​On the evening of February 4, Calaveras and Bret Harte High School students gathered for Poetry Out Loud to recite poems like Diameter by Michelle Y. Burke, and The Conqueror Worm by Edgar Allen Poe. Congratulations to Junior Sydney Button (CHHS), who took third place, Junior Grace Daniels, for her second place win, and first place winner sophomore Sage Miller (BHHS). On March 15, Sage will head to Sacramento to compete against students from around the state.
 
Poetry Out Loud, presented by the Calaveras County Arts Council in partnership with the California Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Foundation, is part of a national program that encourages high school students to learn about great poetry through memorization, performance, and competition. Students first compete at a classroom level, then in front of five judges at each school; the top scorers advance to a county wide level. The winner at the county competition advances to a state competition in March, where they compete to go to the national finals in Washington, D.C. Prizes at that level are substantial; the  national champion wins $20,000 and the runner-up wins $10,000.
 
Poetry Out Loud Coordinator Ingrid Hjelmervik congratulated the contestants from CHS and BHHS for their participation, as well as the teachers who supported the program. “Many thanks for our English teachers Ms. Behle, Bohler, Floyd, Hampton, and Van Buren for supporting this program,” she said, “and to Ms. Ann Mazzaferro for providing the CPAC for the competition.”
 
Kathy Mazzaferro, executive director of the Arts Council, said, “We congratulate all the participants on a job well done. We look forward to supporting our Calaveras champion, Sage, at the state competition in March.”

The Calaveras County Arts Council is committed to presenting Poetry Out Loud. Students interested in competing next year should contact their English teachers and start learning their poems now!

Last year attendees at the Calaveras County Arts Council’s performing-arts series Ovations had a chance to weigh in on the kinds of music they would like to hear at 2020’s winter concerts. According to the Arts Council Executive Director Kathy Mazzaferro, “bluegrass was one of the top genres requested. It’s what our audience wanted.”
 
Choosing Laurie Lewis to scratch that itch was a no-brainer. “She’s one of the top bluegrass artists,” Mazzaferro said. “By all accounts, she’s amazing. We’re very grateful she was available.”
 
Fiddler, guitarist, singer, songwriter, and Grammy-winner Laurie Lewis has long been a staple of the Northern California (and beyond) bluegrass scene. “When I was in my early 20s I discovered the vibrant bluegrass community in the Bay Area and I just stayed,” she said. She’s built a career performing this traditional art form, helping found two West Coast legends, the Good Ol’ Persons Band and the Grant Street String Band, has twice been voted female vocalist of the year by the International Bluegrass Association. Her classic rendition of Kate Long’s song, "Who Will Watch the Home Place?" won International Bluegrass Song of the Year, and her latest album with her band the Right Hands, The Hazel and Alice Sessions, was nominated for the Best Bluegrass Recording Grammy in 2017. Lewis was an influencer in the bluegrass world before “influencer” was an Instagram path to fame.
 
Bluegrass is the quintessential melting-pot American music, hailing from Appalachia and built on a framework of influences from Africa, the British Isles and mainland Europe. Old time string music, blues, sacred music, gospel, and jazz intertwined to create the high lonesome sound and rollicking stringed instrumentals that burst into life the early 20th century with performers like Bill Monroe, the Carter Family, and Ralph Stanley.
 
“It is a very communal sort of music,” Lewis said. “You want to be in a band to play it. It’s so much about communication with the other band members.” With her silvery voice, Lewis weaves intricate and skin-tingling harmonies with members of The Rights Hands: Singer and mandolin player Tom Rozum, Banjo player Patrick Sauber, fiddle player Brandon Godman, and stand-up bass player Andrew Conklin.
 
Lewis says she and the band gravitate towards the older traditional style, as opposed to the modern smoother style of bluegrass. Although she admits that “I also write a lot of songs, and I’m not necessarily bound to the tradition when I write. It’s impossible to be true to yourself and be a complete dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist.”
 
Traditional doesn’t equal stuffiness. “I would argue that blue grass started out as a pretty cutting edge music,” Lewis said. “It was music that combined the interest of Bill Monroe. He loved the church singing and old time fiddle tunes, and he was a singer songwriter. You could sort of define it as a singer song writer with a string band. If you look at it that way, we are perfectly in the tradition.”

Join us for an artist party and meeting and to celebrate our current show 
"Love Makes the World Go 'Round" 

IN THE GALLERY 
January 10 to February 17

RECEPTION AND ARTIST PARTY/MEETING
February 12, 5 to 7 p.m.
 at
the Calaveras County Arts Council Gallery Store, 
​250 North Main Street in San Andreas

This is a small but heart-filled show. We've posted just a few of the works we have in our gallery for you to enjoy. 

A Floating Heart
​Ceramic
By Amanda Sedgwick-Maule

Romance on the Seus Marie
Alcohol ink on tile
By Deborah Marlene

Paintings by George Dillon

Forbidden Fruit
Ceramic
​by Ken Winebrenner

White Rabbit Lantern
Ceramic
By Larisa Stevenson

Love to My Mother in Heaven
Mixed Media
By ​Nedra Russ

Angel
Watercolor
​By Sue Carracedo

Love Blooms
Acrylic medium
By Victoria Fout

Sunday, January 12 2020
3 p.m. - 5 p.m.

The first concert of the Ovations winter concert season at the Bret Hart Performing Arts Center will be the band Cantamos, a popular local band that refuses to be put in a genre box with their mix of big band, rock, rhythm and blues, folk, pop, and even classical music.
 
“We’re so hard to describe,” said Macfarlane. “We have an eclectic mix of our favorite songs. In the past we’ve moved from arias to Latin favorites, to contemporary pop songs.” Indeed, Michela leads the band seamlessly across the world music landscape with a cheerful whirlwind of songs like the Brazilian bosso nova hit “Corcovado” and the German/Yiddish big band romp “Bei Mire Bist Du Shön,” as well as rollicking Aretha Franklin covers and the novelty song “Mambo Italiano.”
 
Cantamos isn’t restricted to English. Macfarlane is a musical polyglot; their concerts can feel like a world tour. “My favorite thing is to sing in a bunch of different languages. Italian, French Spanish, Portuguese,” she said. Chestnut kitschy pop songs like “These Boots are Made for Walking” shine when Macfarlane sings them in French. And Cantamos covers a variety of unusual material, like their rendition of Pink Martini’s “Je ne Veux Pas Travailler (Sympatique).”
​
The eight piece group is blessed with a line up of talent to back Macfarlane: Fred Treece on guitars and vocals, Tonja Peterson on vocals and percussion, Ray Price on drums and percussion, and Ron Schaner on bass and vocals mix it up with the horn section—Ras Beeken Dan on sax, flute, and clarinet, Gunther Hsue on trumpet (he also plays keyboard), and Matt Albright on Trombone.
 
“It can be tricky to play with a horn section,” Macfarlane admitted. “Especially with my vocal range, which is pretty high. A lot of times the vocals can get lost. That’s been one of the challenges.” But she said that the horns, led by Beeken, make it work. “It’s so awesome to have that full section that a horn section brings. There are so many possibilities.”
 
Macfarlane said that each musician contributes to the band’s material by bringing in their favorite pieces. “Each of our songs has a special meaning to at least someone in our group, for example Ray brought in Corcovado, Ron brought in Sara Bareilles’ “Love Song” and Gunther brought in Sting’s “La Belle Dame Sans Regrets.” Whatever memory or desire they have connected to it we then make it our own collective effort and polish it into a rendition that speaks to all of us.”
 
“We are presenting our usual eclectic repertoire mix,” Macfarlane said, “but we’re breathing new life into it. Gunther Hsue and I will do a Mozart aria from Le Nozze di Figaro, new to our show. Tonja, Fred, and I will also be doing a couple new songs with gorgeous harmonies, pieces that you just don’t hear every day.”
 
“I think one of the most important things we are doing for this show is coming up with fresh arrangements for our songs that harness the talent of all of us on stage in such a way that features as many moments of brilliance as possible.”

We're proud to present our autumn show, Art of our Ancestors. This show is about our cultural kinship with our ancestors. Laurie Sylwester, artist and professor emeritus at Columbia College in Tuolumne County, gently judged the show. She shared some of her thoughts about the winners of the show; read them below.

"Thanks to all the artists who participated," she writes. "Realize that a different judge would make other decisions."

First place 2D
Best of Show
The Source: A Shaman’s Gift
James Respess
Digital

Conceptually and artistically captures the theme from the ancient enigmatic petroglyphs to the ray of light/mist (we ARE stardust!). The bird is considered a messenger from the Gods to the ancestors, and water is life. I can keep returning to the piece and seeing more—people in the rocks—and more. Great art sustains your interest and you can keep returning to it.

Second place 2D
Life’s Journey
Lori Kelly
Acrylic

So very well done! This one calls to mind my favorite piece at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. The old man that completely encompasses a whole room. The ancestor in this second place piece is so emotive. Great work!

Third place 2D
Scenes of Bodie, California
Susan Carracedo
Watercolor

Churches are architecture, thus art of the ancestors. The church is an expression of the ancestors and the window selection allowed light to enter; light was considered the proof of God. So, that is they the church was selected over the other Bodie images. Nicely done.

Honorable mention 2D
Inishere Island, Ireland
Susie Hoffman
Watercolor

Celtic crosses were the only monumental sculpture in the early medieval ages, an era of the great migration and small migration art. So, the crosses both were the markers and marked the burial of ancestors. I like the abstraction of the watery paint flowing from the cemetery.

First place 3D
Love of the Land and its Creatures
Marlene Bradford
Ceramic

An ancestor with feet of clay, well grounded in the earth! The animals anchor the young woman with the giant bird creating an emotional pull disproportionate to its normal size. The turtle plays a role in Native American and Aboriginal Australian creation/origin stories.

Second place 3D
Blue Kokoshnik (Russian Head dress)
Larisa Stevenson
Ceramic

This head is a proficient ceramic sculpture with the implication that the ancestral homeland lives in her/his mind. In fact, we are made of the DNA of our ancestors, and for some, the experiences can be conjured in a dream state.

Third place 3D
Neanderthal Family
Meg Grace Newell
Ceramic

You make me laugh, you get an award! The Neanderthals  made me laugh out loud!  Also, the artist got right: women also were cave painters as research has discovered.

Music in the Parks is free to all, but we rely on the generosity of those who can contribute to make this program available to the community. Please help if you are able. Thank you for your support.

When the Random Strangers start singing songs like “Blue Bayou” and “Ring of Fire,” it’s natural that you’ll want to sing along. According to vocalist and rhythm guitar player Suzanne Todd, that’s quite alright. They choose the music they play based on what they like, and they’re pleased when audiences like it too.  
 
“All the songs we choose are our favorites,” Todd said. “Something will come to a band member, and we email it around to make sure everyone is on board with it. Very rarely do we disagree.”
 
Agreement is evident in their tightly woven vocal harmonies and instrumental breaks; Todd and vocalist Larry Park sing with clear, fancy-free voices, and Park, once named one of the 50 fastest guitar players on the planet by Guitar World Magazine, keeps things interesting between chorus and verse. And Dave Wren on pedal steel guitar—what Todd jokingly called a Black & Decker steel workbench—makes the instrument whine, curl and cajole. Wren was inducted into the Western Swing Music Society’s “Hall of Fame” in 2008 and the Northwest Western Swing Music Society’s “Pioneers of Western Swing Music” in 2010, and he knows how to bend the strings. Rounding out the band are bass player George Spriggs and drummer John Duvall.
 
With a pure strong voice, Todd adds zest to their sparkling harmonies. Swinging into her second career (her previous job was with the Fire Service) as a country/rock/Americana performer, she said, “I feel like the luckiest girl on the planet to be surrounded by such high-caliber musicians. They’ve been around the horn musically and it really shows.”
 
The Random Strangers, based in the Foothills near Placerville, are popular in El Dorado County. “They pack the house,” according to Andy Tannehill, owner of Manzanita Kitchen & Events. With their blend of  country, roots-rock, folk, bluegrass, R&B and blues—a genre they call Rocking Americana—they  deliver “dynamite picking, smooth harmonies, blistering ballads, and foot stomping romps,” said Todd.
 
Railroad Flat Elementary School is a big field, but feels intimate. There's soft grass for sitting and picnicking. so come out and dance to the swing, sing to tunes, and have a great time.

It is a zero-tolerance zone, so please, no alcohol or smokables.

​Beautiful art is often made piece by piece. In May, mosaic artist Robin Modlin puzzled out a mosaic on the bathroom wall in Murphys Community park, and now fanciful flowers, birds and animals smile under a sparkling-tile sun.

Robin led the community in this project, seeking funding from community organizations and captaining an army of volunteers that included mentors and mentees from Calaveras Mentoring. Even passersby stopped to set bits of mosaic into place. Now Robin is ready to start on the steps in front of the library. 
 
When the community pulls together, we can create great things. Community organizations like the Calaveras County Arts Council, the Murphys Community Club, Angels-Murphys Rotary Club and Murphys Library have helped build this work of public art. Quyle Kilns helped with the use of materials and studio space, and individuals like Amanda Sedgwick-Maule made all the difference. 

So stop by Murphys Community Park next time you're in Murphys (For Music in the Parks on August 7 maybe?) and enjoy our newest public art. 

Robin Modlin conceived, designed, and managed the community project to create a mural in Murphys Community Park.

People volunteered to help, and pieced together the mural in no time.

Children made the faces for the flowers at Quyle Kilns.

So many hands helped make this mural. It was a real community project 

Small pieces were made at Quyle Kilns, a local pottery and ceramics studio.

This spring we partnered with Conifer Communications and Calaveras High School to create a bright mural for the wall along their parking lot below the fire station. Three high school students--Emma Hohn, Summer Cummings, Sarah Araujo and Elizabeth Metzger--designed and painted it under the direction of retired teacher Dusty Dustyn.

The mural is at the corner of Highway 49 and Main Street. Stop when you’re driving through San Andreas to see it!

Read more about it at the Calaveras Enterprise.