Get TIO in your Inbox!

Author: Susan Viebrock

[click "Play" to listen to Diana Conovitz's conversation with Susan]

Unknown Before Telluride was a ski resort, way before. Before town sported tricked out Victorians, hot and cold running condos and gourmet eateries. Before there were non-profits to fundraise for, there was lots of fun-raising. Over the top. Slightly wicked. Take for example the Muleskinners' Ball.

Muleskinners had nothing to do with hunting. Hauling was their game. They ran pack trains used to transport ore and the bare necessities to miners and loggers. Butch Cassidy was said to be a muleskinner. He allegedly worked for the Tomboy Mine before he was arrested in 1887. In Telluride's mining days the end of the 19th Century/ turn of the 20th Century, the Muleskinners' Ball was one of the era's most popular annual events.
09 August, 2010 /
MarmotteStockFB The creativity patrons experience at Telluride's La Marmotte restaurant is not limited to the table. In July the restaurant hosted  "Le Fair Affaire," a night of art, music, live performance painting, culinary tasting, and film screening, the brainchild of photographer Scott Rhea. La Marmotte's August event promises to be just as much fun.

"Marmotstock" is a pre-PHISH Telluride tailgate party and a benefit for one of town's best loved non-profits, the Telluride Adaptive Sports Program. The all-day event takes place Monday and Tuesday, August 9 and August 10, 11a.m. – 5 p.m., just outside La Marmotte, 150 West San Juan Avenue, one block from Gondola Plaza.

08 August, 2010 /
[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with Tony Smith]

TFA2010Poster_v8 It is the ultimate pairing. The Telluride Festival of the Arts is an annual weekend-long celebration of both the visual and culinary arts. The unique event, produced by the Cherry Creek Arts Festival and sponsored by The Telluride Mountain Village Owners Association, welcomes over 5,000 locals and visitors to the Mountain Village Friday, August 13 –  Sunday, August 15.

08 August, 2010 /
Image 1 - OTR Editor's note: Christo is the granddady of all wrappers. He and his wife Jeanne-Claude (now deceased) became world famous for hiding familiar objects, buildings and views in plain sight by wrapping whatever struck their fantasies in what amounts to a second skin. The big idea: transform the quotidian into something transcendent, stimulate our imaginations and the joy of discovery, causing us to take a second look at that which we tend to take for granted.

The Telluride Gallery of Fine Art is Christo's local representative. The Gallery will be mounting a show of his work to coincide with the Telluride Film Festival, September 3 – September 6. The Gallery show is in support of Christo's latest project, Over The River. Telluride Inside... and Out heard Christo speak on behalf of Over the River at a town hall meeting in Salida. The consensus appeared to tilt overwhelmingly in his favor, although there was the equivalent of a Tea Party opposition, fingers stuck in their ears, generally opposed no matter what. The Christo team has recently opened up the debate to the general public. The Christo team has sent the following release, so read on....
07 August, 2010 /
[click "Play" for an interview with several Mudd Butts principals]

Mudd Butt Poster 2010 The Telluride Academy's Mudd Butts is a four-week theater intensive covering all aspects of what it takes to make a play happen. Through the Mudd Butts, kids aged 10 – 14 get to explore theater games, script and songwriting, improvisation, dance, voice, even marketing. But that's only what's described in the Academy's brochure.

Read between the lines and it becomes clear the young people fortunate enough to participate in the Mudd Butts wind up acquiring invaluable and indelible life tools. Kids meet their inner artist while developing confidence and discovering ways to laugh at themselves and navigate the mine field of group dynamics. What the directors are after is broadening kids' horizons about social, political and environmental issues. Through the Mudd Butts experience, kids travel from a local address on to the world stage. (Literally at times. There is a Mudd Butts International program.)
07 August, 2010 /
[click "Play" to hear Kate Jones on Kate Jones]

Kate at Arts Fest The history of The Telluride Council for the Arts & Humanities is the modern history of our town, from the tie-dyed days of hippies and falling down shacks to robust resort packed with ski bums, entrepreneurs, and ex-CEOs, living in hot-and-cold running condos and restored Victorians.


In 1971, Telluride was emerging as a ski resort and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, the Telluride Chamber Music Festival and the Telluride Film Festival were small events about to happen in a small rinky dink town filled with Fibroids. These people who loved to make quilts and knit pretty things had plenty of time on their hands, but not much money in their patched pockets.
05 August, 2010 /
[click "Play", Brooke Ahana for Two Skirts]

DSC00145 Brooke Ahana is a big-city gal, but for the past seven years, the artist has spent summers in Telluride teaching kids and adult classes at Telluride's Ah Haa School for the Arts, where a show of her abstractions, birds, and portraits of women was on display in July. One of Ahana's Ah Haa classes was "Medal of Honor," in which she taught students how to transform found objects into wearable art in the form of pins.

Kristin Holbrook of Two Skirts, Telluride Inside... and Out's fashion expert, thinks Ahana's mixed media pins made from old keys, pocket watches, chains and more are so cool, they are hot. They fall right in line with the military trend that emerged this Spring and continues into the Fall.

05 August, 2010 /
[click "Play", Susan talks with Paul Machado and Terry Tice]

The history of the Telluride Jazz Celebration in digestible sound bytes.

Jazz 2010 Postcard Final The story begins in another tranquil mountain village in Yugoslavia. A young man named Nick Terstenjak, who was passionate about jazz, migrated to America, settled in New York for a spell, then moved on to Telluride in 1975. The Telluride Jazz Celebration was born out of Nick's KOTO radio show in 1976.

Over the year, the Telluride Jazz Celebration changed hands time and again, but the line-up remained star studded. In 1983, the Town of Telluride took over. By 1984, downtown clubs and bars as well as Town Park became event venues. When Lynn Rae and Buck Lowe took over the event, Paul Machado became their stage manager. He also worked for the Lowes' successor before accepting the baton in 1991.
04 August, 2010 /