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[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.

04 March, 2009 /

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.

01 March, 2009 /

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,...

27 February, 2009 /

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.

26 February, 2009 /

The Nugget Theatre in Telluride is screening three movies in the coming week. The romantic comedy, "He's Just Not That Into You", with a first line cast including Ben Affleck, Jennifer Anniston and Drew Barrymore, starts Friday at 8:30 pm and runs through  Thursday, March...

26 February, 2009 /

In writing about the 2008 Telluride Film Festival, TIO's Susan Viebrock (full disclosure: we've been married nearly 20 years) gave raves to "Slumdog", which premiered in Telluride. The article was written Sept 3, 2008, so it didn't come as a big surprise to us that...

22 February, 2009 /

Clint Eastwood's "Gran Torino" at Telluride's Nugget Theatre this weekDirty Harry is back. In Clint Eastwood's new movie, he is Walt Kowalski, a grumpy, unhappy Korean War vet. When neighborhood youths try to steal Kowalski's prized possession, a '72 Ford Gran Torino, he gets involved...

21 February, 2009 /

[click play to hear Susan's interview with Fred Garbo]

Telluride's Michael D. Palm Theatre hosts Fred Garbo Inflatable Theatre Company, Feb 20, 7:00 pm

The term refers to collective increases in the supply of money or prices – and a theatre company. In Fred Garbo's world, inflation is a good thing.

Fred is the founder and one of two principals in the Fred Garbo Inflatable Theatre Co.(click link to learn more about Inflatable Theatre), a multi-faceted, inventive exercise in pure entertainment, combining physical comedy, mime, dance, juggling, and gigantic inflatable props, which bounce between grand silliness and organic sculpture.

Fred & Co. are in Telluride for a one night only performance at The Palm, February 20, 7 p.m.

16 February, 2009 /

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

H3TaO Front300 Instead of pulling the covers over your head, make Friday the 13th your lucky day. Kick off the holiday weekend at Telluride's Between the Covers bookstore with a Valentine's Day Eve celebration, 5 - 6:30 p.m.

The event is a poetry party to celebrate the release of two new books of poems, "Holding Three Things at Once" and "Come Together: Imagine Peace: Poems" (Harmony), by  San Miguel county's poet laureate, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

Rosemerry is joined by her friends, country commissioner Art Goodtimes, and Ellen Metrick, for readings. Bobbi Smith has created a batch of "naughty cookies."  Frannie Major created the flower arrangements.

Humming beneath the surface of every elegant line is the author's child-like sense of inquiry. Sleek and sinuous as a cat, Rosemerry is just as curious about the many gifts of the natural world and the metaphors they enfold.

13 February, 2009 /