Carol Anderson tracking her Ruby's Roadhouse El Casino Ballroom tribute show at KXCI.
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Have an El Casino Ballroom story or photos to share? Contact Daniel Buckley by clicking HERE to be interviewed for the film.
El Casino Ballroom documentary producer Daniel Buckley joined Carol Anderson on her popular KXCI radio show Ruby’s Roadhouse on March 24.
Anderson, who was highly active in the station back when it held frequent House Rockin’ Concerts at El Casino Ballroom, put together a set of favorites from a long list of artists KXCI had sponsored at the South Tucson club in the 1980s and early 1990s.
During the visit to the station Buckley shared contact info, including the new Facebook page, so that KXCI listeners with stories and photos from El Casino Ballroom could share them and become part of the film. He and Anderson also recalled favorite concerts and shows from the ballroom’s 65 years serving Tucson, and spoke of its special place serving multicultural communities since its start.
Tucson’s venerable El Casino Ballroom celebrates its 65th birthday this year, along with the 80th anniversary of the non-profit organization that runs it – the Latin American Social Club.
You can view the whole playlist from the special El Casino Ballroom edition of KXCI’s Ruby’s Roadhouse by clicking HERE.
TIMC Board President Alfonso Dancil introduces the board to the mariachi conference's new home, Casino Del Sol.
After months of wondering whether the longest continuously-running mariachi conference in America would be around to celebrate its 30th year, the show is “on” for the Tucson International Mariachi Conference, in a new location and with a powerful new partner.
Casino Del Sol will be ground-zero for this year’s mariachi workshops, Participant Showcase, Espectacular Concert, Mariachi Mass and Fiesta Garibaldi.
Grassy area for Fiesta Gariabldi, looking toward the stage area from about 1/3 back.
The TIMC board met March 7 at Casino Del Sol Resort and Conference Center for a tour of the new site, and it was impressive. In addition to the familiar AVA Amphitheater – a beautiful outdoor performance space with great sound, clear sight lines, outstanding lighting and multimedia capabilities – the casino’s new resort hotel complex offers a HUGE lawn (bigger than Reid Park) next to the pool for the Garibaldi event. There’s plenty of room on the sides there as well for food booths and venders as well.
The rooms are spacious and beautiful, parking is ample, and no more dealing with the Tucson Convention Center’s duct-taped-together bleachers (a sad reality).
Missing this year will be the folklórico component to the workshops, though at last night’s board meeting the possibility of bringing in some of the local dance talent for the shows was enthusiastically discussed.
Looking south toward the pool and the lawn where Fiesta Garibaldi will take place this year.
The challenge is to put together an event that normally takes shape over 12 months in just two. But the board seems motivated, energized and anxious to get rolling with the Pascua Yaqui Nation and Casino Del Sol.
Mariachi Nuevo Tecalitlán will be there for the Espectacular concert. Unbelievable showman and amazing musicians, this group blew the roof off the concert at San Jose’s VivaFest! last fall. The crowd would NOT let the group leave the stage, demanding and receiving an encore as impressive as the set that earned it in the first place.
This just in, Shaila Dúrcal has also been booked for the Espectacular concert, along with Mariachi Femenil Nuevo Tecalitlán.
View from above of the hotel pool area and the grassy lawn beyond.
Tickets go on sale March 9 at 10 a.m. for the conference, which will take place April 25-28. Click here for ticket info.
Northern Minnesota native Sandy Lambert started quilting as a young girl, learning from her mother and grandmother. But she stopped as a youngster and didn’t pick it up seriously again until 1984 when a photo of a folk quilt in a magazine caught her eye and made her want to try her hand at it again.
Lambert moved to Phoenix in 1970 and worked in several different hospitals during her 20 years there before relocating to Tucson. The Tucson move brought with it a whole new community of quilters.
Sandy Lambert's "La Placita Sunday"
Along the way, she has moved into the art quilting world, and became a member of the group Fiber Artists of Southern Arizona.
Lambert is a true artist in the medium, and highly devoted to that art. She works in her home studio almost daily, quilting by hand. Her well honed eye for turning bits of colorful fabric into elements of landscape, architecture, fauna and flora are in full display in many of her quilts, including her entry in the Arizona Centennial “100 Years, 100 Quilts” exhibit, which is on display at the Arizona History Museum, 949 E. 2nd St., Tucson, Arizona, through the close of 2012.
"Abundance - Sabino Canyon" by Sandy Lambert
That quilt, titled “Abundance – Sabino Canyon,” was inspired by her frequent hikes in the Tucson attraction, taking in the animals and plants, the water and trees, the mighty saguaro cacti and the rugged mountains to fashion her personal Arizona story for the show.
Lambert was one of 13 quilters chosen for monthly video profiles to run throughout the centennial year. The interview was conducted in Sabino Canyon on a beautiful December day when the sun shone bright and the canyon was full of visitors. And yet, as Lambert pointed out, while many visited the canyon that day, one still had the sense of personal space and solitude that draws her back time and again to hike, meditate and take in its spectacular vistas.
Below are examples of recent musical works and studies in progress by Daniel Buckley, presented in excerpt. Click on the title to hear the music.
X Monk in the Trunk (2011) is a work scored for prepared piano and Harry Partch’s Cloud Chamber Bowls. The piece was written using the drum composition portion of MOTU’s Digital Performer sequencer, using Mach V 3 and Kontakt 5 samplers.
X Miles Meditation (2010) recalls the distorted electric pianos, percussive sounds and surreal directions of Miles Davis’ 70s-era explorations – one of Buckley’s favorite times in music. It is scored for Electric piano (Applied Acoustics Lounge Lizard) and synthesizers (Native Instruments Kore, Xils 3, QuikQuak Glass Viper) and constructed in Digital Performer.
X Final Transmission (2010) is a piece for synthesized voices and ambient electronics, built in Digital Performer using Native Instruments Kore 2 and Reaktor synthesizers.
X Out in the Woods (2011) is a dark atmospheric study created using Native Instruments Kore 2 and Kontakt in the Digital Performer sequencer environment.
X Break It Down (2011) is a study for drum and synthesizer loops (Native Instruments Kontakt and Kore 2) being manipulated in real time within Digital Performer using Native Instruments’ The Finger effects processor.
X Snake Charmer (2010) is a ritual piece for sampled tuned and unturned percussion and flutes (Kontakt 5 sampler) plus synthesizers (QuikQuak Glass Viper, Native Instruments Massive).
All music copyright Daniel Buckley, Saguaro Furnace Music
Partners in the 100 Years 100 Quilts show, l-r Lenna DeMarco, Anne Hodgkins, Anne Woosley, Wanda Seale and Carole Cohen.
Close to five years in the making, an amazing exhibit of the quilter’s art in the Arizona centennial year went on public display February 18, 2012 at the Arizona History Museum, 949 E. 2nd Street, Tucson, Arizona.
The exhibit was brainstormed by the Arizona Centennial Quilt Group in partnership with the Arizona Quilters Hall of Fame and the Arizona Historical Society.
The Shortridge clan with Claire Shortridge Sievers' quilt on the family's history in Arizona
Some 800 people showed up to drink in the exhibit, which showcases Arizona through the yes of members of the state’s vast and talented quilting community.
Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett cut the ribbon to open the exhibit, and stayed to take in the entire show, posing along the way for photos with quilters whose work hung in the show.
It was also a gathering for family and friends of the quilters, and a time to acknowledge those whose hard work generated this unique collection.
Ken Bennett with Prescott's Heritage Quilt And Study Group of the Sharlot Hall Museum's quilt, "Territorial Schoolhouse."
The rules of the unjuried show were simple – the submitted quilts had to be recent, original designs relating somehow to the state of Arizona. They also had to follow certain size constraints.
Within those simple rules came myriad visions of the state of Arizona. Family portraits and personal memories. Depictions of landscapes, flora and fauna, iconic images and historic architecture. Expressions of culture, nurturing and love, along with works of pure whimsy and abstract beauty.
It’s a lot to take in, and thus a good thing that it will be on display for an entire year.
Glendale, Arizona quilter Diane McElmury with her quilt "A Tribute To Arizona's Amazing Women."
Get by and see for yourself this extraordinary compendium of life in Arizona in its centennial year.
The Arizona state centennial exhibit “100 Years, 100 Quilts” opens this Satrday, February 18, 2012, at the Arizona History Museum, 949 E. 2nd Street, Tucson, Arizona.
Years in the making, the show illustrates Arizona through the fabric artist’s eye, and many will be amazed at the extraordinary artistry and quality of the works on display.
The project began when a group of quilt historians and enthusiasts realized a few years back that the Arizona state centennial was approaching. They wanted to celebrate the occasion with an exhibit of the far-reaching talents of the state’s widespread quilting community.
They formed an organization called the Arizona Centennial Quilt Project (ACQP) and teamed up with the Arizona Quilters Hall of Fame to turn that germ of an idea into a reality.
Initially they envisioned the creation of 100 original-design quilts on Arizona themes, which would be farmed out in smaller groups to a variety of locales around the state. But when they spoke with the Arizona Historical Society about becoming one site for the show, AHS counter-offered to house the entire show in its Tucson museum so that viewers could take in the entire collection. ACQP members liked the idea and a deal was struck.
Arizona Quilt Centennial Project, Vicki Bohnhoff
Notice was sent out through statewide quilt guilds, newsletters, related media and in quilt shops that the show was coming. Though the work was not juried, only the first 100 quilts that met the criteria for originality, size and deadline for completion were accepted. In addition to photos of the quilt, those entering had to provide a legacy statement about their idea for the quilt and their feelings about being an Arizona quilter.
In addition, a special centennial fabric was commissioned and created, and a giant centennial commemorative quilt (seen above) was designed and executed on by a crack team of quilters from around the state.
Documentary maker and former Tucson Citizen newspaper writer Daniel Buckley was contracted in September of 2011 to capture video of the process from the time quilters started dropping off their work at AHS offices in Tucson and Tempe, as well as Prescott’s Sharlot Hall Museum. In addition he was to photograph the works by themselves and with the quilters, and to videotape interviews with 13 of the show participants for monthly 5-minute portraits throughout the centennial year. The first of the 5-minute portraits, on Surprise, Arizona quilter Alicia Sterna, is up for viewing now.
From those materials and interviews with the shows creators and partners, as well as footage shot during the hanging of the show, Buckley created a half-hour documentary film to be played during the exhibit, and was cast as a DVD for sale through AHS. In addition his photos were used, along with the legacy statements provided by the quilters, for a book on the exhibit, also on sale through AHS.
DVD case
But there is no substitute for being in the physical presence of these historic and artistic quilts, drinking in for yourself the richness of texture, pattern and color that tells 100 stories of the state, today and in the past.
Book cover
Please come and see for yourself the beauty of Arizona through the quilter’s eye.
The book and DVD from the Arizona centennial exhibition “100 Years, 100 Quilts” are on sale now through http://www.arizonahistoricalsociety.org/quilt_bookdvd.asp. The exhibit opens February 18, 2012 at the Arizona History Museum, 949 E. 2nd Street, Tucson, Arizona. The show features 100 quilts created by Arizona quilters showing their concept of the state. It is a show that will destroy your concept of the art of quilting.
The book showcases images of all 100 quilts photographed by Daniel Buckley, along with the legacy statements each of the quilters shared to explain their take on Arizona. The DVD is a documentary on the “100 Years, 100 Quilts” exhibit shot and edited by Daniel Buckley. It captures the development of the exhibit from the time quilts were first being brought in by their creators to the point where they were starting to be hung for the exhibit. Among those interviewed are the folks who generated the concept and made it a reality, administrators from the Arizona Historical Society which will house the huge exhibit, and a sampling of the quilters who made the show happen.
Alicia Sterna is one of many in Arizona today who are transforming quilting with bold, creative strokes.
Largely self-taught, and the only member of her family to take up quilting, her recent work has been featured in a touring exhibition of winning quilts from the Hoffman Fabric Challenge Competition, as well as the upcoming “100 Years, 100 Quilts” exhibit which opens February 18, 2012 at Tucson’s Arizona History Museum (949 E. 2nd Street).
"The Muse" by Alicia Sterna
For the latter show, quilters of all levels were requested to create quilts that depicted some aspect of Arizona for a massive exhibit.
Sterna was chosen from the 100 quilts participants to be one of 13 quilters to interviewed for 5-minute portraits, to be showcased each month of the Arizona Centennial year on the website of the Arizona Historical Society. What got her into that sub-set was the story behind her quilt for the show, “News.” The quilt is about the ways people received their news when Arizona was a fledgling state and how they get it now, newspapers being an important source at the beginning and a lesser force today.
"News" by Alicia Sterna
So how do you create the look of newspaper fronts in fabric? Sterna used tea bags, steeping the tea, cutting the bags open, dumping out the tea, drying and ironing them. With her husband, Randy’s help, she reverse printed the type faces of the Arizona newspapers she had researched and tore them to give an uncut look to the “newspapers” on the quilt. She used tea again to stain the fabric she’d use to depict the state capitol building.
You can hear her tell the story in a 30-minute documentary on the show by film maker Daniel Buckley which will be played daily at the show, and which will be on sale at the museum gift shop and PayPal through the Arizona Historical Society website.
Sterna grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey and moved to Arizona in 1970. She had been accepted to Kent State, but following the May 4, 1970 shooting of protesters there, her parents decided she should go somewhere else. When she left for a summer vacation in the south of France with her aunt – an art curator with New York’s Museum of Modern Art – that summer she had no idea where she’d be going to college in the fall. When she got back, she heard she’d been accepted at the University of Arizona, and was leaving for Tucson the next day.
She eventually earned a law degree at UA and moved to Phoenix to work for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, where she met her husband, Randy, now a retired deputy director of the department. Randy Sterna is an accomplished digital photographer whose shutter work has on numerous occasions made its way into Alicia’s quilts. The pair volunteered with the U.S. Forest Service on the Oregon coast for seven years before moving back to Arizona and settling in the Phoenix suburb of Surprise.
Click the YouTube box and adjust settings to see the video in HD 1080P at full screen.
Though she never studied the basics of quilting, Sterna applied herself seriously, reading books and watching shows on the subject, and joining quilting organizations. Clearly she had an aptitude for it, and her creative ways with fabric soon made her a sought after teacher, group leader and creator of quilt “challenges.”
Challenges are a common thread in the quilting organization world, designed to expand the skills of the participants. A plan of some sort is laid out over time, sometimes abstract, sometimes specific. Sterna’s challenges have started out at times with a photo, or a page from a magazine, and taken unexpected twists to produce unpredictable but individual results.
While she and Randy were in Lakeside, Arizona last summer the Wallow Fire broke out, and every day she saw the smoke billowing above the burning forest. It became the inspiration for the quilt she submitted to the Hoffman Fabric Challenge competition. She and Randy went hiking through the burned forest afterward and he shot photos of the charred wood, later superimposing a photo of a lily over the top as a symbol of rebirth from the ashes.
"Wallow Fire" by Alicia Sterna
“I took the blue background of the sky and decided to feature the pyrocumulus cloud that rose every day right behind where we lived, over the lake,” she recalls. “It was an incredibly impressive, dynamic cloud. I used various black fabrics to make charred trees and I cut them out and formed them all coming toward the cloud like you were looking up from the bottom.” Paint, colored threads and a variety of fabrics and techniques added to the creation of the powerful final image.
Quilting is a form of relaxation for Sterna, a way of dealing with the stresses and emotions of life and of turning those feelings into tangible and beautiful works of art. The walls of her home are a display of her work, changed up periodically to continue to be inspired by the best she’s done so far.
"Season's End" by Alicia Sterna
Like many in the quilting community, she has donated her quilts to various charities, including women suffering from breast cancer.
She’s published one book, Fabric Art, and likely has more ahead.
In talking with Sterna one gets the impression that she loves what she does as much for the process as the final product. There’s the thrill of putting an image together in her mind, finding the fabrics and techniques that will realize that vision, and reveling in the sheer surprise of seeing how it all eventually comes together. She is on a journey in fabric, leaving a trail of visual gems behind as she walks the path.
– Daniel Buckley, 2012
PS: Trying to squeeze a portrait of Alicia Sterna’s work into a five-minute video is like shooting a photo of a street corner in Idaho and saying that it’s a photo of the earth.
Click photos to enlarge.
“Wallow Fire” photo courtesy of Randy Sterna, all other by Daniel Buckley.
Daniel Buckley’s documentary on the Arizona Centennial Quilt Project’s “100 Years, 100 Quilts” exhibit is finished and has been turned over for DVD duplication.
The documentary “100 Years, 100 Quilts” tells the story of the Arizona centennial quilt project from the perspective of those who hatched the idea and those they partnered with to make it happen, as well as the quilters whose work made the show so extraordinary. It’s as colorful a tale as it is a remarkable visual experience, and a show that speaks volumes about the state of Arizona 100 years after its birth.
Detail of Sandy Lambert's "Abundance - Sabino Canyon "
Quilters from around the state were invited to contribute quilts of their own original design, reflecting some aspect of Arizona, for the show which opens February 18, 2012 at the Arizona History Museum, 949 E. 2nd Street, Tucson, Arizona. Arizona celebrates the 100th anniversary of its statehood on February 14, 2012. A one-minute teaser for the show can be viewed by clicking HERE.
While the vast majority of works in the show are art quilts, representational of the range of cultures, physical environments and historical moments of the state’s first 100 years, there are also more traditional quilts as well. Everything from fabrics with photographs digitally printed on them to extraordinarily detailed hand quilt work will be on display. Subject matter ranges from the contributions of Arizona’s women to representations of all manner of Arizona plants and creatures, the state’s historic and prehistoric sites, its native peoples and the many cultures that have converged here, and even scientific depictions of the heavens above as studied in Arizona’s numerous astronomical observatories.
Janine Holzman's "4th of July Parade"
It is a unique perspective of what Arizona is and has been – 100 stories told in fabric.
Buckley shot the exhibition from the time in which quilts started arriving in the Tucson and Phoenix offices of the Arizona Historical Society, as well as the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott. He interviewed members of the Arizona Centennial Quilt Project, administration from the Arizona Historical Society, and a group of quilters who contributed to the show. He documented everything from meetings to the actual hanging of the exhibit for the film, and shot stills of all of the quilts in the exhibit. Buckley’s still images are featured in a book from the show.
Copies of Buckley’s documentary and the book from the show will be available for sale at the Arizona History Museum in Tucson from the day of the show forward. Additional outlets and prices will be announced as the opening approaches.
Nancy Arseneault's "Mariachi de los Muertos "
In addition to the main documentary, Buckley is creating 13 5-minute artist portraits of a select group of quilters from the show. These will be featured, one per month, through the centennial year on the Arizona Historical Society’s website.
To the shock and amazement of film lovers everywhere, Daniel Buckley’s extra work in the Tucson-shot indie film “Goats” did not end up on the cutting room floor.
Clearly mistakes were made.
Herb Stratford reports spotting Buckley at a screening for the film, which has garnered high critical praise for actor David Duchovny.
Buckley served as an extra when the film shot at the Tucson International Airport on a cold day in February, 2011. The scene was supposed to be summer, so Buckley was dressed in shorts and a short-sleeved cow skull shirt.
In between Buckley and the host talked about the El Casino Ballroom documentary being shot now. The film will premier June 10 at the Fox Theatre, 17 West Congress Street i Tucson, Arizona. It will be the fifth in the popular Cine Plaza at the Fox documentary series. The film is being funded in part by a Tucson Pima Arts Council PLACE Initiative grant.
Tucson’s venerable El Casino Ballroom celebrates its 65th birthday this year, along with the 80th anniversary of the non-profit organization that runs it – the Latin American Social Club.
