This weekend, more than 100 artists will call Breckenridge home for the 38th annual Gathering at the Great Divide Art Festival.
The show is nationally ranked in the top 200 of fine art shows in the United States and will feature more than 100 artists with a wide range of mediums, including photography, wood, glass, jewelry and pottery.
Painting on glass
Lindsay Sutton-Stephens, of Salida, is one of the artists who will be showing her work at the festival.
“I do mainly reverse painted glass, and I also do glazed woods to look like glass,” she said. “I’ve been doing the glass for about 15 years now. I got into it in college and I kept coming across these beautiful portraits in glass. I started from there, and the windows came about organically, as well. I was visiting my parents in Mississippi and their neighbors were throwing out some of their windows and I took them.”
Sutton-Stephens has been showing her art all over the state this summer, including three events in Keystone.
“This year, this summer alone, we’ve done eight, and then this fall, we’ll do seven,” she said. “We’re on the road all of the time and all over the state, as well.”
The painter describes her work as bright, colorful, easy to approach and friendly.
“It’s not anything that is meant to evoke any dark, dark thought or deep thought,” she said. “It’s just happy art. And I used a lot of Colorado-inspired stuff; from mountains to bikes to the flag itself, Colorado is a part of my art in every way, and Summit County encompasses what everyone loves about Colorado.”
Gathering at the Great Divide representatives contacted Sutton-Stephens to be a part of the festival this year.
“I had been looking for a while to do something in Breckenridge, I lived in Summit Cove and worked in Breckenridge at the pottery studio. And it’s a great time of year; Labor Day is a fantastic weekend for a big art festival. I do a lot of events that encompass a lot of things, and this one is art only, which is cool. … I’m really looking forward to it. I can’t wait to do an event in Breck and see what the crowd is like.”
Colorado art festivals
For more than 19 years, Mark Beling and Judith Pollock, directors of the Mountain Art Festivals, have produced outdoor Colorado art events, which are consistently ranked among the top art festivals in the country. Beling and Pollock have lived in Breckenridge since 1990 and have owned their retail jewelry business, J & M Jewelry, since 1991.
“I love bringing art to the Summit County community and exposing our patrons to the wide variety of artists that are so uniquely talented,” Beling says on the festival’s website. “I am very committed to providing the highest quality of juried art shows possible to create a wonderful experience for both the artists and the patrons of our festivals.”
Gathering at the Great Divide is the third of three festivals the organization puts on each year in Breckenridge. Over the past 15 years, Mountain Art Festivals have donated more than $135,000 in cash and more than $150,000 in in-kind donations to area nonprofits, including the Town of Breckenridge Arts District. Additionally, Mountain Art Festivals has provided high school scholarships to Summit High School seniors who have had an interest in pursuing a career in the arts in post-secondary education.
“The mountain setting of all our festivals is such an advantage, you can hike in the morning, visit the art festival in the afternoon and watch the sunset over Lake Dillon in the evening — what a great way to spend a day,” Beling said.
Courtesy of the Summit Daily News.
