T.art
tellurideartnews.com
Local Talent:
Tom Taylor Interview Photography by Mary Kenez
Winter 2022
All Photographs in T.art by Mary Kenez
Welcome to Townie, Telluride
Kamruz Photography & Art Gallery • 100 W. Colorado Ave. • Telluride, CO
Lab Adore, Telluride Gondogola, Telluride
Milk Run, Telluride
Dear Readers, Welcome to the Winter 2022 issue of T.art ! Kamruz Gallery is located at 100 W. Colorado (under Overland) Come say hi to me, Jess or Red!
The largest known Gondogola is hanging at Petco Corp Headquarters in San Diego . WOW! “Ball Patrol - Dog Beach” is now keeping Gondogola company, a huge 76.5 ft. by almost 11 ft. Thank you fine people of Petco!
Gondogola! Well, the popularity and appeal never ceases to amaze me. Still Goo Goo for Gondogola in Telluride for sure.
Check out “About Gondogola” online at Kamruz. com and get the answers to most frequently asked questions about this photograph.
Stop in for a complimentary postcard and maybe meet one of the dogs of the now famous photograph. Certainly my dog, Red will show you his new photo book!
Kamruz Gallery is the exclusive store for Alpine Aloha®. Mountain Adventurewear that will add zip to your sport! Come check it out.
Mary Kenez Editor Please welcome writer Aiden Gallic He is a 2021 college graduate, who recently moved to Telluride to work and explore the rugged, legendary beauty of the San Juan Mountains.” This issue Aiden interviews long time Telluride skier /patroller Tom Taylor
cover: Gone Skiing photography - Mary Kenez staff writer - Aiden Gallic
(970)708-0135 editor@tellurideartnews.com tellurideartnews.com Editor: Mary Kenez Publisher: Kamruz Gallery Layout/Design : Mary Kenez Design and Website: TelluridePhotographer.com logo and images ©2022 T.art & Mary Kenez
“Ruff RIders, Telluride” - Mary Kenez
RUFF Riders Jerseys are back! Available exclusively at Kamruz
Gallery and Kamruz.com
Mary Kenez
Bike and Ski, Telluride
Up the River, Telluride
Dogs on the Gondola
C’est Bone
Collies on Board
Lab Adore, Telluride
Aspen Gondogola
Dogs on the Gondola
Sheltie Squad
Corgi Cargo
Powder Poodles
Chocondola
Dogs on the Gondola
Gondogola,Telluride
Goldie Looks
The Beagle has Landed
Chihuandola
Local Talent
Tom Taylor Tom Taylor was one of the first ski patrolmen ever employed here in Telluride and I had the pleasure of interviewing Tom Taylor on New Year’s Eve. He was kind enough to let me steal a few hours with him that night and ask him about what his life has been like since he moved here. Tom is an absolutely charming man, someone completely worth speaking with if you ever get the chance. After Mary Kenez, our host, kindly poured us a cocktail we began the interview.
What year did you move to Telluride, where did you come from, and what brought you? Well, I came down from Aspen where I was being a ski bum. And, the reason I came down here was because I couldn’t buy property in Aspen. It was already way out of my reach. People started talking about Telluride. So, I brought my bride down in the spring of ‘72, on our honeymoon. When we arrived it was one of those late April snowstorms, where the snowflakeswere huge and you couldn’t see this town because the cloud cover was so low. And we ended up going to the Roma where we had a shoe leather steak at practically Aspen prices. The next morning, it had snowed six inches. The place was covered in white, it was so beautiful. There wasn’t anybody in town, we were it. My wife said let’s move. It took us about a year and a half to get ourselves together. We rented on Fir Street for a year and a half and then bought a house on Main street. It was a wreck at first. Where are you from originally? How did you end up in Aspen? I was born in South Carolina. When I was about two or three, we moved and I was brought up in Baltimore. When I was 25, somebody suggested that I go skiing with the University of Maryland ski club and they drove us all up to Blue Knob, Pennsylvania. That’s where I made my first run. I was waiting for my instructor, who never showed up, so finally I said I’m going to take care of this myself and I managed to get to the bottom without falling down. I stood there as people were loading on the lift and managed to load on. Because it was a T-bar instead of a chair lift. I rode up and got to the top and said “That was pretty damn good.” And I did it again. The sun was coming out and it was partially snowing. The snow was soft and everything was beautiful and I said this is it. And I became a skier. Skied every single weekend that winter. Towards the end of the season when I was riding up, I got on the lift with a ski patroller. While we were riding up I was telling him about my experiences and asking him about his and he said “Wow, if you like skiing that much you should go out to Aspen and be a ski bum.” And I said, that’s it! Where’s Aspen and what is a ski bum? That’s how green I was. So anyway, that fall I loaded up my sports car and I drove out.
When did you know you would stay in Telluride? Was it when you first came here with your wife? Was that when you were like, this is the place for me? No, it was when I came down here in January of 1970. The ski area was actually open, there were just no lifts. There were four of us who came down from Aspen, all ski patrollers. And Billy Mahoney was so glad to see us because he had been dealing with you know rank beginners and low-intermediate skiers for the most part. Now, he all of a sudden had some people who could ski. And he showed us the mountain. We skied everything. We skied Mammoth, Zulu Queen, there was a powerline that came over which we skied, and it was all deep untracked powder at the time. Billy Mahoney provided us with a bottle of scotch to sip on while we were riding up. Boy that was some trip! How many people lived here in ‘70? Six hundred. Yeah, most of them were miners. There were a bunch of us interlopers, ya know. ‘76 was the official closing date of the mines. They drove mine trucks through town and there was a bunch of us that- well not me, I didn’t care- but I had a friend that used to throw big rocks out in front of them to make them slow down. Yeah, they were big trucks and they sped throughtown. Did you start immediately as a ski patroller? Or when did you take on that job? I did. I was working on the Aspen ski patrol and when I came, I had already been hired. It was a piece of cake. I was the most experienced by far. And so, I was sorta in charge. How many years did you work as a ski patroller? How was it when you first started? Well let’s see, I worked six years in Aspen. Twenty years down here. It was pretty quiet as you could imagine. You know, for instance, in February of ‘73, the first season, we had more employees on the mountain than we had skiers. When I came down, I figured that all this was gonna be changing in the first five years. But nothing happened in those years, I suddenly got used to the idea that nothing was happening and I thought this is great. I’d figured out how to make a living and stuff like that. So for about fifteen years we had this town to ourselves, it was a classless society. Didn’t matter if you were the head of the ski area or what, we all partied together. It was very cool, very pleasant.
How did you spend your summers? Construction. We built houses, remodeled, whatever came down the pipe. So with the ski patrollers, was there a local haunt you guys would go to after work or on your days off? Sure, the Sheridan. We took every corner seat in the Sheridan and that was ours. Do you have a favorite memory as a ski patroller here? One that makes you think warmly of this place? Skiing Bushwacker. Skiing Bushwacker way before it was open, it was the perfect powder run. It held the powder for two or three weeks at a time because it’s north facing and tree covered. It was just deep and untracked. I could go up there with my buddies and we could ski it like madmen. You could jump off of anything because there was no fear. It was a nice long powder run. In fact, I had a friend who came down from Aspen, some two or three years after we moved here, and I took him down Bushwacker. He was an ex-patrolman from Aspen. At the bottom he shook his head and said that was the best powder run he had ever seen and it was not an exaggeration! You know, one thing I’m very proud of, my patrol chief Bill Sands and I were the first to descend Tempter Gully. In the spring of 1973, when it was safe. We just did it to do it. So that’s my claim to fame, and his too. I’m curious, what did avalanche mitigation look like, at that time? It was a mess. We didn’t know the mountain, none of us knew the mountain. And so, that was one of our prime deals was trying to figure out where we might have slides, where we might have problems and how to mitigate them. One nice thing was Billy Mahoney, you know him, he gave us all the dynamite we could eat. It was just great. I loved to throw dynamite, you would get in a safe spot, above the slide and then you throw it in. Yeah, we created a lot of noise.
In all those years of work, is there an accident on the Telluride Mountain that stands out? One that you’ll remember forever? I remember once skiing down five, we used to call it Palmyra, and I was with another patroller. Luckily, we happened to look right where this guy was in the trees. He had crashed and had hit his head pretty badly. He kept saying to us. “I can’t remember what happened. I can’t remember what happened.” He must have repeated that 50 times. And you know, you’re dealing with ahead injury and it’s a little on the scary side. So we had to call for a toboggan, had to call for oxygen, and we hauled him off. Not terribly exciting on the one hand and yet at the time it was. But I think probably one of the worst incidents was a young girl who had dislocated her shoulder. She was in so much pain and it was one of those bad dislocations. If you could get your hand under your stomach, you were probably okay but when they locked up above your head, like her arm was, it was almost impossible to put them in a togabban and splint their arm so it doesn’t move. But she was pretty tough. She knew she had to stand it, you know. We just took it slow and got her down to the clinic. It was a long haul for her. Did you ever find out what happened to either of them? Has anyone reached out to thank you for helping them in an accident? No, I never did. Once they were at the clinic, they were gone. For the most part. And oh, yes,plenty of people. We used to get gift baskets full of small bottles of rum, candy, and such. Do you still get together with people you worked with? Amazingly enough, I have lots of people that have said that there’s none of the old guys here,that there’s nobody left. But actually there’s three or four hundred of us that were from the early70s. Yeah, oh yeah. It’s amazing. We do get together occasionally with, say, an annual meeting at the park. A lot of them come in from far away, you know, but there’s quite a few of us that are still here. Actually, there’s a bunch of us that meet every Friday at 1:30pm at the top of 7. We call ourselves the skiizers, because we’re all so old and we ski together, there are probably 30 people that will show up on a good day. Usually there are 6 to 12 on a regular day and we just ski together. It’s usually the same group, although we sure do have other people show up, you know they just join in. There are no rules, just jungle rules.
I’m sure you get questions of what has changed here in Telluride but I’m curious, has anything stayed the same throughout the whole time you’ve lived here? Something that makes you say, this is Telluride? Well, first of all, the mountains. They never change and they will always be the same. I’ve been here for 50 years and I never get tired of looking at them. I have a pair of binoculars on my deck and I look at the little ravines, little rocks, and bumps. And of course, I’ve hiked around all those things and so they are very familiar. But you know what’s really interesting, this town, while it is so much more busy and there are so many people, it still has not lost its character. Aspen lost its character. It became so glitzy but this place, people still come here because the skiing is so good and the attitude is so good. How’s your life in Telluride now? Are there any fun hobbies you’ve taken up? Well, I have the house on Main Street. And one thing I really enjoy is yard work and I have a vegetable garden in the back. Yeah people are always amazed at the variety of vegetables that I grow. I grow peas, lettuce, broccoli, beets, carrots, strawberries, I have an asparagus patch and yeah they all produce quite well. Do you ski now? How much do you ski ? I’m gonna go Sunday with Mary Kenez, if it’s sunny. For the whole season, I probably ski 35-40days. How would you describe Telluride to someone who’s never been here before? If you were to sell the town or something that speaks to you that you think would speak to others? Ha-ha, well. Number one, it’s hard to get here. Number two, it’s very expensive. Number three I’m not sure you’d like it because it’s cold. by Aiden Gallic Telluride Art News : Staff Writer
Gone Skiing, Telluride
Surf’s Up on Dog Beach
Jump for Joy
On Location, Encinitas
Surfer Boy
Photography Mary Kenez
Beach Boy, Encinitas
Surf’s Up, Encinitas
Mary Kenez
Rad Red
Abundance
Mary Kenez Photography
Twinkle, Twinkle
Mary Kenez
“Our Town, Telluride”
“White Sheep of the Family”
Amazing Paper Paintings by Molly Perrault
Red
Louise
Mac
Romeo
Using tiny shards of found colors and textures carefully cut from magazines, Molly Perrault strives to create the illusion of oil paintings without paint. With a focus on rendering landscapes, she is motivated to meditate and slowly reconstruct the places that have been a source of inspiration, adventure, and comfort. Perrault views her process as cyclical: nature is used to produce the paper in which the magazines are printed, and Perrault assumes her role in both the act of destruction and reconstruction. She sees her detail-oriented method as a path to subvert the artificial colors, extravagance, and careful page layouts of mainstream print media by returning its contents to a state of nature. All works are 100% recycled magazine paper. No paint is used in this process.
mollyperrault.com Instagram, @molly.perrault.art
Mary Kenez
Kamruz Gallery 100 W. Colorado Ave Telluride, CO Kamruz.com 970.708.0135
Stop by for a free sticker!
Kamruz Gallery 100 W. Colorado Ave Telluride, CO Kamruz.com 970.708.0135
Kamruz Gallery 100 W. Colorado Ave Telluride, CO Kamruz.com 970.708.0135
Your Dog can ride the Powder Hound Chair Lift! Book a Photo Shoot now!
Kamruz Gallery 100 W Colorado Ave
970-708-0135
Mary Kenez
Welcome to Telluride
Welcome to Telluride
K9 Road Trip, Telluride
K9 VW, Telluride
Ball Patrol, Dog Beach
Dog Days of Summer, Telluride
Driven by Treats, Telluride
Photography Contest...
Casey’s Corner “I know a little about photography” Please send me your best Dog photograph to be considered for the Photography Contest! Despite what it may seem, our contest is not rigged.
Subjects for monthly photography contest Telluride, Dogs, Ski, Bikes...Plastography digital submission: mary@kamruz.com
Mary Kenez I see colors... I’ve loved photography and the outdoors for as long as I can remember... My photography is a documentation of my travels and adventures in... Vivid color and sometimes not. Telluride is so full of color and beauty It’s easy to be inspired here. I find inspiration around every bend and in everyday I’m fortunate enough to spend here. Each season brings new colors, new light and new photographic opportunities.
Mary Kenez
“Welcome to the Sheep Show!”
LOVE fall in the mountains ! - Mary Kenez
Photographs by Mary Kenez
Peta.org
Dog is my Pilot featuring Nellie - Photo by Mary Kenez
Red’s NEW Book, K9 Player’s Club is now Available! “From humble beginnings to professional model and president of K9 Players Club Red will entertain you with his amazing ability to engage with almost any dog he meets!” A large format hardcover photo book by Mary Kenez available exclusively at... Kamruz Gallery 100 W. Colorado Ave Telluride, CO Kamruz.com 970.708.0135
World’s Largest known Gondogola hanging in PETCO Corp. Headquarters 6’ x 10.5 ‘ •
WOW!
There is a Gondogola for any space... Prints as small as 4” x 6” to 7.5’ x 12’ paneled We can print all the way up to 7 x 11 ! This is true for my other photographs as well, everything in this issue. Everything is online at TelluridePhotographer.com . Prices listed on website. Gondogola Merchandise available : Signed Prints (on canvas and matted) T-shirts Cycling Jersey - NEW! Tote Bags Postcards / Note Cards Mugs 2020 Calendar - NEW! Gondogola Puzzle
Plunge Lift
Avalanche, Telluride 2019
A Big Bike LOVE
Exhibit at Kamruz Gallery
A Big Bike LOVE
Exhibit at Kamruz Gallery
Photographs by Mary Kenez
Telluride VW Love Kamruz Gallery
100 W. Colorado Ave
Telluride, CO
970.708.0135