Message from the President
September 2023
Our next General meeting will be held on Monday September 18, 2023 at 1:00 PM at the Tuolumne County Library, 480 Greenley Road, Sonora. The General Meeting will be proceeded by a Board meeting at 11:00. As always, you are welcome to attend all of these activities for free.
Following the general meeting, we will kick off our fall program of demos at 1:30 p.m. with a critique session by noted Foothill artist Judie Cain. You can bring in one piece of work for Judie to analyze and to give you helpful hints on how to improve your piece. Judie’s critiques are always popular and informative! Be sure to go to our “Upcoming Demos” page, Upcoming Artist Demos - Mother Lode Art Association , for more information including limitations on size, etc., that you need to follow if you plan to bring a piece for Judie’s consideration. Judie is also opening her studio at 255 Oak Tree Circle, Murphys, CA on September 16 and 17 from 10am to 5pm as part of the Calaveras Art Council Open Studio Tour. The map for the tour can be found at www.calaverasarts.org. This is another opportunity to make contacts with local artists.
The Board last met in August to work on the 69th Art Show, which will run from April 12 through April 20, 2024. Judges are being selected. We discussed changes to the Prospectus and are working on a revised Entry Form which will make it much easier for applicants to enter their information and for the Show team to process entries.
We also discussed the Youth Art Show, which MLAA is co-sponsoring with Tuolumne County Arts. That Show will be in the General Library in Sonora and will run from late March for about one month, overlapping our Adult Show in the Opera Hall. MLAA will again be awarding Certificates of Merit to the children based on our judges’ review of the student art and we will announce the winners at the Opera Hall at our reception on April 12.
Anyone interested in helping with the next Art Show is welcome to attend the Board meeting on September 18, 2023 at 11:00 AM or make yourself known at the General Meeting at 1:00 PM. and to get ready to select the schools we will be supporting from our 68th Art Show fund raiser.
The Plein Air Group has worked around the heat by finding locations higher up the hills. Our next adventure, on Thursday, September 14, will be to Donnell’s Vista, 14 miles east of Strawberry on Hwy 108. This site is a beautifully developed overlook with magnificent and paintable views of the Dardanelles, the reservoir and the Stanislaus canyon. We’ll plan to meet at the site at around 9:30 a.m. Bring water, hand wipes, and lunch. Contact Maureen Carden at 510 388 3516 if you need more information.
We are still in need of someone to step up and take over as Secretary. It requires attending our seven monthly board meetings, which take place before our General Meeting and Demonstration, and recording the Board actions. If you have even basic word processing skills, it will be a snap. It will also be a way to get more involved with the great fine art community in Tuolumne County! Please let me know at the next meeting that you can help us out.
I hope to see you in person on the September 18th!
John Sharum, President MLAA
WOMEN VETERANS' MEMORIAL PROGRESS REPORT
The design for the memorial in Twain Harte is finished and approved to go forward pending raising the necessary funds. Grants are being written and memorial bricks are being sold to raise funds. So far, $20,000 has been raised, but this represents about a third of the total cost of installing this important memorial to the women who have served and who will serve in the future. If you would like to contribute, contact Frank Smart, project manager, at 209 559-1708. We still are looking for the project to be completed in 2023.
