THE CERULEAN!!! NOW

HEAR THIS

By Omari Fox, Guest Editor 

Greetings Friends, Countrymen and women, Azule Faithful:

The SUN IS BLUE…#BLUESUNDAY

SAVE THE DATE. 11/1/2015. You have a bit under two months to prepare to stand for something and Fall for Azule at our Annual Fall Event at Azule on Sunday November 1. This year the sun is blue once more and we want to reintroduce our fabulous facility and friends to our special kind of place and party with the Hot springs community and surrounding areas. The stage will be everywhere this year at all levels so be prepared to receive art, deeply listen, and share a story anytime anywhere in new and old tradition. We want to have art bursts throughout the enchanted afternoon so all talents and gifts are welcome. Trick or Retreat!!! The Azule Board Meeting precedes the Blue Sunday, Hope to see you there.

ANNUAL POTLUCK and OPEN HOUSE

Back on the Grid…
Fresh off of an emotional and eventful Rootsweek, Camille, Val, Jean-Marie, Gwylene and Omari are all back to the world and work of art and community. In late May of this year the Alternate Roots Visual Arts Scholars made the trek up to Azule on a sunny Saturday afternoon to get a feel for possibility and productivity and of course they want to make art there with us, of course they want to be there in community with artists exchanging skills and friendships, and of course it’s possible, lets figure it out.

In the five day wonderland that is the Annual Meeting for Alternate Roots, art is definitely the business, and our illustrious Azule board members were there on the ground for the business of insisting on what we insist and practice the best, collaboration. Many of the visual artists on the board were all able to attend the 39th Annual Rootsweek down the road in Arden, NC the first week of August. There were hopes of a big ‘TO DO’ to happen in collaboration with this year’s scholars in the near futures so stay tuned as we plan for a creative convergence later this fall or early 2016.

  A large take away from this year’s gathering was the need to commit to and sustain collaboration of intention and substance on real projects or studio exchange with the past and present scholars who have had the chance to visit Azule, and moreover as a general practice with any folks who sincerely want to create. Though the compression of time and retreat schedule can be hectic, the motivation I left with from meeting with the Alternate Roots Visual Arts Innovation Ensemble or  ARVAIE {yes it’s called that entire title) is to get out of the typical presentation mode and take the art and process to relationship building through creating together. Hashing out ways to operate outside the gallery revolutionize it from the inside with dynamic work and even open ended processes that evolve in meaning, in other words the Azule norm.

Talking JUNK…

#BlueLivesMatter?

Yes, I said it. No of course I know my ancestry and the particular struggle that is peculiar to my people, but neither outweighs anyone else’s struggle. Specific ‘Heart-Work’ or Activism for me is always an avenue to eventual humanity of everyone and I had to learn that for my movement, and embrace that for others as well. I’ve been on the ground in a lot of movements from #Blacklivesmatter to LGBTQ justice, to education empowerment and especially what I call equal arts, there’s a cycle, a pattern, and a common through line. The cycle is whatever the ‘ism’ is, whatever form the trauma takes from natural to man-made disaster the challenges have always come and not necessarily gone, the pattern is that oppressive forces will pacify or out will our resolve, however….the through line for me is the juxtaposition of systems conceding nothing. Only when we collectively insist, only when we are relentless and clear about our vision that we want to put forward that embraces the skills and humanity of everyone who wants to offer and receive do we see structures built, and justice served. I’ve been fortunate to find physical and patch worked communities in special places in the world, or should I say south where folks can come together to seek and practice the place we want to live in and experience. All those spaces included art, but only one of them was built blue. I invite you to bring your community and be in community at Azule: A Place for the Arts. A fabulous facility with a spirit that affords everyone to move center out from where they define their humanity be it physicality, ethnicity, or gender. But at the end of an Azule day, everyone is an artist, and that voice no doubt matters. Peace & Love O. 

Omari Fox, Guest Azule Editor, Azule Board Member, Skill Share Organizer 

Davidson Students on Odyssey at Azule

Early August, considered mid-summer by the calendar year, unfolds in Bluff with hints of autumn - the tinge of red on locust leaves, cooler waters in the creek, goldenrod and ironweed distilling their last thrust of energy into golden and royal purple bursting blooms, suckling the Monarch butterflies for their long migration south.

Early August brings another peregrination to Azule as first-year students from Davidson College arrive to provide service.

These students are part of the pre-orientation student-led Odyssey program at Davidson.

New students travel to the mountains to hike, canoe and work in community service at Azule before beginning their new journey in college. In the words of the students who were weeding the patio, carefully working their way like crabs around Camille’s opening spirals, the purpose of their program is to:

“build community before the school year begins”
“get out in nature”
“remind us of the community that Davidson is around, that it’s not just an isolated place- that it’s a part of the world.”
“ take all technology away, so we can focus on the environment and each other.”
“ force us out of our comfort zone- Daisy had hummus for the first time.” 

      2015 is the fifth year that we, at Azule,
have benefitted from the collaboration of Davidson students on Odyssey. This year they weeded, mulched, cleared and built, transforming the spiral patio and stone beds and continuing the trail above the house that fellow students began last year. We are grateful for their good work and hopeful that their experience at Azule learning about the architecture of the house and Camille’s process, building the trail with Christopher after understanding the design concept that underlies it, and opening outward together while weeding within the spiraled sculpture of the patio has added to their unfolding adventure and design for their lives as college students. Lorrie Jayne

Thanks Odyssey Students!
 

POETRY IN MENTION:
 Bluff's Majestic Mountain Pose

MARY-JANE KING with her work-. A student from Clemson, she made great use of her time at Azule, using the large workspace with many windows downstairs to paint.

COMING IN SEPTEMBER and OCTOBER:

9/28 - 1-/25: Dallas Artist, Teacher and Community Organizer Zachary Greer

10/1 - 10/31: Environmental Artist Charlene Potter

NEXT APPLICATION DEADLINE: NOVEMBER 1st, 2015

Bluff's Majestic Mountain Pose

"Tad asana"
known as a Sanskrit’s word
still stands
grounded
centered
rooted
focused
with the Earth
inhales and exhales
a feminine and masculine synergy
emerges strength
empowers confidence
courage
atop the mountain summit range
a serenity
flows 
over Garenflo Gap; a valley's depth of great
tranquility
opens fascinating undenying inspiring
beauty
running rampant springs
merge
creeks to the French Broad River
creates
natural restorative swim holes; hot springs washes away one's toxicity
...

Nina Carroll

CODE BLUE: PASS IT ON

PART I

by Gwylene Gallimard
Ex Officio Board Chairperson
Chair from 2011 to Frbruary 2014
.

AZULE is a work-in-progress, moving from a circle of friends to a sustainable organization. Serving at AZULE as a Chair for three years was a pleasure, an honor and hard work. I always worried about the load-power-charge in my hands and was aware of what I could not bring to Azule.  Six months before the end of my term (February 2015) I started to prepare the passing on of what was put in place at Azule, its burgeoning programs, promotions and administration. In March AZULE hired its first staff, Natalie Marsh. In June, we voted in a new structure of two co-chairs, Lynda Wheelock & Ital Al-Amin, and two co-secretaries, Jean-Marie Mauclet and Lorrie Jayne. In September Azule is hiring a Local Coordinator. Today I am an active volunteer Board member of AZULE.

At this junction I want to take the time to add to Azule's archives the stories of the long friendship Camille and I have had since 1967, a friendship between two very different persons with a similar accent. Camille describes herself as a Radical-French-Appalachian-Hillbilly and I do describe myself as a first generation immigrant and artist in the South of the United States.

Our first encounter was in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Camille had her own apartment. There she could organize very lively conversations about art, every Wednesday. I remember myself as a quiet participant, all ears open. All these artists, students, travelers, knew so much more than me. And I sensed I could learn a lot from them. I followed Camille's discoveries of contemporary music, her knowledge of the Middle Ages, their architecture, their guilds. For me, long Board meetings at Azule still evoke the time where conversations are a way to learn and create outside of class. Thanks to a summer job in Quebec, I followed her for a few months when she was offered a teaching job in Havre St Pierre, on the Northern Shore of the Saint Lawrence River. To me she seemed fearless. So I was going to be fearless. Having missed - because of her - my plane back to France, she pushed me to hitchhike over the ocean. And it did work! Ask her for the story, knowing that in the late 60's hitchhiking was part of our education, almost a ritual to become an adult. She herself had hitch hiked across Canada. Travel or die.

(To be continued on October 2015 issue of AZULE News)

All these years you have been part of the ongoing

"AZULE portraits project"

Hundreds of these portraits are now on canvas and ready for you to sign