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The idea to create a drama camp for kids in Telluride had been blowing in the wind. In 1987, the seed took root:  the Telluride Academy under the direction of  Wendy Brooks became the producer. Sally Davis and Kim Epifano (and John Fago, who is no longer directly involved) became co-directors. Mudd Butts thrived and grew: today, Mudd Butts International acts as a diplomat without portfolio, forging relationships and developing mutual understanding and respect for young neighbors around the globe through the medium of theater.

After 23 years and counting, Davis and Epifano remain the heart and soul of the Mudd Butts, because the two abundantly talented ladies possess childlike wisdom and grown-up teaching skills.

12 August, 2009 /
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The Telluride Academy's Mudd Butts Mystery Theater Troupe is an intensive drama workshop that covers all aspects of theater from script and songwriting to marketing. During the month-long program, kids also learn invaluable life lessons: how to laugh at themselves and ways to navigate the minefield of group dynamics.

Our big fear: Mudd Butts goes away. Right now, however, not so much, because this weekend, August 14 – August 16, the 23rd annual Mudd Butts ensemble performs its next musical. The production is based on the book, "Fears of Your Life,"  by Michael Bernard Loggins.

11 August, 2009 /

Telluride's Wilkinson Public Library was the host and location for a community barbecue on Friday, August 7, 2009. The occasion was to celebrate the Library's selection as a National Five Star Library.Program director, Scott Doser told me food had been ordered for 300, but Telluride...

10 August, 2009 /

(editor's note: Thanks to Rick Silverman for the title)Telluride's annual KOTO duck race had it all: the spirit of competition, winners, losers, dedicated duck wranglers, ducks stranded by circumstances beyond their control, willing assistance by friendly bystanders (by-waders?), a cheering section waiting anxiously at the...

09 August, 2009 /
[click "Play" to hear Susan's conversation with Bruce Gomez]

TCMF Poster '09 Final Artist Bruce Gomez is the poster boy for the second year in a row for the Telluride Chamber Music Festival, this weekend, August 7 – August 8 and next weekend, August 14 – August 15.
On Thursday, August 13, patrons of the arts and the Chamber Music Festival can stop by Gomez's local gallery, the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art, to view the original, a work entitled "Rudy's Ingram Falls," named in honor of the artist's pal, Rudy Davison. The pastel will be sold at a silent auction following the concert of the series.

On Friday, August 14, 12 – 2 p.m. and Sunday, August 16, 10a.m. – 1 p.m., Gomez will be in the Great Room, at the Peaks Hotel, working at his easel, developing new paintings.

08 August, 2009 /
[click "Play" for Roy Malan's comments on Chamber Music Festival]

Malan Johannes Brahms is the alpha and omega of the 36th annual Telluride Chamber Music Festival. The event opens on Friday, August 7, with Brahms closing the first big evening. The final concert, Saturday, August 15, is dominated by Brahms. In between, the venerable Festival, among the three oldest on Telluride's cultural calendar, celebrates two big birthdays: Felix Mendelssohn was born February 3, 1809, just a few days before Abraham Lincoln.

Born to a poor but musical family in the slums of Hamburg, Germany, Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897), studied music as best he could, supporting himself by playing piano at bars and brothels and by turning out arrangements of light music. Eventually Brahms grew to become the brick of classicism in his country. His compositions showed no traces of extraneous – nonmusical – allusions, yet they resonated with strong personal statements. In chamber music circles, Brahms is the go-to guy if you really want to test your mettle and strut your stuff: often just a smattering of notes conveys a universe of emotion. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

07 August, 2009 /

Maggie-and-roy Photographer Maggie Taylor's technically brilliant, unapologetically enigmatic digital photographs throw the viewer slightly off balance, like the work of her husband and fellow photographer, Jerry Uelsmann. The couple, who appear to be on the same wavelength, are featured on a double bill at the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art. Their show opens Thursday, August 6, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. with an artists' reception to coincide with the Telluride Council for the Arts and Humanities' First Thursday Art Walk.

Like Uelsmann, Taylor's renown is international. A major retrospective of her work is currently on display at Centro Internazionale di Fotografia Scavi Scaligeri in Verona, Italy. Also like Uelsmann, Taylor is all about altering the world as we know it in visually interesting ways: the result, at once playful and scary.

06 August, 2009 /

Telluride county commissioner Elaine Fischer is about to deliver the full monty to her constituency: a show of self-portraits that bare her soul opens on Thursday, August 6, at the Stronghouse Studios, part of the Telluride Council for the Arts and Humanties' First Thursday Art Walk, an all-day showcase of the best of Telluride's fine art and retail scene. Venues are open late until eight.

Elaine Fischer arrived in town in the 1980s. Fast forward nearly 30 years, Elaine is  a high profile and highly respected member of the community known mostly for her government and nonprofit work: HARC, town council, mayor, and today,  county commissioner. Two years ago, however, Elaine decided to return to her roots in fine art and start painting again – and it was a long time coming.

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06 August, 2009 /

Selfportrait70 Over the past week, Telluride Inside... and Out has been running a series of podcasts featuring commentary by renowned photographer Jerry Uelsmann about five of his mind-bending images. A show of his work begins today, August 6, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m., with an artist reception at the Telluride Gallery of Fine Art on Main Street.
Uelsmann's opening is part of the First Thursday Art Walk, an all-day showcase of Telluride's fine art and retail scene created by the Telluride Council for the Arts & Humanities. Venues are open late until eight.

Jerry Uelsmann began producing his dramatic photomontages in the 1960s, black-and-white images that are not at all black and white, rather unsettling alternatives to naturalism. These surrealistic, hyper, super or anti realities – call them what you like, the labels are just variations on a theme –  amount to a psychic topography developed from things that happened at the fringes of Uelsmann's consciousness. Clues to the meaning of the work, however, could be derived from artist's symbolic vocabulary, which has remained surprisingly consistent over the years: nature and culture cross boundaries when interiors meld with exterior landscapes. Figures levitate and fly as in dreams, free of gravity. Monumental hands, a classic element in Surrealist photography of the 1920s and 1930s, appear everywhere. Other bizarre, even grotesque Surrealist motifs include disembodied human parts, humans merging with trees, rocks and water, animal, vegetable and mineral blending and intertwining, the stuff of the shadow world. Universal archetypes such as house, tree, sky and water, are all re-contextualized, forcing us to confront them like children, with wonder and for the first time.

06 August, 2009 /
[click to hear Eileen speak with author Howard Greager]


“COWBOY TALES OF A WEST END COWBOY”

Show_image_in_imgtag The Telluride Historical Museum's Fireside Chat series continues this Thursday, August 6, at the Fire Pit in Telluride's Mountain Village with "Cowboy Tales of a West End Cowboy", featuring guest speaker and author, Howard Greager.  Greager was born into a cowboy family and continued the tradition for a good portion of his life. 

Howard Greager was a cowpuncher in many western states but his home has always been on the western slope.  In his travels as a cowboy he met many a character and his stories are both funny and poignant. 

05 August, 2009 /