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Fine Art

Attbd337 In its 19th year, the Sheridan Arts Foundation’s Wild West Fest is a week-long celebration of Western arts, culture and customs, which brings inner-city youth along with artists and musical performers from across the nation to Telluride.

 The featured artist for the 2010 Wild West Fest is Brett Schreckengost, who has been represented by the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art for ten years. Brett is a local photojournalist specializing in mountain sports and outdoor adventure photography (and a former colleague from the early, halycon days at the Daily Planet).

10 June, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Luci Reeve's and Sue Hobby's conversation with Susan]

Let's play a game of free association: I say "Telluride couture" and you say what?

Friends of Fluff - StrongHouse Telluride locals most likely would answer with two names: Sue Hobby and Luci Reeve. Fabric confections created by these two talented ladies have shown up everywhere you've wanted to be over the years: in way too many local theatrical productions to name, as well as on the stage of the Telluride AIDS Benefit and at countless other nonprofit auctions.

For the first First Thursday Art Walk of the summer season, this coming Thursday, June 3, 5 – 8:30 p.m., the dynamic designing duo are up to their old tricks. Which is to say, fashioning something completely new and different – and off the wall.
03 June, 2010 /
[To listen to Ally Crilly speaking with Susan, click "Play"]

Crillysapsucker Here's a question for Telluride locals, guests too: What do a dead bird and elephants have in common? Give up? OK, here it is. Amy Jean Boebel of Sapsucker Studios named her gallery for a dead bird found outside her door at 299 South Spruce, where she is showing the latest in a series of elephants – The Elephants III – by local artist Ally Crilly. And it's a perfect fit: all summer long Sapsucker is featuring strong women artists who refuse to pull their punches. (More on that in the weeks to come.)


The exhibition is part of  The Telluride Council for the Arts & Humanities' First Thursday Art Walk, a very popular walkabout, a time when locals and guests meander down Main Street chatting about Telluride's robust art scene. First Thursday is also an opportunity to shop: retail stores stay open late until eight.
03 June, 2010 /
[click "Play", Susie Billings speaks to Susan from Baja]

E1274393861 Susie X. Billings is a well established mixed media artist, who shows her work locally at the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art. A protean talent (has to do with change, not meat), Susie is intent on proving all life is art, daily to herself, and on magical occasions, to her students.

Susie runs international workshops, but she returns to town this month to her regular stomping grounds, Telluride's Ah Haa School for the Arts, to teach a three-day intensive, Friday – Sunday, June 11 – June 13, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. The subject is Mixed Media Collage & Watercolor. The starting point for the workshop is a love of summer alpine landscapes. Duh. All levels of student are welcome, from never-evers to accomplished professionals.
02 June, 2010 /
[Anthony speaks to Susan about his art and being Anthony Holbrooke, click "Play"]

Anthony-3 The name "Holbrooke" is listed in the Telluride phone book. It is also gets top billing on the marquee of the world stage.

Dad is Ambassador, now Special Representative, Richard Holbrooke, appointed by President Obama to help his administration tackle the thorniest foreign policy challenges it faces: Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ambassador Holbrooke is also a regular at Mountainfilm in Telluride, the event son David, a talented documentary filmmaker, has programmed for the past three years as its Festival Director.

This year, Ambassador Holbrooke is unable to attend Mountainfilm in Telluride, but another Holbrooke, son Anthony, is on the schedule. His show at the Ah Haa School for the Arts is part of Mountainfilm's Gallery Walk, Friday, May 28, following the Symposium.
27 May, 2010 /
IMG_1808 Telluride Inside... and Out scratched the surface of Denver's robust art scene, visiting two major public spaces and our favorite gallery.

IMG_1815 On a beautiful albeit very windy Spring afternoon, we made a pilgrimage to see Henry Moore (1898 – 1986) in the Denver Botanic Gardens and were blown away (very nearly literally). The show, the very first major outdoor exhibition of the artist's works in the American West, features 20 monumental sculptures, primarily bronze, some fiberglass, by the celebrated Brit, from a reclining " Naked Maya" stretching nearly 30 feet long and dominating a grassy knoll to an tender depiction of  a mother cradling a child, standing under three feet tall, hidden in a clearing.
19 April, 2010 /
[To hear Adrienne Lent's conversation with Susan click "Play"]

Telluride's First Thursday Art Walk is a blast.

_MG_4657 The first Thursday of every month – April Fool's Day is the last of the winter season – the Telluride Council for the Arts & Humanities organizes a walkabout to showcase the town's fine art scene. Art venues and retail shops stay open late until 8 p.m.

A relatively new must-visit in the line of march, is Amy Boebel's Sapsucker Studios, 299 South Spruce.

In case you were wondering, Sapsuckers Studios got its name from a dead bird owner/artist Amy Boebel found stiffening outside the door of her studio space before she turned it into a gallery.

01 April, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Masriera rep Sally Lake's conversation with Susan]

CO-40 The bling at Telluride's Lustre Gallery, 171 South Pine, is as extravagantly fabulous as a Nebuchadnezzar of champagne.

Founded in 1839, the House of Masriera became synonymous with Art Noveau jewelry in Spain, ultimately sharing a podium with Lalique glass and Gaudi's over the top architecture. Lluís Masriera (1872-1958), son of jewelers and painters, pioneered several innovations in his field, including the technique known as “Barcelona Enamel”, a translucent enamel possessing brilliant luminosity and remarkable definition. Fortunately for jewelry collectors today, Masriera saved every mold used in his design process. Each contemporary Masriera is made from these original molds, and so they are not considered reproductions, but originals.
15 March, 2010 /
[click "Play" to hear Julee Hutchison on her art]

The pearl Telluride local Julee Hutchison paints in oils on canvas with loose, open brushstrokes. Her focus is almost always the Big Picture, as she creates valentines to broad, open vistas and little corners of the world, although her landscapes are unmistakably American. Even in her portraits, the artist remains at one cool remove to take in and reflect the whole package, mining poetry from a smile or the tilt of a shoulder. Hutchison, however, is not strictly speaking a realist. She takes liberties with color to add punch or direct the eye of her viewer.


06 March, 2010 /
[click "Play" to listen to Malcolm Liepke speaking about his art]


Will Thompson's Telluride Gallery of Fine Art features a higgledy-piggledy mix of artists with one theme in common: They march to their own drum.

Malcolm Liepke was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the unabridged honesty that comes with Midwestern roots shows up in his work. Liepke is an unapologetic realist, who paints with a smoking brush. His images, these freshly minted portraits of women, have evolved into a patented cocktail of sensuality and draftsmanly stylishness: definitely PG-13, as much for what comes through the surface as what's on the surface.

04 March, 2010 /