This exhibition presents two bodies of work by Colorado-based photographer Brenda Biondo. Prints from the artist’s Paper Skies series, a group of carefully composed formal variations, are displayed alongside selections from her Playground series. Both series focus on familiar subjects—the built space of the playground, the open sky—with fresh eyes, attuned to subtle harmonies of form and color.

Biondo’s playground images show a type of structure that was ubiquitous in the American landscape from the 1920s to the 1970s. Widely regarded today as a hazard, the playgrounds photographed for this series languish in various degrees of obsolescence. Their first life—as modern symbols of mid-century leisure—is recalled, however, by the original catalogues, brochures, and advertisements that can be viewed alongside the artist’s photographs.

Recalling abstract exercises in avant-garde graphic design, Biondo’s Paper Skies are in fact the product of an ingeniously simple process. Printed photographs of blue sky, gray clouds, and warm sunsets are cut, folded, and re-photographed against the sky.