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| 11/10/2009 6:00:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article |
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Courtesy Photo
Dian Law stands in front of the mural she helped create with more than 50 people in 2008. The project took six months from fund raising to ribbon cutting, said Law, who recently took the reins as president for the Mancos Valley Arts Council. She is recruiting board members as well as holding a brainstorm session Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at the Mancos Library to help determine MVAC’s next steps. |
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Mancos moves to entwine heritage, art future
Arts Council leader believes ‘creative web of community’ will enrich local economy
Hope Nealson
Journal Staff Writer
In the current economy, many small towns spanning the nation are fine-tuning their images to attract as much business as possible.
For Mancos, that means finding a way to merge the new with the old - with art, according to Dian Law, the new president of the Mancos Valley Arts Council as of October. Law, who took over for Herb Folsom, said the MVAC is regrouping after years of idleness to help the arts lead the way to a more prosperous Mancos.
"We want to add onto the old West," she said.
"People still run their cattle down the middle of town. We want our area to remain rural. Agriculture is big business here," Law said, noting the back-to-the-land, organic food movement has also taken hold in the valley.
Law said by integrating Mancos' booming arts community, which celebrates the "heart of the West" through painting, sculpture and more, as an important part of the "new West" will attract more visitors to stay - not just to pass through on their way to Mesa Verde National Park, seven miles west of Mancos.
Law said since a group of volunteers completed a mural downtown on Mancos' Grand Avenue in the summer of 2008, all but one of the empty storefronts in Mancos' downtown district have filled up with businesses.
The group of merchants has worked together to hold after-hour gallery openings and weekend events such as Fall Into Mancos and Mancos on the Move, in addition to the town's regularly scheduled festivities.
"One of the biggest needs in a community is people who appreciate and support the arts. The mural was the start of it," Law said of the project she helped organize last summer. "It's like we planted a flag. We said, 'we'll paint it and they will come' - and they did."
Law said as the new president of the MVAC, she is holding brainstorming sessions to prioritize the organization's next step as well as recruit new board members.
"They do not have to be artisans; they have to care about their community," she said. "Everybody is beginning to understand this web of a creative community we are building."
Law said whether that takes the shape of a senior citizens' caroling group or designating a space for a Mancos Valley Arts Center is up for discussion.
"There is so much that could happen, and art is a nonpolluting industry and it enriches everybody: people who see it, people who perform it," she said.
Law added there is already "art everywhere in the Four Corners," so it's just a matter of tapping into an already existing market.
"We're not going to get a steel mill or any kind of big industry here, so it's a great model," she said of nearby Santa Fe, the third largest art market in the country.
Law said she personally would like to see a series of workshops where people could learn art, with lots of school involvement, but added the brainstorming session Tuesday night at 6:30 p.m. at the Mancos Library and attracting board members are her first steps as president.
"This is not for the artists; it's for the community," she said of the charitable 503(c)(3) tax-deductible art organization. "It's where art and community collide."
For more information, call Law at 533-7536.
Reach Hope Nealson at hopen@cortezjournal.com.
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