Elsewhere this weekend

Friday & Saturday 29-30 July - Belen ART League Photography Show

Belen Art League, BAL509Becker@aol.comPhone: 505-861-0217. Website: Click to Visit

Friday-Sunday 29-31 July - Music Festival Weekend in Edgewood

Three days of foot-stomping bluegrass/folk/gospel music starts with an old fashion country barn dance Friday night,7-10 p.m. Nationally acclaimed Hot Club of Cowtown and Chuck Pyle along with Finders & Youngberg, Grayson and 6 regional and local bands perform live on 2 stages Saturday and Sunday 11 a.m. - 10 p.m. Festival includes jam sessions and workshops with the performers, children's activities, and fiddle and guitar contests on Sunday afternoon see the Wildlife West page for contest rules and more information about the 3-day Music Festival.

This music festival benefits native, non-releasable wildlife. Price includes admission to Wildlife West Nature Park. It's fun for the entire family! All music performances are held in a covered, all-weather amphitheater located just 30 minutes east of Albuquerque. Free parking, and RV and tent dry camping. 

Saturday-Sunday 30-31 July, 10am-5pm - Celtic Festival, Tijeras Art Market

NM Centennial E-Newsletter July 2011

... to the Town of Mountainair, its Chamber of Commerce, , Manzano Mountain Art Council, MPS, Jubilee committee, Rotary Club and other NGO community service groups, and interested individuals: what is Mountainair doing for the NM Centennial? Inquiring minds want to know....

Having trouble seeing this? Click here New Mexico Centennial eNewsletter | July 28, 2011 NM Centennial SalsaFest - KickOff Event 8/28/11          Things are about to get spicy as the NM Centennial kicks off with Centennial SalsaFest on August 28, 2011 in Las Cruces!  Join us for music, food, dancing, storytelling and activities for the whole family, on Main Street from 11am - 6pm.   Special thanks to the Las Cruces Downtown Partnership and event sponsors, especially Wells Fargo, Rainbow Ryders, Inc. and other private donors.  For more information on SalsaFest please visit the NM Centennial website post.   NM Centennial Events Calendar and Map          Community Planners: A brand new search feature has been added to the NM Centennial website. Now visitors can search for events by date and region, in addition to event category. Be sure to represent your region and help get the word out on your events and activities!  Register at the NM Centennial website and post your events today.   Welcome New Sponsors          The NM Centennial Foundation welcomes generous new sponsors: Fidelity Investments at Mesa del Sol Wells Fargo Coca-Cola Foundation Thaw Charitable Trust Familia Camarena Tequila National Distributing Company Bolton, Inc.   Your support will help create an unforgettable commemoration for New Mexico's Statehood Centennial. Bank of America cardholders: remember that your card gets you in free to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque and SITE Santa Fe in Santa Fe the first weekend of every month. Visit their websites to learn more, and thanks to the B of A Museums on Us program for supporting the New Mexico Centennial Centennial Hot Air Balloon Lifts Off          The NM Centennial hot air balloon took to the sky for the first time on June 22, 2011 at the Anderson - Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum. On board for the first flight were Governor Susana Martinez and Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry.  The balloon was donated to the NM Centennial by Rainbow Ryders, Inc. Be sure to look for the Centennial Balloon at Centennial SalsaFest in Las Cruces on August 28, and lifting off from the Deming Duck Races on August 27th. For more information about bringing the NM Centennial Balloon to your event please contact Scott Appelman at (505) 823-1111.   Help Us Reach 1,000 "Likes"          Follow the NM Centennial facebook page for the latest commemoration news and happenings.  Tell your friends and share your pride as New Mexico approaches its 100th birthday as the 47th state.       Be Social     Make a Donation Today   The Centennial Children's Legacy Fund is an initiative of the New Mexico Centennial Foundation, created to live beyond 2012 in service to children statewide. The Fund will be accessible to charitable organizations working to enhance the education and welfare of New Mexico's children. While the Centennial is a commemoration of the last one hundred years, the Centennial Children's Legacy Fund is a gift for the next one hundred years.   Donate today - Click Here     Submit your Event   Get the word out—add your upcoming event to the New Mexico Centennial calendar   Submit your event - Click Here     Centennial Shop   Tees | Drinkware | More   Shop now - Click Here     Contact Us   The New Mexico Centennial Foundation, an independent 501c3 nonprofit organization 401 Paseo de Peralta Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 (505) 984-2012 Email us Visit our website

It is Sunflower Time Yet?

Cibola Arts' August show, Cibola Sunshine, opens Saturday August 13, reception 2-4 pm as usual, previews  - or if you are music minded, opens for MMAC's annual Sunflower Festival two Saturdays earlier. The press release with particulars will be posted in due course. I so like Dianne Doan's design (even if a bit dark for easy readabing - better art than it is PR, that I was looking for an excuse to post it sooner.

My 2011 sunflower project, curating a page aggregating sunflower links ~ pictures, art, oddities, tea towels, lace, mazes, sunflower fields, other sunflower festivals as well as our own and more, is simply, Sunflowers, described as “celebrating sunflowers in all forms and any manifestation, real or imagined”

 sunflowers healing Fukushima

Event chair Christine Franks sends a reminder about outdoor vendor space, hat contest, volunteering. Inside Dr Saul is already booked full. Information and registration forms are on the Sunflower Festival page. Volunteers are needed . I'm guessing that you don't have to be a member to volunteer. A favorite Egyptian story is a cautionary tale about a pedestrian passing by offering to help passengers push a stalled bus. The conductor's punch line runs, "If you don't have a ticket, you can't push the bus."

Sunday at home ...

in #Mountainair, catching up email, RSS feeds, messages, social media... even blog posts. This here Arts is definitely not Announcements or allowed take up residence in its territory (d'uh... that's why they are two separate blogs not one): just passing through, littering reminders and observations not intended as announcements. Ticking off the list, type-talking out loud to myself as aide mémoire if not symptom of worse.

Before I forget: The Independent [Newspaper]’s publication deadlines schedule (via Leota Harriman, as posted on Manzano Mountain Scribes)

Our next Creative Arts pages come out July 27. If I get a final draft by July 25 (Monday), I'll include it in those pages if space allows. Email it to me at leota@lobo.net. Here's the schedule, with deadlines for submissions being Monday for any given Wednesday's paper. Starting in August, 

• the first week of the month, Older & Wiser 
• second week, Green pages
• third week, Helping Hands 
• fourth week, Creative Arts

We welcome submissions for any of those pages as well as general  interest stories or features for the paper.

This merits its own post (yoohoo, Announcements) and checking with The MountainView Telegraph for their schedule

News from Willson & McKee

A long lost newsletter from a pair of our favorite musicians, Kim McKee and Ken Willson. Remember their concerts, last November in conjunction with an art in the schools session, in 2008 and their first one here in 2007? Their Colorado ~ drought, fires, big energy companies, dying forests, and other weariness alleviated by music, teaching youth, friends ~ does not sound that different from our New Mexico.  (Probably) Kim (because she's the wordsmith, blogger and poet) writes...

Hello friends and fans of Willson & McKee!  It has been WAY too long since we sent out any communications!  It seems like our website, Facebook, texting and other forms of technology makes us feel like we are ‘in touch’, and yet…  the old fashioned things like regular email has slipped past us with a silent memory of connections!

There is so much history now for us and for each of you, that we won’t go backwards too far, except to say that our journey to Ireland with the Chalmers-Mackay Music School was delightful!  Then the remaining adventures in Scotland were dreamy and filled with pre-history, history, friendships, landscape, music, dance, stories and wonder!  Visiting all the places that our songs and music comes from and collecting new material along the way is our greatest treasure!  Thanks to all our grand UK friends who help make our time there possible!  If you are interested in photos, check out our Facebook Photo Album Page

#Mountainair odds & ends: IRL & virtual

Famers market relocates, new and renewed web pages springing up... perhaps slow by city stand but seemingly more than usual in a week free of major events.

Already announced, but the Mountainair Farm & Garden Market moved from in front of dr saul community center to T&C Auto, prime Broadway location - with shade. Not having to pay the town the extra per head for non-food vendors over what the market charges will be a welcome break for a fledgling enterprise. Shade and location are lagniappe.

Slowly but steadily, the market continues to grow, adding new vendors each week: The most recent additions are: Paul and Barbara Prior, Gourmet Gardens, McIntosh, with produce; and Lesa Smith and John Higham, Smith Farm, Estancia, with produce and crafts. They join market regulars Moni's Organic Greens, Addie Draper / Sustaining Art, The Wayward Elf, Rose Bottini, Barb Chung, Rebecca's Backyard Garden Shop, Estancia Valley Kitchen and others.

After Jubilee, attention turns to the Sunflower Festival: the Facebook Sunflower Festival page awakens. Postponing updates on my own Sunflower pages, I'm using a new app to collect, curate and publish a different kind of sunflower page.  Kristine Lauritsen just started a much needed page for the new arts center, Mountain Arts on Broadway. Still in development (e.g. more or less content free), Kristine put out an email call for pictures and other page accessories. Get in on the ground floor: be the first from your block or exurb to "like" the page.

The promised Jubilee wrap is, as the saying goes, ... in the mail... or awaiting replies to email requests for pictures and recaps. If not forthcoming, then I am left with blogging about that and scraping Facebook for brief updates. Good pictures and lively accounts would be so much better.

Folk Art in the Hood

Looking for a Sunday (or later this week) something? Get your global on. Don't miss the International Folk Art Market. Go up the Turquoise Trail or I-40 to Santa Fe. Hop the Railrunner in Belen.

International Folk Arts Week Starts Sunday July 3rd ※ Now In Its 8th Year, Takes Place July 8-10, 2011 ※ Folk Artists Preserve Cultures and Create Opportunities

NM poet, teacher and frequent Sunflower-time Poet-Picnicker in Mountainair, Miriam Sagan writes at Miriam's Well (her not to be missed poetry blog, more online poetry mag than casual blog, publishing poetry, art, diverse travel reflections, TheLand/Art projects and more) ...

The neighborhood is hopping! On Thursday, the artists for the International Folk Art Market arrived, some by Railrunner, and were welcomed to Santa Fe through our very own Railyard.

It was touching and exciting to see so many people from such disparate places, all right here. We ran into lots of locals, too, including intrepid photographer Ursula Moeller, who took all these photographs and has kindly allowed me to post. I think she is an unofficial correspondent for this blog! (Despite being busy volunteering at the folk art market).

More at Folk Art in the Hood, Miriam's Well

Saturday July 2 Soirée at Mountain Arts on Broadway

Tomás Wolff to the art enthusiasts of #Mountainair...

In case you haven't heard, the Friday Soirée sponsored by the Manzano Mountain Art Council at the new Mountain Arts on Broadway is now the once a month Saturday Soirée

This Saturday's Soirée features James Yeager at the harpsichord

Soirée starts at 7 PM, and we hope to see you there. You are also encouraged to participate in other Firecracker Jubilee events during this busy day

In August, Tomás Wolff will present an interactive program in “Collaborative Clay Constructions” and in September Anne Ravenstone will present a program in Basic Movement. These events are free, but donations to the Mountain Arts on Broadway will be accepted.

For further information please e-mail Tomás at wolff.clayworks@gmail.com.