By Mike Rosso
Photos by Brett Vogel
It would make a great story to describe how Salida’s Jessica Vogel was inspired by her grandfather, who was a glass painter in Belleville, Illinois.
Local Artists
About the Cover Artist: Joshua Been
Joshua Been, born in 1974, had no shortage of outdoor adventures that cultivated his appreciation for the natural world. Drawing since he could manage a pencil, he was captivated by animation and cartooning. This interest remained with him throughout high school and an active duty enlistment in the U.S. Army. Been went on to pursue …
Luthier Kurt Snyder – Kutthroat Stringworks
By Ericka Kastner Fire-singed Douglas fir deadwood, collected at the base of Mount Shavano, makes up the soundboard of the steel-stringed baritone ukulele crafted by luthier Kurt Snyder. For every instrument that he makes, Kurt’s intention is to reflect the beauty and grace of the Rocky Mountains, both in styling and in sound. Seven years …
About the Cover Artist – Susan Spohn
Salida-based artist Susan Spohn describes herself as a gardener, recreating in paint the magic she feels when in the presence of flowers, critters and nature. Painting memories, visions and whimsy, her favorite medium is oil paint. She paints on wood panels using bristle brushes, painting knives, turpentine and varnish. Her paintings of textural garden scenes …
Saguache Paints a New Picture: Artists Create Hope for this Historic Town
by Bill Hatcher The casual visitor to Saguache, Colorado will see ranches, farms and a quaint valley town. But upon closer inspection, you will find a trove of artistic gems that rival those in any metropolitan area. A downtown revitalization project, completed in 2012, gave businesses a chance to recover from the town’s century-old slump. …
Jane Rhett, the ‘Bag Hag’ maker
Article by Marcia Darnell
Local Artists – May 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
AT 61, Jane Rhett is on the sunny side of life. She and her husband, Jim, are retired, her children are grown, and she has a comfortable home in Monte Vista, equipped with two dogs. But instead of kicking back, she has chosen to focus her energies and talent on not only creating art, but on promoting art for her community.
Joshua Been: Transforming moments of beauty
Article by Jennifer Dempsey
Local Artists – March 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
WHETHER HE’S PAINTING a waterfall, tree root or mandolin player, artist Joshua Been wants to show the inhabitants of this world how beautiful it is.
“Painting is a way of framing moments of beauty,” said the 33-year-old Salida artist. “I try to show the world why I find a subject particularly amazing. If a viewer sees one of my paintings and appreciates that subject matter a bit more than they did before, after I perhaps showed them how to see it in a unique way, then I feel I have done my job. I just can’t get over how amazing this world we live in is.”
Jo Annette Sieve: Landscaps and Portraits
Article by Sue Snively
Local Artists – February 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
The Card Game
They sit, five distinguished men on a hill, under the sprawling branches of a tree, concentrating intently on the card game they are playing. One of the individuals has thick white hair, and sits with his back against the tree, looking to be in deep thought. Perhaps his next move in the card game is the subject of his thinking, but I think not. My imagination tells me he is thinking about how to take cover from the ferocious wind. Another subject is looking off into the distance, as if the card game is trivial and he has better things to do; perhaps he is planning a polite escape. They all stand out in the picture, not because of who they are, but because of the way the artist has fit them into the unusual background.
Robin James: Singing life to the fullest
Article by Marcia Darnell
Local Artists – April 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine
SINGER ROBIN JAMES is a busy young woman. She just began a new career as a journalist, covering events in Del Norte, South Fork and Creede for their respective weekly newspapers. She’s also promoting her new CD, “People Say,” arranging performance dates, writing songs, learning instruments, and, oh yeah, preparing for her August wedding.
Combining Art and Activism in the San Luis Valley
Article by Marcia Darnell
Local Artists – November 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
SOME LUCKY ACTIVISTS in the West are able to mix their jobs (what we do for money) and their work (what we do for ourselves). Landscape painter David Montgomery blends the hues of his life into a passion for land both in palette and preservation.
Montgomery has been in the San Luis Valley since 1965, when he was a freshman in high school and his father was transferred to Alamosa to run the J.C. Penney store. Montgomery’s studio today is just across Main Street from that store.
Designing for a Better World
Article by Sue Snively
Local Artists – May 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
“The people who give form to our mass produced products have fallen into a visual habit of cubic shapes, chrome trim, and dark-tinted plexiglass to solve all imaginable design dilemmas. The modern office, for example is tantamount to a sensory deprivation chamber with its beige panels, electronic boxes, and even lighting.
Laura Lunsford of Monte Vista
Article by Marcia Darnell
Local Artists -April 2006 -Colorado Central Magazine
PEOPLE COME to the San Luis Valley from very different places and lives. Often the move to El Valle means a shift in latitude, a morph in altitude, and a radical revision of lifestyle.
Laura Lunsford was a radio personality on WCOA in Pensacola, Florida, soaking in coastal rays and local celebrity. Now, she and her second husband, Jerry, live outside Monte Vista, on 160 desert acres with goats, sheep, llamas, chickens, and dogs. What prompted such an extreme change?
The lifelong journey of Stewart S. Warren
Article by Marcia Darnell
Local Artists – February 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
IF LIFE IS, as it’s said, a journey, some of us take the express train to the end of the line and others take the local. Then there’s poet Stewart S. Warren, who gets off at each stop and explores every new place.
Born in Tulsa in 1950, Warren was 13 the first time he ran away. Like any adventurous American boy, he ran away with the circus, becoming a makeshift carny. This was anathema to his affluent parents.
Superlative Soprano: Tina Lovejoy of Buena Vista
Article by Sue Snively
Local Artists – January 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
THE TRIP TO DENVER was wrought with trials and trepidation due to an advancing snow storm. A semi had jack-knifed on Interstate 70 east of Frisco which meant taking a detour over icy Hoosier pass to take stormbound U. S. 285 on into the heart of the city.
Scrimshander in the Valley
Article by Marcia Darnell
Local Artists – December 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
WHAT DO YOU CALL a scrimshaw artist? A scrimshander. What do you call a scrimshander who specializes in elk antler? Tom High.
High, a third-generation native of the San Luis Valley, grew up in Alamosa but hit the road after high school.
Collecting artists in Twin Lakes
Article by Lynda La Rocca
Local Artists – July 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
SOME PEOPLE COLLECT ROCKS. Others accumulate coins or seashells or antique dolls. Sharon Downs “collects” artists–specifically Colorado artists whose work is featured at the High Country Treasures gallery in Twin Lakes.
Tami Sheppard: A passion for beads
Article by Columbine Quillen
Local Artists – January 2005 – Colorado Central Magazine
THERE ARE MANY ARTISTS IN Salida, but there are probably very few who focus more on their materials than on the finished product. Tami Sheppard happens to love beads as much, if not more, than beading. “I have a real passion for beads,” she says.
Completing the circle: The art of Steve Flynn
Article by Lynda La Rocca
Local Artists – August 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
ARTIST SAUL STEINBERG, known for his cover illustrations for the New Yorker magazine, once described doodling as “the brooding of the mind.”
But for Salida artist Steve Flynn, doodling was the springboard for a style that integrates a variety of media with a wide range of subject matter to produce finely detailed work that runs the gamut from playful and whimsical to grippingly realistic.
The Sonheims: Carla’s faces, Steve’s techniques
Article by Sue Snively
Local Artists – June 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
ON FIRST GLANCE, it was like looking into the unknown, perhaps into a scene far removed from the face of this place we call earth. The lighting and shadow in this photograph aroused trepidation — and curiosity. It was a stunning piece.
Steve Sonheim of Salida is the artist, and this photograph, as with most of Steve’s work, was not meant to be conceptual or symbolic, but to go past expressionism and into the world of abstraction.
Shapes, Shades and Sounds: The art of Michael Chávez
Article by Lynda La Rocca
Local Artists – April 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
WHEN ARTIST MICHAEL CHÁVEZ begins a new painting, he isn’t thinking about the finished product.
In fact, he’s trying not to think about design or hue at all. Instead, Chàvez lets the creative process engulf him. And the result is canvasses filled with evocative shapes and vibrant colors, which create a world of abstractions where form generates meaning based on the viewer’s personal experience.
Making art from metal
Sidebar by Marcia Darnell
Local Artists – December 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Viewers of Maestas’s sculptures who visualize him working with a giant block of metal, a hammer, and a chisel need to join the new millenium.
A statue does begin with old-fashioned sculpting, but the rest of the process is more akin to a factory cranking out fenders and frames.
“It’s very labor-intensive,” Maestas says. “Each process is quite lengthy.”
Huberto Maestas: Spiritual Sculptor
Article by Marcia Darnell
Local artists – December 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
ANYONE WHO HAS ASCENDED past the stations of the cross in San Luis has seen the work of sculptor Huberto Maestas. The 15 larger-than-life statues depict the final journey of Christ for the faithful, and their grace and power provide inspiration even for those whose climb is more a physical workout than a meditation.
Angela Manno’s Interplanetary Enterprise
Article by Marcia Darnell
Local Artists – September 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Few artists are good at business. Few business owners are good at marketing. Angela Manno is great at all three, which is how she’s able to spend part of every year in the South of France.
“Next year I’m having a one-woman show near Avignon, and will spend about two months there,” she says. “I was a French major in college, but I never expected I’d be doing this. I intended to be a French teacher.”
Growing Poetry: Jude Jannet of Salida
Article by Ed Quillen
Local Artists – November 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
SALIDA ALREADY HAS a reputation as a place where painters, sculptors, potters, and jewelers flourish. There’s not much poetry in that mix of muses, but that will change if Jude Jannet succeeds in her mission.
Jannet, a dynamic and memorable performance poet in her own right, organized and promoted SPARROWS (Songs, Poetry and Relations Raise Our Winter Spirits) gathering and workshop in Salida this past Februrary, and she’s planning another one.
Photographer J.D. Marston: Capturing the moment
Article by Marcia Darnell
Local artists – September 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
THE PHOTOGRAPHIC ART WORKS of J.D. Marston have become iconic in this part of the West. The lushness of the Yampa Valley, the sensuality of water rushing over a river stone, and the stark beauty of Wheeler Geologic Area, all invite gazers to step into the picture, to savor the sight and feel of the images.
Eppie Archuleta of Capulin: Weaving a Life
Article by Marcia Darnell
Local Artists – February 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
W EAVING requires hundreds of different threads and decades of work and creativity. Eppie Archuleta has 78 years of living on her personal loom, a tapestry of work and family, success and failure, children and teaching, building and growing.
Slim Wolfe: Stone walls and dulcimers
Article by Ed Quillen
Local Artists – November 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
REGULAR READERS of this magazine are doubtless familiar with the name Slim Wolfe, since most editions contain some of his correspondence. If you’ve read Wolfe’s letters, you know he’s pretty skeptical about government, technology, and modern life in general. But the letters are just one facet of his life.
Wolfe’s house south of Villa Grove, which he built himself, is a lifestyle in itself. He’s a jack of many trades — carpentry, masonry, fabrics — and he builds and plays hammer dulcimers.
Frozen Moments: Photographer Bill Gillette
Article by Rayna Bailey
Local Artists – October 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
GIVE AN AVERAGE PERSON a Nikon and a roll of film and they usually snap average pictures of family and friends that eventually end up in a photo album or shoe box on a closet shelf.
Put that camera in the hands of photographer Bill Gillette, and he creates masterpieces that are framed and hung on display in a home — eventually to become family heirlooms.
Roy Gould: Sculpted in Intensity
Article by Marcia Darnell
Local Artists – September 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
ROY GOULD’S life is in flux. It’s one of those exciting, terrifying times when everything’s changing and anything’s possible. That energy is evident in the way he’s bouncing around his cabin, words racing as he talks about his work, his past, his son, his house, and his views on everything from community activism to raising children.
Gloria Brown: Nature on Paper
Article by Ed Quillen
Local Artists – August 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
YOU MAY WELL HAVE seen her art, but not in a gallery. Gloria Brown is a commercial artist whose designs and illustrations have graced everything from cookbooks and compact disks to nature guides and medical texts.
Clyde Tullis: Mudlarking in Salida
Article by Ed Quillen
Photos courtesy Clyde Tullis
Local artists – July 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine –
IF FIRST IMPRESSIONS MATTER, then “mudlark” isn’t quite the brand name that would emerge from a corporate marketing consultant. But it’s the name that potter Clyde Tullis uses for his Salida studio, and he has his reasons.
“Mudlark fits in a lot of ways,” he says. “We potters often call our clay ‘mud,’ and this whole business is a sort of ‘lark’ to avoid holding a day job, so the shop is indeed a ‘mud lark.'”
Ted Mullings: The art of mining
Article by Steve Voynick
Local Artists – June 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
FORTY-SIX YEARS AGO, Leadville’s Ted Mullings began his art career literally at rock bottom — a thousand feet underground on the Phillipson Level of the Climax Mine. Despite that inauspicious beginning, Mullings has earned a reputation as one of the region’s best-known artists.
Sallyann Paschall: Art is where she sees it
Article by Ed Quillen
Local artists – April 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
FOR A GEOLOGIST, Sallyann Paschall draws and paints exceptionally well, and she doesn’t specialize in renderings of rocks.
Actually, she’s not a geologist, even though she holds a master’s degree in geology from the University of New Mexico. She’s a full-time artist, which was her goal for as long as she can remember.
RedHawk: Artist of Vision
Article by Nancy Ward
Local Artists – January 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
REDHAWK: multi-talented artist taught by the spirits, led by visions; simple but complicated. He’s a man at peace with himself, his life, his spirituality, and his universe; a regional and national award-winning painter, sculptor, and creator of Native American artifacts.
Poetic Fame for Peggy Godfrey
Brief by Central Staff
Local Artists – January 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
Poetic Fame
Peggy Godfrey, who chases cows, raises lambs, and writes poetry near Moffat (and occasionally contributes to this magazine) is getting close to famous.
In November, she made the cover of Cowboy Magazine, and in December, she was featured on the front page of High Country News. Has the fame changed her? “I’m getting more inquiries about my ‘Ewe Mow-Em Lawn Service,’ where I pasture sheep in people’s yards,” she said.
Crestone Candles Burning Bright
Article by Marcia Darnell
Local artists – December 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine
IT’S PRODUCTION DAY at Crestone Candles, which today is housed in the kitchen of Susannah Ortego’s home in Moffat. Water is bubbling, wax is melting, candles are cooling, and the proprietor is wielding a propane torch. It’s cottage industry at its San Luis Valley best.
“I love making candles,” says Ortego. “It came to me, truly as a gift, out of the blue fifteen years ago. I had no prior knowledge or expertise or interest, for that matter, in candles.”
Mettje Swift: Banner Days in Del Norte
Article by Marcia Darnell
Local artists – July 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine
BANNER DAY STUDIO in Del Norte is a fascinating mixture of construction and creativity. Two rooms, warehouse-sized, are lined with banners and bolts of cloth. Worktables, tools and the detritus of sewing let visitors know this art is serious business. The finished pieces on the walls and windows say this business is about beauty.
South Park Potter Pat Pocius
Article by Nancy Ward
Local artists – June 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine
South Park Potter Pat Pocius is always on the go
“On the move” is the way Pat Pocius is pictured by those who know her. Seeing her seated behind a desk in the city producing commercial art to make big bucks for her employer is an impossible image for her acquaintances to envision.
Yvonne Halburian: Mapping her way through life
Article by Nancy Ward
Local Artists – May 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine
WHAT DO AIR FORCE RADAR, goose eggs, maps, flowers, rocks, Spanish explorers, Ute Indians and books have in common?
The answer — Yvonne Halburian, dynamic artist of exceptional versatility, jolly disposition, and enough enthusiasm and energy to power a rocket. The Saguache artist is a popular figure throughout Central Colorado, the Front Range, and the San Luis Valley.
Jack Portice lives a Fairy Tale Come True
Article by Nancy Ward
Local Artists – January 1999 – Colorado Central Magazine
“I’ll carve you a wooden leg,” is the way Jack Portice tells the story of his offer to a friend who’d just lost a leg in a motorcycle accident. That was back in 1979 when Portice had a custom motorcycle shop in Aurora, Colorado, where the artist inside him came out in the choppers he designed and built.
Dan Rohn’s Platinum Prints
Article by Clint Driscoll
Local Artists – October 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
WHEN DAN ROHN and his wife, Mary, settled in Salida in 1996, they may have been new residents, but they were familiar with the area. Every August for forty years they camped and fished in Central Colorado: learning the back roads, and finding perfect camp spots, quiet fishing holes and hidden hot springs.
Fred Jobe: the Singing Sheriff of Custer County
Article by Rayna Bailey
Local Artists – August 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
FRED JOBE gives new meaning to the expression, “Whistle while you work.”
Although the lanky six-foot-four-inch lawman would never be confused with the happy-go-lucky dwarfs who made the tune popular in Disney’s Snow White, when Jobe pins his gold star on his chest and sets off to work as Custer County’s sheriff, he does it with a song in his heart.
The integrated art of Lucia Hand
Article by Lynda La Rocca
Local Artists – June 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
FOR POTTER AND LINGUIST Lucia Hand, the visual arts and the art of communication go, well, hand in hand.
“They’re all about the same process of learning and testing and having the courage to try new and different ways of expressing yourself,” Hand says.
Hand’s life mirrors her philosophy. For 15 years, she has successfully combined these seemingly disparate disciplines as smoothly as she shapes mounds of wet clay on the potter’s wheel in her Leadville home studio.
Wearable Art from Becky Kagan of Westcliffe
Article by Rayna Bailey
Local Artists – March 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
INSPIRED BY IMAGES taken from nature, and working with silver, animal fetishes, natural stones, imported glass beads, and satin cording, Beckie Kagan designs jewelry that she calls wearable art.
“I grew up in the country,” says Kagan, a Leadville native.
John Earl Herschberger, the man who carved the lions
Article by Dick Dixon
Local Artists – January 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
JOHN EARL HERSHBERGER of Salida was one of the stonecutters who prepared granite for the Mormon Battalion Monument. In addition, he carved more than 1,000 gravestones in his 58 years in the profession — but he never got around to making one for himself or his family.
But Hershberger’s skills went past carving tombstones. His most famous work was the sundial that still tells time in Cranmer Park in Denver. He also carved the pair of gargoyle-faced lions, slightly larger than life-size, that guard the entrance to Salida’s Alpine Park.