The Green Workshop by Bill and Athena Steen

These workshops made possible by a generous contribution from

This year, in our continuing effort to create a "green," environmentally friendly festival environment and to expand the type of participatory cultural activities available at the festival, we will be featuring educational workshops in straw bale and adobe building design by the internationally renowned husband and wife team of Bill and Athena Steen.

Thursday, September 25th and Friday, September 26th
10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Peralta Adobe
175 West Saint John Street
San José, CA 95110

Drop by any time to watch the Steens’ construction techniques in action.

The Steens run The Canelo Project, a non-profit environmental group in southern Arizona, and they have spent many years working both in Mexico and the United States to teach folks about the benefits of building with straw bale and adobe: traditional building techniques that have been in use in Mexico for hundreds of years. With high energy costs and the need to use eco-friendly and sustainable construction design, straw bale has seen a resurgence in recent years. The Steens' workshop, which will be conducted at San José's historic Perlata Adobe during the week of the festival, will provide a learning opportunity for anyone interested in this method of construction, as well as the many ways it may be adapted to create beautiful art objects and furniture. We first heard about Bill and Athena from our new festival advisor, Linda Ronstadt, and once we had a look at their work and the journey of discovery they have walked, we knew we needed to share it with you.

Bill is also a very fine photographer, and has chronicled his many travels in Mexico with his camera. As many of you know, at every Mariachi Festival, we present a special visual arts program in our gallery at the Plaza. You may remember exhibitions shown during previous festivals, such as our photography exhibition entitled One Hundred Years of Mariachi Vargas. This year we are pleased to feature the photography of Bill Steen, which documents and chronicles the people, landscapes, and natural landmarks of Mexico. We invite you to learn more about the Canelo Project at www.caneloproject.com, and hope you will make plans to attend the workshop at the festival.

"Spring Travels in Chihuahua"

In this part 1 of 3, we travel along with Bill and Athena Steen, authors and lecturers on the Mexican environmentally friendly building technique known as "straw bale," as they travel and shoot photographs in Chihuahua, Mexico. Keep an eye out for information at the straw bale workshop they will be holding at this year's Mariachi Festival!

This is the first installment of three small articles that recount our recent trip to Chihuahua. The first article, which you are reading now, gives the context for our story, the second tells the focus of the trip -- Embudo Canyon -- and a third piece covers the Paquime ruins at Casas Grandes, the pottery of Mata Ortiz, and the border. There are incredible cliff dwellings in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, unknown to most, actually unknown to us until just a couple of years ago. It's our way of taking you with us on a journey through the mysterious past of the Chihuahuan landscape. And should you wish to visit these sites yourself, we have tried to provide all the information you need to visit the same sites.

This story goes back a few years when we became friends with Conn Nugent, the director of the J.M. Kaplan Fund, a foundation based in New York City. Conn has become a good friend over the years; he's a New Yorker with a southwestern soul. Conn dragged me off to Chihuahua to photograph one of Kaplan's projects: Reserva Ecologica El Uno, a preserve managed by the Mexican Nature Conservancy for the largest and southernmost population of prairie dogs. A few months later, we were off to southern Chihuahua to document Kaplan-supported restoration efforts of cliff dwellings high in the Sierra Madre mountains. This trip took us back to the same area, this time to photograph a different group of cliff dwellings. Hopefully this growing collection of photographs will find its way into a book; in the meantime they are for the use of the archeologist in charge and to encourage tourism to the area...

Check out more photos from this installment of "Spring Travels in Chihuahua"