Telluride locals' Art at Ah Haa's 19th annual auction

13 Jul Telluride locals' Art at Ah Haa's 19th annual auction

[click “Play”, Susan talks with Nicole Finger and Robert Weatherford]

Event kicks off with Intimate Live Auction Thursday, 7/21. Main event is Friday, 7/22

The auction is Telluride’s Ah Haa School for the Arts’ biggest and most important fundraising event of the year. Proceeds go towards supporting the school’s operation, especially programming and workshops. The theme of the 2011 happening is James Bond: “License to Create.”

New this year, the auction begins Thursday, July 21, 5 – 7 p.m., with an Intimate Live Auction of 4 Works of Art. The evening of champagne and hors d’oeuvres includes a preview of Friday night’s silent and live auction line-up and an opportunity to bid on four works of art, exclusively created for this mini auction by artists Julie McNair, Amy Schilling, Andy Ward and board member/teacher Robert Weatherford.

Describing Robert’s landscape, “Aspen Grove,” adjectives such as “agitated” and “raw” come to mind. He is an Expressionist. Expressionism is a movement in art history in which traditional ideas of naturalism and representation take a back seat to exaggerations of shape and color. The idea is to express urgent emotions.

Robert’s painting process is largely intuitive and iterative. He begins by taking a digital photograph of his subject matter, which he projects onto a canvas before laying the basic colors and compositional relationships. With each ensuing a gesture, each application of another layer of glaze, the artists steps aside to look at the evolving image for emotional pitch and punch. Weatherford claims he is not in control when he paints. He believes every one of his images used him to create itself. Weatherford is not after beauty. He is after truth. Which is also beautiful.

Robert’s commitment to the Ah Haa School dates back 15 years, when he first became a teacher. He has now served on the board of the nonprofit for four years. The Thursday night event is his brainchild.

Another Ah Haa board member, Nicole Finger, is the Sarah Burton of Telluride. She is a talented painter whose canvas just for this one special Ah Haa evening is another much anticipated show stopper of a dress. Rather than a direct translation of threads from a Bond movies, Nicole’s idea for the 2011 fundraiser was to capture the glamour of vintage 007. For inspiration, she turned to the work of Art Nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha’s, whose 1902 “Morningstar”  conjures power, beauty, and mystery.

The dress, a “bullet-bolero” with hand sewn bullet caps and Swarovski crystal pendants, a bullet art and crystal necklace and crystal embellished sandals (size 8 1/2) are being auctioned off during the live auction Friday night, starting at 7 p.m.

To learn more about the auction from Ah Haa director Rachel Loomis Lee, follow this link.

To learn more about their commitment to Ah Haa and the work they created for “License to Create,” click the “play” button and listen to what  Robert and Nicole have to say.