Common Ground on the Border Faculty

Common Ground on the Border

Thursday - Saturday, January 17-19, 2019

2019 Faculty

Chris Amoroso, MD has integrated 21 years of clinical medicine with 17 years’ experience in cultural and health transformation in industry. The past 15 years have been spent gaining experience and insight into palliative and completion of life care, while attending to family members and friends, and sharing the learnings in community workshops.

Jennifer Clarke is a printmaker living in Green Valley. She was born and raised in England where she had an art education at Goldsmiths College, London, in the 60s. On leaving art school, she moved to Denmark and worked as a conservator of decorative arts. She returned to printmaking later in life and for the past seven years made mezzotints, an old copper engraving technique. She has been visiting Green Valley since 1989 and every year for the past 10 years. Here, in 2016, she has finally been able to follow her heart as well as her love of the desert —and has emigrated to Green Valley and the Sonoran Desert.

Ten years ago Pedro Cornejo left his home in Honduras and crossed the border here in the Santa Cruz Valley. Some of our Green Valley/Samaritans found him along I-19 and gave him food and water before the Border Patrol took him into custody. Pedro will tell the story of his journey and how he eventually returned, made his way to Wisconsin where he graduated from high school, got married, and now has his legal papers. His connection to the Green Valley/Sahuarita Samaritans were a light to his journey.

Sheriff Tony Estrada has spent his entire 74 years near the border, the last 50 as a law enforcement officer. He was first sworn into office as sheriff of Santa Cruz County on January 1, 1993, and has grown the organization into one of the finest law enforcement agencies in Southern Arizona. He is a frequent voice on national and international media because he is a different kind of Arizona sheriff, one whose sensibility and opinions on immigration were shaped by being born in Mexico and immigrating with his family to the United States as a toddler. He is able to speak graciously and professionally about the border communities that he loves as he offers common sense approaches to immigration and border issues.

Betsy Finley loves outdoor adventures that include kayaking on the Great Lakes, wilderness camping in North Carolina, and hiking in the woods. Photography became a natural part of documenting her adventures.However, the photos didn’t initially capture the essence or the beauty of the place. She has worked to fine tune her photographic abilities over the last several years by becoming a member of the Cuyahoga Valley Photographic Society. She has won awards and has had three of her photos selected for their annual calendar.

Gail Frank is the founder of Creative Journeys, an institute for those who write or want to. She has taught writing workshops in Oregon, Arizona, Michigan, and Iowa for the past fifteen years. A newspaper columnist for twelve years, Frank, who now lives 40 miles from the U.S./Mexico border, writes stories and collages the tales of human suffering in the borderlands.

Christie Furber is a fiber addict who splits her time between yarn stashes in Arizona and Minnesota. She has taught knitting classes around the country and loves the creativity of fiber people she meets. She was guest designer for IKnitiative Patterns, has taught at StevenBe’s shop in Minneapolis, and has been published by Vogue Knitting. She has designed for Mango Moon Yarn Company, leading workshops for them in Michigan. She is a new weaver in the Japanese Saori style which melds well with the free, no-rules fiber art she loves.

Francie Ginocchio lives in Green Valley with her husband Fred, and has been exploring and teaching tack iron collage for several years. Over the last 40 years she also has designed art quilts for hospitals, insurance companies, banks, public buildings, individuals in the United States, Japan, Ireland, and Costa Rica. In her spare time Francie enjoys practicing and playing ukulele and banjolele.

Tish Hinojosa is a singer-songwriter from Austin, Texas. Hinojosa’s blend of folk, country, Latino, and pop has an undeniable far reaching appeal, garnering her accolades such as a White House concert at the invitation of President and Mrs. Clinton and teaming up with artists such as Joan Baez, Booker T. Jones, Flaco Jimenez, Pete Seeger, and Dwight Yoakam. She has recorded as an independent artist as well as for A&M, Warner Bros, and Rounder Records and has been a featured artist on Austin City Limits, A Prairie Home Companion and other NPR programs. With seventeen CDs to her name, Tish’s distinct sound has gained her much critical acclaim. Tish has toured extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe and continues to draw a loyal and growing audience.

Matthew Marsolek has been at the forefront of the North American hand drumming movement since the 1990s. He’s been a facilitator, sharing music and rhythm with corporate teams, at-risk youth, bereaved children, cancer survivors, and students of all ages. Matthew has studied and performed West African and East Indian music for over two decades and is also an accomplished guitarist, vocalist, and composer. Along with two solo projects, he’s released recordings with Drum Brothers and Mandir and has produced original music for film.

Rebecca McElfresh, Ph.D, has extensive experience in the field of education, particularly related to arts-infused curricular experiences for both students and faculty. She is especially interested in the intersection among artmaking experiences and personal and social transformation. She has served as teacher, building principal and human resources director in public K-12 schools and has taught in both public and private colleges and universities. As an artist, she enjoys working with molten glass and metals.

Jesse Palidofsky, M.Div. is an award-winning performing songwriter on Azalea City Recordings. For the last 25 years he has utilized music for healing in a number of different settings, working with cancer patients at Children's National Medical Center, and seniors with dementia and Parkinson's in his work with Arts For The Aging. He has led workshops on music and healing for numerous organizations.

Ted Ramirez creates music that is a celebration of the Southwest. His repertoire is pure and authentic, consisting of original songs, and Mexican and American folk songs and stories. Ted has received numerous culture preservation awards, including the “Arizona Culture Keeper” award and the Historical Commission Award. He is “Tucson’s Official Troubadour” as declared by the Tucson Mayor and Council in 2001 and is the Artist-In-Residence at the Tubac Presidio Park in Tubac, Arizona.

Jesús Garcia Redondo, from Saric, Sonora, Mexico, has studied basket weaving with Manuel Valdez and Don Epigmenio, the great basket maker of Magdalena de Kino, Sonora. Jesús is the Director of Fé in Magdalena de Kino, working on creating community and youth empowerment through the arts, and supporting education of young people. He is also a self-taught painter and fresco muralist.

Peter Dalton Ronstadt (Petie) is a fifth generation Ronstadt in Tucson. Son of late Michael J Ronstadt, nephew of Linda Ronstadt, and great-grandson of Federico José María Ronstadt. He sings, and plays the bass, guitar, banjo, and tuba. He is one of the Ronstadts in Ronstadt Brothers (formerly Ronstadt Generations) with his older brother Michael G. Ronstadt.

John Sheehy has been writing and teaching for twenty-five years. Born and raised in Montana, Sheehy received his undergraduate degree from Montana State University and his doctorate in literature from the University of Washington. His critical and creative nonfiction has appeared in a variety of publications, including Fourth Genre, Eclectica, The Good Man Project, The African American Review, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He lives and works in southern Vermont, where he teaches writing and literature at Marlboro College.

Carol Egmont St. John is a veteran of the classroom.She has taught for over thirty years in classrooms and workshops, and in a variety of contexts. Her life’s work has had many faces: writer, columnist, artist and illustrator, children’s theater director, playwright, and mother of five; but above all she describes herself as a teacher. This is her fourth year at Common Ground; her former classes included writing, painting, and sculpture. This year she is going to focus on communication and the many ways we communicate both consciously and unconsciously with results that are often profound.

Diane Van Deurzen and Lisa Otey are award-winning musicians and songwriters who perform around the world at festivals, clubs and concert halls. The songs they have written together combine their mutual love for jazz and blues, as well as humor and their gifts for storytelling. They will bring their passion for teaching and music into this workshop, where participants will discover their own ability to turn their stories into songs. Many enjoyed their “Women and the Blues” workshop at Common Ground on the Border 2016.

Anna Maria Vasquez is an eco-artist, anthropologist and musician. She grew up in Columbia and Florida and has a love of travel and learning about the world. She spent time in Peru and it was there that she learned how to play the pan pipes. She lives part of the year in Magdalena working with children at an orphanage, and the other part of the year she travels, sharing her gifts and working for peace and justice. Anna Maria is the co-founder of Bridges Across Borders and she is involved in many other great causes.

Shura Wallin has served with Planned Parenthood and the Population Council in New York, and coordinated food programs for the homeless in Berkeley, CA where, in 1996 she was selected as The Outstanding Woman of the Year by the Berkeley Commission on the Status of Women. After retiring in 2000, she became involved with Humane Borders, a humanitarian group that puts water tanks in areas with significant migrant traffic. She began to realize the enormity of the problem of migration and teamed up with Tucson Samaritans, eventually cofounding the Green Valley/Sahuarita Samaritans.

Elise Whitaker (they/them) is a scholar, an organizer, and an activist. After cutting their teeth in Los Angeles’ Occupy Wall Street actions, Elise went on to co-found an organization called 99Rise aiming to end the corrupting influence of money on the American democracy. Having spent a number of years training in many narrative based, decentralized organizing structures and focusing in particular on issues around money in politics, the movement for black lives, and immigrant rights, Elise is now a full time student and researcher on public policy issues around environmental and racial justice.

Ray A. Ybarra Maldonado, recently named Top Latino Lawyer by Latino Leaders Magazine, has a long history of aggressively representing the Hispanic community. He created and coordinated the Legal Observer Project during the Minutemen’s operations, has been a Federal and County Public Defender and started his own law firm in Phoenix that is known for vigorously defending the community. Abogado Ray was one of the key community leaders that pursued justice against Sheriff Joe Arpaio and became counsel on the federal civil rights lawsuit that eventually led to the downfall of Arpaio’s notorious raids.