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“Outstanding service. They were extremely careful delivering the extra large container into our driveway.” -- A. L. GARNER
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – As the race for Albuquerque’s next mayor heads toward the finish line, campaign signs for Tim Keller and Dan Lewis are seen on front lawns throughout the city.“Certainly it’s understandable why somebody might want to place something a little bit closer to the street, so that say, drivers or pedestrians would be able to see that,” said Brennon Williams, Deputy Planning Director for the city.As everyone knows, though, those signs are sometimes put in places where they’re not allowed.“Medians, we see them all the time,” said Williams.Light poles, arroyos, bridges and sidewalks are also places they can’t go. Williams said sometimes, even people with the campaigns don’t know the rules.“Sometimes we hear people that are working for a candidate may not have received that information or are not aware or educated on where you can and you cannot place signs,” he said.So when signs mysteriously go missing, it’s not always a case of dirty politics. It’s possibl... (KRQE News 13)
Crider opened the SCA Contemporary Gallery, an organization that sought to give free exhibition space to artists, in the Wells Park neighborhood of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Eight years later, she moved the gallery to a building that formerly housed M & J’s Sanitary Tortilla Factory, a popular restaurant for more than 30 years. The gallery kept the restaurant’s name out of respect for its role in the community. Now, it houses 15 artist studios, exhibition and fabrication space and a residency program.“Tower” appears at the New Mexico Museum of Art, Courtesy of Blair Clark. Sculpture by Sheri CriderHer installation “Drift #1,” co-produced with local artist Nina Dubois, took materials at a local landfill and used them for a large sculpture that have appeared at exhibits in New Mexico and Philadelphia. In particular, doors are discarded much more frequently than people may expect, she said.“In one week at this small local door store, there will be at least 250 doors that are abandoned. The majority of them are due to fashion. They’re out of style,” she said.Her recent series “Obsolescence + Opulence” also addresses these ideas with paintings of large public arenas like the Barclays Center in New York City and Meadowlands in New Jersey. Stadiums, Crider said, are spaces where Americans of diverse backgrounds mingle for a common interest — but also where some of the country’s starkest inequalities are on display, as their construction can push out low-income communities and exploit workers.Rio Olympic Stadium, gouache on paper. Painting by Sheri CriderIn one painting, Crider reimagines the Rio Olympic stadium as a refugee camp, mirroring the reality of Olympic hockey and baseball stadiums in Greece that have been repurposed as camps for refugees. The series debuted at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe in 2016.In all her work, “I try to circle back to how capitalism pulls at us, that we need all of these things,” she said. Buying a new car, for example, can feel like “a brief moment of perfection in the context of this huge, messy world we live in. You have this reassuring moment that, okay, everything’s okay. … It takes us away from the messiness of being human.”Soon, her work will expand to address incarceration directly. For the fellowship, she proposed “La Migracion,” an installation of wooden birds made from repurposed church pews that will be presented alongside stories from immigrants incarcerated at a local detention center. The project will also donate money to the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center.Barclays Center, World’s Fairs Towers, gouache on paper, 32×46. Painting by Sheri CriderFor another upcoming project, Crider has organized a two-week sketchbook exchange between local artists and young women in the Bernalillo County Juvenile Detention Center. She hopes it will help build connections between those who are incarcerated and others in the community. “I want to give them at least … the ability to ask themselves questions, to be the author of their own lives,” she said. (PBS NewsHour)
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – The Environmental Protection Agency got some push-back from folks in New Mexico and other states at a hearing in the nation’s capital on Monday.The agency wants to delay a new methane-emission rule for the oil and gas industry on federal land – although methane leaked at well sites is linked to climate change and considered a risk to public health. New Mexico and California have already sued the EPA to keep the rule in place.Alexandra Merlino with the New Mexico chapter of the group Moms Clean Air Force spoke at the EPA hearing. She says energy producers need to be held accountable to update their equipment and stop methane leaks.“If we don’t hold them accountable, they’re not going to do it,” she said. “We’re just giving them a pass to pollute.”The Trump administration says holding off on enforcement of the new rule for two years would save businesses $235 million.Satellite data shows the Four Corners area of northwest New Mexico has the country’s biggest concentra... (New Mexico Political Report)
Jerome Lucero announce Monday that the state and pueblo will work together to fence off and clean an illegal auto dump site. (Roberto E. Rosales/Albuquerque Journal)ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The breathtaking panoramic vista of mesas and mountains off in the distance is somehow diminished when attention is focused on the ground immediately in front, which is carpeted with spent shotgun shells and bullet casings.The carpet ends at an escarpment, where 100 feet down at the bottom of a ravine an illegal dump is lined with smashed and rusted vehicles, household appliances and furniture, and various types of garbage and hazardous waste.The illegal dump site at the far northern end of Rainbow Boulevard, just north of Rio Rancho, sits on a parcel of state trust land that borders the Zia Pueblo.AdvertisementContinue readingOn Monday, state Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn and Zia Pueblo Lt. Governor Jerome Lucero announced an initiative to install six miles of fencing to limit trespassing and access to the 3,526-acre site. Running mostly in an east-west direction, the barbed-wire fence will be about 5 feet tall and have wood and steel vertical supports, Lucero said.Under a joint agreement, the Land Office is pay...
A Norfolk official alerted me to the church’s project when I wrote about special cleanup programs around the country. Cities including Albuquerque, N.M., hire panhandlers and the homeless to spruce up neighborhoods. The programs have several goals, among them: to instill dignity and connect temporary workers with services.Let me be clear about the Norfolk church’s project: It’s not nearly so formal, nor are city officials involved. It runs on the donations of a churchgoer, Bickford, and the buy-in and support of his fellow church members. It lasts from September till the following May, then shuts down over the summer.Other congregations – or groups – might have enough people to run something similar. It could be a pilot project for local cities, too.At Christ & St. Luke’s, the Rev. Canon Win Lewis said church neighbors used to complain about trash following the weekly meals.“This is turning what had been a liability into an asset,” he said.David Roberts, Christ & St. Luke’s longtime sexton, hands out gloves, bags and vests, which folks return at the end of the cleanup.Participants go into the community, collect trash, return with their bags to a nearby dumpster, and receive a raffle-type ticket from a waiting church volunteer. Roberts then parcels out the money.“We never have many problems,” he said.Everything is finished in 45 minutes to an hour.Some folks, sadly, abuse the program. As I noticed, they simply go to existing trash cans on the street or parks, fill up their bags and cash in. There’s no way to prevent that unless the church had more volunteers to supervise.Other men and women do as asked, with gratitude. They’re like Ronald Sawyer, who catches an HRT bus from his Portsmouth apartment to get out of the house, have a meal, and get a few dollars. He receives Social Security disability checks because of depression.“It’s great for the church … to offer a program for the disabled, to give us a feeling of value,” said Sawyer, who’s 51.“I feel good working for God.”... (Virginian-Pilot)
