Moving Forward

Rourke McDermott and I discuss his work in Valle Caldera as a Landscape Architect.

We are in the History Grove which I will talk about in an upcoming blog.

We are hard at work on our documentary on Oklahoma for the Creative-Native Project. In the meantime I am laying the groundwork for shows in other regions of the United States. I have been talking with the Florida Arts Council and the Division of Cultural Affairs about doing shows on central Florida and northern Florida. Each of the regions in Florida is so different and diverse, so this will be very exciting. Because of my four museum shows and traveling exhibitions in Florida and a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, they are very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about my work as an artist and this project.
We have also been talking to Jenise Gharib who is the New Mexico Program Coordinator for Arts in Social Services, Art Learning in Schools and local Arts Councils. She has been invaluable with her advice on how to present our project to the New Mexico Arts Council and has been very encouraging about the value of our documentary and adjunct projects for New Mexico. We will be meeting with Earthcare tomorrow to sign a 501c3 agreement so we can go forward with applying for New Mexico Arts Council grants money this fall. We have already received a very generous donation from two individuals who are enthusiastic about our project and this is a heartening start as we will need to have matching funds if we receive NM Arts Council funds. In the meantime I thought that you would be interested in the next series of blog posts to hear about some of the creative individuals we will be interviewing and the locations we will visit pertaining to art, creativity, mentoring, cultural preservation and ecological sustainability in New Mexico. I also welcome any suggestions of people or places that you think would pertain. It can be very hard to hone it down as we interviewed and went to about 19 different places in Oklahoma and Bob is finding it a real challenge to edit down all the footage. I am very impressed with what he is doing.
You can see a seven and 1/2 minute presentation we did for the New Mexico Arts Council at
http://www.youtube.com/user/BobDemboski?feature=mhum
I will be talking about more of the places and people we will visit in upcoming blog posts to 'whet your appetite'. I love doing the research for these shows and it allows me to pursue my passion for art, nature, science and the potential for social change. We really want to inspire and show what each of us as individuals can do to feel empowered to support the native and natural in the regions where we live.