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Welcome to the HOTEL I'll Adorn-Ya |
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Written by Erin Frustaci
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Wednesday, 31 May 2006 |
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Page 1 of 2  Laura Kadlec’s artwork lights up the room and soon it will light up the Armstrong Hotel in Fort Collins.
The 50-year-old Fort Collins artist is one of five whose work will be displayed at the 1923 landmark hotel throughout the summer.
 “This show will give people the opportunity to see the work in a real interior setting, in a way they wouldn’t see it in a retail or gallery setting,” Kadlec said.
Each artist selected a room, all different from one another, in the recently renovated hotel to display her art. In addition, artwork will also decorate the hallway.
Kadlec specializes in lighted sculptures, which will be displayed in each room.
 “Lighting is so personal, it creates a mood or feeling,” Kadlec said.
Kadlec, who has been creating illuminated sculptures since 1998, has never had professional training.
“I’m not an artist by training. I’m an artist by accident,” she said. “I’m a living example of questioning authority. I grew up being told I couldn’t do math and wasn’t artistic. Sadly, after a period of years I began believing these things. The assumption was because I couldn’t draw a tree that looks like a tree, that I was not an artist. It eliminated a whole world of art.”
 It wasn’t until she went back to college for the second time that she finally discovered her passion.
She was going to school to be a social worker when a professor saw something in her no one else did.
“She saw a math head,” Kadlec said.
Kadlec abruptly switched majors to engineering, and a whole new world opened.
“Something clicked. I saw art in the math,” she said.
 Math taught her how to take an idea and turn it into a three-dimensional reality. She is fascinated by the way light moves through things and affects the way people feel.
Her pieces range from $150 to $8,000. She also does a lot of commissioned pieces.
“Sometimes an idea pops into my head with no warning at all — other times I will see some type of material that inspires me,” she said. “I do spend a fair amount of time thinking about a structure, but there comes a point in time where the thinking has to stop and I have to start playing with it.”
One of her favorite activities is to scour the aisles of a hardware store for unusual material.
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