Mail letters to Letters, Santa Fe Reporter, PO Box 2306, Santa Fe, NM 87504, deliver them to 132 E. Marcy St., fax them to 505-988-5348 or email them to the editor
Green Opportunity
Kudos for your detailed and positive story featuring the progressive ¡YouthWorks! program. There is no better time than now to reach out to our community, most specifically to the young people of northern New Mexico.
Santa Fe’s Earth Works Institute also operates a comprehensive green-collar, youth-oriented program called 4C/Climate Change Conservation Corps. Over the course of the summer, our 4C members designed and constructed outdoor classrooms and edible schoolyards at El Dorado Community School, Monte del Sol Charter School and Turquoise Trail Charter School. They took part in several home weatherization retrofits in collaboration with the Sierra Club and The Housing Trust.
Corps members were introduced to the merits of building and constructing an outdoor learning space for experiential learning, while being educated about composting, small-scale gardening, water harvesting and ecological restoration. 4C is getting ready for wetland restoration projects underway in the Cerrillos Hills, Arroyo Hondo and the City of Santa Fe arroyos. Most recently, 4C member and Diné (Navajo) artist Bryan Dixon was chosen to paint a mural at the Santa Fe Place shopping center, unveiled on Oct. 8 as part of an event presented by VisionShift!.
It is fortunate there is more attention being brought to the issue of climate change, and how members of our community are leading the way for New Mexicans to become educated and empowered to take action toward sustainable living. We are grateful for the attention the Santa Fe Reporter brings to this.
Avery Affholter Community Outreach Coordinator
Jan-Willem Jansens
Executive Director
Earth Works Institute
Art Revelation
Thanks for the scandalous revelations about the affair between art and commerce; sorry the reviewer skipped the show. Who doesn’t love a good, condescending lecture, especially one fueled so freely by the reviewer’s feelings of adequacy? True, one needs to weigh one’s desire to please with one’s desire for expression. Now that avant-garde has been reduced to a marketing term, the distinction between the edge and the middle is sometimes a matter of exposure. No one required an apology on behalf of those who serve the target demo, especially the artists who scrape, hammer and toil in the DMZ [demilitarized zone] between curators hustling to make the rent and the battle-weary art investors. But lighten up; it’s only a title. How could anyone take even the most cursory stroll through [William Shearburn Gallery] and fail to be charged by the interior force and ferocity in that work? Readers should not miss this opportunity to survey some of Santa Fe’s most accomplished young artists—Chris Collins’ wildly sensual and confident sculpture, Tuscany Wenger’s exquisite and idiosyncratic figurines, Leslie Ayers’ commanding, almost industrial paintscapes: just three of many works in the series, all of which are perfectly able to speak for themselves and saying so much.
Lauren Oliver
Santa Fe
Letters 101
In the short time that I have been reading your publication, I have read a number of letters to the editor that are hypercritical of Alex De Vore. I don’t take issue with the sentiments expressed in those letters, as they are opinions and so free to exist. I do, however, believe that it is wrong to publish so many of them. I would like to see the Reporter stand up for Alex. You see fit to employ him, so [you] must believe that he is a skilled writer. By publishing so many of those letters, you are lending credence to the negative sentiment and so undermining his ability to the very job you have hired him to do.
Darby Photos
Director of Exhibitions and Art Education
Harwood Art Center
Albuquerque
Correction: According to Nancy Bloch, whose husband Richard L Bloch was included in the Sept. 9 cover story, “Where’s the Money?,” she and her husband have not lived in Santa Fe for 15 years. SFR based Bloch’s inclusion on a current address in her name in a Nexus database.
The Reporter welcomes original, signed letters to the editor. Letters (no more than 200 words) should refer to speci?c articles in the Reporter. They may be edited for clarity and space. Include address and phone number for veri?cation purposes; these will not be published.
