Inside The Metro Phoenix Homes and Art Studios We Visited in 2015

With our Personal Space and Studio Visit series, New Times gets an inside look at the homes and studios of some of metro Phoenix creatives, including up-and-coming visual artists, uber-famous musicians, and the design-obsessed. Here's a look back at everyone we visited in 2015. 

Paul and Keri Mosier's Creative Haven in Phoenix's Coronado Neighborhood
At a time in their lives when many families are shopping for their second house, the one with a media room and a guest suite, Paul and Keri Mosier have no plans of moving from their cozy home in the historic Coronado neighborhood. Built in 1928, the 914 square-foot Pueblo revival features a broad front porch, bright, turquoise trim and just the right amount of space for this family of four. See the Mosiers' home.

Lara Plecas' Home Studio
Lara Plecas is an experimenter by nature. The self-taught artist primarily works in encaustic, but she has also produced installations and large-scale collages. What connects all of her work together is a desire to connect past and present, people and place. We visited her studio located in her Phoenix home to discuss her personal history and artistic processes. See Plecas' studio.

Amy and Jim Adkins' Timeless Central Phoenix Ranch House
Between the sage green block exterior, the sandstone half-wall that wraps around the front and the bank of illuminated windows, Jim and Amy Adkins' central Phoenix home radiates warmth. A large red door beacons visitors inside. When the light is just right, it actually glows. See the Adkins' home.

Rachel Bess' Home Studio
The small, detailed oil paintings of Rachel Bess have an intensity to them. It’s in the darkness of the work’s content and in the amount of time the artist spends crafting each piece. For Bess, the process isn’t as intense as it may seem for the viewer. “It’s pretty meditative to be [painting],” Bess says. “At a certain point when you’ve got it all laid out, you have to get from point A to point B.” See Bess' studio.

Nathaniel Lewis' Hot Dog-Filled Studio
Since returning to Phoenix in 2013, Nathaniel Lewis has been kept busy with teaching and creating work that straddles the line between playful and unnerving. Last year, Big Head Day, his installation that captured the strangeness of our desert environment, was on display in Tempe as a part of INFLUX Cycle 4. He was also a participant in ARTELPHX at The Clarendon Hotel, which he will again participate in this weekend. We caught up with him at his home in Phoenix to discuss his work and what’s coming next for him. See Lewis' studio.

Tara Sharpe's “Post-Impressionist Expressionistic Secessionist” Studio
Tara Sharpe is probably best known as the mastermind behind ARTELPHX at The Clarendon Hotel and Spa in Phoenix. The fourth installment just wrapped up a few weeks ago, but Sharpe now has her own work to focus on. She has yet to show her paintings in Phoenix in a formal exhibition, but we sat down with her in her home studio to discuss ARTELSHOW, her influences, and her new body of work. See Sharpe's studio.

Jon Haddock's Free-Wheeling Studio
The last we saw of Jon Haddock’s work was in 2011 in “Us Versus Them,” an installation at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art that playfully positioned the artist as a superhero of sorts. Though lately Haddock has been spending most of his time teaching and thinking about teaching, he doesn’t really make a separation between that and his art practice. We visited him in his studio to discuss the many projects he’s currently working on. See Haddock's studio.

Rossitza Todorova's Tempe Home Studio
Rossitza Todorova recently moved her studio into a temporary space in Tempe. In a way, it’s like a little artist residency. Todorova has dealt with moving her workspace before, so she knows how to get back in the saddle and return to making. In between working for the ASU Art Museum and taking care of stray cats in the neighborhood, Todorova is preparing for a whole slew of upcoming exhibitions. See Todorova's studio.

Peter Bugg
When flipping through a magazine, we most likely don't consider the details from page to page. The work of Tempe artist Peter Bugg carefully focuses on these intricacies present on the page. His cut paper work has always focused on images we consume, such as celebrity tabloids or fashion editorials. He treats these figures present in cover stories and advertisements as revered icons, like characters from famous novels. The magazine becomes more than a consumable item — he acknowledges its status as an artifact of our times. See Bugg's studio.

Samantha Lyn Aasen's Pink Princess Studio
The studio of Samantha Lyn Aasen may resemble the messy room of an adolescent girl, but rest assured there's more going on here than just that. Aasen is about to wrap up her studies at ASU with "Sparkle Baby," her MFA thesis show at Step Gallery in April. The photographs that she is currently producing use cheap craft and beauty supplies along with her own body in order to examine girlhood and womanhood. We sat own with Aasen in her studio and chatted about girlhood and womanhood, the cultural phenomenon known as vajazzling, and aspiration resulting in failure. See Aasen's studio.

Stephen "Scuba" Clark's Almost Completely Customized Phoenix Home
Someone should give Stephen "Scuba" Clark a home improvement show immediately. In the eight years that he's been in his 1955 "cookie cutter" Central Phoenix home, Clark has redone almost every room in the house — some twice. And we're not talking about just moving the furniture around or adding a new coat of paint, though he's definitely done that as well. See Clark's home.

Constance McBride's Reflective Studio
Constance McBride is an artist who's most well-known through the clay world and her membership at Roosevelt Row gallery and collective Eye Lounge, where she currently serves as co-president. Her first solo exhibition, “Timescapes,” took place there last year. Now, McBride is working towards her second solo exhibition with Eye Lounge set for October. We sat down and chatted in her Phoenix home studio and discussed her work. See McBride's studio.


Kyle Daniels
The multidisciplinary work of Kyle Daniels often has a lot to do with sentimentality and the everyday. His work deals with the things we collect, the memories we hold on to, and the significance of interpersonal relationships. Daniels will be entering his last semester in ASU’s bachelor of fine arts intermedia program next month, but this summer he’s been a part of nueBOX’s installation artist residency program. New Times visited his space in Phoenix Center for the Arts to see what he’s been up to during his residency. See Daniels' studio.

Ann Morton Modulated Studio
Ann Morton’s work often combines the delicate yet utilitarian aspects of fiber art with art actions that engage the community at large. Morton uses this community engagement to bring attention to those on the margins. Currently, she is working on a new work called What Happened Today? that will debut at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in Texas in September. New Times chatted with Morton in her home studio about this new project and the relationship between fiber art and social practice. See Morton's studio.

Thomas Locke Hobbs' Photo Studio
Thomas Locke Hobbs has had a busy couple of weeks. He just recently completed his studies in the MFA Photography program at ASU and has been packing up his studio, gearing up for the possibilities of what could be coming next. His thesis exhibition, “I know at a glance,” happened earlier this year, but since then he’s been continuing to make pictures and experimenting with photo books. See Hobbs' studio.

Patricia Sannit
History is essentially the build-up of layer upon layer. Each past layer lends influence to the one atop it. The ceramic work of Patricia Sannit hints at this history, detailing the migration of one culture into another. Though formally trained as an artist, Sannit spent time working as an archaeologist. This fascination with cultures both past and present surfaces in her work. See Sannit's studio.

Dominic Fasano's Midcentury Modern Al Beadle Condo in Arcadia
"Everybody knowns mid-century is a money maker," Dominic Fasano says. He's sitting on his Paul McCobb-designed Widdicomb couch with his girlfriend Alba Serrato and their French bulldog Remi, in the small but well-staged 1965 Al Beadle Boardwalk condominium that they share. See Fasano's home.

Ashley Macias' Shared Studio Space
Since Ashley Macias has been back in Phoenix for the past few years, she’s been a staple of the art scene. As part of the Palabra Collective, Macias has exhibited her work in several exhibitions. Now, she and fellow collective member Josh Brizuela are preparing for an exhibition that will take place next month in Los Angeles with Lost Hills, a salon/gallery hybrid similar to Palabra. New Times visited her studio that she shares with Brizuela and two other artists (Yai and Tyson Crank) to discuss her work. See Macias' studio.

Ben Willis' Experimental Art Studio
Ben Willis has always made the world around him a major part of his work. His MFA thesis work from 2013 was based around painting those he came to know and love during his studies at ASU. Since then, he’s been experimenting and taking a bit of a different approach, opening his practice up to trends in both popular culture and visual art. We sat down with him in his home studio in Tempe to see what he’s been working on. See Willis' studio.

Cecily Culver's Thing-Filled Studio
It's been a pretty big month for Cecily Culver. Not only did her MFA exhibition, "Other Observations" at Step Gallery, debut last week, but she was also awarded The Dedalus Foundation's prestigious MFA Fellowship. With the fellowship, Culver has the opportunity for a stipend and studio space in Brooklyn, New York. Her work in sculpture, sound, and video takes the quiet detritus of the everyday and invigorates it with vitality, requiring us to look and listen a little more closely. See Culver's studio.

John and Liz Tavarez's Gothic Glam Home in Phoenix
If Tim Burton and Betsey Johnson were to build a life together in downtown Phoenix, it likely would look something like John and Liz Tavarez's 1926 Sears Craftsman home. Located in the Fairview neighborhood just east of the Arizona State Fairgrounds, the historic abode is best described as gothic glam — complete with macabre knickknacks, gold accents, and more skulls than you can shake a femur at. See the Tavarez's home.

Erika Lynne Hanson's Failure-Friendly Studio
Erika Lynne Hanson is an artist who's relatively new to Phoenix. In 2013, she relocated from the Midwest and was appointed assistant professor at Arizona State University. Her first exhibition in Phoenix, "Walk quietly, keep looking.," took place in Halt Gallery's shipping container on Roosevelt Row from November 21 through December 7, 2014. Hanson creates installations that explore landscape by incorporating weavings, videos, and webcam screengrabs. See Hanson's studio.

Joseph Shetler's Grant Street Studio Space
Joseph Shetler, a 30-year old artist currently based in Phoenix, comes from a fairly diverse background. He was raised locally in a Mennonite family, worked in construction over his summer breaks from school, and held a position as a guard for a private art collection in Washington, D.C. Most recently, he presented his MFA Thesis Exhibition, "Defining Ethos," which ran in early of December 2014 at ASU's Step Gallery. For this current body of work, all of these defining characteristics, the artist's ethos, coalesce and inform the work itself. He walked us through his exhibition while it was still up and we chatted about the work back in his studio at Grant Street Studios. See Shetler's studio.

Clarita Luli?'s ASU Studio
Originally hailing from the UK, Clarita Luli? is an emerging artist that mainly works with photography. Over her time spent studying at ASU, her practice has come to encompass sculpture, as well. Her current body of work, which will be featured in her MFA thesis exhibition at Gallery 100 next month, fittingly titled "The Good Hurt," deals with the relationship between husband and wife. Using her own relationship as a site of exploration, Luli? uses humor as a means to investigate the often private intricacies of personal relationships, specifically marriage — a contract between two people. See Luli?'s studio.

Misty Guerriero's Internationally Styled Ralph Haver Home in Phoenix
There are few words to describe the first impression of walking into Misty Guerriero's home. It's eclectic, for sure, but it's not the kind of eclectic that results in pursed lips and slow head nodding. The vintage maven's Phoenix home is eclectic in the way that an art museum is eclectic, where you want to walk up to each piece, take it in, and then move on to another. See Guerriero's home.

Bill Dambrova's Grand Avenue Studio
Artist Bill Dambrova left Phoenix for a number of years and couldn't help but return. Since coming back in 2013, his focus greatly shifted from his day job of exhibition design to his art making. His work has been in several local exhibitions throughout the past couple of years, so it's almost like he never left in the first place. "It was really easy to just plug back in," said Dambrova. Now that he's hit the ground running, we sat down in his Phoenix studio to see the beginnings of a new body of work that he's currently working on. See Dambrova's studio.

Kristin Bauer's Wordy Studio
Tempe-based artist Kristin Bauer has been exhibiting her work locally and nationally for over a decade now. After graduating from ASU, she started her career off with solo shows at Modified Arts and was living off of selling her paintings. Her work took a detour in 2010 after working towards a master's degree to enable her to practice as an art therapist. That experience completely changed her creative output. "It's almost like a different person made it," Bauer says of her previous work. See Bauer's studio.

Daniel Funkhouser's Grand Avenue Studio
Arizona local Daniel Funkhouser's work has been a staple in Phoenix's art scene for the past several years. The ASU-trained painter is a former member of Eye Lounge and when he isn't producing his pop assemblages, he works for Scottsdale Public Art. His solo exhibition last fall at Bokeh Gallery was one of our 10 must-sees, so we sat down with him in his studio to talk about his work and what could be coming next. See Funkahouser's studio.


Mimi Jardine's Trash-Meets-Art Studio
Mimi Jardine's studio practice, which incorporates litter and found objects, is not only good for the environment, but it also makes for good art. With her presidency at Eye Lounge and the debut of the Mobile Remittance Unit for her Office of Environmental Responsibility project, she's been a prevalent force in the arts here in Phoenix. It's hard to believe that, prior to moving to Phoenix, she wasn't making and exhibiting work for about 20 years. We sat down in her home studio and chatted about where she started, how she got to where she is now, and what's next for her. See Jardine's studio.

Paul Elliott's Phoenix Studio
If there's anyone in Phoenix that dabbles in just about everything, it's Paul Elliott. He's an artist and writer and he works in the costume shop at Arizona Opera Company. He's also a barista at Jobot Coffee, where he recently showed a new body of work titled "Glob 3: Full of Acid." His work and process are just as diverse as his occupations. Elliott captured our attention in 2014 with his exhibition at Eye Lounge, "Glob 2: This D**k Walks into a Bar," a series of photographs documenting the Phoenix drag scene. This body of work started as a personal goal for Elliott. "I've always wanted to photograph people," said Elliott, "I've never really had the balls to do portrait work." All it really took for Elliott was a group of queens who tuck their junk. See Elliott's studio.

Carolyn Lavender's Curiosity Shop Art Studio
Phoenix artist Carolyn Lavender readily admits she was a bit “odd” growing up, explaining that one of her many collecting phases included hunting and gathering four-leaf clovers. It’s still an apt descriptor, and delightfully so, as New Times learned during a recent studio visit. Approaching Lavender’s Phoenix home, shared with husband Brian Hughes and several formerly feral cats the artist has captured and tamed, visitors spot all sorts of items they’ve collected or been gifted through the years by family, neighbors, or friends. See Lavender's studio.