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Fine Art

[click "Play" to hear susan's conversation with Julie McNair]

Head shot 2009 copy Sculptor and long-time Telluride local Julie McNair makes doll-like figures – but don't be thinking of Barbie. Barbie has curves. McNair's whimsical creations throw you a few.

Dolls have a history dating back 25,000 years. The earliest dolls evolved out of a  spiritual context and were used in a wide variety of rituals and ceremonies to heal the sick, make barren women fertile, capture the spirit of an enemy, influence the outcome of love and war. Shaman are known to have worn dolls on collars and belts. The use of dolls in the voodoo religion is the stuff of B movies.


19 August, 2009 /

TFA09Poster The sixth annual Telluride Festival of the Arts will take place in Telluride's Mountain Village, August 13th, through the 16th.   If you are passionate about food, art and entertainment, you will revel in the line-up of celebrity chefs, national and regionally recognized artists as well as a enjoy a Friday night Sunset Concert performance with the soulful sounds of critically acclaimed singer/songwriter Joan Osborne. 

The Plazas in Mountain Village will become a strolling gallery of fine art throughout the Telluride Festival of the Arts weekend, featuring the work of more than 40 artists presenting work from various media, including: ceramics, digital art, drawing, fiber, glass, graphics and printmaking, jewelry, metal-works, mixed media, painting, photography, sculpture and wood.

11 August, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with Bruce Gomez]

TCMF Poster '09 Final Artist Bruce Gomez is the poster boy for the second year in a row for the Telluride Chamber Music Festival, this weekend, August 7 – August 8 and next weekend, August 14 – August 15.
On Thursday, August 13, patrons of the arts and the Chamber Music Festival can stop by Gomez's local gallery, the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art, to view the original, a work entitled "Rudy's Ingram Falls," named in honor of the artist's pal, Rudy Davison. The pastel will be sold at a silent auction following the concert of the series.

On Friday, August 14, 12 – 2 p.m. and Sunday, August 16, 10a.m. – 1 p.m., Gomez will be in the Great Room, at the Peaks Hotel, working at his easel, developing new paintings.

08 August, 2009 /

Maggie-and-roy Photographer Maggie Taylor's technically brilliant, unapologetically enigmatic digital photographs throw the viewer slightly off balance, like the work of her husband and fellow photographer, Jerry Uelsmann. The couple, who appear to be on the same wavelength, are featured on a double bill at the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art. Their show opens Thursday, August 6, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. with an artists' reception to coincide with the Telluride Council for the Arts and Humanities' First Thursday Art Walk.

Like Uelsmann, Taylor's renown is international. A major retrospective of her work is currently on display at Centro Internazionale di Fotografia Scavi Scaligeri in Verona, Italy. Also like Uelsmann, Taylor is all about altering the world as we know it in visually interesting ways: the result, at once playful and scary.

06 August, 2009 /

Telluride county commissioner Elaine Fischer is about to deliver the full monty to her constituency: a show of self-portraits that bare her soul opens on Thursday, August 6, at the Stronghouse Studios, part of the Telluride Council for the Arts and Humanties' First Thursday Art Walk, an all-day showcase of the best of Telluride's fine art and retail scene. Venues are open late until eight.

Elaine Fischer arrived in town in the 1980s. Fast forward nearly 30 years, Elaine is  a high profile and highly respected member of the community known mostly for her government and nonprofit work: HARC, town council, mayor, and today,  county commissioner. Two years ago, however, Elaine decided to return to her roots in fine art and start painting again – and it was a long time coming.

[double click to view in larger format]

06 August, 2009 /

Selfportrait70 Over the past week, Telluride Inside... and Out has been running a series of podcasts featuring commentary by renowned photographer Jerry Uelsmann about five of his mind-bending images. A show of his work begins today, August 6, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m., with an artist reception at the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art on Main Street.
Uelsmann's opening is part of the First Thursday Art Walk, an all-day showcase of Telluride's fine art and retail scene created by the Telluride Council for the Arts & Humanities. Venues are open late until eight.

Jerry Uelsmann began producing his dramatic photomontages in the 1960s, black-and-white images that are not at all black and white, rather unsettling alternatives to naturalism. These surrealistic, hyper, super or anti realities – call them what you like, the labels are just variations on a theme –  amount to a psychic topography developed from things that happened at the fringes of Uelsmann's consciousness. Clues to the meaning of the work, however, could be derived from artist's symbolic vocabulary, which has remained surprisingly consistent over the years: nature and culture cross boundaries when interiors meld with exterior landscapes. Figures levitate and fly as in dreams, free of gravity. Monumental hands, a classic element in Surrealist photography of the 1920s and 1930s, appear everywhere. Other bizarre, even grotesque Surrealist motifs include disembodied human parts, humans merging with trees, rocks and water, animal, vegetable and mineral blending and intertwining, the stuff of the shadow world. Universal archetypes such as house, tree, sky and water, are all re-contextualized, forcing us to confront them like children, with wonder and for the first time.

06 August, 2009 /

[click "Play" button for a discussion of one Uelsmann image] Telluride Gallery of Fine Art will host an exhibition of works by Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor from August 6 to September 6, 2009. The opening is Thursday, August 6, from 5:30-7:30 pm at the...

05 August, 2009 /
[click "Play" button to hear Greg Barnes on his art]

G. Barnes pleinair_Yellowstone_ For three days, Friday, August 7 – Sunday, August 9, visiting artist Greg Barnes teaches a course in plein air (in the open air) pastel techniques at Telluride's Ah Haa School for the Arts, walking students step-by-step through the process that begins with selecting a subject and ends with a finished product. The intensive also includes show and tell: Barnes plans to demonstrate the techniques he teaches and offer theories about color, composition and value, which become the grammar underlying future work.

Examples of Greg Barnes' landscapes are on display at Capella outside the main ballroom on the second floor, where an artist reception is being held on Saturday, August 8, 5:30 - 7 p.m.

05 August, 2009 /
[click "Play" button to hear Susan X. Billings on Bali trip]

L1020693 Artist Susan X. Billings of mangoworkshops.com, an umbrella for artful travel, in conjunction with Telluride's Ah Haa School for the Arts, is offering a Bali Workshop that combines art, yoga, and Indonesian cooking, September 25 – October 2, in a tropical island setting.

Billings is the kind of protean talent who is out there to prove that all of life is art. A glimpse at one of her mixed media images tells the whole story: the work has nothing to do with '"isms" du jour or with art historians' creaky theories. It has everything to do with being an original, with a big soul and a richness of spirit.

04 August, 2009 /

[click "Play" button for a discussion of one Uelsmann image] Telluride Gallery of Fine Art will host an exhibition of works by Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor from August 6 to September 6, 2009. The opening is Thursday, August 6, from 5:30-7:30 pm at the...

04 August, 2009 /