By Hilliard Moore

I attended the Tag Team Mixed Taste Lectures On Unrelated Topics on July 17 on Fractals & Vance Kirkland at the Museum of Contemporary Art  Denver. This was one of the most interesting and enlighting lectures that I have attended here in Denver.  The lecture hall was full and standing room only in the back. Nicholas Ormes and Hugh Grant delivered two outstanding and visually stimulating presentations on Fractals and Vance Kirkland.  The Mixed Taste lecture lived up to it’s billing as being unrelated topics that blended together perfectly to  invoke your senses on Vance Kirkland’s artwork and the infinity of fractal patterns in a rainbow of colors. 

I was invited to the lecture by one of my artists Jane Renau Denison who is showing her symphony snippit series at the Great Western Art Gallery. She is blessed with synesthesia when the senses are blended and transpose with one another. Sounds are manifested as colors, and flashes of light or shapes become musical. Some say that only one in 200 people has this gift, it is seven times more likely to occur in artists, poets,or novelists.

Jane Renau Denison says;  ”Music has layers, and I see melodies and movements of music as shapes and colors. Through my artistic expression I capiture some of the beauty of music I hear, and through my artwork you can actually see the music around us.”

Vance Kickland would have musicians playing music in his studio while he painted.   So he may have had synesthesia also to paint his extraordinary dotted pictures?

Jane thank you for the invitation to the Mixed Taste lecture series at the MCA Denver it was a super evening at the museum.