Alas de Agua Art Collective - Annual Fundaiser
Donation protected
HELP ALAS CONTINUE TO DO THE GRASSROOTS COMMUNITY ART WORK THAT WE WANT TO OFFER. PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING TO HELP COVER THE EXPENSES OF HAVING A BUILDING ON SANTA FE'S SOUTHSIDE THAT IS LED BY LATINX, BIPOC, LGTBQIA+ COMMUNITY MEMBERS.
As a grassroots organization, we put every single dollar to good use because we have very little overhead. Your donation of any size makes a huge difference for our artists, our work, and our larger community.
As a grassroots organization, we put every single dollar to good use because we have very little overhead. Your donation of any size makes a huge difference for our artists, our work, and our larger community.
Raising money directly from individuals in our community is the most empowered way for our work to be funded. While we very much appreciate grants that help us seed different projects, having funding that is unrestricted, does not require competition against others, and is free from the gaze of (often white) funders enables us to have full autonomy in supporting artists and community. We are always happy to talk about how we spend our financial resources if you have any questions. Finally all donated funds will pass to Alas de Agua through our awesome fiscal sponsor Youthworks.
What we did this year:
While the pandemic has halted a lot of our realities, for Alas de Agua Art Collective it has meant some dramatic shifts on how we operate in the community, and growing in new and beautiful ways for the better.
While closing the doors on programming at our brand-new space in March 2020 due to COVID safety was heartbreaking, it led us back to our roots of Mural Making and Community work. As the food insecurity in our community deepened in the summer months of 2020, our Art Studio / School Building was used to redistribute 800 food bags a week in collaboration with Santa Fe Youthworks. This was spearheaded by John Paul Granillo and his willingness to help our community. Alas de Agua Art Collective is not simply an art collective, but strives to build leadership that is homegrown; leadership that reflects the roots of the Southside community. We have begun mural arts training to help further seed Mural Artists. This is a slow process but one that Alas de Agua members are willing to engage in. In order to fight off gentrification, Alas de Agua strives to be a part of “Gente-fication” or People-Fication, trying to do our part to help the communities most impacted by the waves of gentrification. We also secured emergency funding for artists.
The bigger vision for the Alas De Agua Art Collective has always been to have a land base, community farm and a community building. In 2020 we ended up collaborating with other local entities such as Youthworks, Reunity Resources, and Santa Fe County to start two new community farms and accompanying outdoor arts activities. This was a huge blessing and carried us through 2020 and 2021, along with outdoor murals, which are a safe and natural activity for Alas artists to engage in.
January 2021 saw Alas resuming free workshops online for the community. Mondays and Wednesdays were reserved for an adult cohort and a youth cohort (ages 10-18) learning Mural Arts, Drawing and Painting. Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the first quarter of 2021 were reserved for BIPOC poetry sessions. The Tuesday sessions were open to anybody in the community while the Wednesday session was reserved for advanced participants; and we had the glorious opportunity to have two native elders from Canada join our local Poetry community for these weekly sessions.
As the weather warmed into March, our Tuesday Poetry sessions were replaced with outdoor mural making and moving the now-established adult cohort and youth cohort to outdoor practice and painting. In April 2021 we finally felt safe enough to open up our studio for our first Group Exhibition since COVID hit in March 2020. We had a beautiful turnout with around 40 participants young and old in the community coming to see our first show and participating in an Open Mic and Writing session. Jennifer Spektor, an intern through Southwest offered a Youth Queer Art night at the farm on Thursdays throughout the 2021 growing season.
In Spring 2021, Alas artists were commissioned to create COVID safety campaign posters for the city. This summer, Alas artists created murals this year at the Genoveva Chavez Community Center skate park, and at Salvador Perez Pool. We have also won the state contract to create site-specific mural and mural-inspired artwork in collaboration with the community for the new Southside Teen Center once it is built!
This summer and fall, we’ve been offering weekly free Wednesday night art workshops at our studio with COVID safety protocols in place. Throughout June 2020 and July 2021 different Alas members have offered numerous online workshops with the Public Schools both in art and poetry, led by Israel Haros, Jessica Ortiz and John Paul Granillo. For Dia de los Muertos, we taught alter-making at the Southside Library.
Alas de Agua and Youthworks grew food together and made art together throughout the season, along with Three Sisters Collective. We hope to continue with these different partnerships as we continue to manifest our dream to own a building and land on the southside.
We closed out 2021 with a super successful and well-attended Earth Economy Art Mercado on December 5 at Wise Fool Studio, for 20+ BIPOC and queer artist vendors.
As we continue to shift and adapt to COVID as it evolves in 2022, we will offer more workshops in person, hybrid and online zoom classes, along with other workshops related to farming when the growing season resumes. Come join us anytime.
While closing the doors on programming at our brand-new space in March 2020 due to COVID safety was heartbreaking, it led us back to our roots of Mural Making and Community work. As the food insecurity in our community deepened in the summer months of 2020, our Art Studio / School Building was used to redistribute 800 food bags a week in collaboration with Santa Fe Youthworks. This was spearheaded by John Paul Granillo and his willingness to help our community. Alas de Agua Art Collective is not simply an art collective, but strives to build leadership that is homegrown; leadership that reflects the roots of the Southside community. We have begun mural arts training to help further seed Mural Artists. This is a slow process but one that Alas de Agua members are willing to engage in. In order to fight off gentrification, Alas de Agua strives to be a part of “Gente-fication” or People-Fication, trying to do our part to help the communities most impacted by the waves of gentrification. We also secured emergency funding for artists.
The bigger vision for the Alas De Agua Art Collective has always been to have a land base, community farm and a community building. In 2020 we ended up collaborating with other local entities such as Youthworks, Reunity Resources, and Santa Fe County to start two new community farms and accompanying outdoor arts activities. This was a huge blessing and carried us through 2020 and 2021, along with outdoor murals, which are a safe and natural activity for Alas artists to engage in.
January 2021 saw Alas resuming free workshops online for the community. Mondays and Wednesdays were reserved for an adult cohort and a youth cohort (ages 10-18) learning Mural Arts, Drawing and Painting. Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the first quarter of 2021 were reserved for BIPOC poetry sessions. The Tuesday sessions were open to anybody in the community while the Wednesday session was reserved for advanced participants; and we had the glorious opportunity to have two native elders from Canada join our local Poetry community for these weekly sessions.
As the weather warmed into March, our Tuesday Poetry sessions were replaced with outdoor mural making and moving the now-established adult cohort and youth cohort to outdoor practice and painting. In April 2021 we finally felt safe enough to open up our studio for our first Group Exhibition since COVID hit in March 2020. We had a beautiful turnout with around 40 participants young and old in the community coming to see our first show and participating in an Open Mic and Writing session. Jennifer Spektor, an intern through Southwest offered a Youth Queer Art night at the farm on Thursdays throughout the 2021 growing season.
In Spring 2021, Alas artists were commissioned to create COVID safety campaign posters for the city. This summer, Alas artists created murals this year at the Genoveva Chavez Community Center skate park, and at Salvador Perez Pool. We have also won the state contract to create site-specific mural and mural-inspired artwork in collaboration with the community for the new Southside Teen Center once it is built!
This summer and fall, we’ve been offering weekly free Wednesday night art workshops at our studio with COVID safety protocols in place. Throughout June 2020 and July 2021 different Alas members have offered numerous online workshops with the Public Schools both in art and poetry, led by Israel Haros, Jessica Ortiz and John Paul Granillo. For Dia de los Muertos, we taught alter-making at the Southside Library.
Alas de Agua and Youthworks grew food together and made art together throughout the season, along with Three Sisters Collective. We hope to continue with these different partnerships as we continue to manifest our dream to own a building and land on the southside.
We closed out 2021 with a super successful and well-attended Earth Economy Art Mercado on December 5 at Wise Fool Studio, for 20+ BIPOC and queer artist vendors.
As we continue to shift and adapt to COVID as it evolves in 2022, we will offer more workshops in person, hybrid and online zoom classes, along with other workshops related to farming when the growing season resumes. Come join us anytime.
More about us:
Alas De Agua Art Collective, established in 2017, is an intersectional grass roots space providing resources and opportunities for artists of color, native artists, immigrant, undocumented, and queer artists who have historically and currently been marginalized and not afforded the same resources. We remove barriers and go around them. We believe in abundance where there seems to be scarcity. We believe in compassionate conflict. We help support artistic visions that are counter narratives to dominant culture and believe diversity is key in creating community. More at www.alasdeagua.com
Organizer and beneficiary
Katy Medley
Organizer
Santa Fe, NM
Melynn Schuyler
Beneficiary
