Chef Ian Dedrickson, former sous chef at IV by Brother Luck and currently a bartender at Axe and the Oak Whiskey House, has launched a series of pop-up dinners under the name Ephemera. The intent’s all in the name, he says: small items with temporary significance that, ultimately, create a memory.

“I wanted to approach food more thoughtfully like that,” he says. “[Ephemera is] originally my project, but it’s [now] a collaboration between myself, my sous chef Adam Ridens and my girlfriend, [local artist] Jasmine Dillavou.”

Dedrickson’s been in the restaurant industry for about nine years, starting as a dishwasher at Manitou Springs’ Stagecoach Inn as a teenager. For him, food is art, in the sense that it can be more than just a source of sustenance. It can inspire nostalgia or curiosity, or it can cement a memory of a time and place that will never come again. That’s an attitude he feels has caught on elsewhere — in cities like Chicago, San Francisco and Denver. But he doesn’t feel the Springs has embraced it yet.

For him, one of the signifiers of such an attitude is a move to tasting menus, which makes the experience less of a meal than a sensory journey. So that’s how he’s structuring Ephemera’s dinners: six- to 10-course meals, depending on the night’s theme, offered about once a month, so far in people’s homes but perhaps expanding into restaurant guest-appearances. Meals are a suggested donation of $60 to $100; check the Facebook page for upcoming dates.