Ah Haa: NYE Gala, Nemirov + Trommer Featured

28 Dec Ah Haa: NYE Gala, Nemirov + Trommer Featured

Telluride’s Ah Haa School for the Arts is excited to announce its 2019 NYE Gala, Tuesday, December 31. Attendees are welcome to purchase individual seats for $300 or a full, 8-person round table for $2250. For further information, email kathleen@ahhaa.org or call the Ah Haa School at (970) 728-3886 and get a jump on the Big Night.

Those who miss out on the New Year’s Eve Gala can check out Wahtola Trommer’s and Nemirov’s work throughout the month of January.

Please scroll down for more on the featured artists, Meredith Nemirov and Rosemerry Trommer.

Each year the Ah Haa School for the Arts selects two artists to feature at its New Year’s Eve Gala and for the subsequent month-long exhibit in the school’s Daniel Tucker Gallery. For 2019, Ah Haa pairs poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and artist Meredith Nemirov for a show titled “PIPLANTRI,” an exhibition of collaborative creativity.

“PIPLANTRI” is an installation of 111 drawings and 111 poems inspired by the story of the villagers in India who plant 111 trees every time a girl child is born. It was created specifically for the New Year’s Eve Benefit Gala at Ah Haa School for the Arts. During the evening and throughout the exhibition dates, any of Nemirov’s drawings can be paired with any of Wahtola Trommer’s poems and purchased for a total price of $111. Fifty percent of sales go directly to Ah Haa for their educational programs. The other fifty percent will be donated to the Merwin Conservancy.

For the last six years, the residents of Piplantri, in the state of Rajasthan, India, have planted 111 trees for each female child born in the region. Shyam Sundar Paliwal, the former elected village head, started this initiative in memory of his daughter Kiran, who died at a young age. To ensure the financial security of the each female child, the parents and members of the community are responsible for the care of the trees and for monetary contributions to the girl’s education.

Female children in Piplantri are not allowed to marry until the legal age of 18, and since the planting of the trees six years ago, the crime rate in Piplantri has greatly diminished. Aloe plants have been planted around the base of the trees to deter insects, and now several families are harvesting the aloe oil, as a small business offshoot of the project.

“This very special show and this dynamic duo will wow us with gorgeous paintings and inspiring words related to their chosen theme for the evening: ‘Things of Vital Importance.’ You will not want to miss them,” said Ah Haa director Judy Kohin.

The all-inclusive Gala evening begins at 5:30pm on December 31, with hors d’oeuvres and cocktails followed by a four-course sit-down dinner catered by chef Josh Klein (Bouille Catering/Sidework/Smuggler).

Attendees will dine on braised short rib ‘Estofado,’ crispy sea scallops or artichoke mousse tortellini, while surrounded by an arboreal installation of Nemirov’s delicate drawings and paintings and Wahtola Trommer’s inspired poetry. Before diving into buttermilk pannacotta desserts, diners will be accompanied by Wahtola Trommer’s lyrical words and guided on an artist’s journey by Nemirov.

The celebration concludes with a toast – and one more chance to walk around the gallery, peruse the artwork, and wish your friends, new and old, a Happy New Year.

Of note: This year marks Ah Haa’s last New Year’s Eve Gala at The Depot before the school moves into its new building.

Meredith, more:

Jorge & Meredith, in front of one of Meredith’s paintings of aspens, a recurring theme in her body of work.

Meredith Nemirov is a familiar name in the Telluride region. But the artist is also on the national radar: Nemirov has shown her work at the Brooklyn Museum; Yeshiva University Museum; The American Museum of Immigration; and other prestigious venues. There have been shows in Denver at the airport and at the Red Line Gallery.

Today in Telluride, Meredith shows her work at MiXX, where, in a few short years, she has become one of the top-selling artists in the gallery’s stable.

Meredith Nemirov has always painted her mind and is known for saying a mouthful in a few strokes – or words.

“To stand and face a whole landscape, to paint ‘en plein air’ and make a painting capturing the scene on a two-dimensional surface in a relatively short period of time is rigorous, but that’s what we artists are driven to do day after day: we interpret our world to find our place in it.”

Meredith Nemirov was born and raised in New York City. She started drawing the figure from live models at the Art Students League in Manhattan at age 14. After receiving a BFA from Parson’s School of Design, Nemirov continued working as a figurative painter, doing freelance illustration on the side to pay the bills. After art critic Lawrence Alloway juried her work into her first major show at The Queens Museum, Nemirov quit illustration to devote herself full time to painting. Exhibitions at major museums and galleries (as above) followed.

In 2008, Nemirov was awarded a residency at the world-famous Anderson Ranch outside Aspen. In April 2010, a grant enabled her to spend a month as Artist-in-Residence at the prestigious Vermont Studio Center, a think-tank for artists of all persuasions, including painters, sculptors, print-makers, and photographers, 50 in all, who live in that artistic community and work in private studios.

Meredith Nemirov first arrived in the Telluride region in 1988, settling down in Ridgway with her husband Jorge, also an artist, and son Raoul, ditto. (Raoul is now working for the The New Times.)

Rosemerry, more:

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Telluride’s Word Woman, lives in Southwest Colorado with her husband and two children and served as the third Colorado Western Slope Poet Laureate (2015-2017). Her poetry has appeared in O Magazine, on “A Prairie Home Companion,” in back alleys and on river rocks. Collections of her work include “Naked for Tea,” (a finalist in the Able Muse Book Award; “Even Now”; “The Less I Hold”;  “The Miracle Already Happening”; “Everyday life with Rumi”; “Intimate Landscape”; and “Holding Three Things at Once,” (a Colorado Book Award finalist).

Trommer travels widely to perform and teach for clients such as Think 360, The Aesthetic Education Institute of Colorado, Ah Haa School for the Arts, Camp Coca Cola, The Mission in Santa Barbara, Taos Poetry Festival, wForum, and Business and Professional Women.

She served as San Miguel County’s first poet laureate, directed the Telluride Writers Guild for 10 years, now co-directs the Talking Gourds Poetry Club, and is poetry editor for the gourmet magazine Edible Southwest.

Rosemerry performs with Telluride’s seven-woman a cappella group, Heartbeat, and sings nightly for her children. Since 2005, she has maintained a poem-a-day practice.

Her MA is in English Language and Linguistics.

Her favorite one-word mantra: Adjust.

Watch her TEDx talk, “The Art of Changing Metaphors.”