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State of the Art: A Collector's Evening
at Tlaquepaque |
A Collector's Evening at Sedona's Tlaquepaque
By Beverly Lehnhardt
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Sedona.biz
In recent years, Wendy
Lippman, manager of Tlaquepaque Arts & Crafts Village, has increased
the number of large community events held at this chic shopping and
dining Mecca.Early in September, the 33rd annual
Fiesta del Tlaquepaque attracted visitors and locals both with
the music, dancing, art demonstrations, and other special
attractions that make the yearly event so popular. This event first
began shortly after Tlaquepaque opened its doors in 1972.
In just a couple more
months, the shopping village will be gearing up for the beloved
Festival of Lights that attract thousands of people to Sedona
every holiday season. This year will be the 32nd
consecutive year for the lights festival and if years past are any
indication of “what’s to come,” it will be a winter season to
remember.
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Wolfgang Lehnhardt hosts at the Navarro
Gallery at the first ever "State of the
Art: A Collector's Evening" at
Tlaquepaque. |
Recently, even though
unsettled clouds hovered on the horizon, the extended seasonal
monsoon rains held off to endow the first ever State of the Art:
A Collector’s Evening with a dry, breezy, and very comfortable
night. Nine participating Tlaquepaque fine art galleries opened
their doors wide, tempting art collectors with wine, hors d’oeuvres,
and artwork of the highest caliber. It was a rare opportunity to
converse with each gallery’s featured artist and personally meet
gallery owners and directors.Once everyone had
sampled the wine and wide variety of tasty treats available at each
of the nine galleries, attendees collected on the romantic,
flower-festooned Patio del Norte for a fabulous feast created and
coordinated by the renowned chefs at Amara Resort (Chef Alan
McClean), L’Auberge de Sedona (Chef Jonathan Gelman), and Sedona
Rouge Hotel & Spa (Chef Kyle Evans). Each chef selected the perfect
wine to accompany his own creation.
Finally, when we
thought we could eat no more, dessert appeared, and among several
other delectable sweets, the Belgian Dark Chocolate Cake oozed
chocolate and gave us all our ‘choco-fix’ for the day. An unusual
Musk Wine from Page Springs Cellars accompanied the fantastic
desserts.
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Dragonfly
in the Dragon Knight Stilt Theater
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And as if the food
wasn’t overwhelming enough, the entertainment dazzled and delighted
us. The Dragon Knight Stilt Theater stilt walkers danced
gracefully—on stilts!—among the audience and dinner tables, never
once wavering or missing a step in the crowd. A combination of
circus, masked theater, make-up, and puppetry, they provided much of
the ‘magic’ for the enchanted evening. Their remarkable and
astonishing costumes were an engineering marvel. This was their
first Arizona performance. To learn more about these unique
entertainers, visit
www.stiltshow.com.
Later in the evening,
Greg Reiter, master of Flamenco Fusion guitar music, enticed us to
close our eyes and travel the globe with him. From Mediterranean
romance to the desert sounds of the Kalahari, his music swept us away to another time and place. A few couples even
danced in the courtyard under the stars…
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Tlaquepaque in the evening |
This invitation-only
charity event benefited Friends of the Forest, an organization that
provides the Red Rock Ranger District of the U.S. Forest Service
with over 14,000 hours of volunteer service each year. Friends of
the Forest’s primary goals are to:
- Help the Forest Service maintain its
trails and cultural resources
- Reduce environmental damage caused by
increasing human impact
- Assist in education and improve
communication with the community
- Enhance the forest experience for visitors
and residents alike
For more information about Friends of the
Forest, go to
www.friendsoftheforestsedona.org.Bids for the artwork
donated to the Silent Auction were taken throughout the evening,
with 100% of the proceeds going to Friends of the Forest. Art work
by each of the gallery’s featured artists was displayed around the
Patio del Norte and on the second story balcony above.
It was a very
worthwhile event with a worthy charity benefiting from the proceeds.
I look forward to seeing if next year’s State of the Art: A
Collector’s Evening can top it.
Tlaquepaque is
a word from the Nahuatl Native Indian language - the ancient
language of the Aztecs meaning the "best of everything".
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