Valentine's Day Concert

Bluegrass Legends
Dry Branch Fire Squad
with special guests, The Mars Hillbillies

PLUS:
Valentine's Wine & Chocolate Tasting before the show!

Thursday, February 14
6:30 P.M. - Reception & Tasting
7:30 P.M. - Concert

Coconino Center for the Arts
2300 N. Fort Valley Road
Flagstaff, Arizona

Tickets are available ONLINE and at Arizona Music Pro in Flagstaff.



Traditional Ties is presented in partnership by Flagstaff Friends of Traditional Music (FFOTM) and Flagstaff Cultural Partners.  Both are non-profit organizations.

Youth Celebrate Art & Culture

At a time where our national priority has never been further from the arts, it is increasingly important to celebrate and recognize those who are perhaps most important to the arts within our community - the youth.

March, which is National Youth Art Month, is all about advocating art for children. Many young people excel in art because they love what art stands for and how it makes them feel to dance, paint or write.


Artwork by Maria Melendez

We are happy to present some key events in association with Flagstaff's Youth Celebrate Art & Culture program that highlights visual artists, dancers, musicians, poets and performers. The program begins on February 29th with the opening reception for the Youth Art Exhibit. From 4-6pm, come and meet many of the 300 talented students participating in this exciting exhibit of K-12 art. Annually, every K-12 art teacher in Flagstaff is invited to share 10 of their favorite student works of art for the year with the community in the form of the Youth Art Exhibit. The result is a stunning display of the future of art in Flagstaff.

On Saturday, March 8th, the Celebrations of Culture event will highlight young performing artists. West African drum & dance, teen poetry, many types of music, and more will fill the theatre at the Coconino Center for the Arts for the afternoon. More events will continue throughout the month of March, including the Teen Poetry Festival March 28th-30th. For more information, visit our website.

Artist, teacher, dancer, dance teacher... the list goes on.  The talented Craig Bowie wears many hats in our community.  With Youth Art Month approaching, Bowie is the ideal artist to recognize, as he is involved with many youth art projects and performances.  

Having taught for many years, Bowie adopted as his motto the Pablo Picasso quote, "every child is an artist".  He stresses it everyday in the classroom.  He also believes that the word "can't" doesn't exist in the classroom.  Bowie currently teaches over 500 Elementary level students at the tri-lingual school, Puente de Hozho.  He enjoys the younger students because they are more willing to explore themselves and their artistic talents.  He has found that older students often have to re-train themselves, as they tend to hold pre-determined ideas about what they can and can't do with art.  Bowie maintains that "everybody can dance, paint, draw, sing" - in his experience, the possibilities are infinite.  
 

photo by Elizabeth Vogler

Currently, Bowie is working on two collaborative art projects with his students at Puente de Hozho.  These projects are in preparation for the Youth Celebrate Art and Culture Exhibition in March and for the Recycled Art Exhibition in April.  The first is a body-casting with recycled tape.  The students each provide one body part to be casted, creating a full body with the parts of many students.  The students can make up the poses that they want for their shared body.

The second project involves more in-depth research.  Ultimately creating a peace circle of 6-inch figures from different cultures, each student must research a cultural background to dress their individual figure.  This way, about 40 different cultures will be united when the figures hold hands in the peace circle.  The intent of the collaborative project is to "celebrate diversity and world peace".


photo by Elizabeth Vogler

Bowie believes strongly in integration of fine arts in the classroom.  The exploration and incorporation of in-depth art projects in the classroom stimulates critical thinking.  This idea is exemplified in the peace circle project.  The students do research on diverse cultural backgrounds, learning about different time periods, ethnicities, and dress styles.  He believes in art as a means to increase awareness and encourage change.  One doesn't "just paint for the sake of painting, but paints to make statements, and paints to make world a better place". He stresses the importance of integrating a social issue into the class artwork, carrying out one of the purposes of art.

At Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy, Bowie teaches African Drum and Dance with 9th through 12th graders.  In these groups, "every kid drums, dances, and sings."  On Thursdays, Bowie teaches a family African Drum and Dance class in the FALA dance room.  He has built the class so everyone can do it. 

Last summer Bowie studied in Africa under Chuck Davis.  He spent 3 ½ weeks in Gambia and Senegal.  He danced every day and traveled to many different villages. Bowie tries to bring cultural components into his African classes.  He explained to me that Africa has oral storytelling traditions, so when he brings stories into his teaching, he makes sure to clarify, "this is what I heard and learned, but it changes".  He says the kids respond well to the history.  He says, "In the rhythm and ritual, there is a magic."  



Bowie continues to have big plans for the future, focusing on African drum and dance and youth arts.  Every year, he plans performances at NAU aiming to foster "support for the arts to fellow educators, and emphasize that arts belong in education".  He has also recently received a grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts for Bruce Aiken and Shonto Begay to work together for the first time in creating a mural at Puente de Hozho. Bowie says proudly, "By May, every kid will have a brushstroke on it."


To contact Craig Bowie, drop by his African Drum and Dance class, or email him.  Artwork created by his students will be on display in the Youth Celebrate Art and Culture exhibition at CCA.  Bowie's African Drum and Dance youth group will be performing at the Coconino Center for the Arts on March 8th, for the Celebrations of Culture performance day.  

Article and Photographs by Elizabeth Vogler

Youth Art Month is coming up in March 2008, and we have a plentitude of youth art displays, performances, and workshops planned throughout the month.  However, March is not the only time of the year that we work to bring the arts to local youth.  Throughout the year, Flagstaff Cultural Partners collaborates with the Artists' Coalition of Flagstaff to bring art classrooms from middle and high schools in Flagstaff into the Coconino Center for the Arts gallery to view exhibits and learn from artist docents.

This partnership between our art organizations began during the Appetizers exhibit in September 2007.  Continuing for each exhibit through the end of the year, local classrooms have been given the opportunity to learn about local artwork and the processes that artists undergo to create their work.  Docents typically bring additional examples of their artwork than what are already hanging on the wall, as well as half-finished pieces used to explain the process of creation. 

For most field trips, docents are Artists' Coalition members, as many of these artists participate in many of the shows at the Center for the Arts.  Participants have included Lucian Richards, Sharon Richards, Sondra Francis, Greg Mason, Jay Baker, and Sarita Southgate.  The process includes dividing the group of students into the number of artist docents and having these smaller groups rotate around the gallery to learn about each artist's craft for between 10 and 20 minutes.  This way, students are allowed an in-depth understanding of the variety of art methods and forms.  This also provides an intimate setting for students to ask questions of the artists.

During the Splendor of Chaos exhibition, a slightly different approach was taken.  One artist, Dr. Jim Swift, who is also a professor of Mathematics at NAU, spoke with a group of middle school students from Renaissance Magnet Middle School, about the relationship between art and math, focusing on fractals, the Mandelbrot set, and theories of chaos.  This field trip allowed students to take a different way of looking at art, specifically through a mathematical lens. 

The most recent field trip during It's Elemental brought Jodi Nicolson's high school art class from Sinagua High School to the gallery, while five artist docents shared their artwork and insights about their work processes to the students. 


In this first image, Sharon Richards, fiber artist, shows the students many small quilts and scarves.  She has also brought samples to show the different stages of her work.  She describes to the students how she uses a bleach pen to draw shapes and designs onto the dyed fabric.


This photograph includes Warren Uekert standing with an unfinished table and next to the finished one which was included in the exhibition.  He encouraged the students to handle pieces of wood and arrange them into larger sculptures.  This hands-on approach was appreciated by the students.


The photograph above shows Sondra Francis walking her student group into the side exhibition room where NAU and CCC student work was featured.  Sondra works in fused glass, and after describing her own work and processes, she would tour the students to all the other glass works in the exhibition.  During this tour, she would describe the different approaches to working in glass.  The high school groups seemed impressed and inspired by the student gallery, where artwork of equal caliber was recognized.

Although we devote the entire month of March to youth art, it is important to continue youth art programming throughout the year.  Providing artist docents and an open dialogue about all the different types of art sparks motivation and inspiration in the minds of young artists.  With the large art community in Flagstaff, hopefully students can develop relationships and networks to further their own interests and possibly careers.

 

Flagstaff Cultural Partners' programs are made possible in part by a partnership with the City of Flagstaff, with funding from the Bed, Board and Beverage (BBB) Tax.

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