The dining room at the Boulder Hot Springs has been a fixture at the historic hotel and retreat south of Boulder for more than a century—but in recent years its walls have played host to a rotating selection of art produced by local artists, including new artwork unveiled on Sunday.
The oil paintings of Boulder artist Carol Christensen and pencil drawings of Clancy artist Lee Benner adorned the dining room walls beginning on Sunday, during the Hot Spring’s latest Artist Reception, an event held to launch the newest selection of artwork. The artists’ work will remain on display through January 2022, according to Barb Reiter, who organized the reception.
Sunday’s Artist Reception wasn’t the first time Christensen and Benner had shown work together. Reiter approached Christensen about being the featured artist, and when Christensen said she wasn’t sure she had enough art to cover all the walls, Reiter asked Benner, whom she knew through the Jefferson County DUI Task Force and other groups, if she’d want to partake.
Benner’s art is from her personal collection and is not for sale. She said she’s only sold her art twice: once when she sold an oil painting in high school, and years later when she sold a drawing of an elk to a friend who taught at Clancy school.
Christensen’s art in the dining room is for sale—and discounted—she said. The paintings, many of which feature horses, range in price from $60 to $200. “I got into the equestrian thing about 30 years ago,” she said.
A couple of the pieces were inspired by pictures of the Jefferson County Rodeo, others are of her own horses or conceptualized from her imagination, and a few are based on photographs made by other people. Two pieces in the dining room, including one that’s already been sold, are of buildings, including in the nearby ghost town Comet.
Christensen has been painting all her life. Most of her paintings take about two months if she works on them intermittently, she said. If she works more consistently, they take less time.
Christensen’s portfolio is also at the Hot Springs. It includes pictures of paintings Christensen has sold, including some pictures of the paintings with the people who have bought them.
In one of the portfolio’s photos, a couple is holding a painting of two horses they purchased. Christensen is particularly proud of this photo because “they had a Georgia O’Keeffe painting hanging above their couch, and they took it down and put mine there instead.”
Benner has always loved art and has been drawing since high school. Much of her art comes from her years as a teacher at Clancy School. “Kids would ask me, ‘Can you draw me a bear climbing a tree, or can you draw me a wolf, or can you draw me a blue heeler puppy,'” Benner explained, gesturing to the respective drawings on the dining room walls. Benner has kept the original copies of almost every drawing she’s made, except for one of a helicopter she drew for her son. A copy of drawing is also hanging at the Hot Springs.
The drawings that aren’t hanging in the display are in a notebook of cartoons from Clancy School that Benner drew with her students. “I drew every picture from that book, and that’s what’s in the notebook.”
Benner’s drawings each took a couple of weeks to complete, except for one she made in the 1970s of football players, based on a photo from Sports Illustrated. That one, she said, took years to finish.
Reiter, who is in charge of changing out the art for each reception and helps prepare the events, said that the Hot Springs hosts an Artist Reception every couple of months. The idea was born a few years ago, though both Reiter and the Hot Spring’s general manager Kerri Kumasaka are unsure exactly how many. Before the rotating displays, the art that was in the Boulder Hot Springs’ dining room had been there for a long time, and both Reiter and Hot Springs management thought the walls needed something new.
“There was nothing in the dining room,” Reiter said. “We kept some things up. One of the owners, she had some art we kept on the walls for a while.” And then, finally, they came up with the Artist Reception. Since then, the Hot Springs’ walls have been a temporary home to work from many local artists, including students from Jefferson High School.
Reiter said most of the artists featured at the receptions are found through personal connections of hers or other people involved in organizing the receptions. Benner was a personal connection of Reiter’s; Christensen was found via an artist group in Whitehall she’s part of. And receptions show the work of Jefferson High School students based on an agreement with the school’s art teacher Emma Ehret, and RaeCille Dawson before her. Art students from Jefferson High will show their art at the Artist Reception in April, at which time “their art will fill these walls,” Reiter said.
