Continuing Church Work:
San Miguel and La Cueva
Cornerstones often carries out our work according to seasons, brickmaking before the monsoons, plastering after, and projects at National Parks outside New Mexico come late fall and winter. Over the last two weeks, we continued mud plaster work at Churches on parapets at San Miguel here in Santa Fe and walls of La Cueva in Mora. We plastered and did basal repairs across Mora throughout September, at Cleveland, Turquillo, and La Cueva. We continued to enjoy working alongside the people of Mora and volunteers as well as the audible support of passerby honking and calling out.
Angela Francis, our lead plasterer, headed up our work at La Cueva, and she worked alongside senior plasterer Don Sena on the San Miguel Parapets. We focused on basal repair around all of La Cueva while also addressing individual wall cracks. Basal repair is always needed on older adobe churches as moisture wicks up and erodes the bottom of walls. On the front of the building, we only had to do basal repairs around the corners. We applied a full coat on the back wall and did repairs on the west-facing side wall. On the east wall, we filled in spaces where there were large delaminations of plaster. The main situational challenge for La Cueva is that some walls weather more, particularly the back wall. Where there is more plastering remaining from previous years, there is less year-round weathering, and so plastering is overly thick. We tried to not over build out the plaster too much on the side walls as the weight of the plaster leads to the delaminating. San Miguel needed less-strategized attention, simply more mudding at the parapet tops to maintain them through the winter. We are proud to announce that the Catholic Foundation has awarded us two grants to continue preservation work on Mora missions.
Photos by Lea Andersson and Lucas Burdick
Jim Gautier Gallery Event:
A Party To Remember
We had a lovely, festive time this past Thursday at our event for Jim Gautier and his photographic work for Cornerstones over his last 30 plus years.
His wife Peggy read a beautiful statement by Jim written years before his death, saying he hoped he had another 25 years to take photos for Cornerstones, one of his favorite avocations.
Monie Blum, who recently timed off the board after serving as our Board Chair and member for two terms introduced our new Executive Committee: Lorna Calles who now serves as our new Board Chair joined by Eva Schmatz as our new Vice Chair, Lori Valencia is remaining on as our Treasurer, and Garron Yepa is joining the Committee as Secretary.
Jake Barrow, our acting Executive Director, also announced a new fund, set up in Jim's honor, that will support training interns at core mission projects. Jim loved documenting Cornerstones field work, taking action shots and before-and-after photos. He would be proud to be the namesake of a program that will preserve the buildings and communities across New Mexico he loved so. You can donate to that fund online through the button below or you can mail us a donation.
Cornerstones sold prints of Jim's photographs, both matted and framed at the event. We intend to set the remaining photographs up in our office, which we are presently transforming into a gallery space. We also hope to make new print some of the photographs we sold.
Notecards of Jim's photos are also for sale. We made these for the Holiday season now upon us, and we can mail them to you or have them available for pick up. They are $25 for one set and $45 for two. These can be purchased on our website or in-person. Email contact@cstones.org to set up a time to meet us at the office.
You can order cards for pick-up or mailing - and see the entire card set - at cstones.org/notecards