What We're About at the AZ Foundation
OUR FOUNDING MISSION
The AZ Foundation raises funds to encourage, support
and promote arts, education and preservation projects throughout Colorado.
IN PARTICULAR
We're on a mission to
fund, create and place public artwork commemorating achievements by women
of Colorado .
We've
chosen this direction because of the significant lack
of commemorative
artwork about specific identifiable women throughout the world and in
Colorado. Although there are
women portrayed in a lot of public artwork
they are typically allegorical or represent women in general rather than
honoring a specific woman.
Progress Report
We've nearly completed a survey of public artwork commemorating specific identifiable women in Colorado.
Dr. Justina Ford, Bronze, Five Points Denver CO
YOU CAN GET INVOLVED
You
can help us make this mission a reality by joining
one of our Working Project Teams to determine projects and get them
produced.
INVENTORY/SURVEY TEAM (1-5 Teammates): Help survey and Inventory commemorative public artwork about specific identifiable women throughout the state of Colorado.
PROJECT TEAM (1-5 Teammates): Each Project Teams will select a woman from the Colorado women's Hall of Fame and identify a location to host/house a piece of public art about that woman. These places may be indoors
or outdoors in public access locations. Good placement locations are
Colleges and Universities, Government Property, Public Parks and
Facilities, and Non-Profit Organizations buildings. They will spearhead raising funds and help select Artists and Artwork, accessing Colorado women artists first whenever possible.
INVESTMENT TEAM (1-5 Teammates): Work with Project Teams to secure funding for our projects. Since we are a 501(c)3 we are able to seek grants and non-profit funding. We can also raise money from private, business and non-profit donations.
SELECTION TEAM: Work with Project Teams to select Artists and Artwork to create commemorative public artwork about Colorado Women and their contributions, accessing Colorado women Artists first whenever possible.
MEMBERSHIP TEAM: Help us grow our membership. Design and create engaging Activities and Events that support our Mission.
BECOME A MEMBER OF OUR FLOCK
INDIVIDUAL - 1 Year $45
Discounts on Activities and Events.
Colorado Mighty Women Calendar
Discounts to Private Events with Artists
FRIEND - $250/year
Colorado Mighty Women Calendar
Discounts to Private Events with Artists
2 Event Guest passes
ADVOCATE - $500/year
Colorado Mighty Women's Calendar
Recognition at one event and the Website
Discounts to Private Events with Artists
2 Event Guest passes
PATRON - $1,000/year
Colorado Mighty Women Calendar
Recognition on the Website
Signed Art Print
Private Events with Artists
4 Event Guest passes
LEADER - $5000/year
Colorado Might Women Calendar
Recognition on the Website
2 Signed Art Prints
Private Events with Artists
6 Event Guest passes
Our Love and Devotion
SUPREME BEING - $10,000/year
This was when I knew what the mission of the AZ Foundation had to be.
It was 2017 and we were traveling in London and Amsterdam. During the downtime of waiting for airplanes and trains I had been reading articles about the lack of public art commemorating specific identifiable women.
But it was when we literally bumped into the sculpture of Agatha Christie in London that I knew what needed to be done.
This public art had it all. It was about her. It had a bust of her in a cutout in a giant book that also featured the theater curtain and floorboards. Around the base it listed her contributions to literature, stage and screen as well as her philanthropy and other activities.
This was what public art about women could be. I knew then that the AZ Foundation could play a part in Colorado.
Clara Brown, Stained Glass, Capitol Bldg.
Mary Miller, Mosaic, Lafayette CO
Teresita Sandoval, Marble, Pueblo CO
Helen Bonfils, Oil Painting, DCPA
Virginia Neal Blue, Stained Glass, Capitol Bldg
Sadie Likens, Bronze, Capitol Grounds
5280 Magazine Online | March 6, 2019
Where’s All the Public Artwork Honoring Colorado Women?
Through her AZ Foundation, Carrie MaKenna is on a mission to seek out and install artwork that represents the achievements of Colorado women.
By Meredith Sell
Strong women. That’s the heritage fourth-generation Coloradan Carrie MaKenna proudly boasts—from her Irish immigrant great-grandmother, who took the reins of her family’s finances and owned several homes, a grocery store, and an auto repair shop in Denver’s historic Baker neighborhood, to MaKenna’s mother Ruth Greiner, who used money she’d inherited to co-found the American Zang Education Foundation (now the AZ Foundation) in the 1990s with her husband Rod Greiner.
“The strength of the women in my family has been a driving force in my life,” MaKenna says. In 2017, when she inherited her parents’ foundation, MaKenna decided to shift its mission to honor women like her mother and great-grandmother. “I was searching for an idea that would include the arts [and] that would support women somehow.”
Over the last several years, reporting by Smithsonian and the Washington Post has called attention to the fact that historic women lack representation in the form of public monuments. Both publications referenced estimates suggesting that of the 5,000-plus public outdoor sculptures of individual people in the U.S., less than 8 percent represent women.
MaKenna wasn’t aware of this reality until the national conversation in 2017 exploded around confederate monuments in the South and what they could be replaced with if they were torn down. As she tuned in, she started learning about the lack of statues honoring women, especially historical women. Many statues feature women who are symbolic or allegorical (think: the Statue of Liberty) or generic (the Sullivan Gateway on East Colfax features two women representing agriculture), but it’s harder to find statues of particular women that honor and name both them and their achievements.
That was all MaKenna needed to know in order to define her foundation’s new mission: “to fund, create, and place commemorative public art about the achievements of Colorado women.”
Right now, it’s unclear how many monuments or public art pieces in the state honor women. Denver Arts & Venues keeps a list of Denver’s public art collection, but the list only includes statues owned by the City and County of Denver. According to Erica Duvic, preservation planner in the Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation at History Colorado, her office doesn’t keep a comprehensive list of Colorado monuments because “there are simply too many entities that place monuments to keep track of them all.” A cursory survey of Smithsonian’s inventory of Denver’s outdoor sculptures found 31 pieces featuring people, seven of which included women, only one of whom was a specific woman—but the list is woefully incomplete.
Because of this, a key part of MaKenna’s initiative is to form an inventory survey team to document what public artwork commemorating women already exists in Colorado.
MaKenna is also looking for volunteers for placement and selection teams, to respectively identify locations to host the artwork and choose artists to create the pieces. The selection team will also play a role in selecting which women to honor. MaKenna plans to draw from the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame’s list of 162 inductees, starting with more well-known names.
An investment team will focus on fundraising for projects once they’ve been identified, and a membership team will work to grow the foundation’s membership and organize events to support the mission.
“I want to imbue these pieces of artwork with information about these people,” MaKenna says. She wants anyone who happens upon a piece to be able to learn who the woman was and why she’s being honored, so they can walk away both educated and inspired. “There’s a hunger to know about women’s achievements,” she says. “I don’t know that people even recognize that they’re missing it.”
Get involved: Visit Carrie MaKenna’s website to learn more, or contact her via email at anamcara@ecentral.com or phone at 720-933-3813.
KUNC | Mar 28, 2019
Honoring Historic Colorado Women Through Public Art
If you've ever caught a performance at Denver's Ellie Caulkins Opera House, you may or may not have noticed the giant statue in the lobby.
Denver painter Carrie MaKenna stands in front of the piece dedicated to Maria Mosina, who danced with the Colorado Ballet for more than 20 years.
KUNC's Stacy Nick talks with artist Carrie MaKenna about women in public art.
"John De Andrea makes sculptures that are very, very lifelike from the subjects that he works with and so it looks exactly like them down to fingerprints," MaKenna said.
The sculpture features Mosina gracefully perched high in the air, held up by her husband and dance partner Igor Vassine. It's just one of many pieces of public art that can be found in the Denver Center for the Performing Arts complex alone. But MaKenna said it's still a rarity.
"There are a lot of pieces of public art that have women in them, but they aren't specific women," she said. "So they're either allegorical or they are representative of a genre of women. So there's a really great statue in front of the Colorado History Museum that's about Colorado teachers. But it's not a specific person."
Upstairs
on the third floor is another De Andrea sculpture, "Three Dancers."
This piece, which features three female ballet dancers rehearsing, exemplifies
what most public art depicting women is made up of, Makenna said.
That representation matters, MaKenna said. It's important to honor the impact women have had on the state and to educate people about their stories in a real and public way.
So when MaKenna inherited the AZ Foundation from her parents, she decided to refocus the organization's mission from education to the commissioning and creation of public art works honoring specific Colorado women. Because it's unknown exactly how many pieces of art currently honor Colorado women, one of the first steps will be cataloguing a complete list of all the pieces already out there.
MaKenna said she sees the new direction as a way to honor the strong women in her state, as well as in her own life."I'm a fourth-generation Colorado native and my great-grandmother came here to escape Ireland," she said.
When she came to Denver, MaKenna's great-grandmother ran several businesses in the historic Baker neighborhood including a grocery store and a mechanic's shop — a rarity for women at that time. "So she was kind of a force to be reckoned with back in those days and this just felt like the perfect direction to take this foundation," she said.MaKenna added that women won't just be the subjects of these works. "Being a woman artist, I'm very interested in choosing women artists as often as possible to create these pieces," she said.
As
for choosing which women to honor, MaKenna has found a deep well to draw from
thanks to the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame, which
already has more than 160 inductees. "Colorado
has a very strong history of very strong women," she said.
Women
like Helen Bonfils. Bonfils
has already been the subject of many private works of art in her name. Across
the DCPA complex, in the theatre that bears Bonfils' name, sits a striking
portrait of the heiress with the Rocky Mountains in the backdrop. The
painting is rumored to be haunted. "If
you stare at it long enough, the clouds will move," said Suzanne Yoe, the
DCPA's director of communications and cultural affairs.
Bonfils
was one of Denver's biggest philanthropists at the time — particularly for the
arts. "Helen
Bonfils actually created the theater over on Colfax, which is now the Tattered
Cover," Yoe said. "It used to be the Bonfils Theatre, and it was
actually opened in honor of her mother. She also founded the Bonfils Blood
Bank."
Another contender is former University of Colorado-Boulder basketball coach Ceal Barry. Barry retired from coaching in 2005 holding the record for coaching the most games, matches or tournaments of any sport in Colorado athletics history. With 427 wins, she also had the most victories of any CU-Boulder coach.
"There's name recognition around the state, and also kind of an already understood implication of her importance to sport in Colorado," MaKenna said.
Now all she needs is some art.
The AZ Foundation will meet at 1 p.m. March 30 at First United Church of Arvada.
Harriett Tubman - NYC
Gertrude Stein - Bryant Park, NYC
Eleanor Roosevelt - Washington DC