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A plea for Lee

Dear Aspen Mayor Steve Skadron, members of City Council, and the Aspen/Pitkin County Housing Authority,

Dr. Lee Mulcahy is an artist.

Please support a peaceful settlement to permit Dr. Lee Mulcahy and his family to keep their self-built house in the Burlingame.



I met Lee at a fundraiser at the old Sky hotel put on by Challenge Aspen. They had a “battle” of the artists. We became art friends who are mostly opposites but share a passion for making art. I was an artist in grade school drawing horses in my classes to the amusement of my teachers. Lee’s mother taught painting and ceramics in her house and Lee and his sister joined in.

Both Lee and I are very productive artists and have extensive bodies of work that could easily fill the new Aspen Art Museum.




I have shown my art around the Roaring Fork Valley and the nation. Lee has shown his art locally in the Roaring Fork Valley (this year at the Red Brick and the Four Rivers Biennial at the Aspen Chapel and World Cup) and internationally at Beijing and Berlin.

Lee is from Fort Worth, Texas, and studied at Texas universities including Baylor and SMU for graduate work as well as the Sobonne in France. Lee opens his house to artists to paint and for salons.

Local artists are frustrated by the diminishing opportunities to show our work. We are grateful for the Red Brick, Aspen Chapel, and Snowmass Chapel. Lee and I both donate paintings to nonprofits to sell at their fundraisers (including Boogies and Shining Star). Local artists have lost many opportunities to exhibit including the Roaring Fork Open when it was at the old Aspen Art Museum.

Anyone interested seeing the Sueseum, Lee’s house, or having some temporary use for local art or a donated piece for a fundraiser should contact sooze50@aol.com.

Lee’s family is known for their charitable work with water wells and computers in Africa and Lee himself does community service at churches, and he houses and feeds and helps the homeless.

Again, I urge the city of Aspen to reach a peaceful settlement with Lee regarding his self-built house that is in the Burlingame Ranch.

Sue Tatem

Aspen