<img src=http://sonewmex.com/images/cranes03.jpg align=left hspace=3>Birds and art – what a natural combination and what a sight indeed along the Rio Grande during the autumn season! Autumn is the best time of year for New Mexico, and events crowd onto one another as the holiday season approaches.
The popular Festival of the Cranes, Nov. 14-19, 2006, celebrates the great fall season and for the occasion, the Bosque del Apache Refuge, Socorro and the surrounding communities are full of sights to feast your eyes upon.
From the awesome experience of thousands of birds taking flight at dawn or returning to roost at dusk, to special birding and historical site tours, the Festival offers the best of sights and sounds of the wintering birds. Informational workshops range from Duck Butt ID classes to learning about pricklies at the Center’s Desert Arboretum. A photography contest, special luncheon and evening talks and tours around historic Socorro add to the events selection.
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/images/cranes01.jpg align=right hspace=3> Visitors can extend their experience of the area by visiting the numerous arts and crafts shows which, like the migrating birds, seem to return yearly right in time for all the fun. Art shows will abound from the San Augustin Plains and the VLA Visitor Center to Magdalena, and San Antonio as well as Socorro.
The Wildlife Art Show at the Bosque del Apache, in the big tent on the festival grounds, is always an excellent show. This year, the juried exhibit will feature 25 artists including Adabel Allen, the festival artist whose work was chosen for the Festival brochure and image. An artist, poet and musician, Adabel became a birder a couple of years ago. A frequent visitor of Bosque del Apache, Adabel admits she now can’t draw anything but birds. “My inspiration and fervor for life has always come from observing and celebrating the world I’m in,” Adabel writes, “and though most of my art is focused on celebrating the beauty of birds in their environs, I’m also doing work that makes statements about the condition of the environment and the threats to wildlife and their habitats, and include illustrating a variety of bird folklore from around the world to further investigate birds and our relationship to them and their environments.” You can visit her website: AdabelAllen.com before you see her at the show.
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/images/cranes02.jpg align=left hspace=3> Lynn Starnes won several awards in the three month long Valley Land Fund Photo contest that ran from April 1 to June 30 of this year. She and Joe Zinn, also a winning photographer there, will be on hand at the Wildlife Art Show.
Many artists will be returning to the show including Skeeter Leard, who has held the reins as Show Coordinator for so many years she actually gets to semi-retire. She has handed over those duties to the able Leigh Ann Vradenburg, Supervisor of Operations for the Friends of the Bosque del Apache NWR, who is a birder and artist in her own right.
The show opens Friday Nov. 17, 9:30 am to 5:30 pm; Saturday, 8:30 am to 5:30 pm and Sunday, 8:30 am to 3 pm.
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/images/cranes03.jpg align=left hspace=3>Birds and art – what a natural combination and what a sight indeed along the Rio Grande during the autumn season! Autumn is the best time of year for New Mexico, and events crowd onto one another as the holiday season approaches.
The popular Festival of the Cranes, Nov. 14-19, 2006, celebrates the great fall season and for the occasion, the Bosque del Apache Refuge, Socorro and the surrounding communities are full of sights to feast your eyes upon.
From the awesome experience of thousands of birds taking flight at dawn or returning to roost at dusk, to special birding and historical site tours, the Festival offers the best of sights and sounds of the wintering birds. Informational workshops range from Duck Butt ID classes to learning about pricklies at the Center’s Desert Arboretum. A photography contest, special luncheon and evening talks and tours around historic Socorro add to the events selection.
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/images/cranes01.jpg align=right hspace=3> Visitors can extend their experience of the area by visiting the numerous arts and crafts shows which, like the migrating birds, seem to return yearly right in time for all the fun. Art shows will abound from the San Augustin Plains and the VLA Visitor Center to Magdalena, and San Antonio as well as Socorro.
The Wildlife Art Show at the Bosque del Apache, in the big tent on the festival grounds, is always an excellent show. This year, the juried exhibit will feature 25 artists including Adabel Allen, the festival artist whose work was chosen for the Festival brochure and image. An artist, poet and musician, Adabel became a birder a couple of years ago. A frequent visitor of Bosque del Apache, Adabel admits she now can’t draw anything but birds. “My inspiration and fervor for life has always come from observing and celebrating the world I’m in,” Adabel writes, “and though most of my art is focused on celebrating the beauty of birds in their environs, I’m also doing work that makes statements about the condition of the environment and the threats to wildlife and their habitats, and include illustrating a variety of bird folklore from around the world to further investigate birds and our relationship to them and their environments.” You can visit her website: AdabelAllen.com before you see her at the show.
<img src=http://sonewmex.com/images/cranes02.jpg align=left hspace=3> Lynn Starnes won several awards in the three month long Valley Land Fund Photo contest that ran from April 1 to June 30 of this year. She and Joe Zinn, also a winning photographer there, will be on hand at the Wildlife Art Show.
Many artists will be returning to the show including Skeeter Leard, who has held the reins as Show Coordinator for so many years she actually gets to semi-retire. She has handed over those duties to the able Leigh Ann Vradenburg, Supervisor of Operations for the Friends of the Bosque del Apache NWR, who is a birder and artist in her own right.
The show opens Friday Nov. 17, 9:30 am to 5:30 pm; Saturday, 8:30 am to 5:30 pm and Sunday, 8:30 am to 3 pm.