Click here to see Dickey’s ceramic sculptures in Museum as Theater as Garden.

If every artist aspires to have her work permanently on display in a public setting, then Kim Dickey has just gotten her wish. The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver commissioned Dickey, a CU ceramics professor and acclaimed sculptor, to create nine sculptures for the new museum’s upstairs cafe—the last of which she recently installed—specifically to complement an adjacent rooftop garden by landscape architect Karla Dakin. Dickey’s installation, Museum as Theater as Garden, features a collection of cool-hued ceramic shrubs on the cafe windowsills; the botanical shapes link the viewer to the outdoor garden, but their symmetry is a reminder of their essential artifice. “I like to think of the museum as a theatrical stage on which to display and interact with culture,” Dickey says. “Similarly, the garden serves as a theatrical stage for nature.” Dickey will further expand her showings with two new pieces for a group exhibition at RULE Gallery, opening later this month.

5280 July 2008
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