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Sales from soap will benefit education in India at the new Lotus Boutique in Ketchum
J u l y 6 , 2 0 1 1 • Vo l . 4 • N o . 2 7 • w w w.T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
Midsummer Night’s Serenade is Sunday at the Pavilion Page 3
Kane reviews Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts in new film Larry Crowne Page 8
Dr. Glen Shapiro talks about common summer injuries Page 12
read about it on PaGe 5
The small side of wild Mary Roberson Paintings
Mary Roberson says critics and artists alike often try to make creativity too much of a mind thing.
Photos & Story By KAREN BOSSICK
More than 500 bikers are expected to get an introduction to the hundreds of miles of bike trails in the Sun Valley area next week.
Bike Festival and Championships Photo & Story By KAREN BOSSICK
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s many as 500 of the nation’s top mountain bikers are expected to descend on Sun Valley next week for the USA Cycling Mountain Bike Cross-Country National Championships. Top contenders include Adam Craig, a 15-time national bike champion, and Georgia Gould, who swept all six events on the national mountain bike series in 2007, says Sun Valley Chamber Director Greg Randolph, himself a member of the U.S. Olympic road cycling team at the 1996 Olympics. The Bike Championships starts on Wednesday, July 13, and will run through Sunday, July 17. The Ride Sun Valley Bike Festival will be held at the same time. The Festival will offer four free semi-guided mountain bike rides during the week with transportation provided from the Sun Valley Visitor Center to the sites of the rides. The Wednesday ride starts at 8:30 a.m. taking riders along the newly refurbished Red Warrior Trail to Greenhorn Gulch. The Thursday ride, also at 8:30 a.m., heads to Baker Creek. Friday’s ride, which meets at the Visitor Center at 9 a.m., is called the “Baldy Burner.” There are two Saturday rides leaving at 9 a.m. One 22-mile ride, billed as “the mother of all stokers,” heads to Fox Peak via the East Fork of Baker Creek. The easier 11-mile ride follows Curly’s Trail from Baker Creek to Easley Hot Springs. The Fat Tire Criterium—open to children and amateurs--starts in front of the Sun Valley Visitor Center on Sun Valley Road and East Avenue Ketchum at 6:30 p.m. Thursday. It circles around on Leadville Avenue, Fourth Street and Walnut Avenue. “It’s supposed to be a wild ride that will make everyone cling to the edge of their seat,” said Ellen Gillespie, who is helping organize the event. For more information, go to www. ridesunvalley.com tws
DID YOU KNOW?
Explaining Stage Fright
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By KAREN BOSSICK
lenn Stanton, who will sing in Sun Valley Opera’s “Midsummer Night’s Serenade” on Sunday evening at the Sun Valley Pavilion, says the key to a good stage fight is taking it s-l-o-w. “Slow down and look and see how good you are,” said Stanton. “If you go at the speed of an actual fight, it’s a blur to the audience and they don’t get to enjoy the art of the fight. It’s like doing a ballroom dance in which you have to be in sync with your partner.” tws
M
ary Roberson used to be a big game artist, spending weeks in Yellowstone National Park each winter and summer “bagging” moose and grizzly for her impressionist paintings. Then she put in a flower garden. As she got down on her hands and knees working in the dirt, the Hailey artist became awed by the insects she saw crawling around and hummingbirds buzzing above her. Now, five years later, two stuffed pheasants have found their way into Roberson’s 400-square-foot painting studio where trophy heads of bison, moose, elk and bear used to serve as reference. And her piles of magazine articles focus on the birds that have come to dominate more of her paint time. “My new paintings are more colorful, more fun. And I have a lot more fun painting,” said Roberson, who will show 4 ½ feet. some of her new art at the Ketchum Arts She titled one of her recent paintings Festival Friday through Sunday at Festi“Nature is Everything,” reflecting the val Meadows in Sun Valley. fact that she now cares as much if not Roberson can’t quite explain the turnmore about the little things than “the big around. brown things.” “The mystery of creativity—you don’t That painting features a wolf sitting question it. Creativity is about going with calmly as a raven chews it out. the flow and from that comes the art.” “I love ravens because they’re so comiAnd maybe it doesn’t matter—not when cal and so intelligent. And they really fit her paintings are selling like tickets to a hand in hand with wolves. When there’s Garth Brooks concert. a kill, ravens will call to other ravens and “The galleries can’t keep them. This this alerts the wolves to the kill.” painting I’m working on now is going to a Her favorite bird, however, is the robin. gallery in Jackson tomor“They’re funny. I love row. And it will probably their whimsical nature. be sold by next weekend,” And they’re everywhere.” said Roberson, who also Roberson’s fans love has a painting in the the way she incorporates National Museum of different animals into Wildlife Art in Jackson. a single painting. And, While her focus has they say, she captures the shifted, Roberson’s purspirit of the animals she’s suit of a painting hasn’t. painting—imbuing some She still takes extended with personalities that trips to Yellowstone and –Mary Roberson jump off the canvas. places like Alaska. But, Artist Her latest painting—a instead of just spending testament to her wry look hours mentally recording on life—depicts a variety every move a grizzly sow of hometown birds checkand her cubs make as they dig into the ing out the penguin interloper which carcass of a bison, she now gives equal somehow found its way onto the canvas. time to smaller species around her. “I paint what I would buy and that’s my “I would go with my spotting scope and only critique. This is not brain science,” spend a lot of time looking for a mamshe said. mal when right before me was a frog or a She dabs her brush into a glob of paint flicker,” she said. sitting on her table and returns to paintRoberson often works in sweatpants ing. caked with paint stains, listening to When she gets to the point where she music emanating from her flat-screen TV thinks she could buy the painting if she and shaking her wispy white hair in a happened upon it, she signs it. joyous dance as she paints broad imprestws sionistic swaths across canvas 4 ½ feet by
“The mystery of creativity— you don’t question it.”
Above: Mary Roberson’s birds are often full of personality. Below: Roberson puts a lot of research into her work, which is a mix of impressionism and detail.
you can read more about the Ketchum Arts Festival on page 5