Color, creativity and craft are the operative words of this year’s All Member Art Show at the Glenwood Springs Center for the Arts. The exhibit is a panoply of styles ranging from sculpture to collage to painting from more than 40 artists.

Launching the show will be an artists’ open house at 6 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 18, at the center. Wine, soft drinks and hors d’oeuvres will be served. Dancers from the center’s Choreography and Repertoire Project will perform. The reception coincides with the annual membership meeting.

Each artist has his or her own particular way of seeing, and that vision expresses itself in the work. Photographer and Glenwood Springs Art Guild president Ruth Kary specializes in scenic landscapes and botanical illustrations. She is driven by color.

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“Composition and color are extremely important, but the light and shadows are what give depth and feeling to any photograph or painting,” she said. “I love color photography, and although I occasionally use black and white, my forte is color.

“I’ve done some traveling and have created images from this travel. However, some of my most favorite images are from familiar surroundings and places close to home,” she added.

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Also featured in the show are pencil drawings by Ted Devlin, who teaches ceramics at the art center.

“Ted does everything known to man,” said exhibits and events coordinator Melanie Huskey. “In the last show he had pottery and crochet.”

Watercolor teacher Lezley Small shows a signature piece, “Pansy Mania.”

Small, who is also a botanist, teaches a class, “Watercolor and Horticulture,” at the art center. She shows students how to capture their favorite flowers, and even slips in a few tips on gardening.

Well-known Carbondale artist Don Cyr has two of his awesome colored pencil works in the show – a bighorn sheep and a view of Monument Valley. He brings painstaking process to each of his large-scale works, Huskey explained.

“They’re almost like murals,” she said.

Three-dimensional work is represented by Maxine Buchholtz’ resin-covered stained glass mirrors, Marble sculptor Don Prazen’s bronze work and Mitch Heuer’s iron sculpture.

Art center staff member Dale Reed has a bit of whimsy in the show, a photograph he’s titled “Close Encounters.” It shows a hunter reclining on a hillside and a deer sneaking up on him from behind.

It may not necessarily be a pattern, but in this show the photographers appear to have an uncommon sense of humor. Although Jim Nelson’s photographs are straight-arrow landscapes, his description of them and himself is not.

“Jim Nelson exhibits a remarkable talent for the capturing of photographic images, especially considering the fact that until quite recently he tended to shy away from anything technological,” he wrote in the artists’ biographies that accompany the show.

He attributes his lately found talent to a strange upbringing by “a pack of wolverines.”

Despite the unusual nurturing, “Jim has managed to . make his own special way through life,” he wrote.

The annual show is just one of many that grace the walls of Glenwood Springs’ former electric plant, which has enjoyed a renaissance as a center for the arts.

Coming up will be an evening of cabaret with the Choreography and Repertoire dancers, at 7 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 25, at the center. It will also feature local musicians and singers from Defiance Community Theatre. Lon Winston and Valerie Haugen from Thunder River Theatre Co. will emcee the evening and perform. Tickets are $10 for members and $15 for nonmembers.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, jazzman Harry Allen will perform at 7 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 16. He’s a true classic carrying on the tradition of Lester Young and other architects of the Swing. He’s performed in countless jazz festivals and clubs worldwide with such legends as Rosemary Clooney, Flip Phillips, Scott Hamilton, Harry “Sweets” Edison and Dave McKenna. He’ll be joined by local jazz meisters Walt Smith; Mark Gray; Harry’s dad, Maury Allen; and Walter Hanselman.

Tickets are $14 for members and $18 for nonmembers.

For information about any or all of these events or to buy tickets, call the center at 945-2414.