Ah Haa Moment: Visiting Artists

10 Jun Ah Haa Moment: Visiting Artists

From painting to fabric arts, visiting artists share their talent

The Ah Haa School for the Arts is proud to announce its roster of visiting artists for the upcoming summer schedule of classes. The nine artists who will make Telluride their temporary home bring with them a wealth of talent, impressive bodies of work and gallery resumés as long as a mountain summer day. Accomplished teachers all, they are adept at sharing their particular talents with students interested in fabric arts, painting, photography and mixed media work.

Rosemerry Trommer, Word Woman

Just before Bluegrass, Montana painter Shawna Moore returns to Telluride again this summer to teach Encaustics: Wax, Paper, Paint & More, June 14-15. This unique and dynamic technique incorporates pigmented beeswax, which is heated, re-worked, etched and scuffed to achieve dimensional depth.

Shawna Moore at work

For painters keen to explore more deeply the art of landscape painting, back-to-back, weeklong Telluride Painting School courses taught by Hank Pitcher and Gregory Botts will offer new insights this July 7-18. The new Telluride Summer Landscape Intensive features The Landscape, led by Pitcher, and The Figure in the Landscape, led by Botts. Both instructors, incredible landscape painters in their own rights, will co-teach the courses.

Landscape by Gregory Botts

Based in New York City and Santa Fe, NM, Botts travels to various sites that appeal to him and creates works in the field, which he then enlarges in his studio, adding a figure or other, new aspects to create a narrative within the work. Pitcher’s work is vibrant and colorful and reflects his relationship with painting as it intersects with the natural sciences – many of them scenes from his home base in Santa Barbara, CA. Like all the other visiting artists at Ah Haa this summer, Pitcher considers teaching an important aspect of his creative life.

Landscape, Hank Pitcher

Following Botts and Pitcher, New Orleans painter and former Anderson Ranch instructor Kathleen Loe will teach another Telluride Painting School class, From How to Why: Content and Confidence Development for Painters, July 21-25. Allowing each student to use their preferred media, including collage, this class will stimulate and offer a variety of paths to approaching subject matter.

One of Ah Haa’s biggest names from the workshop circuit this summer is pastel artist Sally Strand, who will teach The Color of Light, Aug. 1-4, which is open to all levels and all mediums – not just pastel. Strand, from California, is fascinated with how light works in the context of painting, and her incredible work appears to emanate light from within.

Still life, Sally Strand

Gasali Adeyemo resides and works in Santa Fe, but hails from Nigeria where his commitment to the art and culture of the Yoruba people was planted. He teaches workshops in fabric dying, batik, embroidery and appliqué techniques. This summer, he will instruct students on the art of Yoruba Indigo Tie-Dye Techniques. His classes take place during the Many Hands Fiber Arts Festival, Aug. 8-10.

Gasali Adeyemo at work

For painters looking to dig deep into layered possibilities, oil and wax painter Lisa Pressman will lead a class titled Using Layered Media to Expand Your Vision, Aug. 15-18. Of her work, the New Jersey-based artist says, “Each piece evolves over time: as I play translucent and opaque layers of paint against each other, draw, layer, cover up, sand and scrape, the paintings take on a life of their own, revealing elements that provoke a visceral response.”

Lisa Pressman

For photographers, the Ah Haa School has invited Glen Randall to share his talent in the realm of fall colors photography with The Art & Science of Landscape Photography, Sept. 26-28. Randall’s intimate relationship with the natural world is evident; he has photographed the sunrise (and sometimes sunset) from all 54 of Colorado’s Fourteeners.

Photograph, Glen Randall

Ah Haa wraps up its visiting artist schedule with a five-day women’s art and soul retreat titled Going Out Going In, featuring North Carolina painter Brucie Holler, who is partnering with local writer Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer for a combined writing and painting experience, Sept. 22-26. With morning The retreat is meant to allow women to explore both inner and outer landscapes and move more wholly into the creative process.

Brucie with image from her Murmurations series

For a complete class schedule, links to the artists’ websites and to register, please visit: www.ahhaa.org

For more information, call 970/728-3886.