This week, you will spot painters outside with their easels, capturing scenes around Telluride. These elite artists have been invited to take part in the Plein Air Festival, and you can see and purchase their finished work this weekend outside the Sheridan Opera House. Plein Air is the Sheridan Arts Foundation’s biggest fundraiser and enables the foundation to support other organizations in our community.
Learn More
Transcript
– Hi, I’m Ronnie Palamar, the executive director of the Sheridan Arts Foundation, and I’m here to talk about the Telluride Plein Air Festival. Just so you know, this is our 23rd year of hosting the Plein Air Festival, and we host between 20 and 30 artists, this year having 24 artists traveling from literally all around the country. The word plein air means paint outdoors or open air. You might be hiking the Judd Wiebe, you might be going to Bridal Veil, and you’ll see an artist sitting there on a rock painting a scene right in front of them. That’s what’s special about plein air. You don’t know where these artists are going to paint, and you don’t know what subject they’re going to paint because it’s whatever attracts them at the time or catches their attention. So you’ll see a nice mix of paintings, and it’s never the same every year. And just so you know, the artists will continue to paint through the whole weekend. So they’ll paint at their display. When the art sale is Friday, Saturday, Sunday, they actually paint on site, as well as they’ll go home that evening and sit there and paint more paintings. So there’s new artwork every single day. If you’re out and about and you see an artist sitting there, walk over and talk to them and ask them, “Why are you painting what you’re painting?” So our artists are quite talented, and quite a few of them do accept commissions. So it’s endless here of the talent that we have in Telluride to our plein air artists. One of the important things about our fundraiser is a portion of it benefits the community programming here in Telluride. The Sheridan Arts Foundation subsidizes between $80-$90,000 of nonprofit rental subsidies, and we do include a portion of our sales towards the programming. So we feel it’s a very important fundraiser for the community to come out and support, as well as visitors. There’s a lot of reasons to support the Telluride Plein Air Festival and buy a painting. And you’ll have the opportunity this weekend, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, to purchase your favorite piece of artwork, as they’ll be on display all day 9:30 to 4:00. They will take a break for the 4th of July parade, and they’ll open right back up again right after the parade. This sale takes place right here in Oak Street Park and across the street in Elks Park. Both sides we just divide the artists up. There’s 24 of them. They’ll be there all three days. Please come out and talk to them, visit with them. Whether you buy a painting or not, it’s such a fun event. Just come join us.
