FREE Shakespeare Performance in Pine Valley!

The Pine Valley Players, under the direction of Dianne Holly, will be performing their first play, Bruce Coville's adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night this Saturday evening, May 31, at 7:00 PM at the Pine Valley Clubhouse. And we can't beat the ticket price: FREE admission for all!

The Pine Valley Players recently formed under the leadership of Mary Aragon of Guatay for home-educating families to have a theatrical outlet here in the backcountry. Dianne Holly, who has extensive theatre background at the University of California at Santa Barbara as well as San Diego's Old Globe Theatre, has generously donated her time and money to make this theatrical debut a success. A Pine Valley resident, Ms. Holly's work and dedication is much appreciated by the approximately twenty home-educated students who have been studying acting, costuming, set design, blocking, elocution, and theatre history under her tutelage for the past six weeks. Many backcountry homeschooling parents are also grateful for her excellent teaching and direction of their students which Ms. Holly has provided at no cost.

Donations will be accepted at the Clubhouse on Saturday night to help with the several hundred dollars Ms. Holly has herself invested in this production. We hope to see many backcountry faces in the audience on Saturday evening at 7 PM to support our drama students and Dianne Holly for the first of what we hope will be many wonderful drama performances in the future.

In the days following the production, which should last approximately 45 minutes (and therefore is entirely suitable for children as well as adult audiences), MECAC will provide photos and a review of the performance, so please check back here next week.

**UPDATE**
Father Keith Acker and the civic-minded folks at Alpine Anglican Church of the Blessed Trinity have stepped up to donate $300 to the Pine Valley Players, the amount that Ms. Holly had contributed from her own pocket for the production. Thanks, Blessed Trinity, for your wonderful contribution to backcountry arts!

Wellness Fair Art Contest: Healthy Fun

This year marks the second MECAC-sponsored art contest for the Wellness Council's annual health fair held at the Mountain Empire Junior-Senior High School. Despite the rain and hail periodically pouring down outside, the Fair vendors and attendees were snug and dry inside the school gymnasium where the Fair has been moved when the weather threatened to damp the fun.


(Denise Morse greets Wellness Fair attendees at the MECAC Art Contest tables)

MECAC is excited to announce that this year we accepted 43 entries for the contest, approximately ten more than last year. The theme for the art contest for grades K-6 was "The Art of Healthy Living." In the months before the contest deadline of May 9, MECAC Board of Director Members personally went to most of the elementary schools in the Mountain Empire region and gave presentations at school assemblies to encourage participation in healthy living and in entering the art contest. MECAC gives special kudos to Mrs. Tanner's Kindergarten Class and Ms. MsEvoy's Second Graders, both of Descanso Elementary School, for their wonderful class participation! A MECAC delegate will be awarding both classes with Honorable Mention ribbons this week as a thank-you to these two classes who created such colorful and remarkable artwork.

In fact, the MECAC Board Members who "manned" (rather, "womanned") the art tables were approached by the Albertson's managers who asked if the art contest participants would be willing to hang their art in the brand-new Albertson's grocery store in Alpine. What a great idea to let the entire community see the creativity of our young backcountry artists!


Our First Place winners in the Kindergarten-Third Grade and Fourth-Sixth Grade categories were Sammy of Descanso Elementary, with his fine "Vitamin" poster, and Evan of Pine Valley Elementary with his wonderful watermelon glass mosaic.


Our Second Place winners in the Kindergarten-Third Grade and Fourth-Sixth Grade categories were Benjamin of Heritage Christian School with his colored-pencil drawing of a pear and banana, and Marian of Descanso Elementary with her drawing of a basketball game. The Third Place winners in the above categories were Philippa of Pine Valley Elementary with her painting/crayon depiction of a fruit basket, and Jonathan of Heritage Christian School with his colored-pencil drawing of an apple.


And our Grand Prize Winner for Mixed Media was Samantha of Pine Valley Elementary with her three-dimensional tissue-paper-and-glue fruit bowl. The judges were very impressed with the creativity and attention to detail demonstrated in this work of art.

Prizes of quality art supplies from Aaron Brothers for each winner were contributed by the Wellness Council and chosen by MECAC. Our outgoing Director, Denise Morse, kept everyone hopping -- or at least bouncing -- as the kids and adults who were receiving stamps on their cards to enter in the prize drawings had to bounce a ball on a wooden paddle a certain number of times in order to earn their stamp. Hand-eye coordination is integral to art, right? Our current Director, Judith Dupree, and our Secretary, Susanne Barrett, also helped to "woman" the art contest table at the Wellness Fair, along with the help of outgoing Board Member Margo Kreger.

This art contest was the culmination of several months' work by MECAC of planning and setting up the contest, promoting the contest in the schools, collecting and storing the artwork at the deadline, purchasing prizes for the different categories, attending Wellness Council meetings, judging the artwork, and then setting up the display of the art, representing MECAC at the Wellness Fair, and then packing up the artwork once again. Plus some prizes and ribbons still need to be presented this week to winners who did not attend the Wellness Fair.

MECAC extends thanks to the Wellness Fair for their support of the Arts and of the children of the Mountain Empire region as well as the Mountain Empire Collaborative which presented MECAC with a check for $250 at the Wellness Fair for MECAC's Summer Art Program. Part of MECAC's goal is to work with the children of our backcountry communities to provide them with quality artistic opportunities. Our goal was more than accomplished in this month's Wellness Fair Art Contest.

An Evening with Nancy Enright-Reib

MECAC's Featured Artist for May is Pine Valley's own Nancy Enright-Reib. On the evening of May 20th, Nancy brought a generous exhibit of her work to share with the monthly MECAC gathering, including a remarkable papier-mache puppet she made as a Girl Scout, tissue paper collages, a wonderful watercolor (see below), string collages, crocheted framings, collages including real butterflies, and many other examples of creative uses of paper and crochet.

A resident of Pine Valley since 1977, Nancy has also been writing for over thirty years by taking part in an autobiography group in La Mesa. Writing vignettes, especially about living in Europe in 1963-1964, Nancy showed us notebooks filled with stories of various events of her life. Adopted at eighteen months of age by a single woman, Nancy also writes about the finding of her birthmother and other family members, including an aunt just in the last few years.

Nancy also explained her philosophy of art that stems from her years of living abroad and attending many art workshops both in Europe and here in the States. She also developed spatial relationships in her works through classes in perspective. The watercolor below was created during an art seminar at the Pine Valley Clubhouse in the late 1980's.



The MECAC gathering very much enjoyed Nancy's sharing of her artistic vision as well as her writing and collage work. Thank you, Nancy, for being willing to share your life and your work with us!

We encourage all back country residents who are artists or are interested in the arts to join the monthly MECAC gatherings. Unless otherwise advertised, you'll find us in the Pine Valley Library Community Room from 7:00 to 8:30 PM on the third Thursday of each month. Our next Featured Artist is painter Sandra Hayen on June 17, so don't miss out on this remarkable artist!

Welcome!

We at the Mountain Empire Creative Arts Council of San Diego County welcome local artists of all genres: musicians, poets, writers, painters, sculptors, dramatists, actors, singers, composers, and fine artists of all sorts to our weblog.

Here we will post upcoming monthly meetings, happenings, and opportunities in the backcountry for artists as well as local arts and crafts fairs and cool gatherings of all kinds for local artists to meet, network, admire each others' work, and perhaps even show off our own.

Our Board of Directors is working hard to provide opportunities for the talented artists of our back country to shine. We also have a passion to reach out to the children of Alpine, Pine Valley, Descanso, Guatay, Campo, Potrero, Boulevard, Mount Laguna, and the environs with the inspiration, creativity, and confidence that comes from artistic expression.

So come join us on our artistic journey! We're very glad you're here.