Cedar Mesa Pottery

Builders feature latest in Parade of Homes

Many people have seen a parade or two in the last month in the Pikes Peak area but now it is time for homebuilders to showcase what they have been up to.

The 2011 Parade of Homes will get underway Aug. 5 and will feature 33 homes by 25 different builders throughout El Paso County. This year’s parade highlights interior design, the latest in technology and sustainable living.

“We are in our 57th year,” said Trish Robbins, director of development for the Housing and Building Association of Colorado Springs.

The 2011 Parade of Homes promises to offer unique designs and landscaping and for the second year will even showcase two homes for low-income families — one home for Habitat for Humanity and the other for Rocky Mountain Community Land Trust.

Robbins said the rest of the homes range in price from $200,000 to $2 million. Three of the homes featured this year are in Flying Horse and one has the distinction of being the first and only Pottery Barn home. The home is furnished and decorated with items exclusively from the Pottery Barn store.

“The best home for energy savings is the G.J. Gardner Northgate (home),” Robbins said. The home is located in Gold Hill Mesa on the Westside and is the first in the history of the Parade of Homes that is LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified.

Other homes on display include: brownstone style homes in the Broadmoor View at Spring Creek; a home that includes 2,600 square feet of outdoor living space with fire and water features in Cedar Heights; homes that offer low maintenance in Cumbre Vista; a home in Star Ranch that uses an iPhone or iPad to control multimedia, lights and the security system; and a home at the Preserve at Greenland that is located at an elevation of 7,352 feet surrounded by open space and trails.

“Some people come to get ideas or they are looking at new trends,” Robbins said. “And some come to buy.”

This year the HBA is partnering with Care and Share and Champion of Colorado Springs to support “Close the Window on Hunger.”

There will be collection barrels for people to donate nonpersishable food items at the homes and part of the proceeds brought in from the parade will go to HBA Cares — the charitable foundation of HBA that connects community needs to the resources the housing and building industry provide.

The Parade of Homes will take place 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Aug. 5 to Aug. 21. Tickets are $10 for adults 18 and over and $5 for seniors 65 and over and can be purchased at all Safeway stores.

Native American Art: Success Blooms in the Southwestern Desert

(PRWEB) January 31, 2006

Twenty-five years ago, while Joe Lyman was in Europe, his father recognized that a Native American pottery factory run by members of the Ute tribe among whom he lived could be transformed into a profitable business with proper management. Until then, the shop had been fraught with difficulties, turning out Native American art, but losing money every year to the point of insolvency and desperation.

Battered down by these conditions to a level of hopelessness, existing management surprisingly turned a deaf ear to his words of hope and promise. They wouldn’t believe that the kind of success he spoke about was possible, nor would they sell him the company or have him attempt to manage and revive it. Although he offered to buy the kiln, they would not let him use their name or sell him their tools. So he gathered his life savings of $ 7000, bought his own kiln and, in 1981, Cedar Mesa Pottery was born.

Twenty-five years later, Cedar Mesa is like a flower blooming in the arid desert of Utah. Specializing in gorgeous, one-of-a-kind, carefully hand crafted Native American pottery which embodies the rich Native American cultural heritage and combines artists’ natural talents and creative genius with such traditional Native American pottery designs as the Wedding Vase, the Wind Bell, the Bear Fetish and Kokopelli, the humpbacked flute player, Cedar Mesa has unique appeal.

In the 80’s, a nationwide fascination with southwestern art saw the birth and growth of many southwestern art and pottery companies, but cheap imported imitations flooded the market and eventually put most of them out of business. Never straying from his father’s ideals or philosophy of management, Joe Lyman helped Cedar Mesa stay afloat through those tough times.

The company supported its artists with training and emphasized the expression of each of their unique individual qualities. Supporting them required running the company with a very conservative fiscal approach to weather any bad storms.

“We never paid ourselves a lot,” says Lyman. “Our purpose has always been to help Native American artists to get ahead, by providing them with meaningful employment. So we positioned ourselves to survive when times weren’t good.

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A Hiking Guide to Cedar Mesa, Southeast Utah

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Investigations of the Southwestern Anthropological Research Group, an experiment in archaeological cooperation : the proceedings of the 1976 conference

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