Chip Thomas & The Bluff Arts Festival (BAF)

This post is to broaden awareness of the Festival and encourage support for Chip's mural.

Chip Thomas is one of those amazing people you rarely hear about.

But anyone's who's traveled the Navajo Reservation has probably seen his murals on the sides of abandoned buildings.

Chip's website

Image use permission pending 

Time/date of posting: 10:11 a.m. Nevada Time, 10, October, 2021

In 2019, along with a showing of a movie about his work, Chip gave a presentation at the Bluff Arts Festival. This year there's a Go Fund Me campaign to raise $1,750.00 for a mural on Cedar Hall, a project that is part of Design Build Utah @ Bluff. I gave $25.00.

Link to Go Fund Me Campaign.

Below  are links to Festival-related events.

List of films at the Film Festival Friday October 15th, 6:30 - 9:00pm

Workshope -- Three on Saturday, October 16 & Two on Sunday, October 17.

Artist Market -- Saturday, October 16th, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Google Map showing location of Bluff Community Center where Artist Market happens.

And for those who do Facebook....

See you there!

It's A Small World

I was fueling up at the Sinclair when I noticed the sign on the truck on the other side of the aisle: Torrey House Press. 

It was the first day of the Bluff Arts Festival and Torrey publishes some of the work by local authors. A recording of one who'd commuted from Bluff to Salt Lake City every week to do a radio show was presented at the sunset readings. She died not long ago, but her husband still lets the public access the land along the San Juan River, the land where we all gathered to hear her and the other presenters.  

Having cut my marketing teeth in publishing I went over to say howdy. It turned out Mark Bailey, co-founder of The Press, is also on the board of Western Watersheds Project.

One of the presentations that year, given by Mark, was on the Dark Sky Movement. He told how Torrey had converted all their street lights so they wouldn't affect the dark and how the town had become a Dark Sky destination. He told of the incredible telescope he'd inherited from his dad (mentioned in this blog) and how folks now come from far and wide to look through it.

But if you read this blog, his latest, you'll get a sense of what Gustave Speth wrote about in his book Angels By the River.

It's surprising isn't it though, how little we sometimes know of each other?