By S. Derrickson Moore
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — It was a dilemma when I was planning a tour for visitors recently. Where to start? Where is the corazon (heart) de Las Cruces?
It was the same question I posed when I moved here in 1994. But there’s a big difference in potential answers, as I start my 19th summer in the City of Crosses.
Back then, if there was still a heart in downtown Las Cruces, it seemed to be on its last, feeble beats, as forlorn and hopeless as the homeless souls who slept in its shadows and haunted its crumbling corners. One of our reporters called it “a graveyard for high hopes.”
But even then, there were signs of both new and enduring life. A thriving Farmers & Crafts Market. Plans ... however faltering at first ... for urban renewal strategies.
There were solid cornerstones: CoAs Bookstore, then-and-still one of the nation’s largest and most diverse book stores. The Branigan Library. The Branigan Cultural Center, where then-director Sharon Bode-Hempton rallied volunteer groups and gathered some of our best artists to join for exhibits that celebrated Borderland culture, like her annual showcase of Our Lady of Guadalupe images. She also dreamed of regional museum cooperatives and expansion of a city museum system that consisted, back then, of the BCC and Las Cruces Natural History Museum. Today, thanks in large part to Sharon’s efforts, those dreams have been realized with the Las Cruces Museum of Art, the Railroad Museum and an expanded Natural History Museum, due to open downtown this year.
And more change was coming. The reincarnation of Court Youth Center, once just a gleam in the eyes of Irene Oliver Lewis and then-Mayor Ruben Smith, is now a thriving community performance and arts center and home to Alma d’arte Charter High School for the arts.
Citizen’s groups and Downtown Las Cruces got a new shot of life when arts maven Heather Pollard came out of retirement to shepherd more progress.
It started slow and then speeded up ... ironically, during a time when the nation’s economy and most of the world was slowing down and cutting back.
In a Southwest heartbeat (a little more laid back than a New York minute), we have a new city hall, a gleaming new federal building, an expanded library. There are new shops, galleries and restaurants, not just on what was once the Downtown Mall, but expanding throughout the downtown area.
The historic Mesquite area has added a street of eclectic adobe galleries, colonized by talented artists from throughout the world. Downtown area galleries, shops and museums join for the Ramble the first Friday of each month, and artists in surrounding neighborhoods plan periodic art walks and events.
The Rio Grande Theatre, reportedly the nation’s oldest adobe theater, has been restored. It’s headquarters for the Doña Ana Arts Council and hosts all kinds of events and its own theater troupe now, joining the downtown’s pioneer theater group, the Las Cruces Community Theater (celebrating its 50th anniversary) and Ceil and Peter Herman’s inspired addition: The Black Box and its No Strings Theatre Company.
And there’s more, lots more. Fun restaurants, interesting shops. Artists’ studios and cooperatives.
Today, downtown is pulsing with life and fun, especially during fiestas, markets, Rambles and special events. This month, Denise Chávez moved the Border Book Festival headquarters to a cute old town adobe at 314 S. Tornillo St. and said the festival itself may move from Mesilla to Las Cruces’ downtown.
Like any human enterprise, it’s not perfect. I’m still mourning a few of my favorite things: the surprisingly glam La Iguana restaurant. The loss of my favorite Las Cruces tree, which vanished when renovations began on the last downtown Main Street block. Our long-time home base Sun-News building, lost after a 2011 fire.
But I love some of the new landscaping and the expanded market which was named the nation’s No. 1 large market in a recent nationwide poll and now has a waiting list for vendors eager to join the fun.
And I’m looking forward to the completion of the new Sun-News building, and moving back to our querencia, in the corazon of it all.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Ideas for the Fiesta Dead Zone
By S. Derrickson Moore
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Do you feel your group or cause is being crowded out by the growing competition during FTFS (Full-Tilt Fiesta Season)?
Maybe it’s time to consider a new approach, and boldly go where few fiesta animals have gone before.
Are you brave and creative enough to tackle the Fiesta Dead Zone (FDZ)?
FTFS traditionally stretches from Labor Day to Memorial Day and things get pretty quiet during the hot summer months.
In recent years, the season has stretched out a bit, with several successful festivals, including Pride Fest, Father’s Day events, Juneteenth, Raft the Rio and Turtle Fest in June and a burgeoning Borderland crop of Fourth of July festivals.
From then until late August, the fiesta pickings have been traditionally been pretty slim.
There’s good reason. We’ve been good sports through increasingly torrid Junes here, but by July, the heat has worn us down, and even though temperatures may drop quite a bit, as they have this year, the monsoons have started.
Much as we love and pray for rain, we high desert creatures have never really figured out how to party in it.
If you’re game, I have just the concept for you: the Singin’ in the Rain Festival, in honor of Nacio Herb Brown, the Deming-born musician who composed the tune that was immortalized in the 1952 movie of the same name. Of course, it would get tricky in drought years. Maybe we could hire rain dancers, install misters and water slides and hedge our bets by holding the festival in tents, or have back-up plans for a Jornada del Muerto Fiesta if we have to call it in case of no rain.
It’s safer to bet that, rain or no, the FDZ season will be hot. So we must come up with more cool alternatives and themes, as the season’s most successful planners have done. Examples: Ice cream Sunday at New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum, Asombro’s new Nightlife in the Desert event, Butterfly Flutterby and the brand new Tour de Beer. What could be more refreshing than frozen treats, a cool desert night, breezes generated by butterfly wings and a frosty mug or two?
Even smarter are those who move their fiestas indoors. That’s the plan for the White Sands International Film Fest, most of which is held in Las Cruces movie theaters, in air-conditioned comfort.
Heading inside and cranking up the A/C is a concept that is catching on with more and more fiesta planners.
Arguably, July and August could be prime time for museums, art galleries and theaters (many local theater groups start new seasons about now) and for glittery new facilities like the Las Cruces Convention Center and the almost-finished New Mexico State University Center for the Arts.
The LCCC will host the Men Who Cook benefit Aug. 11. When it’s too hot to cook, why not let our big strong, desert-hardy men do it? And we’ll do our part by eating … in air-conditioned comfort.
The FDZ would be a great time to experiment with new events and uses for the convention center, like the well-received recent community garage sale. We’d probably all be more inclined to clean out our attics and profit from our surplus stuff, if we didn’t have to hang out in our hot driveways all day to make a sale.
It could be that the fiestas dwindle because it’s too hot to generate interest in anything very energetic. Maybe we could gather hammock vendors, power loungers and dream analysts for an annual Siesta Fiesta.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Do you feel your group or cause is being crowded out by the growing competition during FTFS (Full-Tilt Fiesta Season)?
Maybe it’s time to consider a new approach, and boldly go where few fiesta animals have gone before.
Are you brave and creative enough to tackle the Fiesta Dead Zone (FDZ)?
FTFS traditionally stretches from Labor Day to Memorial Day and things get pretty quiet during the hot summer months.
In recent years, the season has stretched out a bit, with several successful festivals, including Pride Fest, Father’s Day events, Juneteenth, Raft the Rio and Turtle Fest in June and a burgeoning Borderland crop of Fourth of July festivals.
From then until late August, the fiesta pickings have been traditionally been pretty slim.
There’s good reason. We’ve been good sports through increasingly torrid Junes here, but by July, the heat has worn us down, and even though temperatures may drop quite a bit, as they have this year, the monsoons have started.
Much as we love and pray for rain, we high desert creatures have never really figured out how to party in it.
If you’re game, I have just the concept for you: the Singin’ in the Rain Festival, in honor of Nacio Herb Brown, the Deming-born musician who composed the tune that was immortalized in the 1952 movie of the same name. Of course, it would get tricky in drought years. Maybe we could hire rain dancers, install misters and water slides and hedge our bets by holding the festival in tents, or have back-up plans for a Jornada del Muerto Fiesta if we have to call it in case of no rain.
It’s safer to bet that, rain or no, the FDZ season will be hot. So we must come up with more cool alternatives and themes, as the season’s most successful planners have done. Examples: Ice cream Sunday at New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum, Asombro’s new Nightlife in the Desert event, Butterfly Flutterby and the brand new Tour de Beer. What could be more refreshing than frozen treats, a cool desert night, breezes generated by butterfly wings and a frosty mug or two?
Even smarter are those who move their fiestas indoors. That’s the plan for the White Sands International Film Fest, most of which is held in Las Cruces movie theaters, in air-conditioned comfort.
Heading inside and cranking up the A/C is a concept that is catching on with more and more fiesta planners.
Arguably, July and August could be prime time for museums, art galleries and theaters (many local theater groups start new seasons about now) and for glittery new facilities like the Las Cruces Convention Center and the almost-finished New Mexico State University Center for the Arts.
The LCCC will host the Men Who Cook benefit Aug. 11. When it’s too hot to cook, why not let our big strong, desert-hardy men do it? And we’ll do our part by eating … in air-conditioned comfort.
The FDZ would be a great time to experiment with new events and uses for the convention center, like the well-received recent community garage sale. We’d probably all be more inclined to clean out our attics and profit from our surplus stuff, if we didn’t have to hang out in our hot driveways all day to make a sale.
It could be that the fiestas dwindle because it’s too hot to generate interest in anything very energetic. Maybe we could gather hammock vendors, power loungers and dream analysts for an annual Siesta Fiesta.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
Friday, July 6, 2012
How about Super PACs for artists?
By S. Derrickson Moore
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Where are the Medicis of the world when we really need them?
What seems to be called for, in our increasingly talent-packed city, are some very wealthy patrons of the arts, like those in Italy’s Renaissance cities. Florence, Rome and Venice, so endowed with brilliant visual and performing artists, seemed equally well endowed with wealthy popes, doges and prosperous merchant families willing, nay eager, to lavish commissions on the likes of sculptor and painter Michelangelo, as well as musicians, poets, playwrights.
How can we help support our own multi-talented Renaissance men and women (and kids)?
It’s not unusual to solicit government, corporations and wealthy individuals for grants and bequests for theaters and art centers, major motion pictures, scholarships, fellowships and artist-in-residency programs. New Mexico legislation allocates one percent of public building construction to be dedicated to public art projects.
Lately, however, it seems like everybody is seeking aid from everyone for just about everything.
Maybe it’s the tough economy, cutbacks in art funding, or an aging, over-extended and over-supplied population of arts aficionados. I know several persons (including myself) who have to plan rotating art exhibitions in their own homes and find room for the overflow in art closets and storage areas.
Whatever the reasons, many of us are being called upon to go the extra mile.
It is not enough to buy a painting, sculpture, CD or ticket.
We are being asked to finance works in progress and we’re sent to a multitude of websites to contribute to the funding of films both short and full-length, along with CDs, self-published books and assorted musical, literary, artistic and theatrical endeavors.
The upside is that some of the appeals are as creative as the artists who solicit help. I have been treated to lovely melodies, dramatic film trailers, multimedia extravaganzas and some requests so innovative that they are, themselves, masterpieces of performance art.
The best of the appeals offer value-added bonuses: signed works, sharing of insider insights and experiences, even, in the case of one my favorite local talents, a red enchilada dinner and an in-person performance in your own home.
The downside is that much talent is being wasted and artists are becoming exhausted as they feel forced to keep appealing to what has become a tapped market.
What to do, what to do?
We need artistic Super PACs. And the need seems to be so dire that we can’t wait to come up with anything new and specific on the PAC (Poor Artists Competing? Positive Artistic Cooperation?) front.
Nope. Let’s just take over those existing Super PACs.
I wish we could limit all political discourse to live debates and media interviews, and agree to throw all those millions and billions being spent on attack ads into, say, infrastucture, education, health care and lowering the national debt.
But let’s aim for more modest goals, for now.
Let’s start with the presidential election PACs and require that at least 70 percent of all expenditures be devoted to artistic projects.
Each funded artist or cultural organization would produce a work of art representing the cause or candidate supported by the PAC … and the more abstract and creative the better.
Instead of a full-tilt media blitz of vitriol, we could have city squares filled with noble statues, minstrels and mimes conveying their interpretations of wanna-be civic leaders. Instead of spin doctors and propaganda meisters, we could have filmmakers, poets and novelists offering idealistic visions of the future, and multimedia wizards who, as visionary Robert Kennedy once suggested, dream of things that never were, and ask, “Why not?”
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Where are the Medicis of the world when we really need them?
What seems to be called for, in our increasingly talent-packed city, are some very wealthy patrons of the arts, like those in Italy’s Renaissance cities. Florence, Rome and Venice, so endowed with brilliant visual and performing artists, seemed equally well endowed with wealthy popes, doges and prosperous merchant families willing, nay eager, to lavish commissions on the likes of sculptor and painter Michelangelo, as well as musicians, poets, playwrights.
How can we help support our own multi-talented Renaissance men and women (and kids)?
It’s not unusual to solicit government, corporations and wealthy individuals for grants and bequests for theaters and art centers, major motion pictures, scholarships, fellowships and artist-in-residency programs. New Mexico legislation allocates one percent of public building construction to be dedicated to public art projects.
Lately, however, it seems like everybody is seeking aid from everyone for just about everything.
Maybe it’s the tough economy, cutbacks in art funding, or an aging, over-extended and over-supplied population of arts aficionados. I know several persons (including myself) who have to plan rotating art exhibitions in their own homes and find room for the overflow in art closets and storage areas.
Whatever the reasons, many of us are being called upon to go the extra mile.
It is not enough to buy a painting, sculpture, CD or ticket.
We are being asked to finance works in progress and we’re sent to a multitude of websites to contribute to the funding of films both short and full-length, along with CDs, self-published books and assorted musical, literary, artistic and theatrical endeavors.
The upside is that some of the appeals are as creative as the artists who solicit help. I have been treated to lovely melodies, dramatic film trailers, multimedia extravaganzas and some requests so innovative that they are, themselves, masterpieces of performance art.
The best of the appeals offer value-added bonuses: signed works, sharing of insider insights and experiences, even, in the case of one my favorite local talents, a red enchilada dinner and an in-person performance in your own home.
The downside is that much talent is being wasted and artists are becoming exhausted as they feel forced to keep appealing to what has become a tapped market.
What to do, what to do?
We need artistic Super PACs. And the need seems to be so dire that we can’t wait to come up with anything new and specific on the PAC (Poor Artists Competing? Positive Artistic Cooperation?) front.
Nope. Let’s just take over those existing Super PACs.
I wish we could limit all political discourse to live debates and media interviews, and agree to throw all those millions and billions being spent on attack ads into, say, infrastucture, education, health care and lowering the national debt.
But let’s aim for more modest goals, for now.
Let’s start with the presidential election PACs and require that at least 70 percent of all expenditures be devoted to artistic projects.
Each funded artist or cultural organization would produce a work of art representing the cause or candidate supported by the PAC … and the more abstract and creative the better.
Instead of a full-tilt media blitz of vitriol, we could have city squares filled with noble statues, minstrels and mimes conveying their interpretations of wanna-be civic leaders. Instead of spin doctors and propaganda meisters, we could have filmmakers, poets and novelists offering idealistic visions of the future, and multimedia wizards who, as visionary Robert Kennedy once suggested, dream of things that never were, and ask, “Why not?”
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
How about Super PACs for artists?
By S. Derrickson Moore
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Where are the Medicis of the world when we really need them?
What seems to be called for, in our increasingly talent-packed city, are some very wealthy patrons of the arts, like those in Italy’s Renaissance cities. Florence, Rome and Venice, so endowed with brilliant visual and performing artists, seemed equally well endowed with wealthy popes, doges and prosperous merchant families willing, nay eager, to lavish commissions on the likes of sculptor and painter Michelangelo, as well as musicians, poets, playwrights.
How can we help support our own multi-talented Renaissance men and women (and kids)?
It’s not unusual to solicit government, corporations and wealthy individuals for grants and bequests for theaters and art centers, major motion pictures, scholarships, fellowships and artist-in-residency programs. New Mexico legislation allocates one percent of public building construction to be dedicated to public art projects.
Lately, however, it seems like everybody is seeking aid from everyone for just about everything.
Maybe it’s the tough economy, cutbacks in art funding, or an aging, over-extended and over-supplied population of arts aficionados. I know several persons (including myself) who have to plan rotating art exhibitions in their own homes and find room for the overflow in art closets and storage areas.
Whatever the reasons, many of us are being called upon to go the extra mile.
It is not enough to buy a painting, sculpture, CD or ticket.
We are being asked to finance works in progress and we’re sent to a multitude of websites to contribute to the funding of films both short and full-length, along with CDs, self-published books and assorted musical, literary, artistic and theatrical endeavors.
The upside is that some of the appeals are as creative as the artists who solicit help. I have been treated to lovely melodies, dramatic film trailers, multimedia extravaganzas and some requests so innovative that they are, themselves, masterpieces of performance art.
The best of the appeals offer value-added bonuses: signed works, sharing of insider insights and experiences, even, in the case of one my favorite local talents, a red enchilada dinner and an in-person performance in your own home.
The downside is that much talent is being wasted and artists are becoming exhausted as they feel forced to keep appealing to what has become a tapped market.
What to do, what to do?
We need artistic Super PACs. And the need seems to be so dire that we can’t wait to come up with anything new and specific on the PAC (Poor Artists Competing? Positive Artistic Cooperation?) front.
Nope. Let’s just take over those existing Super PACs.
I wish we could limit all political discourse to live debates and media interviews, and agree to throw all those millions and billions being spent on attack ads into, say, infrastucture, education, health care and lowering the national debt.
But let’s aim for more modest goals, for now.
Let’s start with the presidential election PACs and require that at least 70 percent of all expenditures be devoted to artistic projects.
Each funded artist or cultural organization would produce a work of art representing the cause or candidate supported by the PAC … and the more abstract and creative the better.
Instead of a full-tilt media blitz of vitriol, we could have city squares filled with noble statues, minstrels and mimes conveying their interpretations of wanna-be civic leaders. Instead of spin doctors and propaganda meisters, we could have filmmakers, poets and novelists offering idealistic visions of the future, and multimedia wizards who, as visionary Robert Kennedy once suggested, dream of things that never were, and ask, “Why not?”
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Where are the Medicis of the world when we really need them?
What seems to be called for, in our increasingly talent-packed city, are some very wealthy patrons of the arts, like those in Italy’s Renaissance cities. Florence, Rome and Venice, so endowed with brilliant visual and performing artists, seemed equally well endowed with wealthy popes, doges and prosperous merchant families willing, nay eager, to lavish commissions on the likes of sculptor and painter Michelangelo, as well as musicians, poets, playwrights.
How can we help support our own multi-talented Renaissance men and women (and kids)?
It’s not unusual to solicit government, corporations and wealthy individuals for grants and bequests for theaters and art centers, major motion pictures, scholarships, fellowships and artist-in-residency programs. New Mexico legislation allocates one percent of public building construction to be dedicated to public art projects.
Lately, however, it seems like everybody is seeking aid from everyone for just about everything.
Maybe it’s the tough economy, cutbacks in art funding, or an aging, over-extended and over-supplied population of arts aficionados. I know several persons (including myself) who have to plan rotating art exhibitions in their own homes and find room for the overflow in art closets and storage areas.
Whatever the reasons, many of us are being called upon to go the extra mile.
It is not enough to buy a painting, sculpture, CD or ticket.
We are being asked to finance works in progress and we’re sent to a multitude of websites to contribute to the funding of films both short and full-length, along with CDs, self-published books and assorted musical, literary, artistic and theatrical endeavors.
The upside is that some of the appeals are as creative as the artists who solicit help. I have been treated to lovely melodies, dramatic film trailers, multimedia extravaganzas and some requests so innovative that they are, themselves, masterpieces of performance art.
The best of the appeals offer value-added bonuses: signed works, sharing of insider insights and experiences, even, in the case of one my favorite local talents, a red enchilada dinner and an in-person performance in your own home.
The downside is that much talent is being wasted and artists are becoming exhausted as they feel forced to keep appealing to what has become a tapped market.
What to do, what to do?
We need artistic Super PACs. And the need seems to be so dire that we can’t wait to come up with anything new and specific on the PAC (Poor Artists Competing? Positive Artistic Cooperation?) front.
Nope. Let’s just take over those existing Super PACs.
I wish we could limit all political discourse to live debates and media interviews, and agree to throw all those millions and billions being spent on attack ads into, say, infrastucture, education, health care and lowering the national debt.
But let’s aim for more modest goals, for now.
Let’s start with the presidential election PACs and require that at least 70 percent of all expenditures be devoted to artistic projects.
Each funded artist or cultural organization would produce a work of art representing the cause or candidate supported by the PAC … and the more abstract and creative the better.
Instead of a full-tilt media blitz of vitriol, we could have city squares filled with noble statues, minstrels and mimes conveying their interpretations of wanna-be civic leaders. Instead of spin doctors and propaganda meisters, we could have filmmakers, poets and novelists offering idealistic visions of the future, and multimedia wizards who, as visionary Robert Kennedy once suggested, dream of things that never were, and ask, “Why not?”
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
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