I.D.E.A. Space’s IntellectuAle Adventure: Craft Brewing as Local Art

With around 10 percent of the country’s 3,000 craft breweries located in the state of Colorado, small, independently owned breweries are a staple to local community and culture. This specific connection between beverage and place, along with the creative liberties of a small-scale business, gives advertisers a unique angle on marketing their products. Here, in Colorado, as well as in many niches around the country, beer is not just a beverage, but rather an illustration of quality, culinary art, and one’s connection to place; a simple name on an aluminum can will not illustrate this. Fine art, in the form of labels and advertising, is a gateway into the care and precision of the art of brewing.

Working alongside Bridget Heidmous of the I.D.E.A. Space, seniors Abby Portman and Kristi Murray have curated IntellectuAle Adventure on the art of craft brewing, now on display in Coburn Gallery in the Worner Center. Bridging the gaps that often emerge between advertising and fine art, these two students isolated and exposed the meticulous care, detail, and artistic integrity that come with local craft brewing.

In a very long process beginning around two years ago, Portman wanted to create “a new exhibit that students could get excited about and want to be involved in.” A Sustainable Food Systems and Social Policy major, she knew she wanted to curate an exhibit on local food and beverage, leading to a finalized concept of “an exhibit giving an artistic representation of taste.” As she and Kristi have both been working for the I.D.E.A. Space for four years, they are now ending their time at Colorado College curating their own exhibit, what Portman articulates to be “giving students the opportunity to see art in a way they maybe haven’t seen it before, in terms of the way they interact with their everyday.”

Last Wednesday, in a sold-out event in Gaylord Hall, students gathered for a tasting of all of the beers featured in IntellectuAle Adventure in order to experience the inspiration within the meticulously decorated bottles evoking feelings stronger than, well, alcohol. Beer is not a half-crushed can of Genesee left in someone’s front yard and picked up on a Sunday morning; beer, as with anything done right, has the potential to feel like home. Beer is a sentimental association and certain nostalgia of the first snow Rockies, the sudden colors that arise with a new spring, and the immediate attentiveness that comes with any mention of Pikes Peak.

As the giant, brightly colored Sixpoint Brewery posters hanging from the walls of Coburn Gallery read—and justifiably so—“Beer Is Culture.” Culture is an understanding of the human capacity to create art and to not settle for a generic imitation of just another food or beverage. Art is a necessary component to society, as is a product that represents its consumer. Taste is an art within itself, and beautiful blues complementing Boulder Beer Company’s taste of Winter IPA knows exactly who its audience is: “the drinking town with a skiing problem.”

Beer Is Culture: as is color, as are beautiful designs of snow-covered peaks, fish swimming upstream, and Colorado dirt roads. Art is a self-perpetuating force, as taste inspires the need for a visual representation of every carbonated note of what makes a place itself.

See the full article with images: https://thecatalystnews.com/2016/04/09/i-d-e-a-spaces-intellectuale-adventure-craft-brewing-as-local-art/