Get TIO in your Inbox!

Fine Art

[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 /
[click to listen to Sally Strand on her art]

Strand_Awake200808_CC_LG Sally Strand is one of a number of high profile pastel artists in the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art's stable, which also includes Bruce Gomez, Doug Dawson, Carole Katchen, Deborah Bays, Albert Handell, and Ramon Kelly.


Brandishing her colored sticks, Strand teases the magic out of everyday objects and ordinary places/situations – train stations, restaurants, pears, a bowl of flowers, eggs, an unmade bed. The quotidian then becomes a placeholder for Strand's real subject: catching the light as it changes from moment to moment. Although her work is representational, Strand is anything but a strict realist. Look closely at her color choices: her palette is there to create a mood rather than depict what is actually in front of our eyes. In a very real sense, Strand helps her viewer see rather than simply look. Strand once told Telluride Inside...and Out: "Success to me is when you can take an ordinary head of lettuce and cause someone to give it a second glance.”
08 December, 2009 /

Help the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art kick off the holiday season with the 2009 Locals Show, featuring artist/author, Michelle Curry Wright. The event takes place Tuesday, November 24th, 5:30 – 7:30 pm, including wine tasting thanks to the Sutcliffe Vineyards in Cortez. Nepotism?...

24 November, 2009 /



The Telluride Gallery of Fine Art opens for the winter season with its traditional Thanksgiving locals show. The featured artist is Michelle Curry Wright.

Yes, the very same inscrutable Michelle who sits behind the desk of the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art, smiling like the Mona Lisa.

The very same Michelle, who rides her bike or roller-blades in the summertime on the bike path, tuned into her iPod, tuning out the world.
23 November, 2009 /


Last Thursday, November 5, Telluride's Ah Haa School for the Arts displayed about 50 works of art created by middle and high school students from Telluride, Ridgway, Norwood, Naturita, and the Dolores area, participants in the school's 8th annual Youth Art Award. Judges selected from Ah Haa Art Advisory Committee selected the winners based on originality and strength of the work submitted. Best in show, an honor that also paid $300, went to Jonas Fahnestock for his oil painting entitled "Self Portrait."

11 November, 2009 /
Grooms, 2009, Dancing, Marlborough Chelsea (1) Telluride Inside... and Out's stories about our very memorable day in Chelsea continue with a recap of our visit to the Marlborough Chelsea Gallery, 545 West 25th Street, to see an exhibit of monumental sculptures by Red Grooms. Why we went has everything to do with jonesing for the child-like wonder of the artist's work, cosmic connections, Telluride, and our dear friend Stephen Wald.

Grooms, 2009, Dancing, Marlborough Chelsea (4) Stephen Wald died that very same Thursday, October 22, after a long battle against Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. I suspect his passing happened close to the time a group of us went to the Marlborough to celebrate our friend, a successful businessman, philanthropist, accomplished athlete, photographer, and art lover/collector, because Clint and I knew Red Grooms held a special place in Stephen's life: specifically by a window in the entry hall of the elegant Aldasoro home he shared with his beloved wife Sheila, also a collector.
31 October, 2009 /