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

SQUIDSHOW_FINAL_big Telluride. Typist. Tiger. What links these three words beside some neat alliteration is an upcoming theatrical event produced by SquidShow Theatre, and directed by company founder Sasha Cucciniello. FREE performances, March 8 – 11, 7 p.m., begin at The Telluride Community Room, in the Old Library, right next to the Marshall's Department, 231 East Pacific Street. (Audiences will be moved to a second as yet unannounced location for part of the evening.)

"The Typists" and "The Tiger" are two one-act plays by playwright Murray Schisgal. While not exactly a household name, over a long career Schisgal accumulated a pile of awards for the words that  leaked out of his prolific pen. Do you remember the hopelessly straight starving actor in a dynamite red sequined dress? Schisgal co-wrote the 1982 hit flick "Tootsie," starring a young Dustin Hoffman.

08 March, 2009 /

Telluride's Nugget Theatre will be showing three films this week, March 6-12. See below for showtimes, and the Nugget website for more information.

Pink Panther 2 is a remake of the wonderful Pink Panther comedy series of years ago, with Steve Martin in the role of Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau. Sight gags and silly humor are the order of the day. To see a trailer go to apple.com/trailers.

Revolutioary Road, set in the 1950s, illuminates the suburban angst of Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April (Kate Winslet). Richard Yates' 1962 critically reviewed novel was intended as an indictment of '50s American conformity at all costs. The trailer can be viewed at apple.com/trailers.

Frost/Nixon reprises David Frost's 1977 television interviews with Richard Nixon. The film stars Michael Sheen as Frost, and Frank Langella as the disgraced former president. Sheen and Langella played those roles in the theatre productions of this work in West End, London, and on Broadway. To see the trailer of this powerful portrayal of a significant peice of American history: apple.com/trailers.


07 March, 2009 /

Gritty, soulful guitar slinger/songwriter Tony Rosario is the opening act for the KOTO concert at Telluride's Sheridan Opera House, featuring The John Cowan Band. His hard-hitting acoustic band is Trutone & The Pour Boyz.Tony’s claim to fame includes stints with seminal rock group Firefall,...

06 March, 2009 /

[click "Play" button to hear Susan's conversation with John Cowan]John Cowan was only 21 when he joined Telluride Bluegrass Festival sensation, New Grass Revival, which  also featured the redoubtable talents of Sam Bush, Bela Fleck and Pat Flynn. For...

06 March, 2009 /

[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 /