The Blue Sage Gallery offers art shows featuring a wide variety of local and visiting artists and genres. If you are an artist who would like to have a show in our gallery, you will need to submit a few pieces of your work to be juried by our art committee. (If you have your own web site and do not live nearby, you may request a review via Internet.)
Hours are Tuesday-Saturday, 10:00-2:00
Past exhibits at the Blue Sage:
integrative artist, Steve MacGregor
A Solo Exhibition - "photographic by nature, through a binary gate"
Drawing from Nature & Tradition
Fiber artist Katherine Colwell and traditional quilter Bertie Smithwere featured in the show, Drawing from Nature & Tradition.
Katherine Colwell’s work synthesizes her love of landscape drawing and silk embroidery. She explores a variety of fiber media, from hand embroidery, silk paper fusion, hand-made felt, pieced quilting, two-sided and framed wall pieces, and embroidered etchings. Katherine has created drawings in graphite, pen and ink, and watercolor, on which the majority of her work is based. For the past fifteen years, a continuous thread has been the exploration of hand embroidered folding books, created from silk, linen & cotton fabrics, containing images & hand stitched text.
As a fiber artist and art educator, Colwell has been developing her unique blend of embroidery, drawing and printmaking for over three decades, exhibiting and marketing work nationwide and working with individuals and organizations in workshops, secondary art classes and in her studio and classroom at Rivendell Retreat.
Sleeping Cedar-Luminous Dreams. Imagery based on original watercolor drawings, interpreted with silk paper, ink and beads.
Bertie Smith started hand quilting in the mid-1970’s in Leadville Colorado. She retired to Paonia in 1992 and joined the S&B Quilt Guild and learned to quilt by machine. Bertie is also a member of Thimbleberries club at The Quilt Patch in Hotchkiss and Paonia Quilt Group, which meets at the Jehovah Witness church. The Road to Dixie quilt was a 2009 Thimbleberries challenge. The challenge was to use left-over Thimbleberries scraps from previous projects. There are 49 blocks in the quilt and each block is from a different fabric. Another of Bertie’s exquisite work is a quilt called Rose Supreme which is machine pieced and appliqué. This quilt was exhibited in the Rotunda of the State Capitol building in the Colorado Quilting Council's 2003 Capitol Quilt Show.
The Road to Dixie. A traditional scrappy quilt, with each Jacob's ladder block in a different fabric.
Janice Cooper
I was born and raised in Hotchkiss, Colorado and after being gone for about twenty years I returned to Lazear. It wasn’t quite the end of the world that I thought it was when I graduated.
I spent years as an antique and collectible dealer among other jobs and was always drawn to the beauty of stained glass windows. So one day I drove fifty-five miles in a snowstorm to Grand Junction to take my first stained glass lesson. But of course, I had not made any arrangement with the instructor, except to find out which days she had classes and everyone had canceled. She was kind enough to let me stay for the class.
It was the first of many classes in both fused glass and the traditional stained glass. After a few years I began selling glass supplies and teaching art glass at my antique and collectibles shop.
Now, I spend most of my time in my home studio and teach occasionally. I give many thanks to my husband, who tolerates my obsession. I’ve always loved teaching. It amazes me to see what people can create, the colors they use and the ideas they have. Glass lends itself to each individual interpretation.
There is no limit to the possibilities when you work with glass; not only windows, but decorative items, jewelry and much more. Man has been making glass objects for thousands of years and I still marvel at the great pieces that have been created with the simplest of tools and a great vision.
Mary Jursinovic
My interest in Ceramics began while teaching Junior High Social Studies in Northern Illinois in the early 1970s. I fortunately stumbled upon an adult education pottery class that literally, changed my life. A brave, blind move to Crested Butte, Colorado in 1976 found me pursuing what has become a lifetime of crafting fine pottery, establishing Creekside Pottery in 1979.
My work has been primarily functional, using mid to high range stoneware clays to create hand-built and wheel-thrown pieces including dinnerware, utilitarian kitchen and household items, and decorator lamps. Pottery to me is an art form that serves to bring beauty and excitement to the ordinary aspects of our lives. I have always expected my work to become an integral part of my customers’ daily lives.
Landscape scene pottery is one of my most recognized lines. Colored stoneware clays are hand assembled to create the scenic design. Each piece is unique and includes elements depicting the stunning landscape of the Rocky Mountains.
Raku is a firing technique I enjoy immensely. The spontaneous, unpredictable nature of the process results in dazzling, copper-toned decorating accessories. Each Raku fired piece is one-of-a-kind, and a collector’s treasure.
In 2003 I had the remarkable opportunity to study with Felipe Ortega, an Apache potter, who is renowned for his work with micaceous clay. I follow the traditional techniques he taught in sanding and burnishing each piece to enhance the natural luster of the clay and bring the sparkling mica particles to the surface. Horsehair is applied at the end of the firing process to produce the spider web surface design.
Since moving to the North Fork Valley in 2008, the surrounding earthy, agricultural lands of Bone Mesa and stunning views of mountains and mesas have been a new source of creativity for me. I am excited to be a part of the vibrant art community of this beautiful area.
Mary Hockenbery
Fine Art Photographer Mary Hockenbery, represented in galleries in the southwestern U.S., in collections internationally, and in many private homes, captures with her lens artifacts of human existence and elements of nature, translating them through her unique world view into images at once striking, symbolic and charming.
Graphic manipulations and interesting textures give a painterly quality to Mary’s thought-provoking and sometimes eerie iconography. Though shooting with a digital camera, Mary shoots only with the Manual setting, using her proven skills from the old manual camera days. From an original image or images, Mary builds layers in Photoshop, mixing visual elements, blending and erasing textures (created by herself or others in the online image community), working with color and composition as if on a canvas.
Her photograph Tattoo was selected for Tate Modern’s book “Street or Studio,” a history of photographic portraiture that included some of the world’s leading photographers. In 2007, also in England, Mary’s image Arroyo Seating became the signature piece in Norwich Arts Centre’s exhibition and book “Abandoned Chairs,” depicting chairs in unusual settings from photographers around the world. A number of her images have also been published in JPG Magazine.
In addition to her international successes, Mary has won awards in regional shows in Colorado and New Mexico, and shown in juried exhibitions in the Harwood Museum in Taos, the Studio Tour in Dixon, and the High Road Tour in Penasco, all in New Mexico. Her solo shows include “Circus Chimera” at the Embudo Valley Library in Dixon, and the Dog House Coffee Shop in Delta, CO. Group shows include “Abstract” at the Creamery Arts Center in Hotchkiss, and the Delta Fine Arts Annual Show in Cedaredge, CO; Two Graces Gallery in Ranchos de Taos, NM; and “El Corazon” at Eclectic Expressions in Arlington, TX.
Current Galleries
High Road Market Place, Truchas, NM Planet Earth and the 4 Directions Gallery, Grand Junction, CO