Christmas with the Art Tourist in Snowsville

A craft story about holidays out of a suitcase

by Terry Talty

Breckenridge, CO – The Art Tourist did not take off for Christmas, did not go to shows and write the guy-on-the-street review, but instead created another traveling Christmas. Last year, this Art Tourist was in the Pyrenees with Bilbao and the Guggenheim only a long car ride away. We're an American family so we made the six-hour drive in one day during the Christmas vacation. Good food and art overtake Christmas decorations in this part of the world.

This year we are in Colorado where the snowfall has been record-setting worderful, the Denver Art Museum is on stand-by waiting for its own "Architecture as Art" new addition to open, and the Musuem of Contemporary Art in Denver is also building a new space has no show until the 27 of January 2006. There were several festive events at the MCA in December that this Art Tourist just missed.

Instead, I was in the mountains pulling a festive family environment out of a suitcase. Here is the Christmas tree harvested from the surrounding national forest with a permit from the U.S. government (in case the NSA is monitoring this site). The tree is planted in a bucket that was filled with rocks, which were difficult to find in this snow-covered wonderland. According to Breckenridge town employees, nine-feet of snow had been removed before December 1.

We also made a trip to the grocery store. Yes, those are orage slices. My idea was to hang whole clementines, but the tree branches would have been pointing to hell rather than heaven if I had done so. This idea of the dried slices came from my friend Gitti, who lives in Colorado Springs. She is German, and has only recently given up lighting her tree with candles. Thanks to Gitti, Steuart Bremner was able to take this very cool picture of the Breckenridge Ski Area filtered by ornamental tree.

This was not the first time this Art Tourist family was homeless for the entire month of December and January, and so we've had practice creating decorations out of nothing. As Americans, some may think it's our patriotic duty to buy a bunch of slock from Wal-Mart for the holidays we don't like to do that . We like to spend our money on food and drink -- preferable French wine -- public radio, books and progressive political organizations.

Steuart made an oyster knife from a putty knife at Breck Ironworks, we borrowed another one from our friends, Sally and Jere Lynch, who grew up on the East Coast and who had advice about how to use the things. (Last year we were watching French cooking shows trying to figure it out. We had no idea opening a shellfish could be so hard. It seems so easy in a restaurant.) In France we learned that oyster are necessary at Christmas, but can be eaten in any month that contains an "r." Steuart's mother ate her first oyster, as did our daughter, Lorna, this Christmas. Some wait longer than others to discovery the wonders of the world.

On New Year's Eve, the town of Breckenridge put up a good show. Ski and snowboard instructors made a torchlight parade down groomed runs starting at the top of Peak 8 and snaking across the the base of Peak 9, starting just after dark, about 5:30 M.S.T. At 9 p.m. (midnight in Greenland) fireworks appeared like magic over the Ten Mile Range. Graham Bremner and Melina Osornio took turns behind the camera during this great opportunity to photograph incendary devices. Melina can take credit for the one pictured here.

Terry Talty is the self-described art tourist, who writes contemporary art criticism in a postmodern world where anything could be good. Click here to see the Christmas card.