communities as a musical language of expression and freedom. Jazz clubs were places where musical artistry could flourish even when the dominant society denied dignity and opportunity. That history still hums in every jazz club.
The theatre is a sacred place. The word theatre is from the Greek meaning "seeing place." It is not only a place to watch a performance, but a place to see more deeply into the human story. Theatres were elaborately constructed to form the imagination of those under the rule of the Roman Empire. It is likely the Apostle Paul spoke to audiences in Roman theatres about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
The art market is a sacred place. It is a place to celebrate the diversity of artistic creativity within a community. It is a market for the endless mediums that reflect the innate creativity inside each person. The Summer Art Market was founded to provide a place for local artist to show and sell their work, and to begin to build relationships with patrons as they developed their craft.
The Craft Box is a specialty thrift store that cultivates creativity, community, and generosity. It is a place to create and re-create. The thrift store is a sacred place.
Most museums preserve the past. The best museums inspire the possibility of living wholeheartedly in the future. The museum is a sacred place.
The local art store provides the tools to craft something, the materials to make something. We are invited to create and reflect the Creator. The art store is a sacred place.