Fine Art

[click "Play" to hear Barbara Heinrich]

Unknown Jeweler Barbara Heinrich of the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art is a gold medal artist specializing in gold. Her professional training began when she was a young woman living in Germany, her native country, where she studied goldsmithing at Pestalozzi Kinderdorf Wahlwies for four years.

Barbara moved to America to earn a second masters degree in her craft at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and never looked over her shoulder.

[click "Play" button to listen to Judy Kohin]

Daniel_Judy_bw The Ah Haa School for the Arts in Telluride was founded in 1990 by professional book artist Daniel Tucker to provide the community with arts and crafts enrichment education – only art was just part of a larger vision.

Out of the gate, Daniel saw Ah Haa as a "beacon of light" in our community, a place that both inspires and unifies. From Day One, the school's current director, Tracee Hennigar, has had her eyes firmly fixed on that prize: building a community center with a capital "C."

[click "Play" button to listen to Susan's conversation with Daniel Tucker]

Daniel_new On Thursday, June 4, 5 – 7 p.m., Telluride's Ah Haa School for the Arts celebrates its founder, naming its new gallery at the old Depot after the visionary Daniel Tucker.

Daniel is intuitive and a book artist, whose work is assured a place in history. The company he founded with partner Claire Owen in 1975, Turtle Island Press, has titles in the collections of major museums/ institutions including New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art; The New York Public Library; The Library of Congress; The Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany; and London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

[click "Play" button to hear Steve Winter talking with Susan, and click the YouTube box below to see a slideshow of Winter's photgraphy ]

Tell imovie49 Two years ago, a group of "fellows" from the International League of Conservation Photographers came to Telluride, including James Balog Wade Davis, and Chris Rainier, all three long-time Mountainfilm supporters and popular featured guests. Joining them this year is another member of the ILCP, Steve Winter, since 1995, also a major contributor to National Geographic, and Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008, for his haunting images of the elusive snow leopard.

Photography is a democratic medium: most people don’t paint or draw, but almost everyone owns a camera. It would be delusional, however, to describe snapshots of family get-togethers and beach outings, even the images shot by eco-tourists on their adventures in the Alaskan wilderness or African savannah, as art. In no way can drugstore prints be compared to the work of Ansel Adams, Eugene Atget, Alfred Stieglitz, Annie Leibovitz, Balog, Rainier, or Nan Goldin, all acknowledged masters. That would be like comparing Elvis to Mozart.

[click "Play" button to hear Susan's conversation with Paul Bosch]

Telluride region features regularly in Bosch's art

IMG_0007 Pastor and painter of landscapes. Paul Bosch is part of a long tradition dating back to 19th-century America, when artists, particularly of the American West, expressed a rapturous identification with the surrounding terrain. Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Church are two examples. They went way over the top in their depictions of cathedral-like peaks and the Golden Glow that enveloped a scene. At the time, the presiding metaphor was God as Supreme Artist and men like themselves, were simply His obedient servants.

IMG_1701 Paul has been painting his entire life. "Someone has said  (Picasso?  Matisse?  Freud?) that painters are basically feces-smearers, and this was true of me in my crib, according to my parents." While he has been a university chaplain or campus pastor most of his professional life, Paul is also author of numerous published articles/essays on the subject of the arts as they pertain to religious faith, and three books on related themes.

 


[click "Play" button to hear Susan's interview with Jane]

Jane The girl can’t help it. Long before any inconvenient truths, before green became the new red, white and blue, longtime, part-time Telluride local Jane Goren was busy recycling, turning the detritus of people’s lives into edgy fine art.  

Jane came buy her obsession naturally: in the corner of Brooklyn where she grew up no one ever threw anything away.

SPAGHETTI IDARADO  In 1974, Goren moved to Los Angeles. Years later, in this landscape of insecurity both real and imagined, an earthquake struck. The artist began collecting discarded windows, which she painted on the reverse side of the glass in an offbeat attempt to restore order to a disoriented city. These images also allowed Jane to examine issues of voyeurism, surveillance, and the deceitful nature of appearances. The Telluride Gallery of Fine Art, her local gallery, has examples of this work in its stable, and a number of pieces are on display at La Marmotte.

[click "Play" button to hear Susan's conversation with Susan McCormick]

Susan McCormick at Telluride's Stronghouse Studios:

Susan 2003 Susan McCormick is a longtime local who generally maintains a low profile around town. March 5 will different. It will be Susan's once a year day, when her latest paintings go on display at the Stronghouse Studios, 283 South Fir Street, part of the monthly First Thursday Art Walk.

Susan arrived in town in 1979.  Husband Brian works at the water and waste water plant and skis "about one million vertical feet" on the mountain year after year. Susan, a non-skier, lives for the summer festival season and the music, especially Bluegrass. Over the years, like so many locals, she worked a number of jobs: ski Winter Bridge Small area ticket office, Resort Rentals (now ResortQuest) and as realtor T.D. Smith's assistant. For the past seven years, she has collected her paycheck from Jack Wesson and Ben Jackson, owners of Telluride Realty.
The past four years, Susan has also served as a board member on the Telluride Council for the Arts and Humanities, the non-profit voice of the local art scene and sponsor of Art Walk.

Susan began painting as a young girl, inspired by a talented aunt. Today, she works in watercolor and oil to capture the beauty of the Telluride region. She also paints florals and abstractions. What links the disparate themes is a passion for exploring color in seamless and surprising combinations.

Leonardo da Vinci, an influence, had the Mona Lisa, and Roger Mason has the New Sheridan, his muse, and its setting, the town of Telluride. The New York-based painter has merged with the hotelscapes and townscapes he paints over and over again. Main Street is his local studio, where the artist stands determined to capture the fickle light as it hits our buildings, lamp posts, cars, street life, and mountains.

Roger has generously donated two posters enhanced with paint, one of his "muse," another a town scene, to  Kate Wadley's FEAST, Fund for Expanding and Supporting Telluride's Medical Center.

To understand what Roger is up to in his work, it helps to understand his influences.

The Children's Hospital Immunodeficiency Program inside the Denver Children's Hospital began attending to the medical needs of HIV-infected children in 1991, only three short years before TAB got off the ground. Now in its 18th year, CHIP has grown into multi-disciplinary program serving infected parents,...

Auction, Friday, noon – 9 p.m., Telluride's Sheridan Opera House

(Check out the slide show below: Jen Koskinen's photo from 2008 auction and a sample of the art to be auctioned.)

The virus was announced in Washington, D.C. in April 1984. As quickly as the pandemic spread, AIDS threaded itself into the fabric of our lives. It also became an insistent muse for artists of every stripe.

Art about AIDS or art in support of AIDS causes is as varied as its many creators, but it always springs from a very personal place. Whatever form it takes,  it is always a victory for the transformative powers of the imagination: It can turn devastation into beauty or shine a light on dark things repressed in society or in our psyches, things everyone wants to run away from.