{"id":802734,"date":"2020-01-03T11:07:20","date_gmt":"2020-01-03T18:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=376773"},"modified":"2020-01-03T11:07:20","modified_gmt":"2020-01-03T18:07:20","slug":"summit-suds-new-year-new-beer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/summit-suds-new-year-new-beer\/","title":{"rendered":"Summit Suds: New year, new beer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cTake One Down Pass It Around: Adventure Into Colorado Beer\u201d is a collection of abstract paintings by Colorado Springs artist Ceil Horowitz. She painted 100 bottles of beer, 99 of which came from breweries found in the state.<\/strong>
Courtesy Ceil Horowitz<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The humble beer bottle is often not thought of as anything more than a drinking vessel. Yet readers of \u201cTake One Down Pass It Around: Adventure Into Colorado Beer\u201d will learn to appreciate the glasses as they view them in a new light.<\/p>\n

The book by Colorado Springs artist Ceil Horowitz features 99 real bottles of beer \u2014 and one fictional bottle labeled with the Colorado state seal \u2014 painted in an abstract, impressionistic manner. The project is a celebration of the state and the local craft beer industry, especially the artistry and camaraderie of the brewers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a wonderful way of meeting people and honoring them,\u201d Horowitz said. \u201cTo me, they\u2019re the heroic people. They\u2019re brewers, but they\u2019re heroic. They\u2019re trying their hardest, and it\u2019s a pleasure to try and honor that. I see the small things in life as sacred and precious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horowitz knew she wanted to be an artist since she was young. She studied painting at the Kansas City Art Institute and Hunter College in New York in addition to honing her craft with creative people such as Linda Scott, Ellen O\u2019Brien and Floyd Tunson.<\/p>\n

\u201cPainting really spoke to me,\u201d Horowitz said. \u201cI liked it because there\u2019s almost nothing between you and the making of the art.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the medium hasn\u2019t been without its challenges, which Horowitz enjoys so that the work remains interesting and fun. One hurdle is that about 20 years ago she taught herself to paint with her left hand due to rheumatoid arthritis. She\u2019s had about 10 surgeries on her hands because of the condition. Horowitz could switch to another art form, but she prefers the difficulty of painting.<\/p>\n

\u201cPainting is the hardest for me because there\u2019s no instruction book,\u201d Horowitz said. Every time I face a new canvas, I have no idea how its going to go. I just jump in. That\u2019s really a pleasure, and it\u2019s really discouraging when you don\u2019t do well with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The projected started at Trinity Brewing in Colorado Springs in 2012, when Horowitz wanted to do more still life and her friends had beer on the brain. The first piece became the label for the brewery\u2019s 10 Minutes of Pleasure Berliner weisse.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end, (owner) Jason (Yester) said, \u2018I\u2019ll pay you $200 for the label or you can have two cases of bombers,\u2019\u201d Horowitz said. \u201cI was like, \u2018I\u2019ll take bombers!’\u201d<\/p>\n

Another temporal challenge is that Horowitz sits on-site to paint en plein air, becoming part of the crew and taking in the sights, sounds and smells over the course of eight to 10 hours of painting. She could take a reference photo and paint later in her studio, but she feels she\u2019d then lose the magic.<\/p>\n

\u201cA photograph locks a three-dimensional image into two dimensions,\u201d Horowitz said. \u201cIt tells you everything you have to do in it and is more paint-by-numbers. All of the shapes and colors are confined for you, which I find constricts the painting. When I\u2019m painting over eight hours and the brewers are moving, I might get 10 different positions into my abstract movement of a person whereas a photograph could never get it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though researching bottles took months, Horowitz\u2019s journey has had her paint some of the only bottles ever produced by breweries like Oskar Blues Brewery and Wynkoop Brewing Co.<\/p>\n

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For the Dillon Dam Brewery, Ceil Horowitz painted the brewery\u2019s Dam Gogh De Garde while at the Denver Art Museum. The brewery and the museum collaborated for the special beer during a Van Gogh exhibit.<\/strong>
Courtesy Ceil Horowitz<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

When she was just about halfway through, she visited Summit County in 2013 to capture the local scene<\/a>, including a brewery that no longer exists. Regionally, she painted bottles from Breckenridge Brewery, Dillon Dam Brewery and the now-defunct Backcountry Brewery in Summit County. She also did Eagle County\u2019s Crazy Mountain Brewery and Bonfire Brewing.<\/p>\n

She sometimes picks a bottle based on the contents \u2014 she\u2019s fan of darker beers. Some days it\u2019s the label that speaks to her, and other times the brewery picks for Horowitz. As for the location, she\u2019ll paint wherever feels right. That could be lying down in a grain room of a brewery, staging Bristol Brewing\u2019s Winter Warlock on Pikes Peak or enjoying the brewery\u2019s Laughing Lab in the bar of The Broadmoor hotel. She painted a bottle from Verboten on railroad tracks \u2014 on which she had to once quickly relocate to avoid an oncoming train \u2014 and a bottle of Bristol\u2019s Venetucci Pumpkin Ale on a farm.<\/p>\n

After working on other projects, like her series of painting people in the subways of New York, revisiting breweries to reach her 100-bottle goal and fundraising publishing costs, the book was released in fall 2019. Along with full-page artwork, the book contains a few lines of poetry that explain the scene. Like the abstract paintings, she feels the verse captures the mood better than plain prose.<\/p>\n

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Backcountry Brewery\u2019s pilsner by Ceil Horowitz.<\/strong>
Courtesy Ceil Horowitz<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Canned beer wasn\u2019t as popular when she started as it is now \u2014 and it doesn\u2019t have a catchy song \u2014 but Horowitz might make a sequel book featuring aluminum in the future, though likely in a different medium.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe can is too opaque, so abstract-wise, it was too plain and not as exciting for me to paint,\u201d Horowitz said. \u201cWhereas with the bottle, I get the reflection and things are much more abstracted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever she paints, she\u2019s just happy to keep painting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think of us little humans as so precious, and our lives are so precious,\u201d Horowitz said. \u201cBeing able to lift your hand to your chin, being able to paint, is such a delight. I just hope I live till 110, and I\u2019ll keep doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jefferson Geiger is the arts and entertainment editor for the Summit Daily News and managing editor for Everything Summit. Have a question about beer? Send him an email at jgeiger@summitdaily.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cTake One Down Pass It Around: Adventure Into Colorado Beer\u201d is a collection of abstract paintings by Colorado Springs artist Ceil Horowitz. She painted 100 bottles of beer, 99 of which came from breweries found in the state.Courtesy Ceil Horowitz The humble beer bottle is often not thought of as anything more than a drinking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-802734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-29 12:46:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}