The complications of Covid have impacted another long term commitment that Anne and Will oversee: Summer Art Camp.
 
Five ears ago Anne and Will took over Summer Art Camp, a low-cost way for local kids ages 4 to 16 to learn about the arts. Sponsored by the Mokelumne Hill Community Historical Trust, Summer Art Camp had been nurtured by Ed Cline, and Anne and Will were receptive to his vision of the future.
 
Ed’s dream had been to make it a fine art camp with music, dance, theater, and art, so Anne and Will set out to expand. “A couple years ago we were able to find a drama teacher and a music teacher,” she said. The core of what Anne teaches at the camp is visual arts. “I concentrate mostly on modern art,” she said, “although we have done things like portraits made by painting with vegetables ala Archimboldo, a Renaissance artist.. I’ve taught about Renaissance art. I teach everything from drawing to painting to collage.”
 
This summer—Covid Summer—presents a challenge. Traditionally Summer Art Camp meets in the Moke Hill Town Hall, where they have room for around 70 kids. “But this year because of this new normal, we can’t meet in the town hall,” Anne said. She’s working on art kits made up of inventory they’ve been amassing over the years from donations and careful purchases. “If anyone wants an art kit this year, there will be no charge,” she said. “I'm putting together kits for 30 kids. Each kit will have watercolors, some drawing, and we like to focus our lessons on particular artists.” The kits will be distributed through Mokelumne Hill Elementary and Toyon Middle School.  

For ceramic sculptor Marlene Bradford, the nation’s isolation order during the time of Covid-19 has been a time of introspection about her art. “It’s been great having the time,” she said. “I enjoy working by myself. Although I also enjoy having company.”
 
This enforced time-out came just as Marlene started to pull back from perpetual activity. For the last seven years, she’s been a popular teacher of clay sculpture at Quyle Kilns, where she has instructed many in the skill of how to roll, knead, bend and convince clay to take animal and human form. But recently she gave up teaching regular classes, preferring to teach small groups or individuals on request. “I’ll be 87 in June,” she said. “I don’t have the energy I had before, or the patience.” 

When you take a class from Marlene, you tap into a life dedicated to art. She has always been an artist, and she returned to college in her 40s to complete a major in art. Clay is her first love.  “I like the way it feels. I like being able to move it around and change it back and forth and create my ideas using the clay.”
 
Her ideas, brought to life in clay, bring smiles to viewers. She still has a big presence at Quyle Kilns, where ceramic faces and animals peer from the walls, smile mysteriously, and catch your gaze and make you smile. Making the viewer happy is what Marlene intends.
 
She doesn’t strive for strict accuracy in her animal sculptures.  Instead, she tries to express her feelings about them. “I really want to bring joy through it, and have people enjoy looking at my pieces.”

“The reason I say that is because there are many pieces of art that are not about joy. They are expressions of sadness and illness. That isn’t what I want to think about and express. I enjoy trying to reproduce the shape and idea of different animals. And again, I want them to look peaceful. With them I want to express some kind of good thoughts.”
 
Her portraits of people reflect not just a physical likeness but also the emotional personality of the subject. She honed her accuracy with acts of generosity. “I started having people I know pose for me so I could practice. I said if you like it I’ll give it to you. That’s how I got my technique worked out.” Her commissioned portraits of two doctors—Dr. Milton Ben Smith and Dr. Dante Albasio—greet people at Mark Twain Medical Center.

​Now sheltering at home, she spends time in her studio in Murphys working on a series of pieces intended for totems, large pieces of art that comprise animals, figures, and objects.
 
Isolation has given her a chance to delve more deeply into her work. “It’s a chance to concentrate on your own ideas and think about what you’re doing. Often we want to discuss things with other artists or teachers. This is a good time to really look inside of ourselves and try things and see if they’re going to work. And figure out how to do something, or what we want to do. What you want people to think about it.”

Like most of us, Mona Baroody, owner of Artsy-Parts in Arnold, didn’t expect a mysterious and lethal virus to upend the world so completely. But she is navigating our new reality with the blunt force of her creativity.
 
Mona opened Artsy-Parts in Cameo Plaza almost exactly a year ago as a creative community center. After dedicating four years of her life to the Butte Fire recovery, she said “I wanted to do something for myself.” Someone asked her, what would you do if you could do anything? “My answer was easy. I want to create all day and get paid to do it. I’ve always been creative and happiest when I was doing it. I also wanted to help other people feel the same peacefulness.” In the time before Covid, the cozy warren of rooms provided space for the community to drop in and spread out art projects, take art and craft classes, buy hard to find art supplies and exhibit their art work. The virus changed all that.
 
If an art store seems an unlikely business to survive the shut-down orders, you’d be surprised. Not only do times of uncertainty call for creative outlet to relieve stress, precarious times require an artistic temperament. Mona believes that all the traits and skills of an artist—creativity, inventiveness, thoughtfulness, flexibility—coupled with a positive outlook and hard work will help her weather this storm. At the same time, she can help her community too.
 
“I thought, how can I make this work for all of us?” 

Then people asked if she had material for making masks. “The most effective mask material is debated,” she said, “but the general consensus is that you want 100% cotton quilting blocks. That happens to be what one of my wholesalers carries.” She bought enough for the group and enough to have in stock at her store.
 
All of this has kept Mona quite busy. Time flies as she finagles orders for craft kits, origami paper, calligraphy pens, art supplies, and mask making materials. Customers pick up their orders outside the store, which Mona sanitizes religiously. At the end of her days, often after midnight, she said “I’m so busy I haven’t had time to figure out how I’m doing.” ​

​When her doctor could not get cloth masks to protect staff and patients, quilter Nora Carracedo of Valley Springs came to the rescue. After watching several mask making YouTube videos, she sat down at one of her many sewing machines and started thinking.
 
She designed her own version of washable masks made of all cotton material, with a pocket in the middle for a piece of material that’s breathable but still acts as a filter.
 
“I use my own pattern,” she said. “I made one for Sue (her daughter) and me and they worked great. Then I made some for the doctor, and they love them.” Her masks add a bit of brightness to a stressful time. “Some of them have flowers, some of them have polka dots. They’re not plain. They’re pretty,” she said.

​She’s perfectly suited to this need. Nora’s been sewing and quilting for most of her life. When she was young and living in Argentina, she started sewing for a local store to make extra money. “I made pants, underwear, and shirts for men,” she said. “I had to learn to make patterns because there were not many patterns at that time.” She sewed on a pedal machine and finished the clothing by hand.
 
After coming to the states, she sewed clothing for her children and herself. When the grandbabies started coming, she began making quilts. Sue recollects, “I remember my mother making a little bear quilt for the first grandchild.”
 
Nora is still making quilts for the grandchildren, as well as quilts for community members in need. Nora and her sister lead a team of quilters at the San Andreas Senior Center to make quilts for foster children, children with cancer, and comfort care for hospice. “We also donate money for the senior center, and low cost lunches for kids.” It’s a tight knit group, but they welcome others. “We have fun and we enjoy being together,” she said.

Dear community members,

The Calaveras Arts Council Gallery, in keeping with government health recommendations, will be closed to the public for the time being. We will be continuing with administrative work via phone, email and Facebook.
 
In addition, we regret that we have to cancel the 2020 Ride & Walk 4 Art event scheduled for March 22 and sadly anticipate that our last Ovations concert with Driftwood Consort on April 5 will be cancelled as well. We will be contacting ticket holders via email, phone or post. Please check our website and/or follow us on Facebook for updates.
 
If you have questions or need more information about refunds, please contact Kathy Mazzaferro at goldrusharts18@gmail.com or write to us at PO Box 250, San Andreas, CA  95249.

Thank you all for your understanding and support.
​
Kathy Mazzaferro, Executive Director

Dear Ovations patron
 
We sad to announce that we have to cancel the March 15 concert The Diamonds at the Bret Harte Performing Arts Center in Angels Camp. The State of California Department of Health recommends cancelling public events to prevent the spread of the Corona (Covid-19) virus, and the Bret Harte School District has closed the theater until April.
 
The response for our upcoming concert featuring The Diamonds has been so wonderful that it breaks our hearts to cancel the concert. We hope you will consider donating a portion or all of you tickets to Ovations to help us cover already incurred expenses. But we understand if you can’t. To request a full or partial refund on your tickets to The Diamonds concert, please contact us by email or USPS post stating your name, address, phone number, how many tickets you purchased, and how many you would like refunded. The deadline to do this is April 6, 2020.
 
Email: goldrusharts18@gmail.com
Post address: PO Box 250, San Andreas, CA 95249
 
As a nonprofit that brings music and the arts to the Calaveras County community, the Arts Council needs your support. Make a gift today to ensure we can continue to keep the arts alive in Calaveras County at our website, calaverasarts.org, or contact us directly at 209/754-1774.

​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.”