Walking through the historic storefronts of Old Colorado City, one could easily be drawn to the large window display of original fine art pieces at Hunter-Wolff Gallery. Owned by entrepreneur Sharon Wolff since 2005, the gallery displays the work of dozens of artists in a variety of mediums.
Maria Battista is both a sales associate and an artist whose work is displayed in the gallery: currently, this includes many items of jewelry and several sculptures depicting the human form.
“I birth figures and portraits engaged in wonderment about the nature of reality,” she says on her personal art website. “My work is devoted to the body as playground, battlefield, and temple of the psycho-spiritual life.”
Battista also specializes in custom jewelry projects that involve meaningful collaboration with the client – for example, someone may have a gemstone or family heirloom and wish to see it incorporated in a new piece. Battista will assist in bringing their vision forward and into being.
Originally from a large Italian immigrant family in New Jersey, Battista shares on her website a formative moment she experienced visiting her family’s homeland.
“The day before I was to return to the U.S., I sat in a sunny park… and closed my eyes. Nearly instantly, I felt long tendrils of roots burrowing from my feet deeply into the Italian soil: my family roots, our artistic heritage, marble dust, earth, light and bone in comforting connection to the earth… I carried that sensation and a commitment to a certain artistic path forward.”
Battista says she knew at an early age that she would live in the mountains. When she came to Colorado Springs, she saw the Rocky Mountains and thought, “This is it. This is where I’ll stay.”
Battista says it is her joy to live here and “make art out of the substance of mountains.”
Hunter-Wolff Gallery • Maria Battista
2510 W Colorado Ave.
Colorado Springs, CO 80904
719-520-9494
HunterWolffGallery.com
MariaBattista.com
