Telluride Art Goes to Washington

April 17, 2024

By Julia Caulfield

Take a trip down memory lane. To March 2020.

In a newscast from March 18, 2020, KOTO News reported, “with coronavirus spreading across the world, local health officials have been moving fast to keep residents of San Miguel County safe and healthy. Over the past week there have been declared local disaster emergencies, schools and libraries have closed, food establishments are switching to take out only, or closing all together. Now we’re being told to shelter in place.

In Telluride, one of the first things to go was the Free Box. But where some saw a beloved town staple gone, one person saw an opportunity.

‘My name is Brandon Berkel. I’m a local artist in Telluride, Colorado. When you see something you really like you have to just move fast and take it.’

What Berkel saw was a mural canvas.

Just days after the free box was boarded up, the original plywood was transformed into a community art installation.”

Those around in the early days of the pandemic will remember the free box mural. A cowboy with Tom Hanks’ face, covered in a mask, spraying a large green germ. A quote from Toy Story “this town ain’t big enough for the two of us” written at the top.

“Berkel says part of the beauty of the mural is that it won’t be there forever.

‘The mural will be taken down. The Free Box will be open again. The Town will start moving as it always has. It’s still giving little hope that we’re going to make it through this.’” the newscast reported.

But that mural was just the beginning. Jump to months later in the pandemic, Berkel, along with fellow local artist Molly Perrault-Daniel created a series of posters, encouraging residents to COVID safely.

“If you remember in 2020, at the very beginning of the pandemic there were some very scary public notice graphics around town ‘stay at home’ ‘where a mask’ they looked very governmental,” says Perrault-Daniel.

She says it was Berkel’s idea to take the energy from the mural, and create posters to soften the blow.

She says the idea was “to replace the scary public announcement posters and have a friendlier approach to these very important messages that need to go out to locals, visitors, to politely ask them to wear a mask, make sure public distancing, all the messages that went out over COVID.”

Perrault-Daniel and Berkel – in collaboration with the Telluride Arts District – created a series of collage posters.

“They’re just funny little animal faces that we slapped on human bodies,” recalls Berkel. “Local animals: elk, beavers, bobcats, fun little western animals. People. Animal people.”

For months, the artwork hung as a banner across Main Street, on signs along the Spur, as posters around town.

Jump even more years in the future, to now, and those posters are part of Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History archives. The Smithsonian is collecting art and artifacts to preserve and document moments of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was spring of 2021, I got a phone call from Ellen Kramer,” Berkel says, “She bought out our posters at the Transfer Warehouse in 2020. She saw that the Smithsonian was collecting COVID art, so she thought it would be fun to donate it and see if she can get her name in the Smithsonian.”

In a description of the art, the Smithsonian comments on the United States’ long history of using posters (humorous at times) for public service announcements, noting Berkel and Perrault-Daniel’s work does just that. Reflecting “both a humorous approach as well as imagery which specifically reflects the community and history of Telluride.”

The posters aren’t on display anywhere (at least currently) but Berkel and Perrault-Daniel say it’s an honor to have their art recognized.

“My grandmother is so pumped. She’s been telling everyone. My family is very proud,” chuckles Berkel, “I don’t have a college degree, but by having this thing archived it gives the feeling that I did something with my education, which was art growing up. It’s like a certificate that I did something.”

Perrault-Daniel, who also works at the Telluride Historical Museum adds it’s not just about them, but the future, and the past.

“It’s a cool reminder that we’re history in the making,” she says, “We’re making history as we go. These posters that we made less than five years ago are part of our active history and people are going to look back on that. And we contributed to it.”

As for what’s next for the artists?

“I’m just going to keep on making collages,” Berkel says “Cutting things up.”

That way they’ll be ready. For the next global pandemic.

Sparks Fly with Mountain School Art Program

December 20, 2019

By Julia Caulfield

Perched on the side of the canyon above Sawpit, sits the Steeprock Joinery.

“The main building is a large wood shop and artist studios, as well as living space and working space upstairs” says Isabell Harcort. She owns and runs Steeprock. It’s a space for artists to work, live, and create.

But on this clear, December morning, the artists working here are kids. Highschoolers, from the Telluride Mountain School.

Daniel Kanow is the Head of the Visual Arts Department and a teacher at the Mountain School. He says part of the art curriculum is to introduce students to as many types of art making as possible.

Kanow notes, “we came up with this idea, ‘let’s incorporate making a welding aspect.”

In what looks like a small shed off of the main house, four 11th and 12th graders are wearing welding helmets and work gloves. Carefully they move a welder across two pieces of steal, while sparks literally fly.

Koko Waller is one of the students learning to weld, she’s in 12th grade, and making a small 3-D sculpture.

“It has some bent pieces in it, which took a long time. That was a learning curve, for sure, no pun intended. It’s going to be a lot of balancing things” Waller says.

This is Waller’s second year participating in the welding class. She says while she doesn’t plan to become a welder in the future, it’s nice to try something new.

“It’s just something different from what we’ve ever done, and what a normal art class would be normally doing” Waller says.

Plus, she sees how it could fit into her work in the future.

Waller adds, “I want to do theatre, and in terms of set building there’s a lot of welding to do, so if I ever need to build a set, I can weld. So it’s good experience and good skills to have for art, and the real world.”

Keith D’Angelo also likes that working with metal can push the students out of their comfort zone. D’Angelo is a professional artist, and welder based out of Steeprock. Along with Kanow, he works with the students on their projects.

D’Angelo says, “You know, at first they’re like ‘wow, this is a little scary. I don’t know what this is. It seems dangerous’ and then within two or three minutes of showing them how to do it, and saying ‘you can do this. You can make this shape. You can make this sculpture’, and their eyes light up and they’re like ‘oh my god this is so cool’. Whether they go with it or not, just for them to say ‘oh it was scary at first and then I could do it’. It’s been really great.”

This is the second year the Telluride Mountain School and Steeprock have teamed up to teach students welding. So far, close to 10 students have participated in the workshops.

Gregg Deal, Artist Behind New Telluride Mural Highlights the Importance of Native Representation

May 15, 2019

By Julia Caulfield

Rise mural by Gregg Deal — *Rise* mural by Gregg Deal

Telluride has a new mural on Main Street. The piece, called Rise, was created by Gregg Deal, a Native artist, and member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. Deal spoke with KOTO News about the mural and the importance of Indigenous representation in art and culture.

Julia Caulfield (JC): How did you get started as an artist? I know a lot of your work focuses on Indigenous identity and mixing that with pop culture, so I was also wondering if you can talk a little bit about where the inspiration for your work comes from?

Gregg Deal (GD): I’ve been doing artwork forever, to the detriment of my high school career, I spent a lot of time drawing and a lot of time creating, and I’ve been fortunate enough to come into contact with people who have helped me along in figuring out those things. It’s not just the craft, it’s also the message and the voice that comes out in it. As a Native person, those voices are always there. I would even go so far as to say they’re kind of always there for every Native person in one way or another, and so it becomes trying to figure out the way to manifest that into the work in a way that makes sense, and in a way that’s comprehensive for anybody, and how to enact change in the understanding of Native people in our own homeland.

JC: The mural in Telluride is your piece called Rise. It’s a portrait of a young, Native woman with her eyes looking up to the sky and the word “rise” above her head. What was the process like of creating the piece and how did you come up with the production of it?

GD: Well, first and foremost that’s my oldest daughter. She’s thirteen and for some reason when I use her face, or illustrate her face, she’s older than she looks. There’s also some deliberate use in using a woman in those ways as well. The sort of resurgence and understanding of the importance of Indigenous women in our communities and also the way Indigenous women have traditionally and are still often victimized in ways that are horrific, sexual assault, and there’s a huge issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Indian Country right now, and an effort to try to help people understand that that’s a really serious thing that’s happening and affecting our communities. But amidst all that, I wanted to create something that was a little more general, something that anybody could connect with, that is appropriate with the political and social climate of today. Sometimes “rise” could be a political call, but “rise” could also just be something as simple as ‘get up this morning and go do good, do better than you did yesterday, and continue to move forward’. She is Indigenous and there are some aspects of the image that point to that, but they might not be very obvious to other people, and I did that on purpose because I think that it’s incredibly important to sometimes understand that there’s a general message that applies to all these things, that are rooted in Indigeneity, but also can be things that exist amidst other people.

JC: There are people who might not have a lot of experience with Native people, or culture, outside of portrayals that we see in the media. To you, does that change the piece at all, or what your trying to say with it, or the importance of it?

GD: No, not at all. In terms of a white audience, versus an Indigenous audience, the truth is its still Indian land, traditional Indian land, which means that is the homeland of Indigenous People. So, representation and inclusion of Indigenous faces, and Indigenous bodies, and Indigenous issues, it should be, and can be everywhere because it’s something that affects these places. The narrative that has been given to the majority of Americans about our existence is very much rooted in falsehoods, and romanticism, and stereotype and so in my mind to have something that not only is Indigenous, but speaks to modern Indigenous existence, and to put those in plain sight, I think is incredibly powerful.

JC: There’s obviously going to be some people coming through Telluride for the weekend and maybe see the piece once or twice, and then there’s people who live here year round and walk past it almost every day. What do you hope that people get from looking at the piece?

GD: I think it’s a very simple call to action that is ambiguous enough that it can apply to a lot of different things. But I think - just like any piece of art, public art, murals, and even museums that hold art, and galleries that show art - that these become places of reflection and solitude; that there’s a sense of ownership that goes to those things. I hope that folks feel a sense of ownership to that.

JC: Well, Gregg, thank you so much for taking that time to speak with me today about the mural that just went up in Telluride.

GD: Thanks for talking to me.

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Gregg Deal’s Rise mural is part of Mountainfilm and will be up for the next year.