Don and Gail Eden, of Steamboat Springs, began to earnestly collect art when they retired here from Chicago. But the days are gone when they actively seek out galleries to uncover a new piece of art for their home in The Sanctuary.

“I’ll tell you that retirement can be expensive when you have the time” to collect art, Gail said.

However, it’s neither time nor funds that are curtailing the Edens’ urge to collect art. They’ve just run out of space. At their home on a wooded lot where large mammals often wander, the three-dimensional pieces spill outdoors.

“We’re kind of getting to replacement mode,” Don said.

“If we’re going to buy something, it has to be, ‘Oh, is that gorgeous! That has to go on that wall!'” Gail agreed.

Still, the Edens returned from a recent trip to Spain and Northern Africa with a small geode stuffed with amethyst crystals.

The Edens began collecting art when Gail spotted the colorful handmade glass pieces of noted artist Dale Chihuly in a gallery in Vail.

When they returned to their previous home in Chicago, they encountered a major showing of Chihuly’s larger works in the Garfield Conservatory. Gail and Don became admirers, but the artist’s work was out of their price range.

Sagely, they began collecting pieces by Chihuly’s students. The first was a deep blue bowl that transmits the light in mysterious ways. Next, they purchased three large free-form glass bowls that now hang vertically over the French doors leading to the deck at their Steamboat home.

Don, who is handy, quickly realized that the couple’s growing collection of art glass needed custom lighting to be shown to its best effect. He built a stack of glass corner shelves in front of a deep red wall where the art appears to glow from within.

The Edens’ collection doesn’t stop at three-dimensional glass pieces. The best way to describe assemblage of art in their home would be “eclectic,” a term they readily embrace.

Consider Dolly, the palomino mare who sits perpetually on a barstool in front of their granite-topped kitchen bar, one shod hoof cradling a champagne flute.

She is human-sized and was made in 2003 of carefully painted fiberglass by sculptor Rose Reed Littrell, of Dickson, Tenn. Dolly is an expert at breaking the ice at cocktail parties.

The Edens are most proud of two sculptures by the artist “Tobey,” which reside just off the entry foyer of the home. The bronze sculptures, one of an eagle in flight and the second of a Native American figure, are etched with symbolic figures. Uncharacteristic of most bronzes, they are brightly colored.

Not far from the Tobey works is another bronze by Steamboat artist Sandy Graves.

It is accompanied by a large oil painting by Steamboat artist Brenda Hanin. Her early winter scene of a humble agricultural shed reflects a fine eye for authentic detail.

Other local artists who have earned a place in the Edens’ collection include watercolorist Greg Effinger and photographer Judy Jones.

Effinger’s paintings, typically devoted to recognizable Yampa Valley scenes, include Fish Creek Falls and another of two figures on horseback with a familiar white barn in the background. Gail loves that it captures springtime on the lower Elk River.

“I went for a bike ride over the weekend and recognized the barbed wire fences under water,” she said. “I realized I was just biking through Greg’s picture.”

One of Jones’ images of a tightly cropped herd of horses also is placed in the foyer.

In the backyard of the Edens’ home, a collection of metal sculptures is dappled by sunlight pouring through aspen leaves. A mossy boulder the size of a Chevy Tahoe dominates the setting and stands as proof that God, acting through a glacier, is an artist himself.

The Edens’ art collection is enabled in part because they are very open to each other’s taste in painting and sculpture.

“We genuinely don’t agonize about a lot of stuff,” Don said.

When Gail spotted the cut steel wall pieces of Eagle Creek, Ore., artist Brent Lawrence, Don didn’t hesitate. She was drawn to a piece that shows the heads of three heavily antlered bull elk standing out in relief from a plate of steel.

“I love it, but where would you put it? Don asked.

“On the wall in the dining room,” she replied.

“Done! I like it!” Don answered.

Driving down a country road in Tuscany, they spied a man painting at an easel set up on the shoulder. Later, while visiting a gallery, they met the son of the painter, who turned out to be Italo Peteri. They mutually agreed they had to have one of his classic Tuscan landscapes with a field of bright poppies in the foreground and a villa in the background.

It occupies a favored spot right next to the Hummel figurine collection of Don’s late mother, Leah. It’s proudly displayed on a marble-topped hutch that was a gift from Leah Eden.

“That is our pride and joy,” Gail said. “It was a first anniversary present.”

Of course, her own mother’s collection of cut glass also claims a prominent spot on the home’s upper level.

The Edens say they must slow the pace of their collecting. But inevitably, their favorite outdoor sculpture show in Loveland comes around again Aug. 7 to 9. It would be difficult to return to Steamboat empty-handed.