THE ARTS: March Comes in Like a Lion

This is one of the lions flanking the front of the Art Institute of Chicago. Last summer, after the museum closed, I captured this shot on my iPhone. I love the inky blue sky and the fact that the people visible beneath the lion's belly lend scale to this photo. Happy March!

SUPPORT THE ARTS;

THE ARTS SUPPORT YOU.

THE WRITTEN WORD: Inspiration from the Arts & Crafts Movement

I've been researching the Arts & Crafts Movement, finding inspiration in this artistic era on a number of levels. During the Arts & Crafts Movement, book design reached a pinnacle. Most notably, William Morris and Kelmscott Press in England, and the Roycrofters in East Aurora, New York, created gold-standard books. Beautiful typography, intricate illustrations, printers ornaments, lavish borders, and handsome bindings typify the books.

In their rare books collection, Denver Public Library has a number of these precious works. In the photo above, the spread shows a portrait of William Morris at left and an elaborate page at right. A thin tissue separates the pages.

(F.Y.I: Normally, the books may not be photographed, but DPL made an exception for my iPhone: Thanks, DPL!)

People in the Arts & Crafts Era responded to the Industrial Revolution; and I am responding to the Digital Age. The Industrial Revolution put a lot of people to work in factories and put and end to a lot of handcrafting. The Digital Age--along with its many advantages--poses some threats to books and writing. I believe we must preserve an interest in the written word and in tactile books.

The design of my soon-to-be-published first novel, titled GLASS HALO, shows a strong influence from the Arts & Crafts Movement.

My Friday Jones Publishing website includes a list of links related to the Arts & Crafts Movement. I hope you'll enjoy browsing some of these sites.

Thanks for clicking in!

THE ARTS: Stained-glass gardens grow in Denver's cathedral

Since I was a wee one, bored in church, I've been enthralled by the luminous beauty of stained-glass windows. This ancient art form originated to help illiterate people understand stories from Scriptures. Check out this link to today's entry on my Examiner.com page, where I serve as Denver Flower and Garden Examiner. This post takes a look at the flowers and plants in the exquisite stained-glass windows inside downtown Denver's Gothic basilica, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. These are some of the finest windows west of the Mississippi. To read this entry, just click here. I've done a lot of research on stained glass for my first novel, titled GLASS HALO. Set in Denver, the main character is a stained-glass artist. For more details on my soon-to-be-released book, visit Friday Jones Publishing.

Photo by James Baca

This is not a window from Denver's cathedral, but is an example of Munich-style glass that shows the marvelous detail of the stained-glass style.

THE ARTS: Cynthia Madden Leitner & Museum of Outdoor Arts

I just happened across this article I wrote for Denver Woman News. This profile of Cynthia Madden Leitner explains why she founded the Museum of Outdoor Arts, why art needs to be part of everyday life, and why women between 50 and 65 rock.

Photo by Colleen Smith

Detail from a painting in Art Institute of Chicago

THE ARTS: Meet My Auntie Artist

Meet my great-aunt Mary: an artist, a woman well ahead of her times, and one of my mentors. Mary was a fine artist, and she published a little chapbook of poetry that made a huge impression upon me when I was a girl. Learn more about her on the Friday Jones Publishing webpage.

THE WRITTEN WORD: "One of the few havens remaining"

Old books hold court in the old built-in bookcases in my old Craftsman bungalow. My grandmother gave me many of these beautiful volumes, but that handsome burgundy copy of "English Romantic Writers" is one of my favorites from my years as an English major at Iowa State University and University of Iowa. I still love the British Romantics.

Photo by Quincy Benton

“BOOKS: A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few sources of information left that is served up without the silent black noise of a headline, the doomy hullabaloo of a commercial. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man’s mind can get both provocation and privacy.”

-- Edward P. Morgan

Happy Feast of St. Cecilia, Patron Saint of Music & Poetry

"Go out and make a joyful sound."

-- Jackson Browne

Photo by Quincy Benton

Today, November 22, marks the Feast of St. Cecilia, patron saint of musicians and poets. To venerate this great saint of creative endeavors, here are links to a few pieces I've published in The Denver Post on some of my favorite musicians: a feature on Jackson Browne, a quiz on Bruce Springsteen and the E. Street Band, and recent Reverb reviews of Keb Mo, Karla Bonoff , Bruce Hornsby & the Noisemakers and The Denver Brass. Tune in some of your favorite tunes today.

"From the serene heights of art": Thomas Mann on Truth, Reason, Freedom

Shot this photo recently at New Orleans Botanical Gardens.

“Truth and reason

may appear to be crushed

but in our hearts

they remain eternally free,

and from the serene heights of art

the intellect may laugh at the triumph of folly…

Secure in the bond relating it

to all that is best on earth.”

-- Thomas Mann

From DIESER FRIEDE, (THIS PEACE) published in 1938

Mann won the Novel Prize in Literature in 1929.

COLORADO COLLEEN: Introducing my Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer friend, Ken Papaleo

I met Ken Papaleo on assignment: Colorado Expression magazine had assigned me to do a profile on Ken, focusing on his hand-colored fine art photographs.

The photo above, titled "Nature's Window," is one example. Ken works from black and white photographs, painting in colored detail for a magic realism effect.

Ken's images stunned me. And when Ken and I met, we connected quickly, in part because we've both worked as journalists, and probably in larger part because we both ski. Ken had just come from buying new skis, in fact, and he was aglow like a kid with a shiny new bicycle.

Ken is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner photographer, a seasoned veteran on the staff of the now defunct Rocky Mountain News. He paid a price for his Pulitzer Prizes because he was on the fronts covering both the Columbine High School massacre and Colorado wildfires.

Left to his own devices, Ken prefers to focus on beauty. Mother Nature's beauty, particularly.

I was so impressed with Ken's photography that I incorporated an image per month for a year of issues of a national newsletter than I write and art direct. You'll love his photos, too, I promise.

For more on Ken and for links to his gallery and new blog, please check out today's entry on my Examiner.com page.

I've provided links so you can see delightful photography that will take your breath away and renew your sense of awe. Just click here now.

THE ARTS: Terrarium as art form

If you saw the terrarium I designed by request as part of "Cabinet of Curiousity" at Museum of Outdoor Arts, you might have logged on looking for instructions about how to create a terrarium.
Please click on this link to go to my Examiner.com page. Scroll down or search "terrarium" to find an entry titled "Terrarium as art form." You'll see a photo similar to this one. That post includes more details and links.

Photo by James Baca

If you're in the Denver area, don't miss the whimsical wonders at Cabinet of Curiousities" now showing at Museum of Outdoor Arts. This is art for everybody. Make a point to stop by the museum's indoor galleries housed in Englewood Civic Center. Your inner child will thank you, and so will the part of you that secrets away little items of nostalgic, nature or sentiment. MOA opens its doors free of charge.

"Support the arts,
and the arts will support you."

I'll conduct some more research on terrariums and will try to find more links.
Once I get the photos of the little terrarium from the exhibition's fun opening last night, I'll post them here, too. Meanwhile, for the exhibit, here's the label copy I wrote:

The roots of the terrarium

As early as 500 B.C., ancient Greeks grew and displayed plants in closed, transparent containers; but terrariums have their true roots in London. In 1827, London physician Dr. Nathaniel Ward discovered the scientific principle of terrariums.

Studying a moth emerging from a cocoon in moist soil, Dr. Ward noticed tiny ferns and grass growing in the earth contained in the jar. These plants, to the good doctor’s surprise, grew for years inside the jar without watering because the mini-greenhouse formed a miniature, self-sustained ecosystem complete with a water cycle.

Also known as Wardian Cases, terrariums allowed botanists to transport tropical plants safely from one continent to another, aiding the development of botany.

Ornately decorated terrariums grew in popularity as household decorations in Victorian times in the United States.

Today, all you need is a clear glass or plastic container to build your own terrarium, creating your own miniature ecosystem.

THE WRITTEN WORD: Thoreau on Imagination

“The world is but a canvas to the imagination.”

—Henry David Thoreau

(1817-1862); philosopher, writer, naturalist

Discover yourself in "the wilderness of your intuition"

“The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself.”

—Alan Alda (b.1936); actor, screenwriter, director

Dale Chihully glass installation at Desert Botanical Garden in Scottsdale, Arizona
Photo by Colleen Smith

THE ARTS: French-Canadian Circus Is In Town & TREBLE CLEF: Band Called Brother Brings Nouveau Celtic Music To Highlands

Humankind at our highest: We're so creative!

The arts support us when we support the arts.

Got my creative well filled over the weekend, and I'm still smiling over the innovation of the human spirit and the range of emotional expression found in the arts and cultures across the globe.

On Friday, Cirque de Soleil delighted us. If you ever have an opportunity to take in this lavish entertainment, treat yourself and somebody you love--somebody who needs to be reminded of the magic and delight of life. Cirque de Soleil is mind-bending, breath-taking, dreamscaping, myth-making magic.

This show, "Kooza," features an innocent and a kite, a trickster, a pickpocket, a misbehaving dog, a king and his fools.

Cirque de Soleil showcases live music, too: jamming bands and operatic vocalists.

I've seen a few of the shows in the big Vegas venues, but there's something sweet about the more intimate setting of the big top set up in one's town. All the seats are good seats. They do cost a pretty penny, but the return on investment is priceless joy and wonderment.

Yesterday, we headed to the hills for the Long's Peak Scottish Highlands festival. What a hoot! For me, the wearin' o' the plaid stirs ancestral memories. My father's people were all Irish, hailing from County Wicklow. Then there was the green Campbell plaid wool of my Catholic school uniform. My great-grandfather was an Irish fiddler, and I was weaned on Irish music at my Catholic school.

The pipes and fiddles give me happy feet and bouncy knees. The traditional tunes can cause my solar plexus to burn and my heart to rise in my throat. But what really brings a tear of joy to my eye is the new twist on traditions, the next generation's interpretations of Celtic music. In particular, we rocked with a band called Brother. Picture for the front man a shorter Michael Phelps with better teeth. Picture him in a leather kilt with funky, rugged black boots with lots of hardwear. Picture him rocking the bagpipes, a microphone affixed to the pipes--sort of a Jimi Hendrix approach to bagpiping. He also wailed on an electric guitar. Backup by primal drums and--get this--a diggerado (dunno how to spell it) which creates a wacky vibration. The crowd was up and dancing to this unusual blend. Are these guys Australian? Not even sure, yet, but snagged a CD after the show to learn more about their new take on the old traditions.

The highlands festival also featured other impressive marching bands: one a marine brass band and one a wowser pipe and drum band from Utah.

The British Isles excel and uniforms and pagaentry. The Scots seem a mix of testosterone and alcohol when you consider the archaic games they conduct. Jousting is plain and simply nuts--sort of like Medieval rodeo. The highlands games also include tossing a regular old boulder about the size of a few bowling balls melted together. Or single-handedly throwing what amounts to, basically, a telephone pole. Or a gigantic shotput on a chain. For the crowd, shots of whiskey or gin are available, and Guiness stout and other libations. People wander around with flasks of Drambuie. Dogs and horses are part of the highlands games, too.

The Celts enjoy a fascinating culture; and I'm proud to be part of it, druids and all. The highlands festival continues today if you want to get your ancestral tethers twanged.

Slainte'! (Cheers!)

Interested in Irish arts and culture? Try your luck at this quiz. You might be surprised about the enormous cultural impact this little island has made. Just click here now.

THE WRITTEN (and spoken) WORD: Get Well Soon, Garrison Keillor!

Garrison Keillor, 67, is recovering in a Rochester, Minnesota, hospital after suffering a minor stroke. Was it all that deep-fried food at the state fairs?
Reports indicate that the humorist is up and working at his laptop, thankfully. A national treasure, Keillor's radio program "A Prairie Home Companion" includes political satire, spoof, music and entertaining sound effects. It's a hoot and also oftentimes touching and thoughtful. If you've never heard PHC, tune it in on your local public radio station. It usually airs on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings. I'm sure he'll have something to say about this stroke. And I'm sure his audience will welcome him back to the stage with an especially warm reception.

When Keillor's book "Pontoon" was released, I had the opportunity to interview him for The Denver Post. We conducted the interview over the Internet. I submitted questions. He sent me answers within a couple of hours. I never changed a word. Didn't have to. (This is a great interview technique for shy people, but of course, would only work with a top-shelf writer.) Here's a link to the story titled "Red-footed humorist."

Jackson Browne Rocked Red Rocks: Putting Myself in Harmony’s Way

We support the arts. The arts support us.

Sorry for the lame photo, but here's my iPhone's view
from Red Rocks Row 5,26 August 2009:
Jackson Browne and his badass band.

"...and the river opens for the righteous.
And the river opens for the righteous.
And the river opens for the righteous. Someday."
-- Jackson Browne, "I Am a Patriot"

"Righteousness strikes the harmony chords of truth, and the melody vibrates throughout the cosmos, even to the recognition of the Infinite."

Musicians are magicians, in my mind. These gifted people walk on stage, pick up instruments that often amount to inanimate bits of wood and metal and string; and they make music. Jackson Browne’s band polished smooth the songs time has not conquered: “The Pretender,” “For a Dancer,” “In the Shape of a Heart.” These minstrels rocked the rocks. What we see and hear seems seamless, almost effortless. What we don’t often see or hear are rehearsals. We don’t often stop to think how much these people must have practiced their craft to hone it to art.

Jackson Browne is one of my heroes artistically and politically.

And when the singer-songwriter strolled onto Red Rocks’ stage last night, I couldn't help rising from my seat in the 5th row and waving an unbridled giggly groupie girl welcome—my right arm fully extended skyward, all wiggly in my wrist and fingers, all smile on my face. Behind my old Raybans and under a bandana covering my crown chakra, I felt sufficiently shielded from the minstrel's considerably brilliant starpower.

Maybe I imagined it, but Jackson Browne seemed to see me.

Probably all his fans feel that way. But really, he had just reached center stage and gotten into his guitar, and he looked my way and lifted his chin and lengthened his neck a little as if to acknowledge my greeting. I have to admit, I was twitterpated because, for me, Jackson Browne is more than a hero: He’s a muse.

His music mesmerized, thanks, in part, to a romantic evening under a star-spangled sky decorated with a rising half-moon. Rising to our feet, an almost sold-out audience grooved to old hit songs and new songs swelling in the natural amphitheatre between Ship Rock and Cathedral Rock. Jackson acknowledged, “There aren’t too many places like this.”

I'm so grateful to have received the gift of Jackson Browne’s inspired and inspiring music in such a sublime setting as Red Rocks--felt like a holy birthday gift to me one day after I turned 49.

Jackson aimed no direct jabs at John McCain/Republican music thieves.

I appreciate that Jackson, to his classy credit, did not utter a word about his recent lawsuit settlement with John McCain and the Republicans over their infringement of his copyright on his hit tune “Running on Empty.” The band just broke into the number, which forevermore shall be an anthem to artists’ rights to their intellectual property.

A concert at Red Rocks always presents a pilgrimage.

You have to make more of an effort to get there—and to get out of there after nightfall without falling. Like so much in life, the rewards are commensurate. I went to the concert with no expectations: Jackson’s catalog all pretty much pleases me. The set list showed off the band, the lyrics, and Jackson’s still-sound vocals sensationally enhanced by this tour's addition of two soulful back-up singers who put us all in harmony’s way. Jackson Browne and his band walk the talk when then “go out and make a joyful sound.”

Check out my Denver Post article on Jackson Browne and take my 70s rock quiz!

Music unites us all, puts us in harmony's way.

Music allows us to share a vibration. Literally, scientifically, that's what music is: a vibration. That's why live music can move us in ways that even the best sound systems will not. Live music is just that: living. Music is humanity at a high point.

Which is why I always feel good about purchasing CDs in a record store or even buying music online. As Jackson Browne pointed out recently in his Associated Press statement after his successful lawsuit settlement against the Republicans for copyright infringement, if we don't support artists, they won't be able to make a living creating art--and all of us will lose.

Why are outdoor concerts especially cosmic?

AND because as anybody who's gotten into the groove of a really great concert knows, there's special mystery and magic inherent in being part of a shared experience like Jackson Browne's recent gig at Red Rocks, here's a link to my piece the Post published on music therapy and the value of outdoor concerts.

Other recent concerts I've enjoyed indoors and out:
• Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at Pepsi Center, Denver
• Colorado Symphony at Fiddler's Green, Denver
• Chicago Symphony at Millennium Park's Pritzker Pavillion in Chicago
• Jon Chandler and the Wichitones & Cowboy Classic bands, Lakewood Cultural Center
• Dakota Blonde at Nissi's, Lafayette, Colorado
• Rod Stewart at Fiddler's Green, Denver
• Jimmy Buffet at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City
• Robert Cray at Civic Center Park in Denver

"Let the music keep our spirits high." -- Jackson Browne, "Before the Deluge"

We support the arts. The arts support us.
Pass it on!

Elizabeth Gilbert talks about creativity

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, suggests a new way of thinking about creative genius that allows brilliant minds a less tormented existence. This inspiring and inspired lecture came to mind in the wake of learning about the poet Deborah Digges' suicide. Click here to hear this talk.

THE ARTS: Lend Arts a Hand

When Denver Art Museum opened the new Hamilton Building, a campaign collected donations from arts enthusiasts asked to trace their hand and provide their signature. Top center in this image, my hand print hangs with hundreds of others individuals and organizations that invested in art.

In this economy, many arts organizations struggle. Precisely when we all need a booser shot of beauty and inspiration, people tend to cut back on concerts, exhibitions, tickets to plays and other performances. When you purchase tickets to arts events, you invest in visionaries.

Even if your budget won't allow splurging on front and center seats for the symphony or Broadway plays, take advantage of free concerts and city-sponsored days at museums and galleries. Your presence supports artists, too.

And, by the way, did you realize that when you go to the movies, you're supporting not only cinemas, but also newspapers? That's right. Revenues generated by advertisements for movies help keep newspapers solvent. So if you're somebody bemoaning American newspapers' rapid disappearing act, catch a flick and help support a flack and a hack. (In case you don't know, "flack" is an old term for a press agent; "hack" is a word for a writer or reporter paid to knock out copy quickly. At various times in my career, I've been both.)

THE ARTS: Far Out Groovy Rock Posters

Denver Art Museum’s current exhibit “The Psychedelic Experience: Rock Posters from the San Francisco Bay Area 1965-71” draws a crowd of people who might not otherwise darken the doors of a stuffy art museum. Rock music from the era sets the tone in the normally hushed galleries.




The exhibit includes the interactive Psychedelic Side Trip, where visitors can make their own posters, create light shows, and watch videos of rock concerts. Groovy! Interestingly, in A NEW EARTH, Echardt Tolle credits the hippies with bringing in a heightened consciousness for all humanity: peace, love, and understanding.

I turned nine the Summer of Love. One of my older sisters, Karen, strung a necklace of love beads for me. After seeing the vibrant posters at the DAM, I remembered my joy in the box of crayons containing fluorescent colors introduced sometime in the Sixties. I thought the hippies were cool: the music, the clothes, the freewheeling ways. A wanna-be flower child, I let my hair grow long; wore hip-hugging bell bottoms and embroidered gauze shirts—that is, when I wasn’t forced to wear my plaid pleated Catholic school jumper. I really had no clue what was going on, and I never knew any real hippies, but I had my aspirations to go to San Francisco and wear flowers in my hair.

Make art, not war

These images feature posters by Bonnie MacLean, in the second shot, and in the third and fourth shots, by Victor Moscoso, who studied color theory at Yale. Moscoso went on to break orthodox graphic arts rules by combining vibrating colors and creating practically illegible type. More than being read, the posters were deciphered.

THE ARTS: Two Flicks on the Fourth Estate

I shot this detail of Renoir's painting, part of the collection at Chicago Institute of Art.
Will newspapers go the way of camera film? If you care about the fourth estate, support your local newspapers.

NEWSEUM IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

"Before dawn every morning, about 600 newspapers from around the world transmit their front pages electronically to the Newseum." Regretably, I never made it inside the Newseum, but my friend Andrea and I--inadvertently reflected in the sign--found the front pages displayed in front of the building fascinating. Log on to newseum.org for more information.

This weekend, I saw both "The Soloist" and "State of Play," two solid journalism movies. "The Soloist" gets high marks for being based on a true story, for pointing out the sad fact that greater Los Angeles has 90,000 homeless people, and for the scene depicting synesthesia. (Seeing colors while hearing music is one example of synesthesia.)

"State of Play" won me over with the journalists' witty dialogue that rang true, and for shedding light on the newspaper world's problems. Some good, snarky lines about blogs vs newspapers. Amazing to see the presses running and to wonder whether they will go the way of the telegraph before too long.

One recent horror story in the ongoing saga of newspapers: Some reporters in Baltimore were on assignment covering a baseball game when they got a phone call informing them that they were being laid off. Now that's crass. I suppose they still had to file their stories.

Coincidentally, in both movies, the leading men--journalists for daily newspapers--drove Saabs.

THE ARTS: "Tuning in and dropping down the well"

Georgia O'Keefe's blanket flowers


"Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite--getting something down....
We are more the conduit than the creator of what we express. Art is an act of tuning in and dropping down the well. It is as though all the stories, painting, music, performances in the world live just under the surface of our normal consciousness. Like an underground river, they flow through us as a stream of ideas that we can tap down into. As artists, we drop down the well into the stream...We are the instrument more than the author of our work...."
--Julia Cameron, "The Artist's Way"

Elizabeth Gilbert also expresses this idea in an intriguing, short lecture she gave for the Ted series. You can Google it, and we'll try to put up a link later. Liz speaks about how the notion of "genius" has changed, over the years. In the past, people said that somebody has a genius, as if the genius were outside the individual. Now, we tend to say somebody is a genius.