Leadville

View from Mineral Trail

Through the 19th century slag heaps above Leadville winds the mineral trail...a bike and cross-country ski loop that takes in the town's mining history.  Leadville is one of the few towns in Colorado that started out as a mining site (gold, silver, lead) and has continued to be a mining town (molybdenum)..  Early morning customers in this coffee shop include mine administrative folks who are heading up to the Climax Mine at Fremont Pass. 

Mining Camp in the 1880s

Sellers Mine in Leadville 

 

 

 

 

 

The town has a sense of authenticity missing from places like Vail with their ersatz European veneer.  It is cold here at 10,150 feet; life is hard.  Leadville has never really recovered from the closure of Climax Mine in the early 1980s.  Winter and summer sports (bike races, ski joring, skiing at nearby Ski Cooper) can only bring in so much.

When I pass through town, sometimes staying a few days, I stay at the local hostel, run by Wild Bill and his wife.  They run a "tight ship" and there are always interesting folk sharing the ample space (a woman getting "in condition" for a five month trip to Nepal, an African doing work at Colorado Mountain College, men doing temporary work with road crews)....a cross section.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Road Sign Outside the Hostel

Bric-a- Brac in the hostel living room 

  In Norwegian, "kosilig" means cozy, warm, friendly.  Doubt that term would have applied to this town during its early mining days.  Still the hostel, just down the street from the mine ruins,  has that feel after a day of exploring the winter snows. 

Trees

So off we went, Kris Turner, a UK visitor living with us for a while, to the Roosevelt National Forest to get a Christmas tree.  The Forest Service opens up a section each year for two weekends for folks to come and cut their own tree.  The SUVs and four wheel drive vehicles make a long parade on the county roads to get "the perfect tree." 

Joining the parade of cars in search of The Tree

 We found a small tree (to walk around when we sing "Nu hav jul igjen"...a Danish tune stating that "Now we have Jule again"  and a 14 foot one to fill the front of the living room with light and decorations. 

The Small Tree

And the Big Tree

So we bring it home on top of the old Ford Explorer, up it goes in the living room, and then out come 35 or more years worth of globes, baubbles, bangles, beads, garlands, figures, dolls, strings of lights, and one angel.  They don't all go on, but most of them do. 

In the Living Room

So what does it mean, this form of installation art?  Once a year, transforming our ordinary living spaces into colorful dens, magical places?  A custom inherited from Germanic tribes centuries ago....celebrating the solstice, infusing the dark winter with light, creating a festive scene to counter the cold...   Perhaps it is just a way of saying that, whatever the change in season, we are here, we will create our own space, we will find our own joy and peace. 

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year

Museum day

On the roof of the Museum of Contemporary Art on 15th Street

My friend, Patrick, and I went down to Denver last week to check out a couple of museums.  The Museum of Contemporary Art is a fine piece of architecture with a great roof garden and cafe.  It was hosting a series of exhibits on the folk arts of the "counterculture" communes and collectives which sprung up in the late 60s and early 70s throughout the west.  These included light shows, psychedelic paintings, costumes, performances, posters, and inflatable sculptures. 

Inflatable sculptures from the Ant Farm Collective

Having seen the documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, we spent some time in the museum's gift shop.  I came across a book, Huerfano, written by Roberta Price, a memoir of her life on a commune in southern Colorado.  A copy of the book was given to me by my son's college roommate some years ago.  His parents were part of an adjacent commune...after its dissolution, they stayed on and worked a wholesale nursery.  Roberta, now an intellectual property rights lawyer, is coming up to Denver for a panel discussion at the museum in a few weeks. 

Cover of Roberta's Memoir

Patrick and I then crossed over downtown and went to the new Clyfford Still museum.  Still was an initial founder of the movement of abstract expressionism in New York in the 1950s.  His will stipulated that on his death all of the works in his possession would be given to a city that built a museum solely for his paintings.  Denver finally won the right to build the museum.  It opened a few months back.  Four of his paintings, donated by his wife,  had been sold in New York for $114 million to support the operations of the museum. 

Galleries at the Still Museum

So this clearly is not folk art but rather the rarefied "high" art of billionaire collectors, glossy art magazines, and auction houses.  No inflatable sculptures here.  The contrast between the two museums' shows was stark.  And, yet, both come from the same desire to create, to express one's self or a collective's spirit, and to share that by interacting with an audience.  Or at least with two guys on a day trip down from Fort Collins...expanding their sense of the world they live in.