RED DIRT NEWS

Terroir, pronounced “ter'wär,” is a French term used to describe the complete natural environment—soil, topography and climate—that affects the distinctive characteristics and flavor imparted to a wine by the place in which it is produced.

The space is a contemporary art gallery and studio featuring paintings by local artist, Eunika Rogers, herself a terroir artist who utilized the natural environment to create her art. Rogers paints with clay and locally found pigments that she collects on her hikes in the San Juan Mountains. Among the subject that she depicts with her earthy palette are large realistic paintings of Colorado landscapes. Landscapes created by the landscape!

My name is Eunika and I paint with clay ... and now other natural materials. I collect and forage for these on my hikes and travels - it is part of my life and creative process. Painting with clay is a technique I created while in graduate school getting my MFA in ceramics and mixed media. I was digging and using red clay and noticed that it was staining my clothes. I just took it from there and added other colored clays to my palette.

I was born and raised in Eastern Europe and has lived in Memphis / Mississippi for most of my life. I've been a graphic designer, graphic design professor and now a full time artist and Telluride resident.

Painting ... 'One day I looked in the mirror' featured in Exposure section of Ceramics Monthly

Leaving a cushy career of 10 years to feed your starving artist's soul is exactly what Eunika Rogers did. She parlayed her degrees from the University of Memphis and Delta State, Mississippi into a professorship teaching graphic and web design at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi. You'd think that would be perfectly perfect, doing what you love and teaching it to up-n-coming artists.

Eunika Rogers' career as an artist started as a lucky accident. While attending the University of Memphis MFA program and studying ceramics, she was eager to develop her own style of pottery. She dug up her own clay, a particularly red color, from Mississippi. Before long said Rogers, all of her studio clothes were permanently stained from the clay. And then came the eureka moment. She started using the clay to make her own paint, and stumbled onto her unique medium. Instead of sculpting or molding forms, she began painting with the clay.

For many mountain-town dwellers, home is a complicated concept, and it’s especially profound for Telluride-based artist, Eunika Rogers (pronounced ‘Yoo-nee-kuh’). Her whirlwind story spans continents and cultures, from Slovakia to Canada, from conservative Mississippi to the wild, wild West. She uses her art to explore the moving target of these constantly-shifting soils, so, unlike many tales that go untold, Eunika’s is splattered onto canvases for the world to see.

It’s Earth Day tomorrow, a day of remembering and honoring our connection to Mother Earth.
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I thought these extraordinary paintings made by Eunika Rogers, perfectly illustrated that connection, and especially the microcosm of our own bodies reflecting the macrocosm of the Mother. Her masterful renderings aside, Eunika’s work is entirely unique in that she does not paint with traditional pigments; she paints with clay.