Hibert's influences — not to mention other ideas he's got in the works — are too numerous to list here in full, but one of his more ambitious current projects bears mentioning. Raised in Seattle and Phoenix, Hibert now calls the Valley home. He's settled just off Roosevelt Street in the former Kitchenette photography collective. A narrow garage is packed with paintings, Miigiis, and prototypes for more figures, while another space has just enough room for a bed, couch, desk and Hibert's extensive toy collection, awash in hot pinks, blues, yellows, and black.
So you'd think that when it came time to rent gallery space — another dream — Hibert would have landed on Roosevelt Row. He tried that. Turned out, it was actually easier to rent space on the formerly tony, but now nearly empty, Marshall Way in Scottsdale, still home to, among others, Lisa Sette and Bentley galleries. A longtime gallery owner persuaded a landlord to lower rent for some youngsters, in an attempt to increase traffic for everyone.
Jamie Peachey
Tricia Moore
Jamie Peachey
Marcelino Quiñonez
Jamie Peachey
Kara Roschi
Jamie Peachey
Peter Bugg
courtesy of Peter Bugg
A Peter Bugg piece
Jamie Peachey
Miigiis
courtesy of Spencer Hibert
Goo Goo Ghandi, Spencer Hibert's latest figure
Jamie Peachey
Hibert
courtesy of Jen Urso
A Jen Urso piece
Jamie Peachey
Jen Urso
Related Content
More About
That's how Hibert found himself sipping a martini in a loud little bar in Old Town during a recent Thursday art walk. Dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a Modelo T-shirt, armed with a pack of Camels, he seems out of place among the tanned Scottsdale crowd. But he doesn't care, as long as people stop by Soyal Gallery. Hibert runs Soyal with Emmett Potter III, a guy he met at the mold supply company. Hibert's Miigiis are prominently displayed in the window, and several of the pieces in the gallery's first show (super-graphic paintings by Grant Wiggins) actually sold, though the two-month-old gallery's far from becoming a Marshall Way mainstay.
After a cocktail, Hibert admits he's over the Miigii, whose "powers" include the ability to squash humans' bad luck. "It's done too well," he says. "I'm sick of it."
He's onto another character, a cool, bumpy-looking guy named Goo Goo Ghandi, designed to meditate away negative energy. Good luck with that. — Amy Silverman
Jen Urso
www.jenniferursoart.com
Jen Urso never doubted her path in life. Her childhood afternoons were spent sketching portraits of neighbors, and by the time she reached sixth grade, she had dreams of illustrating for Disney. Urso moved past the cartoon stage and graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 1996 with a bachelor's degree in painting and sculpture. Then, she relocated to Arizona, where her family had vacationed years earlier. "I thought [Phoenix] was really beautiful," she says. "I was fascinated with it, and I needed to get out of Pennsylvania because it's cold and damp."
The move was a turning point for Urso's fine-art career. Her work was chosen for exhibits at local venues including The Icehouse, eye lounge, and, most recently, Artlink's A.E. England Gallery in downtown Phoenix. You may remember the installation she created at Modified Arts in 2006, which enveloped the brick building in a spider web-like cocoon that passersby mistook for a playful Halloween decoration.
For Urso's recent exhibit "White Space," she walked the distance between the two Pennsylvania towns where she grew up. It was a courageous move for Urso, who described her childhood home as abusive. The feelings she experienced were chronicled in a series of pen-and-ink drawings done each night and a documentary currently in progress. It's Urso's willingness to take such risky journeys that have made her a fixture in the local arts community.
Urso has watched that arts community blossom in the decade she's been here. Artists are moving away from a singular focus on workmanship to a more conceptually driven aesthetic. Art schools are teaching students to question their motivations and accept failure as a learning experience. If there's one lesson Urso would like to impart on the next generation of artists, it's that they need to take more risks. She has come to appreciate the pieces she wasn't happy with because "they're a step towards something. You have to fail in order to figure out what works."
Currently, Urso is working on a project for the Glendale Centennial that involves historical maps of the city layered on top of each other so that Urso can pinpoint spaces that have remained empty throughout the years. "It's those unimportant spots where you live most of your life, walking from one place to another," she says. The project highlights the theme that flows through all of her work: It's the journey that counts, not the destination.
For a 2008 performance piece at The Icehouse, Urso scratched designs on a 350-pound rock, slowly chiseled it apart, and scattered the pieces around Phoenix. Rumor has it that locals were picking up pieces of rock as souvenirs weeks after the Icehouse performance. For Urso, the chiseling of the rock was more important than the finished piece. "The moments in between big events are really frustrating, and when you're on a path to get to a certain goal it seems tedious," she says. "But it's those little steps that build you up towards the bigger moments in your life." — Wynter Holden
