If the ball game and promise of endless parading, beer, chips, and dip isn’t enough to get you riled up for the annual Fiesta Bowl, be sure to check out the creative energy buzzing about during the Fiesta Bowl Art Walk. On Thursday, December 29, downtown Scottsdale will host a…

Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S), the Tucson-based seed bank, have been busy planning a curriculum and gathering guest speakers for the state’s first Grain School. The six-day program scheduled for January 8 through 13, includes activities surrounding the history, philosophy, and science of local heritage grains and features lectures from ancient grain experts…

Much of Budapest’s traditional architecture was destroyed during a long history of occupation — including houses, libraries, and schools — and was replaced with what the group calls “new ugly buildings made of cheap and bad materials.” This month, they started the Nefelejcs (Hungarian for Forget-Me-Nots) Project, in which large-scale reproductions of the…

Too bad J.K. Rowling couldn’t come up with cuter names for her magical literary characters — or at least names we could pronounce on this side of the pond (say it slowly … “her-my-ah-knee”). In 2011, “Isabella” and “Jacob” (also the names of the two main characters in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight,…

Alan Sailer’s been called a grinch. The California-based photographer recently took a few of his leftover ornaments, his camera, and his high-speed pellet rifle to his garage for an experiment. The result is The War Against Christmas, a series of high-speed photos of his exploding ornaments he says are a “a…

Downtown’s Phoestivus Market You might have expected the 2011 Phoestivus Market to have gone down at Tom’s Restaurant, the world of Seinfeld and all-things-festive-Phoenix collided at Downtown’s Phoenix Public Market on Wednesday night. Living up to its name, the Phoestivus Market featured Feats of Strength, the Airing of Grievances, and The…

One new idea for every day in 2011. We’re talking big, small, local, international, in action, and on the drawing board. Here’s today’s — what’s yours? Brett Novak and Kilian Martin met during a freestyle skate competition and have jumped at the chance to be around each other ever since. The…

One new idea for every day in 2011. We’re talking big, small, local, international, in action, and on the drawing board. Here’s today’s — what’s yours? Just a quick cheers between eggnog drinking, present opening, candle lighting, caroling, greivance airing, festivusing, and (hopefully relaxing). Here’s to a wonderful world, narrated by…

​ One new idea for every day in 2011. We’re talking big, small, local, international, in action, and on the drawing board. Here’s today’s — what’s yours? ​Motherland Design is the blogging bin New York-based designer Chris Streger uses to store inspirational design he finds, well, everywhere. While counting down to the…

To celebrate the 100-year mark of President Theodore Roosevelt traveling west to lend his name to the Roosevelt Dam, the Phoenix Public Library is showcasing more than 25 archived photographs of the dam donated by Arizona historian James McClintock. Roosevelt said the Arizona landmark and keeper of nearly 950 billion…

Oh, to be absorbed in an artist’s narrative. From political paranoia and impossible missions to tales of trash cans and shoe-decorated telephone wires, SMoCA’s “Artists Tell Stories (Mostly About Themselves)” is an exhibition that welcomes the audience into the works and stories of five artists. Through video, installation, and large-scale…

Nothing beats a holiday gift of local art. For one, since it’s locally made you probably won’t have to punch someone at Wal-Mart to get the last one. Second, it’s a hell of a lot more creative than that gift card you snapped up on that last beer run. Now…

No need to fret — depending on the calendar interpretation you believe and your current time zone, you still have approximately 364.5 days left until the end of the world (or “cycle” — whatever floats your arc), according to the Mayan calendar, a second tablet found in the 1960s, and a…