The plein air artists working around Telluride this week always bring me pleasure by showing their unique perspectives on this beautiful place we call home. This morning on our morning walk, we encountered painter Jim Wodark right outside our door, working in the...
by Pamela Zoline
Among the frontiers on which we, smart chimps or bruised angels, find ourselves, perhaps the most intriguing, dangerous and profound is right here and now as we peer into the galaxies within our brainpans and begin to understand. Dr. Clifford Saron, Assistant Research Scientist at the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California at Davis, is at the helm of the starship. His research style, rather than swashbuckling, is exquisite, patient, impeccable, respectful, and has to do with the most powerful experiment design, and the most sensitive investigation of psychological and physiological processes. This is basic and rigorous research into how meditation affects the mind. It takes the exploration beyond religion and even beyond first-person accounts into the realm of what can be tested and measured.
The 8th annual Sheridan Arts Foundation's Telluride Plein Air is a robust weekend of fine art and music, culminating over the Fourth of July weekend.
The action begins July 1 along Colorado Avenue with a Quick Draw and Sale, 5:30 – 7 p.m.: 30 artists paint for 90 minutes in this judged competition. On July 2nd the historic Sheridan Opera House hosts the Plein Air gala and silent auction, 5 – 8:30 p.m.: artists display and auction a favorite piece. (Free entry, free appetizers, and cash bar). The same evening Plein Air presents Jason D. Williams in concert. Show time for this family concert of rockabilly, blues and Americana sounds is 8 p.m.
Telluride Gallery of Fine Art jeweler Barbara Heinrich grew up on a farm in Heilbronn, Germany, the daughter of winemakers. Her designs reflect her roots. The award-winning gold bling is inspired by the natural world, but anchored in German precision engineering: Milky Way, lotus flower, aspen leaves are among the shapes that have inspired her lines – and legions of collectors – over the years, but this year's motif takes the cake. The spiral is a pan-sectarian shape that belongs to us all and excludes no one.
Our tiny planet whirls around in a galaxy that is the shape of a spiral. In ancient myths, the spiral emerges as positive symbol of the cosmic force. The shape is associated with the cycles of time, the seasons, birth, life and death and rebirth. The path of life is a spiral, because it is non-linear: we pass ourselves time and again, but each time from a different perspective.
By Tracy Shaffer
The Denver Art Museum's current offering is a mud pie for the senses. With the most basic of themes, earth, this global exhibition brings together time and place to reveal how the artist deals with dirt. Curators from around the museum present their earthenwares in ways that honor the simultaneous beauty and function of the Coors Porcelain Company's vessels, the aesthic simplicity and eternal popularity of the blue & white ceramic, and the exquisite work of Native American potter, Nampeyo, who built a name for herself and a family legacy through her creations.
Now in its 9th season, the Telluride Musicfest adds two new events to its 2011 lineup, a wine and dessert concert for all subscribers and sponsors to thank everyone for helping to ensure the Musicfest tradition of chamber music concerts in a private home continues – and a movie night.
Movie night takes place Wednesday, June 29, 6:00 at the five-star Wilkinson Public Library. The event features a screening of producer/director Josh Aronson's inspiring one-hour documentary, "Playing for Real," (2000), an intimate look at building careers in big-time classical music. The film showcases the extraordinary talents of 14-year-old Japanese violin prodigy Mayuko Kamio and 2011 Musicfest guest pianist Adam Neiman – when he was 22 and already one of the finest pianists in the world.
By Dan Collins
Does Telluride really need another festival in the middle of the summer? Probably not. Do we really need more compassion? More sharing and caring? Yes. Why? Because it's good for us and for the planet.
"How so?" you ask.
Come find out at COMPASSION FOR A WORLD IN CRISIS, the Telluride Institute's Ideas Festival 2011, taking place July 8 - 10, at the Sheridan Opera House.
By Jon Lovekin
A Tom Boy Ride
Preparing for a festival as grand as the Telluride Bluegrass Festival takes time. For many Festivarians, the week to 10 day experience is their one vacation of the year. The excitement in the weeks before the Summer Solstice reaches a fever pitch the weekend before the music starts. In the early years, an entire festival was spent flopped in a tent in Town Park listening to the music from there, too sick from altitude, sun, and fun to be able to move.
As the festival caught on, pitching a tent in an empty lot or sleeping in a car late in the week ceased being possible. Prior planning became necessary and arrival in the campground early in the week morphed to getting there the weekend before. Town passes on the Landcruiser faded to no longer trying to leave town at all. We started working at the ticket booths, renting bikes, and moving in for the week.
Silent auction and more added to the fourth Annual Touch-A-Truck Fundraiser Saturday, June 25.
Mountain Munchkins Child Care and Preschool, operated by the Town of Mountain Village, hosts the fourth annual Touch-A-Truck Fundraiser in support of the childcare center’s infant, toddler, and preschool programs. The event takes place Saturday, June 25, 2011, 10 a.m.– to 1 p.m. in the Telluride Middle/High School parking lot. Admission is $5 per adult and/or child.
“My favorite thing about Touch-A-Truck is driving the school bus,” said three-year-old Gia Neyens.
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer ed. note: Maybe it's my age- though I think of myself as a very positive person, living pretty much in the now, and though I love the light on the longest day of the year, it brings with it the...
