Andy Tirado, 3D arts supervisor for CC’s Art Department, Visiting Art Professor Jean Gumpper, and Colorado Springs artist Eric Bransby ’47 have been recognized as leading artists in the region.

Tirado’s “Lacuna”

“Lacuna,” a sculpture by Tirado, was selected for the 2014-2015 Art on the Streets juried sculpture exhibition and went on to win the $10,000 Juror’s Award. Tirado’s piece, a 13-foot-long arm weighing more than 400 pounds, is suspended in the Plaza of the Rockies in downtown Colorado Springs, where it will be on display through May 2015. A call for entries attracted proposals from artists in four countries, 21 states, and 16 Colorado cities. The enormous arm is sculpted from a very appropriate CC material — reclaimed redwood from the deck outside the studios at Packard Hall, which houses the Art Department.

Gumpper’s “Respite”

The Colorado Springs Business Journal named Gumpper and Bransby among the region’s best artists. Gumpper works on large-scale reduction woodcuts. Her nature-themed woodcuts are printed from plywood sheets, from which the areas meant to be ink-free are cut away. Gumpper was the recipient of an artist-in-residence grant in 1998 that allowed her to spend several weeks in Rocky Mountain National Park. There she found the subjects that continue to inform her work: She captures edges, a quiet sheet of water beside a brook, marsh grasses, puddles after a rain. Gumpper teaches drawing and printmaking at CC, and spent a month at Grand Canyon National Park, where she was the artist-in-residence at the South Rim.

Bransby, who also earned a master of arts from CC in 1949, is the last surviving New Deal muralist, having executed large-scale commissions during the 1930s in Kansas City. Four of his most significant works of art are on display in Colorado Springs: the 1968 “Murals of Navigation” at the Pioneers Museum, the 1986 restoration of the Boardman Robinson murals above the entrance to the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, the 1994 10-by-75-foot “History of the Pikes Peak Region” at the Pioneers Museum, and the 1948 rotunda mural in CC’s Cossitt Hall. His most recent work, a 5-by-27-foot mural unveiled at the Fine Arts Center in 2012, was largely executed by Trevor Thomas ’10.