{"id":2454818,"date":"2020-02-20T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=321280"},"modified":"2020-02-20T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-21T00:00:00","slug":"aspen-high-artist-wins-state-and-national-prizes-exhibits-in-snowmass-village","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/aspen-high-artist-wins-state-and-national-prizes-exhibits-in-snowmass-village\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen High artist wins state and national prizes, exhibits in Snowmass Village"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Axel Livingston’s “Hunter Becomes the Hunted” earned the Aspen High School student an American VIsion Award nomination. He will show his work Saturday at The Collective in Snowmass VIllage.<\/strong>
Courtesy photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Axel Livingston is 18 years old, the recipient of some of Colorado\u2019s most prestigious art awards, and can sketch a crazy-looking dog on the fly. A rising artistic talent with a range of career possibilities for his growing skill set, he also easily slips into the role of mentor.<\/p>\n

When I met Livingston, an Aspen High School senior, at the Pitkin County Library to discuss his art, his first words were for my tagalong 6-year-old son, whom I introduced as also having artistic tendencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just gotta keep doing it,\u201d he said to my son, wide-eyed at meeting a real artist.<\/p>\n

The advice was perhaps reflective of Livingston\u2019s own mantra. The product of a creative family, including a seamstress grandmother and his \u201cmomager\u201d mother, local writer Jillian Livingston, he attended Aspen Community School, known for its emphasis on creativity. Growing up, he was constantly drawing or being creative with his hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarting off, my art was not very good at all,\u201d he said. \u201cI just kept doing it and doing it. My math sheets, all my books were covered. I just drew whatever I had in my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

In high school, Livingston began researching art and art history on his own. Once he honed in on artists who inspired him \u2014 including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ralph Steadman, the illustrator known for his work with Hunter S. Thompson \u2014 he said, \u201cThe whole world blew up for me; I knew this is what I wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Attracted by the irreverent style and social commentary of those two artists (and of Hunter Thompson culture in general), Livingston further developed his own technical style, and started using it to bring attention to issues he cares about. Favorite topics include the meat industry, medical ethics and the pharmaceutical drug crisis, which he said affects a lot of his local peers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to provide more insight, a visual aspect to the problems we\u2019re facing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Livingston gives a lot of credit to two art teachers at Aspen High. Stephanie Nixon, the school\u2019s lead art teacher whom he\u2019s studied with all four years, has been supportive and encouraging of whatever he wants to work on, even if it\u2019s in what Livingston calls his signature \u201ccreepy\u201d style. In Diane Heath, who taught ceramics last semester and specializes in portfolio development and scholastic competition, he found someone who pushed him outside his comfort zone. Heath convinced him enter the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards contest for Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe greatest thing about Axel is he\u2019s not afraid to try all kinds of media \u2014 you don\u2019t see that in most high school kids,\u201d said Nixon, who added that she\u2019s also seen his confidence as an artist blossom in the past year. \u201cHe\u2019s ahead of his time. He\u2019s not afraid to tackle subjects that may not be pretty, that make you uncomfortable, but somehow he welcomes you in \u2014 makes the viewer look a few times at his work.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the state Scholastic contest, Livingston won four Gold Key awards for four separate works, one of which also was an American Vision Award nominee. (For the latter, two of the five Colorado nominees for the national award are from Aspen High, whose students won a total of 18 awards in the state contest.) As a result, his works will be judged as part of the national Scholastic competition in March.<\/p>\n

These are some of the highest artistic honors teens in the region can achieve, noted Heath, who equated the Scholastic Colorado contest to a state championship in a sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe judges want to see not just skill but what you have to say about your art, and can you say it in a way that hasn\u2019t been seen over and over?\u201d she said. \u201cWhen I saw his work, I said, \u2018My god, this kid has to enter.\u2019 His skill set lies in creating images where each piece has something to say \u2014 a social justice or political idea \u2014 and he\u2019s not imitating another style. It\u2019s all his.\u201d<\/p>\n

Livingston is also a product of his environment. Growing up an artist in Aspen has been both a blessing and a unique perspective on the value of work and relationships. There\u2019s plenty of artistic support in multiple arts-focused nonprofits in the valley; Livingston won a scholarship to an Anderson Ranch program two summer ago. Among peers who\u2019ve been given everything, he\u2019s appreciative of having had to work to pay his own expenses, and this past summer spent six weeks at California College of the Arts in Oakland among a group of like-minded peers.<\/p>\n

Back in Aspen, Livingston developed a relationship with the team at Aspen Hatter, which hosted his first art show in September 2019. He was thrilled to sell some pieces, but perhaps more importantly learned to talk about himself and his work in front of potential customers and art patrons.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll we can do as humans is connect,\u201d said the teen who considered himself anti-social up until recently. \u201cIt\u2019s good to push yourself; you never grow if you do stuff you\u2019re comfortable with all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aside from deciding where (or if) to go to college next fall, Livingston is developing practical skills to serve him if his career path doesn\u2019t lead straight into the fine arts: graphic design, sewing and filmmaking. Meanwhile, burgeoning PR and social media skills are serving him as he promotes his next event, a one-day show with fellow Aspen High artist Jake Bozza on Saturday at The Collective in Snowmass Village.<\/p>\n

No matter what, though, Livingston is committed to his artistic message.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I can do is try,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I\u2019m trying to bring light to stuff, get people intrigued, provoke thought. I want people to look at my art and have really stimulated conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s even happening with the crazy dog sketch Livingston gave my 6-year-old son, who\u2019s been carrying it around in his backpack showing everyone he knows.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Axel Livingston’s “Hunter Becomes the Hunted” earned the Aspen High School student an American VIsion Award nomination. He will show his work Saturday at The Collective in Snowmass VIllage.Courtesy photo Axel Livingston is 18 years old, the recipient of some of Colorado\u2019s most prestigious art awards, and can sketch a crazy-looking dog on the fly. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2454818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 14:33:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2454818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2454818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2454818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2454818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}