MESA VERDE COUNTRY® HOSTS 10TH ANNUAL INDIAN ARTS AND CULTURE FESTIVAL

Famed Jemez Pueblo Artist Joe Toledo Highlights Renowned Event

Featured as a "must-attend festival" in Patricia Schultz's best-seller, 1000 Places to See Before You Die, the celebration begins on Memorial Day Weekend with events in Mesa Verde National Park. A juried Indian market, featuring world-renowned artists from Pueblo, Zuni, Hopi, Navajo, Ute and Apache tribes, and a Navajo rug seminar and auction highlight the weekend.

The festival, also recognized as one of the "Top 100 Events in North America" by the American Bus Association, features a pow-wow, Native American dancers and musicians, a Native American concert, traditional foods and cultural programs. The Anasazi Heritage Center will offer the "Sacred Images: A Vision of Native American Rock Art" exhibit. The center serves as the visitor center and research center for Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, which contains more than 100 archaeological sites per square mile.

Guides from Ute Mountain Tribal Park will offer special archaeological tours during the festival. The Ute Mountain Tribal Park is an area set aside by the Ute Mountain Utes — one of the seven original Ute bands that inhabited Colorado — to preserve Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) architecture. Ute tour guides interpret Ute Indian history, pictographs, geological land formations, and ancestral Pueblo petroglyphs, artifacts, and dwellings.

The festival's featured artist for 2010 is Joe Toledo. Toledo, 80, is one of the world's few watercolor purists, which means he has only nine pigments in his swatch of colors, and does not use black or white in any of his paintings. "The reason I don't like to use white is because it becomes an opaque and you can hide your mistakes," he says. Toledo also is unique is that he paints with rainwater, pointing to its softness. "I want to paint things that take you back, and the colors move you and are emotional."

Toledo's broad subject matter ranges from buffalo, with which he has a self-proclaimed spiritual connection, to quail, war chiefs, feathers, horses and barns. His most famous paintings are his portrayals of wild horses tearing across the plains. Among the awards the artist has won are first place in his division from the Santa Fe Indian Market and several best-of-show honors from Red Earth.

For a full schedule of festival events, see http://www.mesaverdecountry.com/tourism/festivals/iacf/iacfschedule.html.

Mesa Verde Country® (www.mesaverdecountry.com)
Mesa Verde Country® is the southwest Colorado travel destination surrounding Mesa Verde National Park. The towns of Cortez, Dolores, Mancos, and Towaoc, and the entire Mesa Verde Country® area, comprise the archaeological center of America.