Join us as we use art as a means of storytelling.
Exhibiting Strength illustrates the ties that bind us all, allowing each member of the public to explore the different ways that artists have been impacted by the themes of mental health and suicide prevention through their art and in their own words.
This juried art show featuring local artists gives space for attendees to contemplate the ways in which mental health, suicide, and suicide prevention have impacted their own lives, while providing resources and information from SpeakUp ReachOut. Attend Exhibiting Strength anytime that the Vail Public library is open during the month of November, and join in the conversation by sharing your experience. If a specific piece (or pieces) resonates with you, there may be an opportunity to purchase it with a percentage of the proceeds supporting the mission of SpeakUp ReachOut to prevent suicide in Eagle County through training, awareness and hope.
As of the writing of this page, the Vail Public Library is currently open daily from 10 am to 6 pm, but please find more information on the Library and check for any changes in hours here.
Join us for the Kickoff Party!
Artist Bios:
Andrew Odlin
Andrew Odlin is a multidisciplinary artist based in Vail, CO. He received a BFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 2012 with an emphasis in printmaking and has since focused on painting, drawing, and sculpture. He employs distortions of imagery with figural representation, creating compositions that suggest an unharmonious narrative in harmonious visual terms. Often working in response to unplanned mark making, paintings and drawings become facsimiles of living—an attempt to achieve understanding by identifying possibilities and, hopefully, using the tools available to achieve the best combination of elements.
Andrew Pranger
Andrew Pranger is a working painter and print-maker originally from Richmond, Virginia. He studied Fine Art Painting at the University of Brighton, one of England’s most well respected institutions, and graduated with honors. His work has been shown with many respected galleries and organizations throughout the US and England and sells privately as well. He started two collectives of young artists who found disused spaces in towns and turned them into temporary “pop up” galleries, gaining rave reviews from local and national art publications as well as the public. After years of living in Europe he returned to the US and currently lives in Edwards, Colorado.
His work focuses on the engagement with the relationship between medium and idea. He attempts to show attention to the details of applying paint that takes into account the rich tradition of oil painting. Working within a highly figurative and traditional context, his work seeks to question the roles of painterly realism in relation to modern mass-media spectacle. His paintings deal with hubris and failure, yet attempt to maintain a lightness of touch and self-deprecating humor that preserves the difficult balance between the profound and the approachable. Pranger uses the language of portraiture to draw in viewers but corrupts and perverts understanding of the work on display. The identity of the figure, is beside the point.
Baylie Persson
Bea has been practicing watercolor since 2023 and this is the first Art Show she has ever been showcased in. Originally from rural western Arizona, Bea has been calling Colorado 'home' since 2021 and enjoys living in Eagle Valley with her two black cats, Pip & Tuck.
Julie Adriansen
Julie is a Vail Colorado based watercolor artist whose work celebrates simplicity, bold color, and emotional resonance. Her paintings often feature people and animals, rendered in vibrant hues that reflect not only how she sees them—but how they might see themselves. Each brushstroke is an invitation to feel what she feels: connection, warmth, and wonder.
Driven by a deep love for community, Julie believes art is a shared experience that brings people together. Whether she's painting, teaching, or simply enjoying the creative process with others, she sees art as a way to foster beauty, expression, and joy in everyday life.
Julie paints to connect—with her subjects, her viewers, and the world around her. She hopes her work speaks to you as deeply as it speaks to her.
Kelle Roberts
As an intuitive artist, I create from the threshold between waking and dreaming — a place where instinct guides imagery before logic intervenes. My process begins with little intention, allowing gesture, color, and spontaneous mark-making to reveal forms that feel familiar yet otherworldly. I paint not to depict reality, but to uncover the hidden emotional and symbolic worlds that run beneath it.
Working with fluid media such as watercolor, acrylic ink, and alcohol inks, I embrace their unpredictability. Stains bloom like thoughts forming, edges dissolve like memory, and shapes emerge from chance — figures, landscapes, and symbols rising from abstraction as though surfacing from the subconscious. Through this practice, the painting becomes a site of discovery. Meaning is not imposed; it arrives.
My imagery draws inspiration from nature and emotional archetypes, echoing how human experience often expresses itself in metaphor rather than literal form. I am compelled by the idea that inner worlds are no less real than physical ones — that intuition, imagination, and the surreal belong as much to lived reality as stone or shadow. Each work is a meditation on transformation, memory, and the porous boundary between the visible and the felt.
Kelly Jackson
Kelly is a local artist and arts therapy practitioner. The breadth of her existence spans over two decades in the beauty industry, which offers a very unique foundation to her artwork.
She has the pleasure of using her creative compass to support mental well-being in the community with art. She offers private, group and community art programs.
She loves to collaborate with dealers, brands, events, and commission projects. She dreams of seeing her art on snowboards around the world and hopes to use her creativity to be part of something bigger.
Contact the studio to connect and make your art dreams come true.
@theliftshack @luvkel
Margo Thomas
Margo Thomas is a local artist whose work celebrates nature, family, and the harmony of mountain life. Winner of this year’s Best of Vail Valley Reader’s Choice Award and a two-time Vail Valley Fine Art Show award winner, she has exhibited widely throughout the Vail Valley, including Vail Valley Art Guild, ARTSPaCE, Alpine Arts Center, Near and Far Vail, and regional outdoor festivals. Working in oil, ink, mica, and acrylics, she also serves as Art Curator for The Charter at Beaver Creek and is a TEDx speaker, inspiring audiences through harmony in visual experiences.
Susan Macklin Dolan
Susan Mackin Dolan was born in a small town in Maine near the northern end of the Appalachian Trail. She received her MFA at the University of Colorado Boulder, in printmaking and papermaking. In 1984 she helped establish the first papermaking studio in south Texas, Picante Papers, at the Southwest School of Art and was the original Chairperson. She has been an artist and educator for over 40 years and has taught and had artist residencies at many colleges, universities, and art centers including: University of Colorado, University of Oregon, Colorado Mountain College, West Texas State, Haystack Mountain School and Oxbow School of Art.
Her work is in many important collections including: Robert C Williams Paper Museum, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, California College of the Arts, Meyer Library, San Francisco, National Library of New Zealand, Wellington, Cooper Union, New York, Smith College and Wellesley College Libraries, Institute of Paper Science & Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, Library of Congress, Rare Books & Special Collections, Washington D.C. , Biblioteque Nationale de France, Paris, France, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Watson Library, New York, NY.
Her work has been shown in exhibitions nationally and internationally including: Collaborative Vision: Poetic Dialogue Project, Chicago Cultural Center (traveling), Aware of Other Angles, Paper Press, Chicago, International Triennial of Graphic Arts, Manes Gallery, Prague, New Directions in Paper, Mendocino Art Center, Mendocino, CA, Real Life International, Soho 20 Gallery, New York, NY, BIMPE Biennial, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Innovative Printmaking on Handmade Paper, Robert C. Williams American Museum of Papermaking, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, Single Impressions, Mesa Art Center, Mesa, Arizona, Miniare Biennale Internationale de Montreal, Montreal, Canada, 6th Texas Sculpture Symposium, Blue Star Art Space, San Antonio, TX, New Texas Prints, Diverse Works Gallery, Houston TX, On, Of, With Paper, Cummings Art Center, Connecticut College, New London, CT, Paperworks Mountain West Biennial, Nora Eccles Harrison Museum, Logan, UT
Numerous articles have been written about her work and it has been published in books including: 1,000 Artists' Books: Exploring the Book as Art, Quarry Books, The Best of Printmaking: An International Collection, Rockport Publishing, Basic Printmaking techniques, Davis Publishing, The Art of Papercraft, Storey Publishing.
Tiffany Manchester
Tiffany has been an Artist and Art Therapist for more than 15 years. She began her journey in the art world through art therapy in George Washington Hospital in Washington, DC after her suicide attempt.
She studied art and art therapy at the Corcoran Art School and Museum in DC, and has showed at the DC Studio, 19th Street Studio, LA Frieze, and Miami Frieze. She is currently the lead designer at The Smithsonian.
Tina Medina
Tina Medina, a Vail Valley native and longtime local, creates art that reflects the harmony between light, nature, and transformation. Her crystal and butterfly-inspired works explore beauty, balance, and renewal—celebrating the connection between the earthly and the spiritual.
This event is presented in association with:
