We want a world filled with beautiful landscapes and exciting megafauna that we enjoy while on vacation, and if we are lucky, while sitting on our own front porch. However, our current way of life demands high rates of natural resource consumption that destroys precious ecosystems, which by association, destroys the beautiful view. We want the best of both worlds; we want our view and to eat it too. Tammi Brazee’s work satirically explores this paradox and the tension that exists when society attempts to reconcile these competing desires.

Telluride Arts’ HQ Gallery in Telluride, Colorado is featuring Layers, an exhibit featuring artwork by two local artists: Brandon Berkel and Molly Perrault through March 2020. The exhibit explores two different approaches to the medium of collage.

For Brandon Berkel, the act of creating is about guiding his imagination from internal to external places. After moving from St. Louis, Missouri to Telluride, Colorado to work on his second novel, Brandon felt inspired to switch to a more visual medium. With a background in writing, Brandon continues to tell stories through his mixed-media collages. He invents and arranges surreal landscapes, merging elements of both reality and fantasy. His current growing body of work is deeply inspired by the epic landscapes of the San Juan Mountains.

“I am able to take the gravity of life and turn it into something tangible, and beautiful, but not quite real. The truth becomes the fable and what I find is not myself, but the remnants of dreaming.” Artist Shannon Richardson begins each day with a sense of excitement and wonder, never knowing what will be revealed in the many canvases she works on simultaneously. She paints daily in her light-filled studio loft above the Blue Sage Center for the Arts in downtown Paonia, CO. A back and forth of ideas, questions and answers start to unfold a narrative organically, and the fable is realized.

This collection of Tara Carter’s sculpted birds is just a small sample of birds that frequent Telluride. Not all of them stay here year-round, but the hearty ones stick it out (we’re looking at you, Black-billed Magpie). Then there are the breeding warblers who make their annual trip to the box canyon. These beautiful little birds come to the area, create a nest, and abandon it until they return the next year. And you can't forget about the migrants who stop through town for some rest and recuperation on their larger journey. Much like the people who make up our community, all of these birds contribute in their own way to make Telluride a place we love to be in. Some may stick out more than others, but that's what keeps our little town so interesting.

Jesse Crock is a Colorado-based artist with a love of climbing, cycling, and the outdoors. The rich color and sharp contrast of his acrylic paintings attempt to capture the vibrant Colorado landscape of the places he travels. Jesse is an art teacher who finds that he often connects his work with the playfulness of his students and is inspired by the energy they bring to the classroom. As an outdoor enthusiast, he brings the viewer’s eye to places that are not often painted.

Telluride Arts put out an open call for entries of x-rays, as well as optional small artifacts, short stories, poems, etc. that tell the story of how “you broke and/or got back together”. Nearly 30 people submitted their x-rays, and over 50 x-rays were received and will be displayed, representing a full range of injuries and procedures. The narrative told through these portraits of our broken insides is a unique, and sometimes dark, reflection of the lifestyles we choose to live. 

As the specter of the automation and artificial intelligence continue to advance, slowly replacing more and more blue-collar jobs, Dave Pressler imagines a parallel universe in which his classic robot characters must show up for factory work the same way we begrudgingly did at the turn of the 20th century. “We’re having another industrial revolution right now, but most people aren’t really talking about it,” explains Pressler. “There’s all this rhetoric about immigrants coming in and stealing blue-collar jobs, but it’s not really true. It’s the same thing that happened in the 1800s when local furniture-makers and garment makers were suddenly replaced by factories powered by steam and assembly-line workers. We’re seeing the same kind of job displacement that we did at the start of the 20th century, but this time it’s being driven by automation and AI.”

Telluride Arts’ HQ gallery in Telluride, CO presents, Mid-Summer Mardi Gras, a group exhibit featuring seven artists from New Orleans, Louisiana. The show will be on display beginning July 31, 2019 and runs through the month of August 2019.

Addressing the intersection of art and science through a series of mixed media paintings, the work is an abstract visualization of the processes occurring beneath the forest floor. The Mycelia series incorporate white fibers that represent the Hyphae, fine branching tubes that are important structures required for the growth of tree species. Other pieces are a composite of observational drawings and patterns taken from early botanic studies. Inspired and informed by the writings of British naturalist Robert Macfarlane, the artist is pleased that the show is opening a month after the publication of his new book Underland. The connection between the human and natural worlds and the urgency to address current issues regarding the health and future of our landscape is what Nemirov is interested in communicating through visual works that depict the mystery and complexity of the invisible process that is the mychorrhizal network.

Jim Herrington is a photographer whose portraits of celebrities including Benny Goodman, Willie Nelson, The Rolling Stones, Cormac McCarthy, Morgan Freeman and Dolly Parton have appeared on the pages of Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Esquire, GQ, Outside and The New York Times as well as on scores of album covers.

In her exhibit, Chromatic Concepts, Megan Padilla explores and studies the perception, depth, and stunning gradients of color through the nature of alcohol inks, creating original abstract pieces that are both dramatic in composition and color. The alcohol inks provide vibrant, colorful effects. It offers little control, while the harmony in color combinations deliver some sense of order through fluid movement and a visual experience to engage the viewers. Padilla is able to manipulate the medium by utilizing various techniques and tools that create colorful, contemporary elements and textures.

Matt Kroll is a landscape and fine art photographer based in Telluride, CO. His photography is inspired by vast mountains, desert, and ocean landscapes as well as the beauty that comes with the simple and finer parts of the world. From black and white, minimalist photographs to vibrant colorful landscapes, his photography captures a unique view of our world.

In her exhibit, Moons, Ally Crilly explores her relationship with the moon and its power. The beauty, the pull, and the altered state it puts her in. She is particularly curious about indigenous cultures’ respect to the moon. Crilly loves the names given to the different moons by different cultures. She is also learning to love painting portraits. “I find a human with a moon so beautiful and these portraits will try to convey the magic of the moon and our relationship to it.”

This series was painted as a reflection and re-examination of Elisa Gomez’s studies of nature and traveling. With a much more loose and flowing approach, Gomez wanted to express the connection she has with music and nature and how they feed into one another. She strives to break barriers within this body of work, creating colors and textures that are free of spatial separations and less linear. This series comes from a place where Gomez’s expression loses words and can only be shown through her paintings.

This exhibit is the product of 5000 photos, shot over three years, during all four seasons, in the Hunter College 68th Street subway station. The intent is to visually present the human stories which we all hear in our minds as we scan the images. Carl Marcus is typically known for his large format landscape and portrait photography. He was born in New York City and moved to Telluride forty years ago.

As a non-representational painter, Brucie Holler’s work is influenced by the landscape and the idea of a sense of place. The relationship between the sky, water, and land is what compels Holler the most. “I’m always hoping to find a connection that is not too literal, the gray sky and water of winter, the squall lines in the spring, the gathering of the summer storm, the flight path of seabirds, the golden light of autumn that illuminates all it touches.” It is within this artistic paradigm that Holler searches for a sublime and quiet beauty in her paintings.

Molly Perrault’s Regeneration is comprised of works created entirely out of magazine paper. Using tiny shards of found colors and textures, Perrault strives to create an illusion of oil painted landscapes sans paint. She views her process as cyclical: nature is used to produce the paper in which the magazines are printed, and Perrault assumes her role in both the act of destruction and reconstruction.

Austin Halpern is a fine art photographer captivated by nature’s abstract splendor. With a camera in his hands, Austin says he has become attentive to little miracles like the colors reflected in moving water at dusk and the way street lights glow upon asphalt after it rains.Just as a sweeping landscape photograph is majestic and impressive, so are the big, extraordinary moments in life. And yet, what if we viewed the every day with such attention, contemplation, and wonder? The ordinary occurrences of nature can offer us something immensely intimate and creative. Take a look around you. Is This Water? invites us to see differently, to see more—and possibly even, to make meaning.