Brief by Central Staff
Local art scene – April 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
Art in High, Dry Places
The San Luis Valley sits just upriver from Taos and Santa Fé, and the connection appears to be growing.
The Denver Post featured Valley art in a March 15 article, which observed that “The arid, mountainous landscape and the multicultural mix of Anglo, Spanish, and Indian traditions that inspired the Taos school of Southwestern art … exist here, too. Even the culture of Taos’s fabled artist colony earlier this century has been somewhat replicated…”
But photographer Mary Alice Johnston of Crestone said the area evokes memories of Paris in the 1950s: “A lot of things that were happening there are parallel to what is happening here now. I think I can see what I saw in Paris then happening here.”
On this side of the Atlantic but across Poncha Pass, Deb Diener of Salida will have some of her work featured in an upcoming edition of Southwest Art..
She specializes in small metallic landscapes, from ear-rings up to almost business-card size. You can find her work at Sangre de Cristo Interiors in Westcliffe and Trav-Lan Conoco in Salida. Her sister, Becky Kagan of Westcliffe, was the featured artist in last month’s Colorado Central.
