Giving Thought
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an ongoing avalanche of need for financial help, for health care, for fellowship and for food.
The Aspen-to-Parachute region has mustered an exceptional response to the huge and continuing need for food, and arguably the backbone of that effort has been the Food Bank of the Rockies. The organization procures and distributes food to hungry people in 30 Colorado counties and Wyoming as well. The Western Slope of Colorado, including the Roaring Fork Valley, is served by the organization’s Palisade warehouse and office, which ramped up its distributions drastically in March, and has been hustling to help thousands in need ever since.
Roshni Gorur/Anderson Ranch Arts Center
The pandemic provided inspiration for Anderson Ranch Art Center’s outdoor exhibition “Sculpturally Distanced,” which featured 17 works of art scattered throughout the Snowmass Village campus this summer. As part of the art institution’s newest outdoor exhibition, six Roaring Fork Valley artists decorated trees around the facility for an artful take on more traditional holiday aesthetics.
“Anything that we can do outside with visitors where we can be safe and distanced we’re going to do,” said Anderson Ranch’s Studio Coordinator of Sculpture Zakriya Rabani of the impetus for the project. “In the call we put out to artists, we mentioned that it doesn’t have to be holiday themed, it was just a chance for them to come out and decorate a tree. We chose those words strategically.”
A team from Anderson Ranch Arts Center hangs one of seven banners on a construction barrier on East Hyman Ave. in Aspen on Friday, Dec. 4, 2020. Anderson Ranch received a grant from the City of Aspen to partner with nonprofit organizations within the Roaring Fork Valley to artistically represent the organization’s mission statements. On top of the artistic partnership, Anderson Ranch also made a donation to each of the organizations as part of their grant. Each of the seven banners is designed by a different artist for a different organization. Organizations like ACES, English in Action and AspenOUT, depicted in this image, were represented. Anderson Ranch hopes that the banners will hang for at least four months in the three locations around town. (Kelsey Brunner/The Aspen Times)