Artist-in-Residence Program

The program provides an opportunity for artists to pursue their work in the inspiring landscape and history of Caribou Ranch. By sharing their art, we hope to add to residents’ enjoyment of open space lands and create a legacy of art preserved for future generations.

2023 Applications

The application deadline was Feb. 28.

Applicants must be comfortable in a backcountry setting with rustic accommodations.
Application must include two or three samples of work.
Application cannot be saved and returned to later. You must complete the application in a single session.
Application deadline is Feb. 28.
Selected artists are required to donate a piece of work to Boulder County that is representative of their stay at the open space property.
Please read the Program Rules & Guidelines before applying.

Artists’ Stay

Selected artists will stay in the historic DeLonde Barn at Caribou Ranch.

Artists can stay up to four days and three nights (Monday-Thursday) during period from July 15 to September 30.

Artists will not share residence with another artist, but are permitted to bring one adult companion if desired.

The open space property offers a variety of landscapes to explore including streams, waterfalls, forests, and beautiful vistas. Moose, elk, black bears, beavers, bats and nearly 90 species of birds live within or pass through the area.

Also found on the property is the Blue Bird Mine complex where miners from the 1870s to the 1960s extracted silver ore. In the early 1900s, the site was a whistle stop for the Denver, Boulder & Western Railroad.

The residence includes:

Solar-powered electricity for lighting, cooking, and heating water.
Outlets for low-powered electrical devices (there is no Wi-Fi).
Twin-sized bunk beds (no tents or camping allowed outside the living quarters).
Outhouse with pit toilet and solar-powered camp shower and sink.
Outdoor dish washing station.
Dining area and kitchen furnished with drinking water, electric stove-top burners, toaster oven, cooking utensils, and cleaning supplies.
Two large RTIC coolers (there is no refrigerator).
Outdoor picnic table (campfires are not permitted).

2021 Selected Artists

Jill Burkey is a poet, writer, and editor living on the Western Slope of Colorado. In her poems, which circle around the themes of nature, relationships, history, and spirituality, Jill explores the larger existential questions of humanity, and makes connections between life, the natural world, and the passage of time. Jill grew up on a three-generation cattle ranch in western Nebraska and began writing in high school. She earned a BA in English, business administration, and secondary education at Nebraska Wesleyan University and has taught hundreds of elementary and high school students poetry and writing as a writer-in-residence with the Colorado Humanities’ Writers-in-the-Schools program. Jill’s poems have been called warm, complex, and intensely satisfying, and they have appeared in Sixfold, Pilgrimage Magazine, Paddlefish, Soundings Review, Front Range Review, Grand Valley Magazine, IMPROV Anthology of Colorado Poets, The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, and others. Two of her poems were included in The Untidy Season: An Anthology of Nebraska Women Poets by Backwaters Press, which received the Nebraska Book Award for anthology. Jill’s work also won the Mark Fischer Poetry Prize and other awards and honorable mentions. She is currently working on her first collection of poetry, Enough.

Greg Marquez grew up in that mythical place called the American West and is a Colorado native. Largely taught by the precious beauty of open spaces such as land and sky, Greg’s watercolors and acrylics are rooted in impressions of place–both landscapes and wildlife rendered with realism and abstraction—and thus imbued with the color and light so unique to the West. Greg has been awarded four corporate commissions and has most recently finished the first Nederland mural, titled “A Good, Great Place, “ and installed on the side of Nederland Pet and Feed in town. He has exhibited in in juried shows and galleries across Colorado. Currently, his work can be seen at Crosscut Pizza & Taphouse and is for sale at Kaleidoscope Gallery in Nederland. His work is held in private collections along the Front Range. Greg is also a wood-worker and toymaker and owner of Mooseworks Colorado. He lives outside of Rollinsville with the writer Karen Auvinen and their dog, River and cat, Dottie.

Chelsea Pennington has always believed in the power of stories to change people and followed this passion to study English and Creative Writing at Samford University, where she received the Charles T. Workman Creative Writing Award. Since then, she has published several short stories and most recently, a novel titled The Mistletoe Connection. With an inexhaustible sense of curiosity, Chelsea likes to use her fiction to explore topics that catch her interest, from Foley artists to applied mathematics. Originally from Texas, Chelsea now lives in Boulder and has fallen in love with the mountains and the lack of humidity. When she’s not writing or at her job as a museum curator, she’s probably taking up a new hobby like birding or balcony gardening, filling up the apartment she shares with her long-suffering husband and their dog.

Shannon Szczesny is a Colorado-based artist working primarily in ink, watercolor, and acrylic. Her work is often inspired by adventures with her husband and two children in the forests, deserts, and mountains of the American West. Shannon’s art reflects an intense personal connection with the natural world, as well as interests in architecture, film, and travel. She enjoys blending these themes to create original paintings and drawings across numerous mediums. Several of Shannon’s pieces can be seen in galleries and private collections throughout the U.S., South America, and Europe. In addition to her passion projects, Shannon runs The Pea Studio, creating commissioned artworks including building portraits, landscapes, and the occasional mural. She holds a bachelor’s degree in American Studies in Art from the University of California, Berkeley.

Jesse Wooten is a musician, hiker and natural resource specialist focusing on forest management for Jefferson County Open Space. In this regard, nature themes permeate and blur the lines between his personal and professional pursuits. Most of his songs take their voice through his band, Creekbed, whose melodies have reverberated from venue and festival stages up and down the front range. Jesse’s lyrics explore dreams of shedding the anxieties of city-life like snakeskin, rolling with coyotes in the twilight hours, sketching new constellations, and weaving strange melodies in the cedarsmoke dark. Jesse earned degrees in English and Creative Writing at UNC-Chapel Hill before earning an MS in Forest Sciences at Colorado State University in 2021.

Contact Us

Parks & Open Space

Monserrat Alvarez
303-678-6268