TELLURIDE COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES

The original dream was for Telluride to be a small place, but one that would have all of the arts, culture, music, entertainment, good food, quality educational opportunities for our children and interesting people of a big place.

Having come from Kansas and having the experience of living in a small western farm town, I can assure you that I know the difference. In fact, we thought it could even be better than the big places because, we’d actually get to meet and hang out with the movie stars, rock stars, scientists, technology leaders, musicians, and other famous or sort of famous people and we would get to live in the beautiful mountains of Telluride.

And so, starting up a community arts organization that encouraged and organized artists was extremely important and a job that looked like it would be fun and attainable.

When I arrived in the summer of 1971, there was small eclectic group of artisans and craft people already here. Artists like Richard Wagner, Bill Hamner, and Jane Vass to name a few. It seems that artisans the world over have their own secret information grape vine and they almost always find all the cool places first—as was the case with Telluride. The word had spread in the 60’s that you could buy a house in Telluride for a thousand dollars and it was beautiful.

TELLURIDE MAIN STREET 1971

SITTING IN FRONT OF WHAT WOULD BE TELLURIDE TRAPPINGS WITH TONYA, ANNE HOOD, ANNE’S SON, AND RALPH PARKER. THE STORE TO THE RIGHT WAS A JUNK STORE RUN BY KENT RYAN THAT WOULD SOON BE THE IRON LADLE WHICH WAS OWNED BY MIKE AND LAURA RYAN AND MIKE AND SUE THEILE THERE WERE ONLY THREE OR FOUR BUILDINGS THAT WERE NOT BOARDED UP OR IN THIS VACANT EXISTENCE PRIOR TO THE LAUNCH OF THE TELLURIDE SKI RESORT FOLLOWING THE FEBRUARY, 1972 ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE U.S. FOREST SERVICE THAT A CONSTRUCTION PERMIT HAD BEEN GRANTED.

Within a couple of days of moving into my new home on Pine Street, a small group of local arts and crafts people organized an Art Fair on Main Street. Louise Gerdts was in the middle of it all and let us use the space now occupied by the Telluride Art Gallery. We must have had ten exhibitors. We had some tourists in town and I sold a few stained glass trinkets. It wasn’t much, but it was fun and it gave us all an opportunity to meet the other like minded people in town and was encouraging, everyone was very enthusiastic and excited.

There was hope and there was a core group to work with and hang with. A few months later I organized the Telluride Arts and Crafts Guild and we had about fifty card carrying members who paid $10.00 each to join.

In 1973 a group got together and formed TCAH under a charter that was consistent with the state and federal arts council charters and rules. Sandy Woods was the first Chairperson and I was Vice-Chair. Other board members included Larry Wilkinson and Barbara Martin. The idea was to be in a position to apply for state and federal grants and to pull together all the disciplines including fine art, crafts, music, dance, theater into one organization that had standing and clout. As a founder and Board member I thought it was great. We’d have an umbrella organization that could raise money and we’d be able to help each other.

Clearly, the idea was that TCAH would be the Grand Lady of arts and culture for Telluride for ever more and would control the purse strings for grants and aid for all the arts.

TCAH is still going strong today in Telluride and is responsible for laying the foundation for our culture of arts, and festivals.