Sequesterings
Twyla Exner, Things 13 & 14, 2019
August 6 – October 24, 2026
厂别辩耻别蝉迟别谤颈苍驳蝉听features diverse and compelling artists that demonstrate the transformative power of art to challenge our reliance on throwaway culture.聽Sequesterings聽is more than an exhibition; it is a call to action. By investing time, care, and artistry into unwanted materials, these artists offer a counter-narrative to mass-production and over-consumption. They demonstrate that transformation and regeneration are not only possible, but essential.
Sequesterings challenges viewers to confront the world鈥檚 ecological crisis through the lens of radical transformation. With diverse works ranging from delicately stitched collages and colorful hand-woven textiles to large-scale sculptures, the artists in Sequesterings act as environmental stewards and aesthetic scavengers.
The exhibition features work by Twyla Exner, Calder Kamin, Natalya Khorover, Blue McRight, Anna Mein, Kelsey Merreck Wagner, Pamela “Posey” Moulton, Portia Munson, Aurora Robson, and Ian Trask, whose individual art practices unite to present a global issue on an intimate scale, creating a vision of optimism within a harsh reality.
Sequesterings聽was curated by Cecily Cullen and Aurora Robson.
Artists
Aurora Robson
Aurora Robson works primarily with post-consumer and post-industrial plastics, sculpting toxic waste into playful yet slightly menacing forms. Her practice explores the material irony of plastic, simultaneously indestructible and destructive, transforming it into objects of beauty while keeping its troubling origins ever-present. The work serves as both a personal meditation on childhood fears and a broader engagement with the global crisis of plastic pollution while conveying the delicate connection between human culture and the natural world.
Pamela "Posey" Moulton
Pamela “Posey” Moulton聽is an artist and environmental activist who works primarily with salvaged fishing gear, recovering over 20-tons of abandoned gear to-date, transforming it into fantastical sculptures that blur the line between plant, animal, and imaginary creature. Her work tells the stories of nature’s resilience while raising awareness of issues such as rising sea levels and the devastating effects of derelict fishing equipment on marine ecosystems and industries.
Blue McRight
Blue McRight鈥檚听Plastinauts聽are speculative marine-like creatures from the future whose organic bodies have been completely replaced by plastic as a means to survive in the ocean鈥檚 polluted waters. Utilizing marine salvage materials such as straws, ropes, and nets, McRight鈥檚 artwork alludes to deep-sea migrations while elevating plastic trash to fine art material.
Twyla Exner
Twyla Exner鈥檚 series titled聽Things, features organic forms hand-woven from discarded landline telephone cables, copper wire coated in plastic. Resembling coral reefs fungi, and other organisms, these sculptures blur the boundaries between technology and organic growth, challenging the disposable logic of consumer electronics, and reimagining what we consider waste.
Anna Mein
The belief that the medium of a work is inherent to its message lies at the core of聽Anna Mein鈥檚 series titled聽Wood and Waste. Joining together litter from both the natural and human worlds, Mein creates modular sculptures that embody the complex relationship between the two entities.
Calder Kamin
Plastics such as marker caps, Easter eggshells, sleds, and shopping bags are deconstructed, reshaped, and fashioned into fantastical menageries by聽Calder Kamin. By transforming community-donated plastic and trash into beautifully textured sculptures of flora and fauna, Kamin shifts society’s perception of trash into enduring optimism.
Natalya Khorover聽
Natalya Khorover聽stitches together single-use plastics, food wrappers, and vintage linens into delicately rendered collages of line and form. Her community-rooted practice turns neighborhood discards into mended relics, highlighting the astonishing possibilities of environmental action.
Kelsey Merreck Wagner
Kelsey Merreck Wagner聽a self-described “eco-artivist,” orchestrates large-scale weavings made entirely from recycled materials such as plastic bags, old clothes, electronic cables, bubble wrap, and party decorations. She works collaboratively with her community, weaving their lives into the works, giving longer life to the short-term use materials that would otherwise spend eternity as trash. This community-engaged practice raises crucial awareness around environmental pollution and its effects on us and the natural world.
Ian Trask
Ian Trask聽is a sculptor and multimedia artist who repurposes waste materials into art installations imbuing items of trash with new meaning and purpose. His work critiques society’s unsustainable relationship with material consumption and its environmental impact. Over time, his personal exploration of trash as an artistic medium has grown into a community-driven collaborative practice centered on creative reuse and connection.
Portia Munson鈥檚
Portia Munson鈥檚 work critically examines the intersections of gender, environmentalism, and capitalism. Her video project titled聽Contents of a Whale鈥檚 Belly is a two-channel, 1-hour long video comprised of hundreds of scans of the either blue or pink objects found in the bellies of deceased marine animals. The objects are sorted into the two stereotypical colors of gender representation, speaking to how men and women are separately portrayed in our culture through the colors and objects they鈥檙e sold.
Exhibition Review
Check out these books!
We partnered with librarians from Denver Public Library to create a list of recommended books to read if you鈥檙e interested in learning more about the themes presented in the artwork on view in Sequesterings. Want to check one out from the library? Click on the title and it will take you to the book鈥檚 page in the library鈥檚 catalog. The entire list can be found here:
Digital Exhibition Guide
Access artwork images, artist's statements, and artist's audio recordings from your device.
Also on View
Susan Dillon, Move a Mountain One Stone at a Time (detail), 2022
Backstitch
August 6 – October 24, 2025
Backstitch聽features mixed media sculpture by Denver artist Susan Dillon. Dillon鈥檚 background in biology guides her building of organic forms, implying signs of growth, spread, and takeover. Her mysterious forms explore themes of colonialism and gentrification through comparisons to invasive species. The material is colorful and captivating, inviting the viewer in, only to later reveal its predatory intention. By utilizing thrifted and upcycled fibrous materials, and diverting them from becoming waste, Dillon weaves critiques of consumerism into her subtext. Like a predator, fast fashion preys upon the pockets of consumers, just as invasive species prey upon the unsuspected organism, and colonialism preys upon 鈥淣ew鈥� lands.
The exhibition was curated by 爱液A片 students Sadie Hughes and Lucy Love Riley. The 965 Project Gallery at CVA is a student-led space that provides immersive professional development opportunities to 爱液A片 students interested in fine art curation and arts administration.