Ah Haa dedicates new gallery to Daniel Tucker

02 Jun Ah Haa dedicates new gallery to Daniel Tucker

[click "Play" button to listen to Susan's conversation with Daniel Tucker]

On Thursday, June 4, 5 – 7 p.m., Telluride's Ah Haa School for the Arts celebrates its founder, naming its new gallery at the old Depot after the visionary Daniel Tucker.

Daniel is intuitive and a book artist, whose work is assured a place in history. The company he founded with partner Claire Owen in 1975, Turtle Island Press, has titles in the collections of major museums/ institutions including New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art; The New York Public Library; The Library of Congress; The Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany; and London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

Daniel has always known creating art is more than a feat of aesthetic engineering. He would likely sign on to French writer Emile Zola's notion that art is "a corner of creation seen through a temperament." As is his art school.

In the late 1970s, about three years after Turtle Island Press opened for business, Daniel asked himself a life-altering question about what regrets he might have about unfinished business looking back from 100. His answer: "The only thing I would have regretted is not having taken the risk – and it is a risk – of becoming an artist." Ah Haa and its sister school, the American Academy of Bookbinding became Daniel's way of helping others conquer that fear and channel their inner Leonardo.

Daniel, a humble man, eschews fanfare. But the facts are on the table: he is not one of those dreamers who always tilted at windmills. The proof is a century-old train station,The Depot, today transformed into the town's brand new Community Center.