Best Art Festival 2022 | Furry Friends Fine Art Festival | Megalopolitan Life | Phoenix
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Best Art Festival

Furry Friends Fine Art Festival

Even with art festivals, people tend to assume that bigger is always better. But a small festival at this off-the-beaten-path arts center proves that good things still come in small packages. Especially during the age of COVID-19, as some have felt more comfortable avoiding crowds, Shemer Art Center struck just the right note with its family-friendly, pet-themed festival that gave community members a chance to stroll around the center's grounds taking in sunshine amid a casual, creative vibe. Visitors got to meet local artists and talk with them about their work, try pet-themed art projects led by metro Phoenix creatives, enjoy a pet parade complete with costumes and fun takes on pet transports, and explore the center's sculpture garden. While there, visitors got to check out the inside gallery spaces as well, getting a glimpse of the charming house transformed into an intimate arts venue. And the dogs who joined them discovered that beyond the expanding universe of cat videos, there's a big wide world of canvases covered in playful pups.

  • 5005 E. Camelback Rd., Phoenix, 85018 Map

Best Mural

It's Another Beautiful Day in Downtown Phoenix

A giant sun anchors this bright mural that exudes optimism, even as it references the history of the region with its colorful depictions of waterways, corn fields, cactuses, and rock formations. Artists Jake Early and Quinn Murphy collaborated on the mural, which pays tribute to not only the city, but also a downtown Phoenix ambassador who was killed in a bicycling accident. The mural holds special meaning because its title references the late Hans Hughes' enthusiasm for Phoenix. Aesthetically, it stands out for its clean lines and abstracted landscape incorporating bold colors. The fact that it's painted on the side of a historic building adds more layers of meaning. And its location near Symphony Hall affirms the fact that murals are no less important to the cultural ecosystem in metro Phoenix than more traditional art forms. It's a visually stunning nod to history, community, civic engagement, and the essential place of artists in the urban landscape.

Best Outdoor Art

'Chihuly in the Desert'

The best art has a way of changing our perspective, helping us to notice things we haven't really seen before or think in new ways about the world around us. Dale Chihuly's orbs, spires, baskets, and other glass forms exhibited at Taliesin West and the Desert Botanical Garden did just that, drawing attention to both the built and natural environments in metro Phoenix, where the pace of daily life can keep us from seeing the rich complexities of color, pattern, and texture in the urban desert. Chihuly's installations amid desert plants, renowned architecture, and water features were a powerful reminder of the role art plays in creating and sustaining vibrant communities and healthy ecosystems, and provided a window into new ways of seeing the desert environment too often taken for granted. Through these outdoor artworks, people who might never have explored these cultural gems discovered their rich tapestries of design, and those who already frequented these sites experienced a renewed sense of curiosity and wonder.

Best Art at the Airport

The Phoenix

Renting a car at the airport is pretty high on the list of mundane travel experiences, so when a monumental work of art gets installed inside a rental car center, it's a big deal. Paul Coze's triptych spanning 70 feet was first installed at Sky Harbor Airport in 1962, and reinstalled inside the rental car center in 2021 amid airport improvements. Anchored by a giant phoenix rising over the city, the piece speaks to the city's past while also calling to mind its future. But it also symbolizes the city's strong history of showing art at the airport, which gives both residents and visitors a way to experience the rich cultural diversity of the city in an unexpected setting. As Phoenix, like other major metropolitan areas, continues to face challenges, the artwork is a powerful reminder of the myth of the phoenix, a bird that rises from the ashes as a symbol of rebirth and renewal.

Best Art on the Freeway

The Path Most Traveled

Driving along most freeways in metro Phoenix, you won't find much to delight your senses. There's the occasional mile marker, signs telling you where you can eat and drink near various exits, and sometimes a humorous overhead display by ADOT that references pop culture icons such as Star Wars or the musical Hamilton as a way to encourage safe driving. But when you travel along the six-mile strip of the Pima Freeway/Highway 101 in Scottsdale, where the freeway walls sport Carolyn Braaksma's massive desert designs inspired by cactus, flowers, and wildlife, you get a delightful respite from the regular freeway views. On the freeway, and retaining walls in adjacent neighborhoods, you'll find her massive prickly pear cactuses, giant green lizards, and other desert delights that renew your sense of pride in living in the desert, with all its natural beauty.

Best Art Along the Light Rail

Roots

Taking inspiration from Amanda Gorman, the country's first national youth poet laureate, artist Jerome Fleming created the image of an African-American girl that anchors his art installation on a giant curved wall at a busy light rail station in Roosevelt Row. People using the light rail or passing the artwork while driving, bicycling, or walking enjoy a bright reminder of the power of youth, nature, reading, and imagination. The central figure in Fleming's piece stands in a field with yellow flowers, near a lone butterfly hovering by an open book. Gorman's poetry centers on the African diaspora, and the mural also calls to mind the Great Migration of African-Americans out of the rural South during the 20th century. Fleming's beautiful imagery conveys an idyllic setting, but also prompts reflection on themes that are prevalent in Gorman's work, including racism, feminism, and ongoing oppression. It's particularly poignant when considered in the context of calls in some circles to limit youth access to books that celebrate diverse identities, experiences, and communities.

Best Art You Can Walk On

From the Earth to the Sky

For many, the return of air travel meant moving from isolated existence to a mélange of uncertainties, along with visions of swamped airport terminals and planes packed with bodies. For people traversing Sky Harbor Airport, several artworks installed as terrazzo flooring provide a visual break from travel worries or stress. That's particularly true for From the Earth to the Sky, the 6,000-square-foot design that channels the energy and movement in Bill Dambrova's larger body of work, which trains the eye on what he describes as "our biological and metaphysical relationship with plants, animals, the cosmos, and each other." Walking atop his colorful design filled with natural forms, travelers feel a sense of wonder and joy. But the artwork is also a reminder that all those people we sometimes find so maddening in airplane aisles or restroom lines are fellow travelers on a journey through a magnificent desert that's best enjoyed by being curious and kind.

Best Creative Compound

Rockin' S Art Ranch

Creative spaces can be hard to come by, especially if you're an artist looking for a studio where you can be surrounded by other artists, have access to common areas and equipment, welcome visitors for exhibits or events, and still feel like you have your own creative home. The Rockin' S Art Ranch operated by Phoenix-based artist Patricia Sannit has studios of various sizes, along with common areas for working on larger projects, and access to equipment like kilns. Events from studio tours to art markets give local art lovers a chance to meet artists and explore works in several mediums in a casual setting with a great community vibe. Best of all, it's off the beaten path of the downtown arts scene, which helps to reinforce the fact that amazing work is being made all over the city.

Best Permanent Public Art

Industrial Pipewave

Yes, it's still a dry heat. But you can dream of bountiful waves of water when you see this giant wave form made with salvaged industrial pipe. It's not a trip to the beach, but it'll help you imagine being there just long enough to break your laser focus on the sweltering heat. Beyond that, this elegant organic form pays homage to the value of reusing and recycling, which is something we could all do more of in our daily plastic-filled lives. Three small pieces that appear to rise out of the desert are also part of this installation, which calls to mind the early canal system built by the Hohokam. It's technically a temporary artwork because of the site where it's located, but it's permanent in our eyes and we hope it continues to surprise and delight the people who stumble on it for a long, long time.

Best Creative Collaboration

Conder/Dance and Taliesin West

Traditions sometimes taken for granted took on fresh meaning this year, amid the ongoing effects of COVID-19, which shifted the ways people enjoyed creative spaces such as performing arts centers. By teaming up to bring contemporary dance to a landscape filled with natural and built environments, these two creative organizations provided a way for audiences to explore both movement and architecture in an outdoor setting where they felt safe but also experienced the serenity of seeing art created in nature. The collaboration encouraged supporters of one art form to discover another, expanding their visions of how art in metro Phoenix can and should be happening. It also brought the return of dance to Taliesin West, where it's had a significant role in the past. And it gave dancers an opportunity to expand their thinking and feeling about connections between interior and exterior landscapes as they moved through the challenges of creative opportunities lost during the worst of the pandemic, thus creating fresh perspectives for moving forward.

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