If you ask visual arts curator Drew Austin what unites the disparate and dazzling works on display this fall at Dairy Arts Center in Boulder, you’ll get an emphatic answer: “Community, community, community.”
The response should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the city’s largest multidisciplinary arts institution. Since its founding in 1992, the 42,000 square-foot facility has been a fixture of the local creative scene as a home for visual art, dance, film, spoken word and more — all tied together by the idea that local art matters.
Among this fall season’s slated exhibitions are Katie Caron’s mind-bending Neuron Forest (Sept. 15-Nov. 11), a preview exhibition of works included in the upcoming countywide Open Studios tour (Sept. 15-Oct. 22) and solo exhibitions from Diego Florez Arroyo, Grace Gutierrez and Raymundo Muñoz (Oct. 28-Nov. 11) spread across the arts center’s four public galleries.
In keeping with the theme of community, the Dairy’s Locals Only gallery will include works by Courtney Griffin (Nov. 2-Dec. 3) and Bill Snider (Dec. 7-Jan. 7) alongside a solo exhibition from Boulder County artist Irene Delka McCray and a large salon-style portrait gallery.
“I wanted [to showcase] the talent we have here. There are so many other people I wanted to invite, and I just stopped myself because I really just wanted to focus on us,” he says of the latter show sourced through an open call to artists in the Centennial State. “When you look at portraits, you’re peering into the community … it’s gonna be massive and beautiful and really exciting.”
