Rather than whine about the high temperatures, as we’ve spent the past three months doing, Lisa Sette got constructive about it. A new show called “From the Ground Up” has, for much of the summer, been distracting us from the monstrous weather with new works by well-regarded artists, each of…
DJ Pete “SuperMix” Salaz spins on the ones and twos, playing the best in house music for a typically chic crowd every week during Skyline Fridays. The veteran DJ, who celebrates 25 years as a mix master this fall, provides the perfect soundtrack for a relaxing atmosphere, one that will…
Leonard Wood was here. He lived a nice long life, and he was well loved, and he chased away grief and fear by building things that occupied his hands and kept his mind off his troubles. He was an unremarkable man, one about whom none of us would ever have…
I’m Still Here — “that Joaquin Phoenix movie” — capitalizes on an anxiety that’s very of-the-moment, uniting pop cultural phenomena as seemingly disparate as the too-stupid/good-to-be-true Jersey Shore characters, James Franco’s baffling side careers as a professional student and soap opera stud, and pretty much every thing having to do…
Imagine being invited to a different land to photograph the traditions and customs of an unfamiliar people. What would your images say about them? About you? Tiffiney Yazzie, an art history and photography major at ASU, wondered the same. From the Yucca Fruit-Strung-Out-in-a-Line Clan, Yazzie and her family invited several…
This ancient Roman myth is deconstructed and reassembled by contemporary artist Eve Sussman as a story that takes place in the 1960s. Wed., Sept. 15, 7 p.m., 2010…
You could use a massage, couldn’t you? Go today when $15 from every massage will go to the local affiliates of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Go ahead, splurge. Tue., Sept. 14, 8 a.m.-10 p.m., 2010…
Lebanon, written and directed by Samuel Maoz, is not just the year’s most impressive first feature but also the strongest new movie of any kind I’ve seen in 2010. Actually, Lebanon — which won the Golden Lion at Venice, after being rejected by Berlin and Cannes — hardly seems like…
I got into a lot of trouble in seventh grade for describing Phoenix, in a school newspaper article, as “pavement and cactus and Circle Ks.” But I stand by my long-ago description of our town, which — at least regarding its bleak topography — hasn’t changed a whole lot since…
Nowhere is the phrase “out of sight, out of mind” more applicable than the music business. This is why you could probably use a refresher course on Los Angeles fuzz-rockers Autolux. Six years ago — that’s nearly two decades in blog time — Autolux had a lot going for them…
At 13 years old, my family and I moved from Tennessee to Arizona, passing through Oklahoma on the drive. Crossing the border from Arkansas into the Sooner State, we broke into a jovial, off-key sing along. You know that Rodgers and Hammerstein musical? Oklahoma! The musical’s signature song memorably features…
Is it evolutionary, do you think, or devolutionary, to value a type of music that carries with it an implied sense of shittiness – a value given to it for the simple sake of allowing the listener to access his or her own individual feeling of interpretive entitlement of an…
Pretty much everyone has heard of Cesar Chavez, and a lot of us are familiar with Tomas and the Library Lady, a play by Jose Cruz Gonzalez about Chicano author and poet Tomas Rivera. But few among us are familiar with El Teatro Campesino, a theater troupe founded in the…
Thanks to Eat Pray Love, leaving it all to travel somewhere exotic is not exactly rooted in betterment-to-society purposes, especially when considering Jonathan Brandstein’s 2005 adventure. For the Los Angeles-based photographer, it all began that summer when he peeped a documentary about blues musicians in Mali. Recalls Brandstein, who has,…
Imagine being invited to a different land to photograph the traditions and customs of an unfamiliar people. What would your images say about them? About you? Tiffiney Yazzie, an art history and photography major at ASU, wondered the same. From the Yucca Fruit-Strung-Out-in-a-Line Clan, Yazzie and her family invited several…
It’s hard to imagine some of Phoenix metro’s most notable art and hip-hop events going down without some sweet live-art creation. Thank Adam Dumper for that; he’s one our town’s originators of the funky visual happenings. With ambition and street-honed graphic skills, Dumperfoo has been getting busy since the early…
The bank account of Pickster One is probably growing exponentially by the day, what with everything that the obscenely talented turntable artist has piled on his plate lately. Besides his longstanding Blunt Club residency and his Tuesday joint at the new Rocky Point Cantina in Tempe, the 33-year-old spends his…
You have to wonder how these party kids come up with names for their DJ dance nights. Sure, it could be the result of a drunken, coked-out conversation in someone’s back yard at daybreak . . . or it could be a little more thoughtful. In the case of Burning…
Ok, ok, so we’re all kinda sick of the sustainability fad but give Christopher McGean a chance. Sure, he constructs beautifully designed custom furniture with found materials but he got in the habit for one simple reason: it’s cheap.Each work is rich with history and personality as McGean uses materials…
David Michael Sanders is just as comfortable in the chair outside the front door at Rogue Bar as he is behind his drum kit. He’s been at Rogue for two years, he’s been playing music for as long as he can remember and he plans on doing both of those…
When asked what she loves about Flamenco dancing, Angelina Ramirez pauses. The reasoning, she says, is hard pin down. “I like the community aspect of it. When you go to Spain you don’t have to be a professional Flamenco dancer to be able to participate,” she says. “It’s very social.”…
Slideshows get a bad rap. Mention them to most people and the first things that comes to mind are crushingly boring business presentations or a relative’s relentlessly dull “what-we-did-on-our-vacation” click-and-drone talk. But in the right hands, the combination of static images and lengthy discourse can produce pleasing results. And aside…
