“Your Keys to the City” Pianos Launch 2011 Season with New Design and Return to 16th Street Mall
Your Keys to the City
On May 25th, seventeen colorfully painted pianos were placed back out on the 16th Street Mall as part of Your Keys to the City, a public piano art program created by the Downtown Denver Partnership. Hand-painted by local artists, each piano has a “Spring” theme and each will be available for the public to play from 8 am to 10 pm seven days a week.
“The pianos along the 16th Street Mall taught us that people have a voracious appetite for opportunities to make music,” said Tami Door, President & CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership. “Our ability to showcase the talents of local artists through this program has also been invaluable. There is so much creative talent in our community – Your Keys to the City is helping us share this.”
About the Artists:
Piano Name: Rocky Mountain Spring
Artist: Eric R. Matelski
Inspiration for piano: My inspiration comes from my surroundings.
Website: www.: ericmatelski.com
Location16th Street Mall & Arapahoe
Piano Name: Ice Cream Song
Artist: Lauren Katz
Inspiration for piano: I drew inspiration from 1950s diners and 1920s ice cream parlors.
Web Site: http://laurenkatz.wordpress.com/
Location16th Street Mall & Wazee:
Piano Name: Swirly’s
Artist: Tom Varani
Inspiration for piano: The idea of this piece is to capture the feeling of spring through the use of color.
Website: tomvarani.blogspot.com
Location: 16th Street Mall & Court
Piano Name: Spring Imagination
Artist: Paul Roberts
Inspiration for piano: My inspiration for this piece came from the National Cherry Blossom Festival held annually in Washington, DC. The plantings of the cherry blossom trees originated as a gift in 1912 from the people of Japan to the United States as gesture of friendship and goodwill. Since then, the number of trees has expanded to approximately 3,750 trees of 16 varieties on National Park Service land.
Contact: chalkdesign.roberts@gmail.com
Location: 16th Street Mall & Welton
Piano Name: Chasing Summer
Artist: Lea Wells and Gail Firmin
Inspiration for piano: A need for warm weather!
Web Site: http://leawellstudio.com/
Location16th Street Mall & Court:
Piano Name: Night Blooming
Artist: Lisabeth Place
Inspiration for piano: My inspiration is the growth and personal ability to thrive that can arise from the darkest of times.
Contact: lisabethblancheart.com
Location: 16th Street Mall & Curtis
Piano Name: Spring Sonnets
Artist: Bobby MaGee Lopez
Inspiration for piano: Vivaldi and Janis Joplin
Web Site: www.BobbyMaGeeLopez.com
Location: 16th Street Mall & Tremont
Piano Name: Phosphene
Artist: Eileen Riley
Inspiration for piano: While I have spent most of my life studying what I see and training my eyes to be specific I naturally began to delve deeper into the subject of vision and became interested in entopic phenomena, (visual effects whose source is within the eye itself). I have been studying my own entopic imagery by subjecting myself to different conditions and creating compositions based on my findings. The images are unusual, personal, patterns that connect to my work as a whole. They are hypnotic, celestial and meditative works that honor the imagination. A phosphene an entopic phenomenon characterized by the experience of seeing light without light actually entering the eye.
Portfolio: http://s784.photobucket.com/albums/yy129/phineart/
Location: 16th Street Mall & Arapahoe
Piano Name: A Song a Day Keeps the Doctor Away
Artist: Anne Latimer
Inspiration for piano: I wanted to paint the piano as if it was just a giant canvas. I thought of apples because they are colorful, fresh, and the perfect companion on a nice spring day.
Contact: a.e.latimer@gmail.com
Location: 16th Street Mall & Stout
Piano Name: Razzle Dazzle
Artist: Daniel Nilsson
Inspiration for piano: Dazzle camouflage during WWI painted by the British Navy on ships to break down space and confuse the enemy. Also, the café at the Venice Biennale Pavilion designed by Tobias Rehberger (2009). (http://www.artefakt-sz.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Rehberger-Café.jpg)
Website: http://nillvurt.wordpress.com/, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Extreme-Knitting/111989665543609
Location: 16th Street Mall & Wazee
Piano Name: Past Presence
Artist: Ingrid vB. Porter
Inspiration for piano: I was immediately drawn to the delicate lines and detailed woodwork of this little piano. I originally had a very different design in mind, but just couldn’t paint over the wood and mother-of-pearl inlay on the front! I love the craftsmanship – that attention to detail - that someone put into it many years ago. I wanted to honor that, so I used the inlay motif as a starting point, shifting and repeating it. I think it’s a great visual surprise as well as an interesting metaphor: You can see the larger design from a distance, but it’s only when you get up close that you discover its origin.
Contact: ingridvbporter@yahoo.com
Location: 16th Street Mall & Tremont
Piano Name: Squash
Artist: Kamla Presswalla
Inspiration for your piano: My daughter and I have a spring garden in its 3rd year and the strawberries are HUGE! I love them and wanted to paint them from a mouse’s perspective.
Website: www.kamlapaints.wordpress.com
Location: 16th Street Mall & Glenarm
Piano Name: Jorge
Artist: Lynda (Janie) Knowles
Inspiration for piano: My brother George was my inspiration on this piece. I asked him what colors were “in” and he said colors come and go, keep the lines crisp and clean….which I’ve tried to do. But I threw in some Mayan-inspired design and raspberry sorbet coloring to jazz it up for him a bit.
Location: 16th Street Mall & Cleveland
Contact: janielynknowles@aol.com
Piano Name: Birdsong
Artist: Megan Alfa Jones
Inspiration for piano:
Birdsong brings relief
to my longingI’m just as ecstatic as they,
but with nothing to say!
Please universal soul, practice
some song or something through me!
Website: www.flickr.com/meganalfa
Location: 16th Street Mall & Arapahoe
Piano Name: Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring)
Artist: Megan Alfa Jones
Inspiration for piano: Le sacre du printemps is the brainchild of three remarkable artists: painter Nicholas Roerich, choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky and composer Igor Stravinsky. The three artists produced the ballet in 1913, inspired by a pagan story of a young girl who celebrates spring by dancing her adoration for the earth continuously, ultimately dancing herself to death. The piece is so intensely rhythmic and powerful in its music, choreography and vibrant set designs, that a riot ensued at its 1913 Paris opening. The quaking aspen leaf has flattened petioles that flutter easily with the slightest breeze. As entire groves of leaves quake together, they create a unique, soft sound and an otherworldly visual effect. The leaves continue to quake through the spring and into the summer, when they rapidly change color as the season changes, fall off the trees, and flutter to their “death” on the forest floor.
Location: 16th Street Mall & Champa
Piano Name: Spring Evening Bloom
Artist: Jymi Zez Shores
Inspiration for piano: I am inspired by the earth and the colors and lines in nature.
Website: www.sincerelyzez.com
Location: 16th Street Mall & Stout
Piano Name: Denver Then and Now
Artist: Eric Matelski
Inspiration for piano: My inspiration comes from the great city I live in “DENVER”
Website: ericmatelski.com
Location: 16th Street Mall & Welton
About Your Keys to the City
In the winter of 2009, seven uniquely painted upright pianos appeared along the 16th Street Mall in Downtown Denver. Created by the Downtown Denver Partnership, Your Keys to the City was designed to encourage residents, employees and tourists in Downtown Denver to interact with their public spaces in new and spontaneous ways—while contributing to the vibrancy within our urban core. All pianos are donated to the program and painted by Colorado artists. Pianos are covered during inclement weather.
