First peek

The art show will take a back seat to the venue when "Phylum" opens today at Colorado College's Cornerstone Arts Center.

   "Phylum" will be interesting enough. The video installation by artists Lane Hall and Lisa Moline integrates music with images taken through an electron microscope - though it may be more meaningful if you're familiar with such terms as ekphrasis (description of an artwork), cladocera (a subgroup of crustaceans) and ephemoptera (mayflies).

   (Or maybe not.)

   But the irresistible draw is the first chance for the public to see the college's new Edith Kinney Gaylord Cornerstone Arts Center, the $33 million multidisciplinary building designed by internationally renowned architect Antoine Predock.

   "The hard-hat walk-throughs were nice, but to see the polished flooring and the painted walls, it's pretty awe-inspiring," said Jessica Hunter Larsen, curator of the college's interdisciplinary experimental arts program.

   The three-story, 73,300-square-foot building includes a 451-seat auditorium - with electronically enhanced acoustics to make it suitable for a wide range of performing arts - a 92-seat black box performance venue, a soundstage, a 106-seat film-screening room, the InterDisciplinary Experimental Arts Space (to be known as the I.D.E.A. space), and a multipurpose Flex Room, which can be used as a teaching or performing space.

   Predock is known for such creations as the Nelson Fine Arts Center at Arizona State University and Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres. Cornerstone isn't the New Mexicobased architect's first building in the city - it was preceded by Discovery Canyon Campus, the $72 million, prekindergartenthrough-12th-grade campus in Academy School District 20 that opened in the fall - but it's the one of which the architect is most proud.

   "Colorado College truly embraced the idea of a multidisciplinary building," he said during August's topping off ceremony.

   Hunter Larsen said the result is a complicated but rewarding space to work in.

   "It makes my job better," said Hunter Larsen. "The possibilities for collaboration are endless."

   But she said that the nontraditional spaces took some getting used to.

   "There was a moment that it all kind of clicked," she said. "People will be impressed by how beautiful it is, and how the interdisciplinary ideal is expressed in the building."

   It's only fitting that an exhibition in the college's I.D.E.A.space will inaugurate the building.

   "With its interdisciplinary focus, ‘Phylum' combines some of the key elements of the building," said Hunter Larsen. The piece is a kind of reverse ekphrasis - scientific images transformed into art.

   But the piece also has strong ties to a college that was known for stimulating creativity even before Cornerstone was built: artist Hall is a CC graduate who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, and the video's soundtrack is sampled from music created by music professor Stephen Scott for the college's famed bowed piano ensemble.

   "We're creating an immersive environment," said Hunter Larsen, with still images complementing the video.

details

‘PHYLUM'

When: Opening 4:30-6:30 p.m. today (5 p.m. gallery talk); regular hours 2:30-9:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1-9 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays, 2:30-7:30 p.m. Saturdays; through July 18

Where: Cornerstone Arts Center, Colorado College, 825 N. Cascade Ave.

Admission: Free; 227-8263 or theIDEAspace.com