Suzanne and Bud Selig have donated $2.5 million to Phoenix Art Museum, the museum’s board announced in a March 19 statement. Suzanne, a member of the museum’s board of trustees, and Bud, former Major League Baseball commissioner, reside in Scottsdale. Their donation will be used to fund a chief curator…
The WWE superstar known as Stardust is what you’d call a colorful character, even by professional wrestling standards. Adorned in star-shaped face paint and his special “mevlar” bodysuit and gloves, he’s eccentric, enigmatic, and a bit other-worldly whenever he makes an appearance on such WWE television shows as Raw and…
Breaking Ground 2015 Now in its eighth year — just as captivating and clever as always — the 2015 contemporary dance and film festival Breaking Ground returns to Tempe for an inspired night of performing arts. Winner of last year’s New Times award for Best Dance Festival and produced by…
Consider yourself on notice, Phoenix. Here are 10 things to do in the next three years…
When Jackalope Ranch issued a 10-question survey asking Phoenicians (and anyone with an opinion of Phoenix) to sound of on the state of the arts in the Valley of the Sun, dozens provided insights on what’s happening in the city’s creative realm. We’ll present a selection of survey responses here…
We’ve finally hit the art-meets-weather sweet spot, when temperatures are just right for making the art walk rounds during First and Third Fridays. A whole new crop of shows opens this week, and some cool shows are about to close. So start early, and enjoy this mix of art and…
Carley Conder is a pivotal player in the Phoenix dance scene. Her company, Conder/dance, has raised the bar for local choreography. The dance and film festival that she spearheaded, Breaking Ground, enters its eighth year this weekend, and will feature art from 32 artists, choreographers, and filmmakers. Jackalope Ranch caught…
It’s time for some well-deserved applause, Phoenix. Today we’re announcing the 2015 Big Brain Award finalists. Each spring, these awards put the spotlight on emerging creatives and give them cash to keep up the good work. After sifting through a long list of Big Brain nominees, we’ve narrowed the field…
We’re two films in to the kiddie-dystopia Divergent franchise, and it’s still unclear if the sequel’s director, three screenwriters, eight producers, and especially original novelist Veronica Roth have bothered to double-check a dictionary. Divergent, and now this new sequel Insurgent, tracks the monotone mishaps of Tris (Shailene Woodley), a very…
Clueless rich guy Tom Perkins rightly became the laughingstock of the internet last year after comparing America’s “war on one-percenters” to the Nazi Kristallnacht. However detestably fatuous Perkins is in real life, it must be admitted he’d make a fascinating fictional character, perhaps in a Greek tragedy about a wealthy…
In the action thriller The Gunman, Sean Penn, at age 54, looks neither old nor young. He’s been in training to look this age for a long time. Even as a relative kid, in 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, his sailor-on-shore-leave mug had a wry, quizzical roughness to it;…
The Native American arts collective Postcommodity is currently engaging both the senses and the cerebrum with its two spring installations, Promoting a More Just, Verdant and Harmonious Resolution (2011) and Pollination (2015). Now to coincide with the current exhibition, the transdisciplinary collective’s artists Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, Kade L. Twist,…
Get Hard, Etan Cohen’s comedy about a white stockbroker who hires a black man to prepare him for a 10-year stretch in San Quentin, is like a spoon that’s almost-but-not-yet sharpened into a shiv. With just a little more effort, it could kill. Judging by the poster, in which star…
The Amazing Randi insists that the public wants to be fooled, that it’s easier and more comforting for us not to see unromantic truths — you can see him proclaiming this, a little sadly, in Justin Weinstein and Tyler Measom’s doc An Honest Liar, which plays like a companion piece…
If you’ve ever played music or even just attempted to coax a pleasing sound from a keyboard or a guitar string, you may have some sense of the dissonant signals that the desire to make music can set off: Are you playing toward some idea of perfection, perhaps in the…
Sure, Hulk and Thor can thwart evil with the best of them, but when it comes to getting laughs, we’ll put our money on Comedy Avengers. The side-splitting evening of entertainment will feature over 20 up-and-coming comics including Steve Marek, John Higbee, Angela Merkin Haines, Steve Maxwell, Zed Phillips, Ali…
We’ve all been thanking god for the beautiful weather this month – why not formally pay homage to mother nature this weekend at the Japanese Friendship Garden of Phoenix, 1125 North Third Avenue, during Haru in the Garden, a festival to welcome spring? The event includes all kinds performances, art…
It’s not a surprise that Valley burlesque dancer Pyrrha Sutra knows how to move gracefully. Off-stage, she’s made the smooth transition from Scandalesque, the dance troupe she co-founded, to helming her own endeavors solo. Dark Cabaret, debuting Friday, March 20, is Sutra’s latest vision incarnate.Pyrrha Sutra might be the ringmaster…
Douglas Miles, who lives and works on the San Carlos Apache-Akimel O’odham Reservation hours outside Phoenix, is known for his updated approach to Native American art and culture. Balancing fine art and street art, he is able to toe fine line, creating representations of both community and popular culture.Miles —…
Just the name “Deft Collective” is enough to pique our interest and have us looking into this show at Retrofit Creations. Twenty-three artists will be showing, including Christopher Conte with his steampunk-y arachnoid sculptures, brothers Chet (a.k.a. “Painter of Dark”) and Rick Zar, who works mostly with light and glass,…
The 31st edition of WrestleMania is next weekend and, in recent years, the annual event has managed to grow to the grandeur to which it always aspired. The trick for the WWE to pull off isn’t having the premier bash in sports entertainment go off without a hitch as much…
Creatives, get ready to rev your right lobes. Spark! Mesa’s Festival of Creativity is offering four days of all things colorful and artsy — from fire juggling and fireworks to interactive displays and live art performances. Featured installations have been created to embody the four elements, fire earth, wind, and…
