Bonjour Colorado

Vive le Plein Air

Capturing Our Rocky Mountain Landscape

The leaves have popped here in southwestern Colorado within the past ten days and it has felt like full-on summer since last Friday.  We’ve been transported from a long, bleak period into a lush, green season as fast as you can paint a scene.  The rivers and streams course between and within our mountains, creating a thunderous soundtrack throughout the land; our bright, sunny days are melting the snowpack at twice the usual rate. Today on my walk I spotted my first lupines of the year, tall bushy blooms with purply-colored flowers hanging thick on the stalks like grapes on a vine.

When I interviewed Ronnie Palamar, director of the Sheridan Opera House in Telluride, a few weeks ago for my Travel Fun radio show, the summer season seemed light years away.  Now it’s nearly upon us (officially) and what a great season it is for outdoor painting. The Impressionists were particularly consumed with the effects of changing light on color outside.  Pissarro, Manet, Monet, Degas and others took to setting up their canvases en plein air, or in the open air, creating some of the finest pieces of the Impressionist movement.

The striking scenery of Colorado, with its often dramatic interplay of light, provides the perfect setting for painting in plein air, especially during the summer when the days are plenty warm for standing outside at great length.  Plein air festivals have taken the country by storm in recent years, some of which originated on the coasts.  The Telluride Plein Air festival, modeled after the Carmel festival and created by the Sheridan Arts Foundation, is certainly the best known in the Rockies.  And now this year this terrific celebration of the arts is also establishing itself in Aspen in conjunction with the Sheridan Opera House and Aspen’s Wheeler Opera House.

Painting on Telluride's Main Street

Most of the works on view and for sale in both of these festivals are painted sur place, or on the premises, the week prior to the official festival opening.  For me, that’s the best part of this event; I love seeing the artists—some thirty painters in Telluride—set up their easels around town and in the surrounding area at all hours of the day and night.  Indeed there’s a certain romanticism about it all and fortunately the artists don’t seem to mind if we peek over their shoulders and perhaps even ask them a question or two.

Both the Telluride Plein Air and the Aspen Plein Air festivals are marked by exhibitions and demonstrations that are great fun to attend even if you’re not shopping for a treasure.  Be sure to check out the Quick Draw Competitions where artists must complete an on-site painting within only ninety minutes. Now that’s what I call a showdown.

The Historic Sheridan Opera House

Click on the play button below to hear Ronnie talk about the historic Sheridan Opera House in Telluride and also the seventh annual Telluride Plein Air and the first annual Aspen Plein Air festivals.  She tells some wonderful anecdotes about the artists that you won’t want to miss.

Telluride Plein Air, June 28-July 4

Aspen Plein Air, July 6-July 10

Photo Notes

The top photo features Niles Norquist painting in Telluride.  Niles will be returning to the Telluride Plein Air Festival this year.

“Home of the Ski Bum” below was painted by Wayne Mckenzie, a local artist that will be featured at both the Telluride and Aspen Plein Air festivals.  Ronnie recounts his story in the above interview.

If you’d like to host an artist in Telluride or Aspen during these festivals, contact Ronnie at ronnie@sheridanoperahouse.com. That’s a wonderful way to support the arts for which you’ll even receive a painting as a special thank you. Commissioned pieces may also be arranged for particular scenes; contact Ronnie for those enquiries as well.

Home of the Ski Bum

Brand New Me

Plastic Mania at MountainFilm

My life is forever changed. From now on I will live every day in a more conscious manner in an effort to break myself of the plastic addiction that I have clearly been suffering from for the better part of my life. I will approach every aspect of my life—from a beauty product purchase to how I deal with recyclables—with a new awareness about how my actions effect the world, my health and the health and well being of those around me. I embrace this brand new me and hope you’ll come along with me on this journey.

I’ve considered myself a green person for quite some time. I think I first began to recycle when I moved to Paris in 1984. There was a glass recycling receptacle on every street corner which made it easy to adopt good practices of sorting garbage. When I moved back to the States over ten years later, recycling was in full swing yet I still had to make the effort to load up my car to drop off my recyclables at a recycling center a few miles away. In the beginning I thought my other environmentally aware efforts bordered on compulsive or at the very least quirky: rinsing Saran wrap, Ziploc bags and foil and then hanging them out to dry a gazillion times over, cutting open tubes of cream and the like to scrape out the last remaining bit of product, you get the idea. Other habits such as covering a dish with a plate in the fridge (instead of plastic wrap) just seemed to implement a dose of common sense. And in the past couple of years in addition to living a very simple life that involves limited travel (yes, it’s true, especially in cars) and minimal waste of any kind, I’ve been careful to cart my own water bottle along with my personal supply of shopping bags whenever I leave my home. At least most of the time.

After having seen the movie “Bag It” this past weekend at MountainFilm here in Telluride, I realized that none of the above has been nearly good enough. It answered the question that most of us dare not think about: Where does all this plastic go anyway? It does not just go away. It is polluting ourselves and our world in more ways than you could imagine. Filmmaker and Telluride local Suzan Beraza takes us on a marvelous journey from our pristine mountain town to the floating “island” of plastic and other debris swirling around in the north Pacific gyre, estimated to be more than twice the size of Texas. The story is told through another Tellurider, Jeb Berrier, our resident thespian and funnyman, who relates this grim tale with well-proportioned doses of humor, wit and intelligence. The human factor rises exponentially when a major event in Jeb’s personal life forces him to look even more closely at the effects of plastic in our world. “Bag It” is indisputably the most entertaining and moving documentary I’ve ever seen. It has informed and motivated me enough to want to really make a difference in my life and hopefully to spread that message to others through this blog, my own example and my Travel Fun radio show. (I’ll be having Suzan on as a guest sometime soon—she has some great green travel tips as well!)

This is the kind of information, inspiration and yes, hope you get at MountainFilm. It’s more than a film festival. It’s an extraordinary four-day happening also filled with art exhibits, book signings, student workshops, social gatherings and presentations by outstanding adventurers, leaders and keen observers from a variety of realms. It’s about celebrating the indomitable spirit of all while calling attention to what is possible in the world. I was blown away by the opening day symposium that tackled extinction, a problem we now face at an alarming rate. The biosphere is hanging in a delicate balance and only we can bring about that change.  (Consuming less energy would certainly help to create that shift for example. Did you know that plastic bags and bottles are made of fossil fuels such as petroleum and natural gas?)

Stimulating Conversations Galore at MountainFilm

Since it’s MountainFilm, I was also awed by movies of great mountain adventure such as “The Wildest Dream,” the tale of George Mallory’s obsession with Mt. Everest and Conrad Anker’s obsession with Mallory. Another outdoor exploit took me to the Kamchatka peninsula in the Russian Far East in the film “Eastern Rises,” an entertaining documentary about the fly fishing trip-of-a-lifetime for a group of funny dudes.

Conrad Anker (rt) and His Climbing Partner, Leo, on the Summit of Everest

“I am,” the film by Hollywood heavyweight Tom Shadyac, also greatly moved me. As with many of the other films in the festival it provided insight into how one can truly achieve happiness in our culture of consumption and how we can be more connected to the world we live in. Both “I am” and “Bag It” received the Audience Choice Award for Favorite Film at MountainFilm 2010. Click on the above links to see trailers of these memorable films, many of which may be purchased on DVD and/or viewed in a theater near you in the upcoming months.  Note that “I am” is so hot-off-the-press that there’s not yet a Web site for it.

There's Something for Everyone at MountainFilm

I must wrap this up now since I have much work to do. In addition to the usual, I now have to do things such as figure out how I can dispose of my garbage without using plastic bags and yes, even whip up a batch of yogurt since none of the ones available to me are sold in recyclable containers. (Apparently making yogurt at home is super easy.) Plus it appears that not everything is being recycled the way it should be, so it’s just better to try to wean myself off of plastic as much as possible. I have renewed hope though. I perused the What You Can Do list at the “Bag It” Web site which provides many answers and resources for creating a life less plastic. Most of all I’m buoyed up by the great wave of energy that rolled through this past weekend’s MountainFilm. Suddenly I don’t feel quite so ill about the oil spill in the Gulf. Maybe it’s a huge wake up call for us all. No one need feel totally disempowered, we can each begin to turn things around in our own way.

Check out more of what I’ve written on MountainFilm here and in my Ken Burns posting.

Know that MountainFilm goes on tour, so keep your eye out for it in case it comes to a city or town near you.

Thank you to MountainFilm and Melissa Plantz, Merrick Chase and Jennifer Koskinen for the above images.

Ken Burns on America’s National Parks and Telluride

Ken Burns and "National Parks" Producer Dayton Duncan

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been moved to tears every night this week watching Ken Burns’s six-part series, “The National Parks:  America’s Best Idea,” on PBS.  This work was a labor of love for this master documentarian for some ten years and I think most of America is grateful for it finally being available for all to see.  ”It is the history of the ideas and the individuals that made this uniquely American thing happen,” Ken told me in a Travel Fun interview I conducted with him early September.  ”For the first time in history, land was set aside for the people,” he continued.

You may listen to the entire forty-minute interview I conducted with Ken by clicking on the play button here:

Ken also chats about his twenty-year relationship with Telluride.  “It’s my lover,” he says. Listen to the podcast to find out why.   You’ll also learn more about Ken’s two-decade long relationship with the Telluride Film Festival and why he calls it “the best festival on the planet.”

I was lucky enough to see one of Ken’s films on our National Parks on the big screen at Telluride’s Mountain Film Festival last May.  Read about that experience here.

Book Picks

“Ken Burns:  The National Parks:  America’s Best Idea” at www.shoppbs.org/home.  You can buy this must-have tome and the DVD and receive the CD soundtrack for free.

Top Chefs

Pasta from Panzano

What does it take to become a top chef?  Certainly lots of training, years of experience and a passion for creating a memorable dining experience.  The desire to make people happy seems to be the driving force behind the success of most culinary whizzes, professional and amateur alike.  (Just think of your grandma baking you your favorite cake.  My grandmother’s was a special boiled raisin cake with thick butter cream frosting that neither my mother nor I have been able to duplicate.)  This notion of people-pleasing became abundantly clear to me recently when I interviewed two notable chefs on Travel Fun.

Chef Kenny from Capella

Chef Kenny Gilbert, Executive Chef at Capella in Telluride, told me that he became interested in food when he’d watch his father barbecuing as a child.  Growing up in the South, there was always lots of barbecuing and Kenny had many opportunities to see how people enjoyed it so much.  

Chef Elise Wiggins, Executive Chef at Panzano in Denver, talked to me about a similar experience.  She explained that in her native Louisiana, much of life revolves around eating.  “It’s about good times with family and friends.  I learned at a young age that you can make a lot of people happy by cooking.”

Both went on to pursue their love of cooking at culinary school and began to rack up experience at home and abroad in the kitchens of some of the best known restaurants in the world.  Chef Kenny draws largely upon basic French techniques that emphasize such fundamental practices as kitchen organization and garde manger (pantry) management.  Chef Elise has been greatly influenced by her mother who spent summers in northern Italy, preparing regional dishes for her family and also by many Italian chefs with whom she studied over the years.  Her regular travels to Italy have helped her to hone her knowledge of largely northern Italian cuisine, the emphasis at Panzano.   Chef Elise pays particular attention to how flavors change according to the terroir in Italy, especially in products such as cheese and salumi.

Chef Elise from Panzano

So it comes as no surprise that at Capella in Telluride you might find a barbecued pulled pork sandwich on the menu at Suede, the hotel’s swanky informal bistrot, and a superior cut of meat served up at Onyx, this tony establishment’s more high-end restaurant.  Chef Kenny’s whimsical note is rolled out in the form of a multi-tiered candy cart that showcases everything from puckery lemonheads and swirl pops to luscious truffles and pâte de fruits.  “I like to serve up childhood favorites,” Chef Kenny says.  “I’ve seen a diner moved to tears over Swedish fish.”  Creating and conjuring up memories is after all an essential part of the dining experience.

At Panzano, gorgeous plates of food composed of the freshest ingredients and many house made specialties such as hand cured meats delight discriminating diners in Denver, a city that is quickly becoming one of the food capitals of the country.  If you haven’t tried one yet, this is where you’ll find the best grilled Caesar salad on the planet.  Who would ever think grilled romaine could taste this good?  “It’s a simple technique with simple ingredients,”  Chef Elise says.

Lighting Up Mountain Village with Telluride Festival of the Arts

Chef Kenny and Chef Elise will have the opportunity to meet up and create some culinary magic together at the Telluride Festival of the Arts, a celebration of the visual and culinary arts that’s taking place this year August 14 through 16.  They’re both participating in a gastronomic extravaganza with Hosea Rosenberg, winner of Bravo’s 2009 Top Chef.  “It’s a well-organized, flawless event that features a great mix of people,” Chef Elise told me.    This will be her second year at the festival and my first.  I’m really looking forward to it, too, not only since one of this year’s highlights will be a free concert by Joan Osborne but also because it has become abundantly clear to me that foodie events big and small are about making people happy.

One of Chef Kenny's Creations

Kitchen Tip from Chef Kenny Gilbert

“Time management is key.  It’s really about the mise en place,” Chef Kenny emphasizes.  “Have everything in place, write your list out, check inventory and have everything right in front of you.”  I’m hoping this will up my chances of having everything ready at once and served at the desired temperature!

Culinary Advice from Chef Elise Wiggins

Memorize flavors.  “Act like a three year-old and put everything in your mouth in its raw state and then you will remember its flavor,” Chef Elise says.  “This also helps you to realize that you can overdue it with certain herbs.”

Onyx and Suede are the two signature restaurants of Capella, Telluride, 970-369-0880, www.capellatelluride.com

Panzano, located in the Hotel Monaco, 909 17th Street at Champa, Denver, 303-296-3525, www.panzano-denver.com

Note that Chef Elise gives cooking classes once a month specializing in everything from pickling and preserving to the preparation of turduckin, a classic Cajun dish served at Christmas.

Type Capella or Panzano into the search in the upper right hand corner of my Web site to read more about my dining experiences at Onyx and Panzano.  You can also read my story on Hotel Monaco by typing Hotel Monaco into the search.  You’ll notice that I put a quirky spin on it.

Book Picks

Chef Kenny recommends “Developing the Leaders Around You,” by John C. Maxwell.  This book has helped him to look at his employees as potential leaders, not just employees.  “In the kitchen, I feel everyone is a struggling artist, so it’s important to understand people’s skill sets in order to help them create goals and to achieve them,” Kenny says.  “If I can give to the employee and they give to me, then they’ll give back to the guests and the guests will feel their passion.”

Chef Elise loves “Eat, Pray, Love,” by Elizabeth Gilbert and so do I.  The food scenes in particular are extraordinary!

Bon Appétit!

Summer in Telluride: A Sea of Festivals and More

Shopping for Chic in Telluride---Yet Another Summer Activity!

Lolling at the pool at The Peaks.  Hiking.  Gazing at the riot of colors created by the wildflowers that dot our hillsides and valleys.  Indulging in simple picnics of wine and cheese at the Wednesday Sunset Concert Series.  Wearing flip flops, shorts and a fleece.  Soaking in a hot tub after having gotten caught in a summer storm and been chilled to the bone.  Watching the ever-changing dance of gathering clouds and distant rains form in the sky high above our mountain tops.  Smelling the freshness of our air, grass, plants and trees.  Admiring the pert and pretty flower displays that embellish the town’s array of Victorian houses.  Spotting the marmots sunbathing on the rocks beneath the gondola.  Eating a fresh Palisade peach from the open-air markets.  Sipping a cup of tea on a rainy summer afternoon.  Consulting the calendar for the upcoming weekend’s line up of events.

Carbon Neutral Smoothies: Only In Telluride

These are a few of my favorite things about summer in Telluride.  And as usual, this season kicked off with a stunning set of events.  Summer was officially ushered in the last day of Bluegrass when the Telluride House Band (consisting of Jerry Douglas, Béla Fleck and Sam Bush, to name a few) played past the longest day of the year and furnished foot-stomping music into the dark of the night.  Wine Festival weekend followed and for the first time ever I attended their Sunday Brunch, a lovely affair where one can sip seemingly bottomless glasses of Champagne and delight in a delicious spread in one of the most awe-inspiring settings in the world:  Telluride Town Park.  I was thrilled to partake in this elegant party—complete with white tablecloths and petits fours—made even more magnificent against such a stunning backdrop.  As is the case at nearly all Wine Festival events, there was a lot of wine on hand to sample and many discoveries to be made.  (My latest is Windmill, an Old Vine Zinfandel that I can buy at the local liquor store for just over $10.)

The July 4th holiday marked the third weekend in our now renowned summertime trifecta of events.  It was a good ‘ole fashioned 4th of July replete with a big parade, root beer floats, barbecue, lots of games and a fireworks display that could be the envy of many a town, big and small.  And since this is Telluride, all was spiced up with a flash of flesh, humor and politics, most notably in Irrational Exuberance, the top prize winner of the parade, that spoofed the greed and conspicuous consumption of our country in recent years.

George Clinton: The Godfather of Funk

Thank goodness the Telluride Yoga Festival is on the docket for this weekend.  By now, many of us need to tone it down a few notches.  Oh, but wait.  There’s the KOTO Doo Dah tonight, the radio station’s annual summer concert that has featured artists such as Jackson Browne, Lyle Lovett and Bob Dylan in the past.  George Clinton, godfather of funk, and Parliament are this year’s headliners.  Word is that some twenty-five people including dancers and back up will be on stage for this funkadelic happening that’s sure to go down as one of the summer’s best concerts.  Rusted Root opens the show, a percussion-heavy, World Music-sounding act that could easily receive top billing themselves.

Then next Tuesday is Bastille Day, the French equivalent of our 4th of July.  I’ll be doing an event from 1 to 3 p.m. at Between the Covers bookstore here in Telluride to mark that holiday in characteristic French flair. Wine will be poured by the Wine Mine at Pacific Street Liquors and sweet and savory treats will be provided by the New Sheridan Chop House, La Marmotte and Jean-Louis.

The following weekend marks the Nothing Festival where supposedly no scheduled event takes place in T-ride except for a bunch of nude people pedaling down our main street.  (We know, though, that there’s always something going on in our spectacular mountain town.)

July wraps up with the Cajun Festival, a Friday-night event that promises to be a hot and happening affair punctuated by great music and delicious eats from the Bayou.

And that’s just a brief overview of a Telluride summer through the end of July!  I hope that before August roles around, I’ll be able to carve out more time for my favorite things because they represent the very best part of Telluride.