Restaurants/Chefs

Item Description

Located in Denver, Fruition Restaurant opened in 2007. The restaurant is a showcase of Chef Alex Seidel's passion to create approachable, top quality food without the pretense of fine dining. Fruition is perennially honored as one of the top restaurants in Colorado and helped earn Chef Seidel a spot on Food & Wine Magazine's Best New Chef list in 2010 and a James Beard finalist nomination for Best Chef Southwest Award in 2016. Fruition's menu is seasonally driven and changes according to what is fresh at the market. Every ingredient on the plate has a purpose which creates layers of flavor in each dish. Alex believes in simplicity and letting the ingredients shine. "I like to keep things simple. It's really abut sourcing ingredients and highlighting them," says Seidel. As an intimate neighborhood restaurant, Alex wants every guest who walks through the doors of Fruition Restaurant to feel as though they are stepping into his welcoming home.

About the Mask Artist: With a background in Fine Arts and Interior Design, Julie Clements shares a passion for an holistic, eclectic aesthetic grounded in sustainable design. With a curious and discerning eye, she explores concepts of historic preservation and urban renewal in both her artwork and her industry. The study of permaculture inspires her appreciation for small scale agriculture, thus influencing her activities as a consumer and an advocate. She is a dedicated member of the service team at Fruition Restaurant, where she expresses a joy for hospitality and talent for creating memorable experiences. Her mask is a stylized interpretation of the delicate beauty of the honey bee to bring awareness to the crucial conflict that underlies colony collapse disorder.

The mask appears to bloom with layered textures and graceful green that encourage the dance of the honey bee. The decorative embellishment is no substitute for nature's bounty, but with careful consideration, the theme of beauty and balance frame the mask to evoke a sense of Spring. The placement of the bee specimen at the mouth is symbolic of both the fruits that sustain us and the need to advance the conversation concerning colony collapse disorder. Other patterns of adornment elude to honey and the comb. The choice ornamentation models a beautiful face to capture an audience within ourselves, to highlight the health and wonder of the natural world.