By QCC members
It takes a lot of effort to run a non-profit organization. In small towns like ours, often the burden of work can’t be spread out, with fewer volunteers and board members compared to large cities. But, we’ve got good news: The Questa Creative Council team is growing! We’ve just added Jessie Hook as our part-time funding manager.
Jessie grew up in the southeast, has traveled extensively in South America, and spent two years with AmeriCorps and Rocky Mountain Youth Corps, where she gained experience in non-profit communications, fundraising, and grant writing. She is bi-lingual, an artist, and a lover of the outdoors. With a BA in Environmental Studies, she hopes her career will always focus on sustainability, conservation, and community. A creative and practical person, she plans to pursue an MBA in sustainability next autumn at Bard College in New York City. Lucky for us, it will be less expensive to commute monthly than to physically move there, so she’ll be around! She currently lives in Taos. Jessie’s skills are a good fit for a position that will keep an overall picture of our funding and writing grants to maintain and build our goals
Have you considered joining the Questa Creative Council team? We are not just about community art projects —Our aim is to strengthen community through the arts, but also through culture, history, and education. We meet quarterly to share project and community news with one another, review the status of our funding, and create new project plans.
We are looking for a new treasurer who can do very simple tasks, such as present our bookkeeper’s reports to the board, and forward bills and donations to our bookkeeper electronically. Please reach out to us if this could be you!
Our next planned events will not be until the spring, when we hope pandemic news will allow us to re-start our Art for All workshop series at Questa’s Cisneros Youth and Family Center.
Meanwhile, over the winter, we will be working with our Northern New Mexico: Past and Present project team which includes Chris Arellano, to develop and produce audio and video products and live performances. These will honor and preserve our unique northern Rio Grande musical heritage. Current recordings highlight the music of the moradas. (Listen at https://questacreative.org/northern-nm-music/)
Jessie will be working hard to keep all this funded!
You can help fund us with your own pre-holiday shopping, if you use Amazon. The Questa Creative Council is a non-profit choice for the Amazon Smile feature that lets you choose a charity to receive a portion of your spending.
Thanks, as always, for your support. We are grateful for the new members we added this past summer during the return of our in-person events, through the History Trail Walk and Studio Tour, and are also looking to refresh our existing board (giving some of our founding board members a break.) Stay tuned for much more exciting work and fun collaborations that will continue to build on what is best in our community.
Reach us at QuestaCreativeCouncil@gmail.org, http://www.QuestaCreative.com, or our phone message line at (575) 586-5658. Donations can be given online or by snail mail, at P.O. Box 1025, Questa, NM 87556.
QCC EVENT UPDATES:
Support the artists of northern New Mexico – Holiday Shopping!
There are many artists in northern New Mexico and you can find some of them at the QCC website NorthernNewMexicoArtists.com. For the holidays, local artist and volunteer, Peggy Trigg, is posting artwork from the NNMA artists who have a profile page on social media sites, helping to direct potential buyers to artists’ sites to purchase their art. This site promotes and advertises local artists who can set up a profile page for free, and participate in and the Questa Studio Arts Tour. It continues to grow with each new artist who joins. Peggy Trigg is always seeking new artists. Contact her at peg.trigg@gmail.com for more information.
…And our youth.
Peggy is also launching the annual Art Kit Fund drive, to supply our youth with art materials (see her article on the youth library show and importance of art education on pages 18). If you are interested in donating, just go to the QCC website home page or Donate page and you’ll see the dropdown menu that lets you select “Art Kits for School-Aged Kids.” Donations for this project can also be sent to the QCC at PO Box 1025, Questa, NM 87556.
Live Latin Music at Yoga Sala!
There were 34 people who came to hear the “open rehearsal” concert on Friday October 1, at Yoga Sala in Questa, with local musicians Mark Dudrow (cello) and Martha Shepp (piano). It was grand! Refreshments were served and a standing ovation ended the event. See videos at the Yoga Sala Instagram page. https://www.instagram.com/p/CUsnSICADio/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link They will be back in the spring with the second concert, featuring even more Latin music for cello and piano!
Contact Martha Shepp to be notified of future concerts at sheppmartha@gmail.com.
