http://www.csindy.com/colorado/best-of-2011-daylife/Content?oid=2387860
A big thank you to all that voted for us this year in the annual Colorado Springs Indy Best Of.
We won Three Golds!
1) Best Gallery
2) Best Place to See Emerging Artists
3) Best Place To Buy Art
and our own Brett Andrus took Silver for Best Artist. We are happy, fell really good! Thank you for the support
Here is the right up from the Indy:
The Modbo
(17C E. Bijou St., 633-4240, themodbo.wordpress.com)
It’s your basic downtown alley: potholes, trash bins, graffiti … until you get to the end that’s home to the Modbo and its companion gallery, S.P.Q.R.
That’s where, most weekends, owners Brett and Lauren Andrus pack so much art and music into the tiny buildings that colors and sounds just have to spill out into the alley.
And you, dear culture-loving readers, love to partake of the smorgasbord they offer. A recent “weeklyish” e-mail blast previewed art shows in each gallery, live music and a theater production, plus an art show Lauren helped curate for Ormao Dance Company — all in the space of about nine days. Brett also curates art exhibits for four other venues around town.
It’s worth noting that both Andruses have other jobs: She’s a piano accompanist; he’s a mortgage loan officer by day, and a painter and painting teacher by night.
Where do they get the energy? It helps that they’re still young: Lauren is 29, Brett is 33. But much of it is simply fueled by a love for and belief in the work they do.
“I just really have a passion for art and feel the necessity to encourage people,” Brett says. “It’s really cool, too, because we’re seeing people doing more collecting.”
They started Modbo in summer 2009 and S.P.Q.R. in late 2010, and the galleries are already “pretty self-sustaining,” he says. They may never get wealthy pursuing this dream, but they’re richly rewarded when they see a classical music aficionado standing next to a Mohawked kid at a concert, or when they watch people fall in love with a painting and realize they can afford it.
“We undeniably feel great about what we’re doing,” Lauren says. “I feel that, whenever one of us feels crappy about how things are going, we’ll buoy each other up.”
Adds Brett with a laugh: “I think we’re both bull-headed enough to make it work.” — RVP