EMILY KING

REDWOODS & WINE COUNTRY, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

July 2023

Emily Grace King is an artist and museum professional living and working in the Denver Metro area. While Emily works in a variety of mediums, her current focus is on creating encaustic monotype assemblies using beeswax from her backyard hives and on exploring personal identities through small sculpture. Emily is the Exhibition Manager and Associate Curator at the Arvada Center. With a focus on featuring living Colorado artists and artists of the Western region, The Arvada Center Galleries host more than 12 art exhibitions each year across its three distinctive galleries spanning over 10,000 square feet of space. The galleries are free and open to the public seven days a week, keeping access to local and regional art available to all.

In 2016, Emily founded the much-beloved community project Art Drop Arvada. Working with artists and art-lovers throughout Metro Denver, Art Drop Arvada creates interactive, grassroots events in public spaces that bring free, hyper-local art to anyone willing to hunt for it. Emily serves her city as Chair of the Arvada Arts and Culture Commission. She is a strong advocate in the community for public art and for civic investment in local artists at all stages of their careers.

While Emily expected the awe-inspiring scenery of Northern California's wineries, coast, and redwoods to be the highlight of the trip, she was wrong--those things were wonderful, but the members of the band itself were the real highlight. She found herself falling in love with her bandmates in new ways every day as she was learning who laughed and which kinds of jokes, who sang the loudest to Whitney Houston on the long car rides, who had the most surprising performance in the hotel-room-talent-show. Since the travelers were the gem of the trip for Emily, she used her artist ode to capture the unique experience of each bandmate by creating a cast resin hand to represent each person on the trip. Different colors of glitter, inks, sparkles, spices, and objects in the resin are used to create "portraits" of each person. Emily would like to thank artists and band members Jaida and Jareth for their collaboration and insight on choosing colors for each person.

Chosen Colors:

Bethany, who chose Diva-centered music on car rides and showed off sultry Britney dance moves, is represented in deep purple with flecks of striking dark pink and red

Claire, who helped us all navigate big emotions and challenging ideas, kept us clear-headed and connected to each other, has a little bit of all of us in her colors with green, gold, blue, and rainbow sparkles

Jaida, who delighted us all with her stories, style, and humor, requested a bright wine color for her hand

Sophie, who is Mom to us all, is full of bright pink joy with sunshine-gold

Jack, who was our all-American bro, entertained with original raps and connected with generous emotion

Lawrence, who joked and laughed and made everyone feel special, shared a special bromance with blue-and-red-sparkle Jack, and Larence has his own special gold and purple sparkles too

Kendall, who shared her family and her memories with us and tended to our needs seen and unseen, houses leaves and plants gathered along the forests and the coast

Jonathan, who put his feet in the ocean for the first time and proudly taught us about his passion for being Jewish, is blue and silver

Stanley, who smiled and smiled and visited the ocean for the first time, is deep sea blue with white-as-his-teeth sparkles

Erin, who danced and sang and oozed giant beautiful joy into each moment, is boldly depicted in big rainbow confetti

Bill, who kayaked for the first time, is the turquoise hue of sky over the Russian River, with gold medal flakes for his athletic dedication

Isaiah Blue Stone, who forged a true and deep connection with each person, is a burnt orange selected by Jareth, who said “because orange is the opposite of blue”

Jareth, who spread his arms and heart wide to embrace a towering Redwood, asked for dark purple and pink sparkles, with a piece of tree bark embedded into his hand

Emily, who joined the band nervous and lonely and unsure but left confident, connected, and renewed, is a dense mix of the red wine and coastal blue, and she has a little bit of everyone in her now, too–the rainbow of it all.