And the winner is...

Earlier this month at both the Crested Butte Art Festival and the Telluride Festival of the Arts I offered a chance to win a Huckle Vase in a drawing which was held last Tuesday, August 18. This helped me to connect with people who are interested in my work and also gave people the chance to win something. The Huckle Vase is a new piece for me this summer, so new that it hasn't been photographed yet. It is a cast concrete bud vase with a fluted texture cutting across a smooth surface with a wooden strip set into it. Like many of the pieces I've been working on, it plays the smooth refined wood against the coarser concrete. The name comes from a character in a Richard Scarry children's book, who's name my son has given me as a nickname. The winner of the drawing was Kirk DeVincentis of Montrose, CO. Congratulations Kirk!. For those of you who didn't win, I will have three more vases with me at Rijks Family Gallery tomorrow evening, 8/27, where I will be featured as a guest artist for Art Walk from 5:00 - 8:00 pm. I hope to see you there!

Telluride Festival of the Arts

I'm in Telluride, Colorado for this weekend's Festival of the Arts in Mountain Village, which is a short (as well as free and beautiful) gondola ride from town. My friend Jonathan Augello, who is an architect here in Telluride, was kind enough to let me stay with him for a few days. It's great to get to catch up with him a little. We don't get to see each other so much since he moved from Crested Butte.

The Telluride festival is interesting in that it is a smaller festival (at least in terms of the number of artists) featuring the work of about 50 visual artists along with food and wine vendors. Instead of being arrayed down a single street, the festival winds its way through the core of Mountain Village intermixing artist's booths with food and wine booths. There's a free Joan Osborne concert tomorrow night from 5 - 7 that I hope to be able to hear some of from my booth location.

If you're lucky enough to find yourself in Telluride this weekend, and you like art, fine food and good wine, be sure to check it out.

Down Time

It's been a really busy summer so far. I've been working on some commissioned pieces and getting ready for art festivals, and my wife, Alison, a talented photographer who focuses (really bad pun intended) on portraits and weddings has been much in demand. All this work has left Oliver wondering what's up, so we decided to take him camping this past weekend, the first one we've had free all summer. We spent a couple of nights in Erickson Springs on the other side of Kebler pass. Guitars were played, hikes were hiked, marshmallows were roasted and a good time was had by all, particularly Oliver who found some really gooey black mud next to a little swimming hole on the river.

This morning we packed up and headed into Paonia, about a half hour away, to go to Orchard Valley Farms to pick some fresh veggies. Our timing was good, and although the peaches aren't ready yet we came home with a whole bunch of Thai and Italian basil and some fresh peppers to roast, as well as a bunch of other things. We're all big basil fans - even Oliver who had pesto for dinner last night - so we're hoping to make enough pesto to last a few months. We also like roasted peppers quite a bit, so the fresh anaheims were a welcome sight!

It's back to the studio tomorrow, but the down time sure was nice. This week I'll be getting ready to head over to the Telluride Festival of the Arts, which takes place next weekend, 8/14 - 8/16.