Women have been trying to balance life and art since before Virginia Woolf longed for a room of her own and Tillie Olsen traded her ironing board for a typewriter. And for the past 27 years, Colorado women looking to fend off the mundane for twelve glorious months have turned to the Rocky Mountain Women's Institute. The well-connected non-profit artists' colony annually grants approximately ten artists, writers and scholars $1,250 stipends, a venue to show their finished work, and the sense of a creative life. What the winners do with their laundry is their business.

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