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!

Bluff Arts Film Festival - Friday Evening

At 1:00 p.m., after an INTENSE (and exhausting) discussion about the vicissitudes of multiple relationships and in anticipation of attending the Film Festival in the evening, I managed to DRAG myself into the sun and wash my hair & upper body. (Clean undies and socks will do for the rest.)

The view up Butler Wash is to die for. We're camped on the 2nd bench above the crik. And to stand here with the heat of the sun and the chill of the approaching Fall evident in the breeze, clean hair, freshly shaved, toweling with magnificent purple from thrift shop for indigent seniors.....

\

 I've everything one needs ('cept love-making) to feel alive!

The Film Fest was comprised of four:

Night Sky
About an observatory at Torrey, Utah and the Dark Sky movement.

Chip Thomas
An eight-minute documentary on the artist/physician in which he describes how he came to the reservation, his interest and treatment of the Dine with uranium mining-related illnesses, learning of their ways and gaining trust and then, rather than just having his photographs in galleries, started doing his large murals for everyone to see. Afterward he fielded questions from the M.C.

Sweetheart Dancers
The story of two Native-American men who choreographed their own "Sweethearts" dance and entered into contests at pow-wows. Sweetheart dances have been, traditionally, for male and female couples, but in true Native-American fashion, it took only a year before the tradition was modified, at least at one place, to include partners in long-term relationships.


Escape
About the psychological and physical abuse suffered by two teenaged best friends, one who is gay and the other smart and shy. After the movie, Smart & Shy and another actress talked about how things hadn't changed much since the making of the movie. Smart & Shy is now a senior ignoring the lucrative offers from Hollywood and planning, instead, to attend college. But many of the others had moved on; had children; died; gone to prison; and, as is the case on many reservations, otherwise fallen by the wayside.

Chip Thomas - Artist-Physician

Featured in the July 30, 2018 issue of THE Magazine. THE Magazine, morphed into Southwest Contemporary.

Jetsonorama

The Artist

Painted Desert Project - Pumphouse

WEBSITE

https://jetsonorama.net/the-painted-desert-project/

How it came to be

https://jetsonorama.net/welcome/


Blog

https://jetsonorama.net/



An Upload on Chip Thomas's Youtube Channel
             (uploaded Nov 13, 2017)

Beware the ditch at the bottom of the hill.

That poster is *adhered.* It's fully-seated in the grout lines. As a collector, my ambivalence was intense; maybe with time I COULD get it off. I consoled myself with a quote from my therapist, "Handling ambivalence is a sign of maturity."

Notice the word hor (lined through) between pump and house.

DETAIL

Above: I spent some time driving around Tuba City and asking folks, but couldn't find the work mentioned: Step on JR's House. 




Location:

N 35.95443 degrees W 111.39668 degrees


For those who prefer feet:

N 35 degrees 57.266' W 111 degrees 23.800'


For them what uses odometer:

About 6.5 miles N of Cameron on east side of highway 89.