The Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs — Even the quaint culture of the Yampa Valley tends to have small communities that don't intermingle that often.

There are the outdoor sports-driven crowd, the older retired community, young white- and blue-collared workers, the folks running cattle ranches in rural portions of the county, and a thriving Hispanic culture, just to name a few.

Organizers of a fund-raiser next week called "Women About Transformation through art, music, performance, literature and style," hope to pull people from all communities of the Yampa Valley to meet, mingle and make friends.

"We just want to bring everyone together, and art is a good way to do it," Barbara Hinton said.

Hinton is one of three artists who will display work at the gathering, as well as an organizer of the event. The fund-raiser displays some of the creativity of local women, and even some men, including a sale of artwork and jewelry, free haircuts and stylings and a book signing from Jill Murphy Long, the author of the book "Permission to Nap."

There will also be free food and music from local flutists, as well as an African drum troupe and fire performance (pending permits because of the fire ban).

Forty percent of sales of the artwork which is mixed-media created by Hinton, Eileen Braziel and aspiring artist Melissa Roger will go to the Yampa Valley Community Foundation to be made available to nonprofits in the Yampa Valley. Twenty percent of the sales from the jewelry, made by Melanie Guerra, will go to the same cause, as well as a percentage of book sales from Long's "Permission to Nap."

A $5 donation is suggested for the event, which also will go the nonprofits.

There are actually several functions of the fund-raiser, from raising money for the community to getting residents together for a day, but the idea of a "transformation" in every person's life is a key element of the event.

For example, Hinton said organizers hope that bringing different segments of the community together will stimulate a transformation of how people view and feel about their community.

On a deeper level, a transformation takes place within an artist (including musicians, writers and stylists) who creates a piece of art, Hinton said. Another transformation takes place when the art is displayed, and the fund-raiser allows for that to happen.

"This is a reflection of the community. All the artists and musicians are a reflection of the surroundings," Hinton said.

And in some sense, she explained, the surroundings the Yampa Valley stimulate transformation in many of its residents. Many people in the valley came from a different life and transformed their normal day-to-day existences to live here.

Even taking on the normal challenges of life stimulates a self-transformation. In a sense, the fund-raiser is stimulating, recognizing and celebrating these transformations, which can be overlooked.

"Women About Transformation through art, music, performance, literature and style" is from 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday at the Comb Goddess in the Old West Building, 1104 Lincoln Ave.

For more information, call Hinton at 875-1298 or e-mail barbsteamboat@yahoo.com.