June/July 2002 Articles

Lincoln County - Art Loop

Lincoln County – Spend an enjoyable weekend seeing beautiful scenery and incredible art during the annual Art Loop, a self-guided tour of artists studios and galleries in rural Lincoln County.

The Art Loop, July 13 and 14, this year features 19 artists living in Carrizozo, Capitan, Lincoln,  Nogal and the Hondo area. Art Loop offers a rare opportunity for the public to visit with these artists in their own work environment, with endless possibilities for great gifts. The beauty of the area adds its own charm to the weekend. Maps and other information about the Art Loop will be widely available for the weekend. And you can visit their website: www.artloop.org for more information.

Here’s a summary of the artists and their art along the Art Loop:

1. Ann Templeton, expressive paintings in oil and pastel focus on contemporary approach to the landscape

2. Dee Wescott, panting. ‘Art is my journey’

3. Judy Benson, jewelry, each neckpiece tells a story

4 Paula White, painting, vibrant representations of the Hondo River Valley in porcelain, oil and mixed media

5. Linda Fox, paper collage, dynamic layers of texture, shape and patterns form abstract and representational composition

6. Susan Weir-Ancker, ceramics, garden sculpture, table fountains and functional works

7. Beverly Wilson, book arts and printmaking, Fruit of the Trees Paper Products, new series of mono-prints, collages and limited edition illustrated artist’s books

8.  Jake Wolfhart, leather, a feast for the senses

9. Maggie Doyle, handwoven clothing, contemporary limited edition handwoven clothing

10. Susan Burke, ceramics, porcelain and stoneware birdbaths, sculpture and dinnerware

11. Karen Pritchett and Todd Shelby, ceramics, Animalia Pottery, starfish-topped teapots, lizard-laced platters and bowls brimming with bumblebees

12. Zoe de Negri, jewelry, metal jewelry embellished with semi-precious stones, whimsical, colorful

 13. Richard Rumpf, blacksmithing, sculpture,  from traditional blacksmithing of functional objects to inventive sculpture

14. Pamela Topper, garden sculpture of figurative and abstract statuary in marble, alabaster and steel

15. Georgia and Mike Lagg, woodwork, sculpted doors, animated lamps, organic window coverings and expressive sculpture

16. Gay P. Speirbhain, multi-dimensional Folk Art, nationally recognized paintings and constructions of found objects, written verses ; colorful brilliances to produce whimsical visions of the world

 17. Bill Kerr, hand-painted porcelain,  Old World elegance and southwest designs on china, porcelain, dinnerware and tile tabletops

18. Tim O’Lear and Marie Watkins, folk art and batik apparel, ethnic-inspired contemporary folk art, mirrors, wall decorations, batik cotton clothing

19. Dennis Dunnum, furniture with personality, eclectic combinations of wood, paint and mosaic

London Frontier Theatre Company

By Gwen Roath
Socorro

Magdalena – Donna Todd, Socorro County’s damé (or doña, in Spanish) of the theatre arts, enters at stage left just as the intermission to May Day! On Lost Wife Creek begins.

“As some of you know,” she begins after the hearty round of applause subsides, “we’re trying to buy a theatre.” She notes the London Frontier Theatre Co. has been given “real theatre seats, with cushions so you won’t have to sit on hard chairs. But for some reason, they don’t want us to bolt those seats in to the gymnasium floor.” Donna then launches into a short plea for donations to the cause – a plea which nets the company’s account half again as much as the tickets had brought in.

“They wanted me to come out crying and say we hadn’t eaten for days,” Donna says later, speaking of her cast of characters who had finally, she says, convinced her that she needed to make just such a plea to the audience.

Donna Todd, playwright, producer, director and actress (among other roles) is a tireless promoter of her London Frontier Theatre Co. At a recent conference in Las Cruces, Donna  was often heard to exclaim: “Oh, there’s so-and-so. I want to meet them.” And, theatre brochure in hand,  Donna’s small, energetic frame could be seen charging through the crowd to catch up to her next contact for her favorite subject: London Frontier Theatre.

In the six years since Donna brought her theatre company (read: herself and various props, books, dogs and cats) to Magdalena, the productions have grown in popularity and bring in a faithful group of local enthusiasts. They also draw visitors from cities north and south of here. Out-of-staters often arrive just to see a play, which typically sells out for the Old Timers’ Reunion in July.

Born in Arkansas, and raised in Georgia, Donna was drawn to acting as the proverbial duck to water, writing, directing and acting in plays as a youngster. She attended the University of Georgia for a couple of years but abandoned the quiet academic halls for  real theatre life after her first job with a  summer touring company.” All I wanted to do was act, anyway. I didn’t want a degree.”

Donna headed toward the theatre mecca: New York City. But first, she stopped over to visit an aunt in Washington. DC. While there, she heard about auditions for drama scholarships begin given  to local students. So, she quickly got a job, auditioned and got the scholarship, studying for about a year with private tutors.

A year later, she debuted in New York City, in an off-off Broadway show. A couple off-Broadway professional shows later, Donna, “well, what can I say? I met an actor and a year later, Madelyn was born – in San Francisco.”

After her daughter’s birth, Donna when to L.A. and acted there, and back in Atlanta. When the marriage broke up, Donna “took off for England, with Madelyn in tow.” There, Donna acted in several productions, along with taking “a million other jobs” in an attempt to make a living for herself and her daughter. The jobs ranged from distributing leaflets to the restaurant and catering business to editor of the Green Party news sheet.

Two plays Donna had written were performed at the Edenborough Festival, “what you call festival fringe,” a festival equivalent, she says, to New York’s off-Broadway. “The kid’s show went well,” she says. It toured several other places, including shows in the schools around London.

The second show, “Women Real & Dreaming,” well, she says, “it got some good reviews from the few who saw it.” But the play remains one of her favorite. “I haven’t done it here,” she says, and probably never will since it’s of a rather ethereal theme.

From England, Donna moved to in 1973 to Salt Lake City where she acted for with several theatre company, her favorite being the Salt Lake Acting  Co.

About that time, she began wondering about having her own theatre company. “Of course I had no money.” But a series of circumstances aided her in her quest: She was offered a space to use to teach acting and soon after the company that was in the space “went belly-under and they asked me if I wanted to take over the space.”

 The London Frontier Theatre  Co. was officially registered in 1991.

When Donna came into a small inheritance, she decided to try New Mexico, “I’d always loved it. I headed to Santa Fe. Of course, I was thinking of Santa Fe of 20 years ago, or so.”

“Somewhere under there, Santa Fe’s still there, but it’s not very apparent anymore,” Donna says.

So, on the advice of a friend, Donna headed out  in search of a new home. She was on her way to Las Cruces and decided to head west in a big loop. Heading west from Socorro, she found in

Magdalena the country she loves – mountains in a rural area. “Exactly what I like. And Magdalena, it looked, … real, I guess – especially after Santa Fe.”

It took her a year before she found a home to buy  but by 1996, London Frontier Theatre Co. was back in business – in Magdalena.

Her focus here has been western. “You can do anything western,” she says. Her first production was a re-write of Decameron. “Instead of hiding out from a plague in a castle, a stagecoach breaks down,  and the characters tell stories around a fire. It transposes just fine,” she says. The next was a re-write of a play about western women.

Donna is aided in her efforts through grants (including the McCune Charitable  and New Mexico Arts Division.) The cast changes but some of the actors have been with the company for several years: including Frank Howard, and Fernando Montano, who started out with just a couple of words and has grown into a major character  actor.

Don Wiltshire has added great flare to the plays with his lighting and set design and Daniel Broaddus doubles as actor and sound manager.

Most the actors have little if any acting experience but Donna has found some gems: Anna Marie Clark (as Ruby Aragon in the series), Beth Pawlcyn (Ivy Dake) also doubles as grant writer. Marking her debut during May’s production was Cindy Northrup, whose expressive face and clear mannerisms stamped her for a professional (although she’d never held acting roles before.)

Michelle White is another talented young actor, one of several London Frontier Theatre Co. has seen over the years. The problem with young actors, Donna notes, is that they don’t stay that way.

Her  favorite play, she says, “is mostly the one I’m doing at the time. … I love the series,” a project she has been eager to try since it allows the playwright to explore more deeply into the characters.

The Lost Wife Creek series is a funny, often irreverent series about the Aragons and the Trotters who live near the Lost Wife Creek (somewhere around Magdalena) during the depression era ’30s.

The couple’s challenges and their adventures often poke fun at society – then as well as now – while exploring one universal theme or another and the characters’ reactions to the challenges.

Theatre and acting, Donna says, is both fantasy and more-than real.

 On the real side, “theatre provides good perceptions for living. We don’t often reveal to anyone what we really are feeling – whether it’s that we’re overjoyed over something silly or have irrational prejudices,” Donna says.

“But for actors on stage, the point is to reveal these things and get an understanding of them.”

“When people in the audience comes up to me and says, ‘I know just how (such and such character) feels – I feel just like that’,” Donna says its one of the highest compliments people give her.

Then, again, Donna muses, theatre life gives you the opportunity “to play dress up and pretend – and people don’t think you’re too silly – most of the time.”

 For more information, call 505-854-2519 or visit their web:  www.londonfrontiertheatre.com.

Enchantment! next for London Frontier Theatre Co.

Magdalena –   In keeping with Magdalena’s 31st annual Old Timers Days theme, “A Past to Remember”, London Frontier Theatre presents its own tribute to the long-ago, including Magdalena’s unique past as well as its present.

The tale visits the untold (often with good reason) history of the Land of Enchantment, the true stories and people of this great state. Taking a thoroughly modern media approach, the troupe will uncover scandals, make mountains out of molehills, disregard the serious and celebrate the frivolous, and present it all as colorful, rip-roaring epic entertainment.  

Performances are Friday, July 12th, and Saturday, July 13th, both at 7 pm with a Sunday, July 13th matinee at 2 pm, all in Magdalena’s historic WPA Gym, on Main between 4th and 5th Streets.

All performances will start promptly at set times; refreshments, provided by the Boys and Girls Club of Magdalena, will be available.

Tickets are $3.50 for adults, $2.00 for children, and will be available at Outlaws Convenience Store, Magdalena, two weeks before the play.

Tickets may also be purchased at the door, though prior purchase or reservations are advisable, due to large crowds celebrating Old Timers Days.  For reservations or further information, call (505) 854-2519, email:  londonfrontier@gilanet.com, or visit our website:  www.londonfrontiertheatre.com.

31st Annual Old Timers’ Reunion July 12-14

The parade is one of the best in the state and always starts with a cattle drive through town

Painted Pony Update

Socorro – It’s foaling season. No sooner had the big ponies, Vida and Renewal of Life, left for their debut Sunday May 26 in Santa Fe, for the 2002 Trail of Painted Ponies, than 2 mini-ponies appeared at the gallery/stable/studio (otherwise known as the Fullingim-Isenhour Galleries)

Skeeter Leard’s Vida depicts the flow of life along the Rio Grande with an emphasis on all the wildlife one can see at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. (Friends of the Bosque sponsored the horse.) Natasha Isenhour’s horse, sponsored by the Socorro Chamber of Commerce, features the bright colors Natasha is known for in her paintings.

The new ponies are about 12 inches tall, the size of the sculptors’ original and cast from it. They were anticipated and Skeeter Leard had been promising herself some wildflower painting, so a tentative design was awaiting hers.

The subject is poppies: on one side the bright golden Mexican Gold Poppy that looks so sunny mixed in with the agave at the cactus arboretum at Bosque del Apache. On the other side, prickly poppies, white and papery with their distinctive foliage. And the pony’s name? The Poppy Pony, you can call her Poppy, for short.

Natasha Isenhour has decided to do a similar design to her life-size pony; “not exact but a close relative to the large pony.”  She says that the first thing people respond to when they first see “Renewal of Life” is the colors.  So she plans to decorate her small pony sculpture with another colorful, dramatic landscape.  “The colors will be a surprise to me as it happens and I will let the pony tell me her name as she comes to life.”

So what is going to happen with these little equines?  They will be auctioned off at the New Mexico Arts and Crafts Fair, New Mexico State Fairgrounds, the last weekend of June (the 27th-30th).  To find out the auction schedule, stop by Fullingim-Isenhour Galleries on Abeytia in June. Natasha and Skeeter will also have their life-size ponies with them at the fair.  You will find them at the Fine Arts Building just inside the entrance to the art fair grounds.  Be sure to stop by and say “hello!”

The Cell

“Art is only achieved through perspiration!”
 – Kolenkhov

Albuquerque – Hot on the heels of its critically acclaimed production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Fusion is proud to announce its third production of the 2001-2002 inaugural season: You Can’t Take it With You by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. This classic American comedy opens with a literal bang on Thursday, July 4th, 8:00pm at The Cell, Albuquerque’s newest performance venue.

Directed by Brad Gromelski, the show is one for the whole family to enjoy. The production runs through July 28th with Thursday-Saturday evening performances and Sunday matinees.

Written in 1936, You Can’t Take it With You, received the distinguished Pulitzer Prize and saw 837 performances during its Broadway run. Audiences flocked to the theatre to see this endearing play which, for a moment, lifted them out of their anxiety and challenges during the Great Depression and the foreboding of a world war.

With the uncertainty of the world around them, audience members were carried away into the madcap world of the Sycamore/Vanderhof family highlighted by toe dances, dramatic opuses, fireworks, G-men and grand duchesses.  Couched in a highly crafted comedy, Hart and Kaufman, manage to take on the theme of the individual who is set free from stifling social convention and fear masquerading as propriety.

Ultimately, the play asks a most significant question: What is really important in life? This is a question not lost on us today as we once again meet serious challenges and the anxiety of the unknown. 

Visiting director Brad Gromelski is thrilled to be crafting Fusion’s new production of You Can’t Take it With You. A life-long New Yorker, Mr. Gromelski has won several awards as a director for stage and video. He is a published and produced playwright and has worked as a set and lighting designer, off-Broadway producer, theatre reviewer for print and radio, and an actor/singer.

Currently, he holds a position as Associate Professor at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York. He is an elected associate member of The Dramatists Guild of America, Inc.. The Author’s League of America, and The Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, Inc.

Fusion is a diverse collection of artists, teachers, and businesspersons rooted in the conviction that theatrical arts nourish and renew community. The storytelling and dialogue of theatre presents a forum for conscious participation and celebration of the human journey.

Opening Thursday July 4th, You Can’t Take it With You, runs Thursday - Saturday evenings at 8:00 pm with a Sunday matinee at 2:00pm through July 28th. Tickets are $20.00 general admission and $15 for students, seniors, and current AEA members.  Special group rates are available.

The Cell is located at 700 1st St. NW (just south of Lomas.)  Plenty of free parking.  For reservations and information call 766-9412.

Shows run July 4 - 28

Performances are 8 pm Thursday through Saturday, 2 pm on Sundays

Bohemian Light

Mountainair – You may know Jeani Walker through her  beaded jewelry company, Moon Dancers of New Mexico.

The company, formed in 1999, has outlets in stores in 20 states from New York to California and in between, contracting work to many women in the Estancia Valley area.

Now, Jeani Walker has seen the light: Bohemian Lights: Handcrafted fabric and beaded lampshades. Her new work will be featured at Cibola Arts Gallery with an opening reception July 13 at the gallery, 203 Broadway from 1-4 p.m.

Fabrics include satin, lace, velvet and brocade with the shades accented in ornate imported trims and hand-beaded or rayon fringe.

The shapes are reproductions of European parlor and bedroom styles of part eras. Their unique styles create an ambiance, when turned on, that is unlike any other lampshade you’ve ever seen, Jeani promises.  She adds that she’s crossing the European styles with our Southwestern flares and some Art Deco looks as well.

Jeani found New Mexico in 1972, “during my hippie years,” living off South Hwy. 14 and later in La Joya.

But she chose to return to her family roots to raise her daughter.

After her daughter graduated from the University of Texas in Austin, she came back to New Mexico “where my heart had remained all those years.”

“(I) quit a career which had put her in the top 2% of women wage earners, packed up all I owned and headed to Albuquerque to pursue my creative life. “ She quickly found a passion for beadwork, enjoying all “the colors and varieties of beads.”

Jeani says she has been mentored in her lampshade project by an artist in the East Mountains who has been creating fabulous shades for over 25 years.

A member of the Cibola Arts Gallery Cooperative since October, 2000, Jeani says “New Mexico is where I belong and I am so glad to be here NOW!”

For more information about the show or Cibola Arts Gallery, call 505-847-0324.

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