May is National Preservation Month!
May 1: Cornerstones / Paul Bruhn regrants application is ready to view and will be active for submissions by the end of the week.
May 21: Annual Heritage Preservation Awards Ceremony with OSFA and the City of Santa Fe, San Miguel Chapel from 5:30 to ~7pm with a reception at HSFF's El Zaguán following the ceremony.
May 29: NMSHPD Awards
May 30: HSFF Symposium
Our Annual Report is
LUNA COMMUNITY COLLEGE
YOUTH GROUP WITH STEPHANIE CAMFIELD
On a beautiful April day, Luna Community College welcomed 150 fifth-grade girls from Mora, San Miguel, and Colfax counties for the Girls Can program. During this day of exploration, the students chose three trades, careers, or fields of study to learn about. Fifty of the girls selected adobe building—and Cornerstones was lucky to spend the day with them. Together, we mixed mud and learned how earth, sand, straw, and water come together to create strong, comfortable, sustainable, and affordable homes. The girls experienced how communities can build together, even without much prior construction experience. Some of the girls were already familiar with adobe, while others were learning about it for the first time. One student shared that her father wanted to build an horno, but her grandfather had pointed to her and her brother and said, “Let’s have them build it while we teach them how.” She said the experience made her feel proud—building something meaningful for her family without having done anything like it before. Most of the girls eagerly joined in and wanted to stay all day. Many also talked about the fires that have affected their communities and were interested in learning more about how adobe construction responds to those challenges and how adobe could provide affordable housing without major debt.
A big thanks to Mani Archuleta, his teen age children and Jonathon Ulibari for coming back to the adobe model home at Luna Community College to help Jake do a site clean up.
RAEL
Staff helped to clean and repair the acequia at Rael Ranch, a BLM historic property in La Cienega, NM. Cornerstones has been involved in keeping the historic Acequia running for the last few years of its over 300 years of existence. As part of the RMYC Historic Preservation Training, participants also replastered one of the walls at the ranch house and repaired a shed roof on the property.
Elephant Butte
Training workshops in collaboration with the Bureau of Reclamation and Rocky Mountain Youth Corps commenced at the Dam Site Marina in Elephant Butte, NM. Participants continued to remove incompatible cement stucco and repoint the exposed stone with an appropriate NHL mortar.
Notes from Friends: Reform and Rehabilitation
William Powell has worked with architectural organizations throughout the state, including Cornerstones and most recently New Mexico MainStreet. He shares his experience working with inmates from NorthEastern NM Corrections Facility restoring and redesigning a historic storefront.
We were restoring and re-designing a historic storefront that was intended to be a local craftsperson market showcasing local art and crafts made by those in the region. This reuse of the historic Dudley Building is the brainchild of Lynette Keeth, Clayton MainStreet’s Executive Director. The design for the storefront involved the restoration of large storefront windows dating back to the 1940s, and the full design and build-out for the gallery’s window display. Working closely with Lynette, she identified the prison as a possible asset for volunteer recruitment. It was also brought to our attention that the prison had a woodshop. With this knowledge in mind, I decided to base the designs for the gallery storefront on using oak, steel and paint to transform the storefront. After touring the prison woodshop I knew that the inmate volunteers could help execute the work. Everyone at the prison from the inmates, officers, and warden were very helpful.
Corrections inmates asked thoughtful questions, worked hard and never complained. They painted with precision, helped to assemble and secure all pieces of the framework as needed. I brought coffee and pastries, I bought lunch—burgers, burritos, pizza—whatever they wanted or had missed in daily life. One of them asked if he could have jalapenos with his hamburger. When I brought back lunch he looked like a kid on Christmas morning.
I sent the guys home with homework for the woodshop, drawings I created so that we could begin building out the storefront. When I returned a few weeks later, they had completed the assignment and went above and beyond in the execution and craftsmanship. We all worked side by side. All of the men were excellent workers. Having spent a fair amount of my career on job and construction sites, I can spot good workers, and those who genuinely care about what they are doing. These volunteers are no exception. Continually, these guys would show up early and work until dark, or until they were told the workday had ended. It was clear they did not want to go back to the prison. They got a taste of life outside again, a taste of freedom, and a taste of rehabilitation. It was a chance for them to work on skills they were developing inside the prison, so that they could have success when they finally got out. Just like the buildings we work on; these men are also capable of reform and restoration. They are not dissimilar.