Regan Mertz/The Aspen Times
The city of Aspen held the final day of its 21st Annual Downtown Aspen Art Festival on Sunday, July 21, at Paepcke Park.
Beginning on Friday, July 19, artists from all over the country — including Utah, Arizona, California, and Wyoming — showcased their creations. Art at the fair consisted of sculptures, jewelry, photography, paintings, and more.
“Look at this location,” Santa Fe-based sculptor Fredrick Prescott said. He was referring to the park: a green grassy square off of Aspen’s Main Street, surrounded by mountains.
“Yeah, it’s amazing,” he said. “And (Howard Alan) brings all these artists out here from all over the country. They get a great turnout, and I’ve hooked up with a lot of my old clients that have bought sculptures 30 years ago. They really support the arts here.”
He first came out to Aspen right after he graduated high school in 1967. He began showing at some of the city’s galleries, including Cooper Street with Joanne Lyons, in the ’70s and continued into the 2000s.
After taking an almost decade-long break from showing in aspen, he returned for the art festival this year.
“I used to come here all the time to ski,” he said. “I’d come here in the summer and bring sculptures. I always love coming. Because it’s just a special place.”
Prescott’s dad was a mechanical engineer, and he grew up in his dad’s machine shop. Eventually, he began taking painting classes, and through this, he began putting his two interests together to create sculptures.
The sculptures he brought from Santa Fe included a moose and a bear bobbing their heads, as well as a dog, a cactus, and a flamingo, among others.
“Then I put the painting and the metal in the sculpture, and the kinetic part of the sculpture is all moving in the wind,” he said. “When the wind blows, the sculpture moves, so, you know, animals usually are moving. They’re not stationary. It’s kind of fun to do the animals.”
Another artist, based over 900 miles away in Missouri, brought her leather creations to the valley, which she calls, “one of a kind.”
Kelly Brown, from Sunrise Beach, makes her art pieces out of leather and other animal skins, like cows, buffalo, stingrays, and elephants. She said all of her materials are ethically-sourced.
For an elephant, it is not poached. Its skin is used for leather goods, and the meat feeds families.
Using leathers and other animal skins, hair, and feathers, she creates scenes within picture frames: mountains, horses, palapas, and the American flag. The materials she uses are treated with acid wash, dyeing, and other techniques to create the desired effect.
“Elephant hides: They make great rocks and mountains and different things like that,” she said.
She encourages all onlookers and customers to touch her art pieces because the oil from their fingers actually conditions the leather.
Brown began experimenting with this type of art around 20 years ago, but life and children put it on hold until about ten years ago. Throughout the last decade, a lot of mistakes took place to get her to where she is today.
“It depends on the picture, depends on if I’ve done the process before,” she said. “A lot of it is trial and error and things like that to see what works, how the glue works, sticks out, activates with the leather. Sometimes it takes the color off the dye. It just depends on the details.”
This is her first show in Aspen, and she’s looking to come back next year.
There is another showing in Beaver Creek from Friday, Aug. 2, to Sunday, Aug. 4.
