To honor the change in seasons, Pine Moon Fine Art is unveiling its “Anywhere But Here” exhibit, on Friday, April 7, as part of First Friday Artwalk. The collection of fair weather pieces draws inspiration from destinations all over the world — as long as they aren’t Steamboat Springs.

“Taking you away from the muddy mud season that we’re in right now,” said Missy Borden, one of the 14 artists whose work will be featured in the exhibit at Pine Moon.

One of the paintings being unveiled on Friday features a rowboat tied up at a dock, appropriately called “Not a Steamboat,” by local artist Joanne Orce.

---

---

Keeping to a similar warm-weather theme, the Wild Horse Gallery will exhibit two recently completed oil paintings by Richard Galusha — one that depict meadows of native wyethia, or mules ears, within a warm summertime glow and another painting that interprets fields of Colorado’s cool, silvery lupine.

Meanwhile, Steamboat Creates will premiere a litany of new art at the Depot Art Center and will give the public a space to drop in and create art of their own.

---

---

As part of a crane-inspired creative arts scholarship contest, 19 participants will unveil works of either visual or written art, all of which must accurately depict aspects of crane habitats or physiology, so the contestants needed to perform their own research as well.

The contest was open to local high school seniors in Routt and Moffat counties and will award $3,000 scholarships to the winners in the written and visual categories, while second place finishers will receive $1,500 scholarships, all of which come from a single donor and crane-enthusiast Gale Jensen.

---

Get a weekly rundown of upcoming concerts, events and fun activities happening in Routt County sent to your inbox. Sign up here: steamboatpilot.com/newsletter

---

And starting on Friday and continuing for through April, a small space in the Depot Art Center will be repurposed as a drop-in studio area for the community. The prompt for the drop-in studio space will center on the word “community,” and what that word means to the person contributing their own art for display, either by painting small card-sized images or by adding to a community weaving project, where the public can write on individual pieces of fabric or yarn and add them to a larger public piece.

“Over under, that’s all you need to do — no experience necessary,” said Jill Modesitt, the program director at Steamboat Creates.

The exhibit at the Depot Art Center will also debut works by seven local artists, two of whom, Erin Branscum and Leslie Bell, are newcomers.

While many of the local galleries are keeping to a seasonal theme, the Schoonover Gallery will feature work by Rene-Romero Schuler, a painter and sculptor whose work focuses on femininity through semi-abstract depictions of womanhood. 

The two newest venues for the Artwalk are Rumor Design + reDesign, an interior design business that relocated downtown in 2021, and Emerald, a coffee shop that opened last July and has only a couple ArtWalks under its belt.

“We’re still in our rookie year,” said Emi Grayam, a supervisor at Emerald.

The coffee shop will feature live music from 5-7 p.m. with wine samples and a menu of organic and sustainably sourced food.

Emerald will also have live music by the local band Steamboat Folk. Many other venues will also host live music such as the Jace Romick Gallery, which will feature another local band, The Neighbors, and local artist Chula Beauregard will be painting live at the gallery.

And for the first time, certain works at Jace Romick Gallery will be sold for 50% off in the upper level of the gallery. A total of 13 art galleries participate in First Friday Artwalk and more information on each exhibit can be found at SteamboatCreates.org/first-Friday-artwalk/.