Pletts: A letter to Theodore Roosevelt

Dear Theodore,

We never met, living in different times, but you enriched my life enormously. Thank you. Yes, I have a Teddy Bear. You couldn’t shoot a live bear here — thank goodness — so the Hotel Colorado staff in Glenwood Springs crafted a stuffed bear for you.

Better than that, you established the National Park System with John Muir. That’s your grandest contribution. But this is an arts column, so what does a U.S. President who preserved nature for all time have to do with art?

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A lot. Your art came first, love of nature second.

That’s because painting taught you how to observe and deeply respect wilderness. I hope I get this right. You were quite ill, quite young, and confined to bed for a long period. Your loving, clever mother gave you a watercolor set, and you painted through a window. When you recovered, the outdoors was no longer a playground at your disposal. You learned through the painting process, to care for your surroundings, to pay attention when you observed, picked your color for the brush, and created a 2D image. Making works of art preceded your environmental activism.

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We have big decisions to make this Tuesday concerning Roaring Fork Valley political leadership. It’s an Aspen election, but that economy affects our entire valley.

I turn again to our real estate transfer tax for the arts. The public has voted four times to renew this tax. It’s written in law that it goes to buildings, admin, culture, the performing and visual arts. But tracking the spending since 2021 — perhaps 93% of nearly $40 million — in so-called public “arts funding” has been spent on bank deposits, buildings, and admin. I have actively pursued decades-long-relationships with two of the Aspen City Council’s old guard, and they have not shifted their positions on RETT spending. We may need “out with the old — in with the new” and trusting new representation to uphold the voting will of residents.

Because the RETT is written in law, maybe we need an outside city audit by a firm like Earth Law. You, Theodore, were a major cartel buster. Can you give advice on how to bust up the leaders who seem set on absconding with arts funding?

To recap: in 1979, when the RETT tax started, $100,000 was collected, $50,000 went to art and $50,000 to structures and admin, according to figures provided by a former Aspen finance director. In 2021 alone, $11.5 million was collected and less than 1% went to “art.” But no operating budget may have been fully funded for applicants, which means possibly no funds went to making art. I met with a city official then and asked “Why?”

He said, “Sarah, technically if one dollar went to art, we’d be covered.” Is that what voters want? If a local artist uses the Wheeler or the Red Brick Center, they must pay. Funding goes to everything else.

Many would like $20 million of the $54 million that’s now held in the “Wheeler Fund” (That name was stamped on the RETT without voter approval) to go to a valley-wide arts endowment distributed yearly by arts professionals.

Theodore, how can we respect our glorious natural world in the RFV if we don’t make art? Currently, the John Denver Sanctuary is under consideration for major development by a relentless developer — a theatre company. Isn’t theatre art? Can’t playwriting and acting also guide us to honor nature? John was a singer and musician whose music burst out when he moved to the Rockies.

Being dead, you may not know that I co-founded the Sarah Pletts Dance Theatre in 1985 with the late Janet Garwood. We single-handedly stopped Aspen city planners — twice — from constructing condos and two concrete parking garages on the Roaring Fork River from Mill Street to Neale Avenue. And we started the Recycling Center with artist Christine Anderson and young artists exhibiting recycled sculptures in the former Aspen Art Museum.

Art preceded nature!

And, Teddy — may I call you that? — if you are being a creative, environmental leader elsewhere in the universe, can you please text me Warren Zevon’s number? I’ll call and ask him to send, “Lawyers, Guns, and Money” before Tuesday. We may need that.

Sincerely,

Sarah A. Pletts.

Sarah A. Pletts is the co-founder with Janet Garwood of the Sarah Pletts Dance Theatre, Ltd. The International, a Colorado-based nonprofit since 1984.