Where art meets the mountains by Dawne Belloise

MEETS THE MOUNTAINS

THE CRESTED BUTTE ARTS FESTIVAL, FIVE DECADES AGO: A FREE-FORM FESTIVAL BORN IN A WILDER WEST.

By Dawne Belloise

“I just left a place where nobody was running a race or rushing to find the finish line to some kind of end.

Nobody was sad, no, everybody was so glad to be alive and in the company of lovers and friends.

Crested Butte, honey, you sure can shoot. You took the gold and the loot. You got your feet on the ground.

Crested Butte, honey, you sure are cute, and just like a worn-out boot, you’ve got me laying around...”

– from the 1972 song “Crested Butte” by Brewer & Shipley

Sandra Cortner

It was a wilder West when the Crested Butte Arts Festival cranked up unpretentiously in the summer of 1971. Back then, the festival was a pleasant, sunny, dusty-day blur. Long-haired, smiling people strung beads into a lacy matrix of necklaces or hammered silver and copper wire into dangling earrings in a cloud of music, incense and other entrancing smoke.

At those unstructured fairs on an unpaved Elk Avenue, the somewhat newly relocated hippie artists and musicians tuned in and turned on, sold their crafts and plied their music.

Crested Butte’s coal mines had shut down by the 1950s, and the ski area that opened in 1962 began attracting a far different demographic from those who’d come to work below ground. First came the ski bums, then the artists – the musicians, actors, painters, dancers and dreamers. These free spirits saw both the beauty and the potential to live nonconforming lives in a tiny town in the back of beyond. (Crested Butte is still a haven for creatives, and their influence shows in everything from handpainted buses to crazy-good community dance shows.)

The first Crested Butte Arts Festival was loosely manifested by three young men – Michael Berry, Jim Cazer and George Sibley. “Michael had just purchased a semi load of railroad ties at an auction,” Sibley recalled. “He thought that an interesting thing to do would be to build a covered pavilion where we could have an arts festival to show off the art in the community. He wanted to do something that the community could get into.” So Berry set out to find Sibley, who was the editor and writer for the Crested Butte Chronicle newspaper, to promote the idea.

It took about a week to build the pavilion – “this rambling, shaded but really nice, cool, lovely place that smelled of creosote but was a work of art itself,” Sibley said. The pavilion went up approximately where the Post Office parking lot is now.

Susan Anderton, one of the original festival artists, remembered that free form was the norm. “It wasn’t like you had a formal committee that got together and decided to do something. It just happened; people just got together.” Anderton fondly sifted through her recollections of the era. “People were so supportive and enthusiastic. I had some of the best times. I remember thinking, I can’t believe I’m hearing all this great music in Crested Butte. We were young then, and so enthusiastic.

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It was magical.”

Music had long been a dominant part of the Crested Butte culture, and the embryonic festival drew some of the local and regional best. Berry had strong musical connections and produced many of the shows, bringing in nationally known talent like Brewer & Shipley, who played on a rudimentary stage on Elk Avenue next to Frank and Gal’s saloon (until the saloon eventually burned down). Berry also brought in Michael Martin Murphey before anyone knew who he was. The late Townes Van Zandt, infamous country-folk singersongwriter and poet, spent his summers in Crested Butte during the 1970s and graced the festival’s stage.

That stage also showcased the abundance of local talent – Les Choy, Ramon Burrell, Lightnin’ Lydell, Robert J, Jimmy Lozar, Jim Michael, Fahrlander, Flash, Tracey Wickland and her band Whiterock…. The list is as long as the Forest Queen communal breakfast table they all graced after the noon whistle rolled them out of bed.

Doc Watson was introduced to the area by long-time local singer-songwriter and amazing guitarist Tracey Wickland. “Doc and Merle (Doc’s son) and I became friends in 1972 at Tulagi’s in Boulder,” Wickland said. “I had become a huge fan of his from early recordings that my brother played for me in the late ‘60s. I learned his tunes note for note and fell in love with flat picking.” With the spunk of a Crested Buttian, Tracey walked right through Doc’s backstage dressing room door at the Boulder club to meet her hero. “The door was open,” she said with a laugh, “and I sat on the floor talking to him. We talked a lot about music, then he handed me his guitar. ‘Try this one,’ he said. I started picking out some fiddle tunes... then he picked up another guitar and said, ‘Honey, let’s pick.’ They drove me back to Crested Butte and continued coming for several years, camping and staying with me and my friends.”

During the third Arts Festival, the Totem Pole Park was created along Coal Creek. Several artists with chainsaws took four or five days to carve the totem pole itself. Denny McNeill spearheaded the project, along with Jim Cazer, Billy Folger, Phil McKay and Barbara Sibley. The crew planted the tall totem pole with help from a backhoe. In 2006, crews lovingly repaired the falling-apart sculpture, and it still lives in the tiny park.

The Crested Butte Arts Festival, held the first weekend in August, has grown far from its original “let it flow” attitudes, dusty venues and Woodstock-like musical eruptions. But it continues to showcase exceptional talent, in a spectacular marriage of art and mountains. b

‘BRINGING THE WOW’

FOR THE 50TH ARTS FESTIVAL

The Arts Festival, nearing age 50.

Nolan Blunck

What began as a laid-back local crafts festival has become a renowned, juried fine art event that draws artists and fans from around the country. For 2022, the festival venue, on the Crested Butte Community School grounds, will feature approximately 120 booths (selected from more than 600 artist applicants), live music, familyfriendly activities in the Art Alley, and a “beefed-up” array of other experiences.

For the 50th Arts Festival, August 5-7, “We want to bring the WOW,” said Chelsea Dalporto-McDowell, the festival’s executive director. “Our goal is a more robust experience for our patrons as well as an inviting festival layout.”

Crested Butte’s largest summer event, attracting 12,000 people, has also become a “mission-based nonprofit… for the betterment of the arts community in Crested Butte,” Dalporto-McDowell said. Money generated from the festival has channeled “hundreds of thousands of dollars into art outreach in the community.” Local artists and organizations can apply for grants from the Arts Festival – for offerings like the online art enrichment classes taught by local artists, or individual projects like Molly Murfee’s “Writing through the Changes” classes, or art-related programs at the Crested Butte Community School, just to name a few.

Of the Arts Festival’s $5 admission fee (added last year), Dalporto-McDowell said, “I’d like people to see that as a donation to the arts here, as a significant portion goes directly into arts outreach in our community.” Another source of funds, the festival’s art auction, is now hybrid, with items at the event and bidding online.

“We also want to beautify the event by focusing on the layout and design of the venue,” Dalporto-McDowell said. That will include food vendors serving healthy, unique cuisine, a covered eating area, and seating near the entertainment stage.

The festival will rely on 80-100 volunteers and collaborations with the Trailhead Children’s Museum, Wheels of Intention and the Crested Butte Mountain Heritage Museum.

This year, instead of picking up printed programs, patrons can download a festival app. Vendors will serve food in compostable containers, as the festival board strives toward a “zero waste” event.

“The Arts Festival helped establish an arts economy in Crested Butte,” DalportoMcDowell said. “Things have changed so much since it started as a little crafts festival. The tax dollars that come in are huge, both at the event and around town. But it’s still community based. There’s something for everyone at the festival.”

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