Marmalade's 'First Friday' goes for multiple Santas

Everyone’s saying it (or trying to): Chriszaihamankus.

It’s got to have something to do with the holidays, right?

“Christmas, Hanukkah and there’s an African-American holiday in there, Kwanza,” explains Don Goede, executive director of the Smokebrush Foundation. “We do so much African drumming here, we threw that in. I wanted to do some more Hindu and Buddhist stuff but it got way too complicated.”

In addition to live music, theater and some performance art, art will be exhibited and remain up through Jan. 28. Everything presented is born of the Smokebrush staff and extended creative family.

Photography and video from the foundation’s office manager, Jeff Kallaus will be on display.
“It’s street travels, what I see out on the streets,” says Kallaus. “From graffiti scenes to performers to train scenes: We’re right here on the tracks.”

Goede’s band, “The New Depressionists,” will perform. His artwork will also be up: photography and what he calls his “speed freak art,” which  was created in his early teens.
“I’m pulling a bunch of stuff out of the archives and I’m finishing some pieces. We have such a great pool of artists in Colorado Springs. This will give me an excuse to throw some of my art up.”

Smokebrush founder Kat Tudor will show her own work as well as some collaborative pieces with her husband, Bob Tudor.

Bob Tudor’s band Crystal & the Curious, comprised of Tudor on multiple instruments, Randy Bowen on percussion and Crystal Bliss on vocals, will morph, as it does every year, into the Two-Headed Santa. They’ll do their best to deconstruct the seasonal classics.

And then, could there possibly be a Smokebrush holiday party without the “Suspended Kosmic Kat?”

“Kat (Tudor) will be in the middle of the room and will be dancing upside down for anyone who wants it,” explained Goede. “She has a yoga swing she gets inside of. She’ll be upside down. When my band is playing and we want a go-go dancer, she’ll come and do interpretive dance.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen around here. We had a hell of a year and this is a way for us to let off a little steam.”