Best Stop on Art Detour 2014 | "Apache X: 10 Years of Douglas Miles and Apache Skateboards" at MonOrchid | People & Places | Phoenix
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Best Stop on Art Detour

"Apache X: 10 Years of Douglas Miles and Apache Skateboards" at MonOrchid

To interestingly and engagingly fill the sprawling space of Roosevelt Row's MonOrchid is an impressive feat. The sizable gallery played host to our favorite exhibition during the 26th edition of Art Detour, an annual self-guided tour of galleries and artists' studios in Phoenix. Curated by Nicole Royse, "Apache X" was a retrospective of Douglas Miles' career in the arts and as founder of Apache Skateboards. The show presented aggressive, intense pieces that asserted Native American culture through a variety of media. Standouts included Beautiful Struggle, a mural of a man and woman staring at passersby, and paintings on luggage and oil cans. The striking visuals made for an unforgettable show.

Best Temporary Public Art

Sarah Hurwitz's Participation Prize

There's no other way to say it: Sarah Hurwitz's Participation Prize made us smile. (Full disclosure: Hurwitz is a New Times contributor.) As part of the Valley-wide temporary public art initiative IN FLUX's fourth cycle, the piece was installed on Roosevelt and Fourth streets. The interactive sculpture is a purple awards platform for celebrating the little everyday things people accomplish — like taking out the trash, sorting out junk mail, or calling Grandma. A banner across the top of the piece reads "Today I . . ." above a chalkboard space where anyone can write in whatever activity they completed that deserves recognition. It's a playful chiding of participating ribbons that also celebrates the small wins. And it's so completely Sarah Hurwitz.

Best Permanent Public Art

James Turrell's Knight Rise

Light is acclaimed artist James Turrell's medium of choice. And it shines just right through his Scottsdale skyspace Knight Rise. Completed in 2001, the work is, to put it simply, a circular room with a bench lining the walls and a circular cutout in the ceiling, above a curved wall. Though that description hardly does the piece justice. The way light pours and changes color within the space is something that truly requires an in-person visit to comprehend. Open to the public and free of charge, Knight Rise is located in the Nancy and Art Schwalm Sculpture Garden at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Go see for yourself.

Best Graffiti Artist

El Peezo

Now you see them, now you don't. The wheat paste works of graffiti artist and 2014 Big Brain finalist El Peezo are like the Houdinis of 'hood art. Adorning the walls of abandoned buildings and occupied structures, down secluded side streets and major public access roads, these colorful yet easily corroded composites of starch and water add a much appreciated vitality to downtown living. Whether it's Nightmare Before Christmas' Jack Skellington hanging out on the side of the Phoenix Public Market Cafe, the now removed Charlie Chaplin posing outside of Bentley Projects, or the creatures of Where the Wild Things Are creeping behind the scenes of the Palabra Collective (those are gone now, too), Phoenix locals love to pause and pay tribute to the anonymous artists' work with the always welcome Instagram post. Seriously, take a picture. It will last longer.

Best Poet

Alberto Álvaro Ríos

Arizona is rich in the traditions of poetry. Local poets who keep the art of verse alive include Alison Hawthorne Deming, Norman Dubie, and N. Scott Momaday, but none are so celebrated as Alberto Álvaro Ríos, our own State Poet Laureate. The author of ten books of poetry, three collections of short stories, and a memoir, Ríos writes beautifully of life and death and "this hour of ourselves," as he famously wrote in "Who Has Need, I Stand With You" in 2010. His books of poems include The Theater of Night, winner of the 2007 PEN/Beyond Margins Award, The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body, finalist for the National Book Award, and Whispering to Fool the Wind, which won the Walt Whitman Award for poetry. His memoir, Capirotada, may be written in prose, but its stories of growing up on the Mexico-Arizona border sang with poetry and passion. Alberto Ríos does us proud.

Best Mural

JBAK's Generations

Angels Trumpet Ale House

It's hard to miss JBAK's six-story mural on Thomas and Central. Though Berlin-based artists Karl Addison and James Bullough, who together make up JBAK, are accustomed to doing large-scale work, Generations marked the first mural of this magnitude in Phoenix. But the piece isn't earning accolades for size alone. Generations is a beautifully vibrant portrait of Chris Nieto, a major developer in the downtown area, and Addison's own grandmother. The mural is a nice blend of Bullough's photorealism and Addison's hatching techniques, which you might recognize from another piece he completed on the back of Giant Coffee. Though he's now an internationally recognized street artist, Addison did grow up in Phoenix. Lucky for us, he still makes time to share his talents with his desert home.

Best Designer

Monique Sandoval

Chances are, right now in the back room of her Pinterest-perfect boutique, Cleo & Clementine, Monique Sandoval is creating something beautiful. The fashion designer, whose label is called Ouma, has garnered quite the reputation as a go-to wedding dressmaker for the Etsy set, with airy bridal gowns and delicate party dresses any gal would be happy to get gussied up in. Sandoval makes said frocks by hand in her Melrose District shop, where her designs line the racks. In addition to purchasing pieces off the rack, Sandoval also makes custom dresses for shoppers on the hunt for one-of-a-kind garments that fit as nicely as they look.

Best Left-Wing Blog

Steve Muratore's Arizona Eagletarian

Arizona Democrat Steve Muratore doesn't suffer fools gladly, whether he's wondering whether Attorney General Tom Horne is a "psychopath," accusing a spokeswoman for schools Superintendent John Huppenthal of polishing a piece of merde, or calling out the Capitol Times for kissing up to pro-plutocrat legislators. What makes him different from some online blowhard on a blog like, say, the Daily Kos is that he does a lot of his own reporting and research and offers unique analysis, not just fighting words. He's also fiercely local, focusing on issues such as redistricting that in these days of strained newspaper budgets, do not receive the attention they deserve. Cantankerous and principled, Muratore is a fighter whose motto "The KEYBOARD is mightier than the sword" is especially true when he's typing his latest entry.

Best Right-Wing Blog

Seeing Red AZ

Seeing Red AZ is the blog to go to if you want to explore the bizarro-world mind of the average Republican activist in Maricopa County. Granted, it's a journey into darkness, but one where you will make some astonishing discoveries. For instance, so-called "Common Core" is not a matter of higher standards for school kids, but rather a commie plot to force all Arizona students to read Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. Attorney General Tom Horne? He's the best politician ever, and if he wants to hire his mistress with taxpayer money, that's his business. Senator John McCain is the spawn of Satan. (Okay, we'll give them that one.) And Sheriff Joe Arpaio should be worshiped like Jesus Christ come to dinner.

Don't bother arguing with the commenters, because opposing views are not welcome and will be deleted. But the blog's opinions are true to the kind of folk you'll find over-populating any mandatory meeting of the Maricopa County GOP. And visiting Seeing Red's website is much less scary than attending one of those conservative confabs. Hence, the site's value for reporters and researchers.

Best Lifestyle Blog

Field & Fellow

Ashley Eaton, she of mobile vintage boutique Merry May Handmade, got married. Now she goes by Ashley Eaton Denton. And in chronicling her wedding to Trevor Denton, he of local band Sun Ghost, the duo created our new favorite locally run lifestyle blog. Field & Fellow follows the newlyweds as they decorate their home, take a stab at gardening, look through their wedding pictures, try out new recipes, and practice yoga — among other things. With beautiful photos, great stories, and a compelling couple at the helm, the blog's worth a check-in every once in a while.

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