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Fine Art

[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with Katia and Steve]

Necklace-mask-b-e Sponsored by the Telluride Council for the Arts and Humanities, First Thursday Art Walk has become what to do apres ski or pre-prandial for Telluride locals and guests, who get to soak in the town's fine art and retail scene: galleries, studios, arts organizations (such as the Council) and retail stores located in and around Colorado Avenue (Main Street) stay open late until 8 p.m. Lustre Artisans Gallery is one of the participating venues.

For Art Walk, February 4 (also Friday, February 5), 4 – 7 p.m., the husband and wife team of Steve Pflipsen and Katia Pflipsen-Olivová are on hand at Lustre for an artists’ reception. The couple will be talking about their newest large-scale sculptural glass vessels.( Also at Lustre, a trunk show featuring 24K gold jewelry by Gurham, who fashions his contemporary pieces based on techniques dating back thousands of years.)

04 February, 2010 /

[click "Play" to hear Adele Kaars-Sypesteyn]

TELLGALLERYsypesteyn_Candle 3 First Thursday Art Walk, February 4, 5 – 8 p.m., is a big night out on the town. Locals and guests meet and greet on the street as they check out Telluride's fine art and retail scenes. Venues are open late until 8 p.m.

The Telluride Gallery of Fine Art , 130 East Colorado Avenue, features the work of artist Adele Kaars-Sypesteyn , who paints images of aged and decrepit walls, floors and other architectural features of buildings marred – or enhanced? – by time. Repetition of forms, the visual marks of lives well lived, evoke a feeling of bygone days and the weathering of lived-in spaces. The power and physical beauty of Sypesteyn's abstractions and landscapes also suggest the artist holds some interesting views about the aging process in humans.
04 February, 2010 /
[click "Play" to listen to MD about his art]

Md_web The Telluride local known on the streets simply as "MD" is not what his handle suggests. Michael Patrick Doherty is an artist, this month the featured virtuoso at the Ah Haa School for the Arts. "Life on Telluride" officially opens tomorrow, February 4, for the First Thursday Art Walk., 5 - 8 p.m. in Ah Haa's Daniel Tucker Gallery.


03 February, 2010 /
Friends Poster Part-time Tellurider, painter Jane Taylor, and her husband, photographer Frederic Ohringer, join a group of Hudson Valley artists featured together in a group show in Germantown, New York. Ohringer curated the exhibit at the request of ArtSpace. The opening reception is January 16.

Taylor is no stranger to Telluride collectors. Her shows at the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art and at the Scott White Gallery used to sell out. Taylor's subject matter evolved over the years from abstractions suggesting worlds coming apart to the bounty of the table and garden, summarizing the arc of the artist's life. Insider poop aside, by channeling her physical experiences of the outside world, each tour de force painting became about making the commonplace look uncommonly good. Something that straddled the border between memory and metaphor, reality and illusion. Something transcendent.
11 January, 2010 /


The Telluride Council for the Arts & Humanities kicks off the New Year with its First Thursday Art Walk this week, January 7, 5 – 8 p.m.

Holiday trifecta over and done, Amy Jean Boebel took the old adage about ringing in the new to heart. Art Walk celebrates the opening of her brand new gallery, Sapsucker Studios, 299 South Fir Street, and a show of her latest work, "Screen Scapes and Shapes." In future, Sapsucker will be dedicated to cutting edge regional art, including installations.
07 January, 2010 /
[click "Play" to listen to Amy Boebel speak about her art]

DSC_0146 Sponsored by the Telluride Council for the Arts and Humanities, The First Thursday Art Walk is a day-long block party with a mission: to showcase Telluride's fine art scene, including galleries and studios, which stay open late until 8 p.m. The first Art Walk of the New Year is this Thursday, January 7, 5 – 8 p.m.


Last January, TCAH's Strong Studios featured the work of newly minted local Amy Jean Boebel, a recycler with massive creative chops. "Seventeen Scrolls of Screen" featured playfully elegant sculptures created entirely from rolls of wire screen. Exactly one year later, Boebel managed to open her own gallery: Sapsucker Studios, 299 South Fir Street, where the idea is to feature cutting-edge work produced by regional artists. Sapsucker's debut show this Thursday features her own "Screen Scapes and Shapes," illuminative aluminum screen wall hangings and sculpture in which shadows complete the picture in a play of movement and light.
06 January, 2010 /



Bruce Gomez was the very first artist Will and Hilary Thompson, owners of the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art, signed for their stable when they opened their new gallery on Main Street (130 East Colorado) in 1985. Will Thompson first saw Bruce's work in a Denver gallery, but the timing was not right to work with a pastel artist. Will was buying and selling original graphics exclusively, but he recalled thinking: "This kid really has something."

30 December, 2009 /
[click "Play" to listen to Sheryl Rydmark]

Telluride (2) On December 29, the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art opens a show of new work by jeweler Cheryl Rydmark. The jeweler is renowned locally for her now famous asymmetrical arrangement of sterling silver beads, gold, leaf-like charms, and small diamonds, worn by a trend-setting group of Telluride ladies like a sorority necklace.


A classically-trained-painter-turned-metal-artist, Rydmark's creation are as elegant and harmonious as Einstein's theory of relativity, the architecture of Renzo Piano, Brancusi's sculpture, Rothko's paintings, and ancient Etruscan jewelry, works that convey the idea that, in the hands of a master, complex concepts can be successfully conveyed very simply. After 35 years on the job, Rydmark is a true master, often described as a "jeweler's jeweler" for her uncompromising quality and sensitive handling of the materials.
26 December, 2009 /
[click "Play" to listen to Susan Sales speak about her work]

Susan A show of new work by painter Susan Sales goes on display at the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art on Thursday, December 17. The opening artist's reception is 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.


Susan Sales built her considerable reputation on color field paintings. Eliminating figure and ground in favor of color and form, she forced a focus on paint, color, surface, texture, and gesture, creating near landscapes that "feature" the viewer in the mirror created by glossy, lacquer-like veneers that both contain and protect the raw emotions she paints on to her canvasses. That was then. This is now.
15 December, 2009 /