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Events

[click "Play", Susan speaks to "Auntie Graffiti" (Jane Goren)]

Janegorencardhoriz-3 Think of Auntie Graffiti as Telluride's answer to Auntie Mame: madcap, irreverent, fun-loving, funny, and free-spirited. Her thing is traveling the world painting portraits on paper toilet seat covers, though, like Mame, she is a scandalizer, not a vandalizer.

Part-time Telluride local Auntie Graffiti has presented her bathroom art at renegade exhibitions in the toilets and WCs of renowned museums and galleries around the world. Now she returns to town with her offbeat body of work.

Sapsucker Studios, 299 South Spruce, opens the first exhibit of works by Auntie Graffiti September 2, 5 - 8 p.m., in conjunction with the Telluride Council for the Arts & Humanities' First Thursday Art Walk, a walkabout to show off Telluride's art scene, when local galleries, studios and retail shops stay open late until 8 p.m.
30 August, 2010 /

Sidebar_poster The official website of the Telluride Film Festival claims there is no better way to attend the event than as a passholder. Further, it states there is "no hassle" with a pass. True. Sorta kinda.

Here's why: Your pass entitles you to seating on a first-come, first-served basis. Even then, not so much, because passholders are not created equal.

Especially for big buzz movies in the smaller venues (the Sheridan Opera House, the Masons and The Nugget) first-come, first-served means if you are a plain vanilla passholder, your lanyard may not get in unless you arrive super early, as much as 1 1/2 – 2 hours in advance of the scheduled screening. Even then, remember you are behind sponsors, patrons, students, and Hollywood entourages, who can show up when they wish and jump the queue. When that happens, your treasured numbered Q becomes just another piece of paper to recycle.
29 August, 2010 /

IMG_5313 "This festival (the Telluride Film Festival) is characterized by its small size and friendly atmosphere. If there were a few key words to describe Telluride, they might include 'intimate' and 'down home,' just as easily as 'monumental' and 'important.'" (Elise Berlin, Boulder Daily Camera)

Even without a pass, the 37th annual Telluride Film Festival, 9/3 – 9/6, has something for almost everyone.

IMG_5328 The Telluride Film Festival opens with free films sponsored by Ralph and Ricky Lauren. The four film premieres, one each night starting Wednesday, September 1, just after dark, (and a day before the cat is let out of the bag with the official announcement about screenings on the long weekend to come), takes place in the Open Air Cinema or Elks Park, just across the street from the Courthouse. (Telluride Inside... and Out will be posting details about those films on or around September 1.)

28 August, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Susan's interview with Gary Lincoff]

2010HarvestAug14Hollinbeck The Telluride Mushroom Festival, Thursday, August 26  – Sunday, August 29, bills itself as the nation's "oldest mycological conference exploring all things fungal." Which is saying a tasty mouthful since fungi have been around for a very long time. A lot longer than people, perhaps 500 million years. (The earliest known picture of a mushroom was found on a wall painting in the ruins of Pompeii.)

Fungi used to be classified as part of the plant kingdom. They become a kingdom of their own because fungi differ in biochemistry and structure from plants and cannot synthesize their own food. The mushrooms people collect are just the fruiting bodies of mycelium, a sentient cobweb-like web of cells. These "fruits" are created in order to manufacture spores for reproduction. Because so much shroom activity occurs underground in the fungal version of the world wide web, mushrooms themselves appear to pop up quite suddenly over night.
25 August, 2010 /
IMGP1428 After a five-year hiatus, the Telluride Repertory Theatre at last was able to bring back Shakespeare in the Park. "Merchant of Venice" opened Saturday night. 7:30 p.m. on the Main Stage in Telluride Town Park. Performances continue Wednesday, August 25 – Sunday, August 29. (The performance on Saturday, August 28, however, is a 1 p.m. matinee.)

Local actor-turned-director Jeb Berrier's choice of "The Merchant of Venice" to relaunch one the REP's most popular series was a bit like deciding to run a marathon after an extended illness. The material in this dark comedy is challenging to say the least, dealing as it does with racial profiling in the person of Shylock, whom the Bard portrays in a somewhat grotesque, anti-Semitic caricature. Shakespeare, however, specializes in shades of gray, begging the question: Is Shylock meant to be victim or villain?
23 August, 2010 /
[click "Play" for Art Goodtimes' take on the Mushroom Festival]

IMG_5180 "The mushrooms have two strange properties: the one that they yield so delicious a meat; the other that they come up so hastily, as in a night, and yet they are unsown," Francis Bacon, "Naturall Histories," 1624.

Probably the best mushroom harvest in years has upped the ante for the 30th Annual Telluride Mushroom Festival, Aug. 26-29.

Wild mushrooms have always prompted wild debate, because they make great eats, but also can kill you. In some parts of the world – Telluride is one such address - mushrooms are prized for their culinary properties. But elsewhere on the map, mycophobes associate fungi with witches and serpents oh my.
22 August, 2010 /
As a school girl, Telluride local Barbel Hacke received only F’s in English class. It was only heartache, of Berlin Wall proportions, that sent her packing for America to find refuge with her friend, and fellow German, Elizabeth Gick.

27 Throughout Telluride’s history, this remote box canyon has served as a mecca for immigrants running from home, searching for riches or following follies. The place has been a magnet for those in search of adventure and a path less traveled.



19 August, 2010 /
[to hear Erin Neff's conversation with Susan, click "Play"]

And now for something completely different.

Cabaret ad costume party The 37th annual Telluride Chamber Music Festival meets "Cabaret." The event takes place Friday, August 20, 7:30 p.m. at the historic Sheridan Opera House. In keeping with the decadence of the period in Germany before the rise of Hitler, the evening begins with a champagne reception and ends with sweets. Guests are asked to come in costume, although Telluride chic works just fine for the aristos in the crowd.

The culture of Germany's Weimar Republic, 1918-1933, encompassed the political caricature of Otto Dix and George Grosz, the beginnings of the far-reaching Bauhaus movement in architecture and interior design and the decadent cabaret culture of Berlin, documented by Christopher Isherwood in "Goodbye to Berlin," the book that became the musical "Cabaret." Cabarets, concert halls and conservatories performed the atonal and modern music of Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Kurt Weill, like the other arts, declared decadent under the Reich.
18 August, 2010 /