Rule Gallery

Made during his residency in Costa Rica a few years ago, Jason DeMarte’s Sabrewing and Sprinkles examines the tension between the natural and artificial world.

Referencing Martin Johnson Heade’s 19th-century studies of tropical birds and orchids, DeMarte reconsiders the romantic landscape through a contemporary photographic lens. Built from hundreds of images made under controlled lighting, the work appears as a singular landscape while foregrounding photography’s ability to construct, manipulate, and exaggerate truth.

In place of untouched wilderness, DeMarte presents a carefully staged environment marked by consumption and excess. Candy sprinkles hover in the cloud forest as commercial residue, disrupting the natural order while highlighting how nature is packaged, embellished, and made to compete with our appetite for the artificial.

Jason DeMarte
Sabrewing and Sprinkles
pigmented ink print
*available in four sizes, in very small editions

DM for availablity

Save the date for an afternoon at RULE 🥂

On Saturday, June 20, we’re opening our Denver HQ at Fabrica for a relaxed summer open house with 80+ works on view throughout the space, artist-led and gallery-led walkthroughs, and time to gather with many of the artists who shape RULE’s program.

We’ll have bites and beverages, conversation, and plenty of room to wander. RSVP is helpful, but not required. ❤️

More details soon, but for now, mark your calendar. We’d love to see you at the gallery.

Saturday, June 20
RULE Gallery HQ at Fabrica
3001 Brighton Blvd
Denver, CO

What a wonderful, amazing turnout! Thank you as always, Marfa, Texas - your hospitality makes us feel like VIPs. 🥹

The Martha Invitational ends today at 5 PM, Saturday, May 30. Swing by for the first time or join us again to enjoy another view.

Many thanks to the artists for organizing such a fantastic weekend show.

Exodus, 2018,
acrylic on canvas
40 x 120 in

Nathan Abels’ evocative diptych contemplates a future on Mars, using as its inspiration images taken on two planets brought together by the human imagination.

Visit us in Denver for a close up view, and to tour more that 80 pieces of art on view.

DM for info and additional images.

Martha Hughes ( presents recent works from her Garden series as part of the Martha Invitational pop-up at RULE, Marfa.

Drawing inspiration from private gardens and public spaces like the Denver Botanic Gardens, Houston Arboretum, and Dallas Arboretum, Hughes continues her long engagement with landscape and the natural world. These paintings approach the garden as a constructed yet living field of color, line, shape, and movement.

On view Friday and Saturday, from 11 AM to 5 PM. Public reception Friday, 5–7 PM. Located at RULE, Marfa. Hughes joins three other artists—, , and —in this show. Don't miss it! 👀

DM for details

👀 can’t stop thinking about this one

RULE artist ’s ‘Cardinals’ installation at The Fitzgerald Apartments, placed by .

At mural scale, DeMarte’s constructed world becomes an transformative environment and completely unforgettable.

For more details about this work and other works by the artist, contact [email protected]

New at Rule 👀

Colorado-based artist Susan Blake creates vessels that blend painting and ceramics.

Instead of glazing her clay forms, Blake paints them with acrylic and enamel, layering geometric patterns onto hand-built shapes that bend, slump, and defy symmetry. For her, the vessels symbolize feelings of containment, and their rhythmic patterns evoke transcendent escape—viewing them as ‘personal artifacts’.

Works by Susan Blake are available to view in Denver and Marfa, as well as on RULE Gallery’s Artsy profile.

‘Bandeau’
2025
Acrylic on ceramic
12x6 inches

Final transmission from Signal and Return.

Only two days remain to see Joe Clower’s watercolor paintings alongside Polaroids by El Disco, the artist collaborative formed in Los Angeles in 1987 by Clower, Steve Thomsen, and Tennyson Woodbridge.

On view through May 23 at RULE Marfa.

Blink and it's gone.

DM for a checklist.

(1) El Disco, Downtown LA
c. 1988
Polaroid
4.25 x 3.375 in
*print available

(2) Joe Clower, Untitled
2005
watercolor on paper
10 x 13 in (paper) / 16 x 19 in (framed)
JOCL0131

As we enter the final week of Signal and Return, we’re spending time with Joe Clower’s unique visual language. This piece has long been a favorite among the gallery team.

Clower’s watercolors often juxtapose familiar references, instruments, architecture, and landscapes in unexpected arrangements, causing the images to exist somewhere between plan and proposition.

Joe Clower (1937–2024) was part of a circle of Colorado artists whose work was influenced by structure, pattern, and ongoing artistic exchange, from Boulder’s Armory Group to the Criss-Cross artist co-operative. This history of friendship and shared inquiry also runs through El Disco, the collaborative project Clower formed with Steve Thomsen and Tennyson Woodbridge in 1987, which is also currently on view in the adjacent gallery.

On view through May 23 at RULE Marfa.

Joe Clower
Untitled
1992
watercolor on paper
30 × 22.5 inches
Sold

Thinking about…. rest

Anne Noggle
The Old Nymph
1985
silver gelatin print
20 x 23.87 in / 50.8 x 60.64 cm

In the flat file at our Denver HQ 👁️
——-

Anne Noggle (1922–2005) was an American photographer, pilot, and educator whose work brought unique directness, humor, and tenderness to ideas of aging, femininity, and the body. A former World War II pilot, Noggle turned her camera toward women, often older women, with a refusal of idealization. Her photographs treat age as presence, experience, and self-possession rather than disappearance—a true icon in photography.