Thanks to a late-afternoon tweet from the Broadmoor, I found out that the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center now has another claim to fame: one of its pieces is part of the United States Postal Service's Modern Art in America 1913-1931 2013 forever stamp collection.

• USPS

The work is Arthur Dove's 1929 painting "Fog Horns," which belongs to the FAC's permanent collection. Unveiled in late 2012, Dove's work is part of a 12-stamp series that includes pieces by Georgia O'Keeffe, Man Ray and Marsden Hartley.

You can buy the stamp series here, and a framed print of the stamp here.

OK, there's no real huge point to this blog, just an interesting story.

Last week, I went to San Antonio (or more specifically, Boerne) to visit my family. While I was there, my father purchased a piece of art from the gorgeous Greenhouse Gallery, and that prompted an entire living room redecoration headed up by my mother, my grandmother and myself.

One of the paintings in the mix was this old brownish one of a house and a tree, something that's been in the visual periphery my whole life. Back when the family lived in the Springs, my mother bought it at a thrift store, apparently captured by its calm simplicity. Naturally, my grandmother remembers this (she never forgets a Goodwill/Arc score).

• Edie Adelstein
• The painting ...

As we moved it about, I held it under a lamp to make out the tiny signature in the bottom corner. And lo, it says, Archie Musick. He who painted the interiors of the City Auditorium and the Manitou Springs Post Office as part of President Franklin Roosevelt's Public Works of Art Project and is a pillar of local Regionalist art. Musick was also a friend of Boardman Robinson, the director of the Broadmoor Art Academy when it became the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.

What's more, I spoke to Archie's daughter Pat a few years back for this article on local art history.

• Edie Adelstein
• Can you see it?

Now, I'm no expert on authenticity, so any help is appreciated. All I know is that this signature matches those I found online, and the work sure suits his style. And that just goes to show you, one never knows what turns up at the thrift store.

The second year of the Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region's annual art organization fundraiser kicked off today, with 18 nonprofits slated to receive the money.

Last year, the Peak Arts Fund pulled in $35,995 to 15 orgs, with hopes to hit a goal of $50,000 in 2013.

• COPPER

You can donate as much as you want, but for $60, you receive a Peak Radar Pass, which gets you discounts to restaurants and other businesses, passes or coupons to local events and more, all of which is listed online.

As before, donors can only contribute to the program as a whole, and not an individual organization; COPPeR's outlook is a holistic one, e.g., "a rising tide raises all boats." However, all underwriting and administrative costs have already been covered by the Founders Circle made up of: the Pikes Peak Community Foundation, Bee Vradenburg Foundation, Inasmuch Foundation and Kirkpatrick Family Fund.

So 100 percent of proceeds will benefit the following:

• Business of Art Center

• Chamber Orchestra of the Springs (new this year)

• Colorado College Summer Music Festival (new this year)

• Colorado Springs Children’s Chorale

• Colorado Springs Chorale

• Colorado Springs Conservatory

• Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center

• Colorado Springs Philharmonic

• Colorado Springs Youth Symphony

• Cottonwood Center for the Arts

• Imagination Celebration

• Millibo Art Theatre

• Opera Theatre of the Rockies

• Ormao Dance Company (new this year)

• Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival

• TheatreWorks

• Tri-Lakes Center for the Arts

• Velvet Hills Chorus

Also like last year, the initiative will only run through May 1.

Last week, the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center announced the winners from its annual Representing the West Art Exhibition & Sale.

We're obviously, um, late on this. So, without further ado ...

• Best of Show, 2D: "Ghost Ranch," by Teresa Vito

• First place, 2D: "13th and Grand, Pueblo, CO, Cir. 1995," by Nathan Solano

• Second place, 2D: "Swallow Duet," by Lani Vlaanderen

• Best of Show, 3D: "Mid Day Sun," by Greg Kelsey

• Sangre de Cristo Purchase Award: "Near the Spanish Settlements, El Valle," by Tom Lockhart

The show was juried by Kathy Andrews, and art appraiser and adjunct professor in Denver.

Sangre is still taking votes for the People's Choice Award. You can cast your vote at the museum until the show closes on April 6.

From the listings desk: Saturday is the third installment of We Are Not Rembrandt, happening at Zodiac. To give you a better idea of what the show is — since the title's all about what it isn't — take a look at some of the art going up:

• "Crane" by Steffany Suze

• "Purgatory Symphony" by Jeremy McAnally

Plus jewelry like this:

• By Marisa Madge

Now let's just hope the show doesn't get snowed out.

Today, the Bee Vradenburg Foundation announced that it's officially seeking a new executive director, after longtime ED Susan Edmondson departed for the Downtown Partnership last week.

In the interim, trustee Kathleen Fox Collins will serve in Edmondson's old spot, and be reachable via voicemail at 477-0185 or directly at 660-1010 or 473-4738, or via e-mail at susan@beevradenburgfoundation.org.

For those interested in the position permanently, here are the details:

The Executive Director of Bee Vradenburg Foundation will be an experienced self-starter with a strong background in the arts and nonprofits. The ideal candidate should possess the skills outlined in the job description as well as the following attributes the board views as essential to this strategic leadership; respect for artistic freedom and the artistic process; a servant's attitude with respect to grantees and volunteers; optimism and a can-do attitude for working within the community and among artists and arts organizations. Approximately 50 percent of the position's duties involve grants management and administrative functions; the remaining 50 percent comprises leadership on key community initiatives and projects. The Board of Trustees is particularly interested in candidates with a strong understanding of the history of the arts in the Pikes Peak region and a vision for the role of the arts as a vehicle for change in the community.

Please click HERE to download the complete job description and application instructions.

No phone calls, please. Thank you!

For more on Edmondson's new post, read this blog and column.

• Kathleen McFadden
• "25 Cents" by Kathleen McFadden

Colorado Springs is full of amazing photographers, one of which is Kathleen McFadden, the artist and owner of Range Gallery in Old Colorado City. She's had the shopfront for a few years now, but decades of shooting experience, capturing the most Americana corners of Texas to California.

McFadden is also notable for her innovations, like her "third dimension" panoramic photographs that curve out to hug the viewer, and a camera that spins in a full circle, creating a warped image that still manages to document its subject well.

Now McFadden is offering tips and tricks from her trade with photography classes. The image above, which she says was taken at Gus' Tavern in Pueblo, is from one of her class excursions.

She offers courses for beginners, intermediates and old pros looking to get out of a rut, the idea behind her newest class, "Walk About Workshop." For $200, you'll meet up at a predetermined location and see and shoot the way McFadden does: "The goal of this class is to practice the art of seeing the beauty/humor/interest in the everyday world around us. We'll be looking to recognize Americana style human interest, local color and humorous images."

Following that, students will send McFadden their five favorite pictures from the day and receive a critique.

Interested? If not, you can still check in at Range for a variety of prints and cards, or get an image framed.

Thanks to TheatreWorks, the artist Mark Rothko has been on a lot of minds lately.

Its production of the 2009 play Red was simple but powerful. I had the pleasure of seeing a show (and, humblebrag, to lead an audience talkback afterward) and it was a lovely look at the decisions an artist must make — from formal elements like what to add to a painting — to personal decisions, like one Rothko wrestled with following a lucrative commission.

• National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
• "Hierarchical Birds," 1944, oil paint on canvas

Red fared well with our theater critic Todd Wallinger, too. He wrote that each of the arguments Rothko aired with his assistant Ken "landed like a punch in the gut."

So it's perfect timing to learn that the Denver Art Museum will host a Rothko exhibit this June. Figure to Field: Mark Rothko in the 1940s is a 28-piece show that showcases Rothko's most formative decade with some works that, according to the DAM, have rarely been seen.

As you can see from the image above, it doesn't look much like the Rothko we know. Unlike the "classical" Rothkos, there are figures in place of bright color blocks. But that was Rothko's thing in those days; he was a devoted student of various myths, the Bible and Friedrich Nietzsche.

In addition, the DAM will show works by Rothko's contemporaries: Robert Motherwell, Clyfford Still and Jackson Pollock.

Figure to Field entry will be included in museum admission.

Doug Lamborn is a man of many letters. That is, he inspires a lot of strong feelings from people, who write letters to the Indy and other publications talking about how pissed off they are at the congressman.

That's probably the most non-partisan thing I can write about him, since the focus of this blog is that the 5th Congressional District Representative, with his wife Jeanie, will attend tonight's opening reception for Cottonwood Center for the Arts' Congressional Art Competition.

The Congressional Art Competition is a nationwide program started in 1982 that engages high school artists to show their efforts in local galleries with the chance to then exhibit in Washington, D.C. Tonight, a winner from the group will have his or her work displayed in the Capitol for one year and receive D.C. plane tickets, museum tickets and scholarships.

According to the competition's website, students submit their work to their local district representative and a panel of artists will select a winner.

The show features over 100 pieces from high school and home school students district-wide, Cottonwood says. In addition, it will also hang work from Ridgeview Elementary students upstairs "to show our continued support for student art and art in schools."

The reception runs from 5-8 p.m. and will have refreshments provided by the El Paso County Republican Women.

From the listings desk: Music and art meet again at the hands of Michele "Nelly" Johnson, a woman who told the Indy last June that she wanted to create events that blended sight and sound like the kind she was used to in her hometown Minneapolis.

Her effort, We Are Not Rembrandt, was such a success she hosted another, and now she's back with No. 3, slated for 6 p.m., Saturday, March 9 at Zodiac (230 Pueblo Ave.) A $5 door fee gets you 13 artists and six gigs. Here's the line-up:

• Artists:

K8E ORR
J9 Glass
Steffany Suze
Jeremy McAnally
Lexi Harris
Marcea Flowers
Jesse Allen Rozell
Sara McCandless
Miranda Davie
Marisa Madge
Heather Barlow
Carrie Miller
Michele "Nelly" Johnson

• Acts:

Chauncy Crandall
Bryan Ostrow
Andrea Stone and friends
Moonhoney
Floaty Raft
RayDio

In WANR tradition, Johnson will take donations for a local nonprofit, and like last time, it's going to All Breed Rescue & Training.

Click here for more info on the event.

Like most people, I trashed just about everything my boyfriend had given me after we broke up. What was personal I dumped in the garbage, what was possibly meaningful to someone else, I gave to Goodwill.

That's the way it usually goes when two people part, because when relationships end, they are usually deemed failures, and we move on, eager to forget. However, the Museum of Broken Relationships seeks to change that outlook.

• Museum of Broken Relationships
• All's fair in love, even curating the breakup.

Far from a punchline, or a Chicken Soup for the Soul-style pity party, the museum wants donations of objects that once meant the world to still mean something. A token of shared human suffering, an offering of closure of a chapter in one's life, "be it sheer exhibitionism, therapeutic relief, or simple curiosity — people embraced the idea of exhibiting their love legacy as a sort of a ritual, a solemn ceremony," reads the website.

Each of the items in the museum's holdings comes with a story from its donor. These include a cell phone — "He gave me his cell phone so I couldn’t call him any more" — a wedding dress, a "Divorce Day Mad Gnome" with a suitably crazy story and pink fuzzy handcuffs. Naturally.

While the brick-and-mortar museum resides in Zagreb, Croatia (home of its founders, who broke up), portions of the collection travel internationally. And one portion is currently on display at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.

BMoCA's 40-"story" exhibit opened on Valentine's Day (of course) and runs through May 26. It couches the show in the same philosophical terms as the collection's parent:

[A]s more and more people experience several significant relationships during their lifetime, with second and third marriages becoming increasingly common, we begin to acknowledge that our expectations and needs change as much as we do as we live longer, more educated, and self-determined lives. Simultaneously, the notion that the person we spent part of our life with was just “the wrong one” and should be erased from our memory becomes less plausible.

If the breaking-up thing is too much of a bummer though, you can, instead of parting with your relationship mementos, create a new one with BMoCA's March 1 HeARTifacts: a workshop for pARTners.

With your boo — or anyone, really — you collaborate to map your partnership. Using some guidance from an instructor, pairs will create a timeline of their relationship and divine meaning from what they've made. "Each participating couple will develop a personal atlas charting how their relationship started and developed as well as how it will continue in the future."

The workshop lasts three hours, supplies food and drink, and costs $45 to $50 per pair. Interested? Call 303/443-2122 to sign up. And if you're flying solo, you can check out the rest of the museum for a mere $4 to $5 any day of the week except Mondays.

Tidbits from the scene:

• A heart for art: The Cultural Office of the Pikes Peak Region announced today that it's going to get involved in the upcoming local elections by talking with the candidates in March "to share insights and information about the arts." It's also looking for volunteers to become an "arts advocate" for the community. You can download "advocacy tools" from COPPeR's website on how to do it solo, or sign up to help COPPeR with festivals, fundraising events, art openings and more.

In other COPPeR news, the Peak Arts Fund kicks off March 7.

• Mark your calendar: Aficionados Luncheon with Michael Howell, registrar and collections manager for the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. Howell will discuss the Colorado College Southwest Collection, which "consists of Native American objects collection through various expeditions throughout the southwest — conducted independently of, and by, Colorado College — from 1893 to 1940." Howell will also talk about key items in the collection and the relationship between the FAC and CC. A buffet lunch will be served.

Wednesday, Feb. 27, noon. Gaylord Hall in CC's Worner Student Center, 902 N. Cascade Ave. $17. RSVP to 389-6334 or swshulbert@coloradocollege.edu by Feb. 22.

• If you missed it: Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico: Architecture, Katsinam, and the Land opened at the Denver Art Museum Sunday. This series of 53 works covers O'Keeffe's interest in Hopi katsinam, or supernatural beings, along with the natural and man-made landscape she loved. Real katsinam figures and photographs of Native American ceremonies like those O'Keeffe saw are included in the show.

Through April 28. Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Ave. Pkwy., Denver. Included in general admission: $3-$13 for nonmembers, free for members.

• Denver Art Museum
• Georgia O'Keeffe, "Paul's kachina"

• On the air: If you remember our recent cover story on blossoming local arts institutions, you may recall that Cottonwood Center for the Arts has plans to be on Roadtrip Radio once a month. Roadtrip is a local show that airs at 8 some Saturday mornings on KREL-AM 1580.

Cottonwood was last aired Jan. 27, and the next time it'll be on is Feb. 24.

In the meantime, Cottonwood is gearing up for its 30th Congressional Art Show, opening Feb. 22 (there's a reception that night starting at 5.) Read more about it here.

• The Cottonwood crew, including executive director Jon Khoury, on the far right.

• Left coast-bound: The FAC announced that its first Museum Society trip outside the state will be to Los Angeles in April (we first introduced the Society in the same cover story mentioned above). The four-day itinerary includes a private tour of the Getty Villa with curator Claire Lyons, a private reception at the Weisman Art Foundation and a visit to the home of collectors Cliff and Mandy Einstein.

The trip is available only to Society members, so keep this in mind if you're thinking about joining. Contact Tom Jackson tjackson@csfineartscenter.org for sign-up information.