Ashamedly, one of my favorite parts about visiting a museum is hitting the gift shop. I’m a filthy consumer and I satiate my purchase thirst with postcards and cheap knockoffs of the invaluable art on display. If you happen to stop by just about any local art museum gift shop…
Walk outside and take a deep breath. That’s the smell of our city, set to broil. After months of breathing the aromas of melting blacktop and hot garbage, it’s only fitting that five15 gallery’s “What Smells So Bad?” will be up for the most miserable summer month. The olfactory-inspired group…
A 21st birthday usually means bar-hopping, endless rounds of shots, and plenty of post-partying puke. Thankfully, Lisa Sette decided to skip the debauchery and celebrate her 21st year in business with “7+7+7=21 Summer Group Show,” in which an excellent medley of artwork is displayed by 21 of her gallery’s represented…
I’ve always been a sucker for the graphic print. Today, printmaking is considered a valid process used by high-end visual artists. But the medium hasn’t always been held in such regard. Because they could be produced quickly and in mass volume, prints were often considered throwaway street art. But if…
With all this talk of going green and cleaning up our carbon footprints, it’s no secret the world is knee-deep in trash. Changing old wasteful habits can prove difficult, particularly in a world of heavy industry. But leave it to an artist to find a way to appropriate scrap metal…
Fausto Fernandez at The Latin American Art Gallery: We all need a little instruction — something to give us direction and guidance. Without it, wed be flailing aimlessly in this life, accidentally screwing each other over in a nonsensical world of no consequence. Fausto Fernandez taps into the need for…
Ever since we could use our eyeballs, humans haven’t been able to shake a major staring problem with the night sky. The ancient Babylonians were so obsessed that they created the first-known practice of astrology — which we now use as fodder for cheap come-on lines in bars. In the…
Art exhibitions can be frustrating, confusing, and challenging. It’s always a struggle to decide whether the art in an exhibition is total crap or you’re just too dumb to get it. So every once in a while, it’s time to take a break, shelve the ego, and just enjoy something…
“Homegrown AZ Artist Show” at Windup Gallery: Graffiti — it’s not just for cinderblock anymore. The bold and energetic aesthetic has recently popped up in galleries (like five15, or Wet Paint when it was showing artists) and coffee shops. With reasonable prices, the work is gaining popularity among the young,…
No argument that our collective body-consciousness has, indeed, reached a vulgar place. You can’t channel-surf these days without hitting Dr. 90210 or a countdown of the 100 hottest Hollywood bodies — shows that surely will make you panic at the sight of your own nakedness. But our obsession with bodies…
Several years ago, I moved to Chicago. Most of the friends I made had never traveled west of Omaha, so they liked to tease me for being a cowpoke from Arizona. One so-called pal wondered if I missed my pet tumbleweed. Another asked if I grew up next to the…
Give a kid couch cushions and a blanket and you’ll inevitably see some masterful fort-building. What child can resist? Creating new spaces that offer protection, mystery and ample opportunity to flex the imagination is — and always was, for my part — too much fun to pass up. So, the…
Growing up in South Dakota, Brian Boner remembers being surrounded by hummingbirds. “They were everywhere,” he says, “and if you stood very still, they’d come right up to you and buzz around your face like you were a giant sunflower.” It’s a memory that the 32-year-old painter has memorialized in…
Little, pink weasel-cats making sweet love atop bulbous greenery. Such is the kinky world I entered at “Renegade Clay: 5 Views from the West,” at ASU Art Museum’s Ceramics Research Center. The title’s a little overdramatic and silly (Renegade? Can clay really be that badass?), but I was pleased to…
The best part of any art history class is learning whom an artist was sleeping with when she painted her masterpiece. It’s natural — the thirst to hear the dirt behind the work. And the backstory often fuels the interpretation. In the case of the photography show “Lalla Essaydi: Les…
The other day, I found myself swooping a glowing green ball in front of me as I stepped forward, kneeled to the floor, and then scooted to the side. I was in the middle of the Americas Gallery at ASU Art Museum, and I looked like a conceptual interpretive dancer…
Maybe I’m a judgmental jerk, but when I think “car show,” I picture a trashy model in a hot pink thong bikini, draped over a gleaming hood and circled by ogling men who don’t stand a chance in hell of taking either commodity home. That’s what I used to think,…
“Life in a Cold Place: Arctic Art from the Albrecht Collection” at the Heard Museum: The humble aesthetic of Grandma Moses — the self-taught early-20th-century folk artist — is beloved because it serves as a simple reminder of quaint, rural life in America, rich with homely traditions and collective practices…
No matter how hard we attempt to extend life, impermanence just isn’t in the cards. The jury’s out on cryogenics, and all the vitamins in the world won’t stop you from eventually becoming worm food (personally, I’ll skip that and get cremated instead). But most of us will live on…
It’s no secret that photography is the art form most practiced by the masses. And because any Joe Blow with a pulse can push a shutter-release button on a camera, we’ve been subjected, ad nauseam, to the dreaded snapshot. I automatically think “bad amateur” when I see a clumsily composed…
“Rembrandt and the Golden Age of Dutch Art” at the Phoenix Art Museum: Sometimes, its the fame and hype surrounding a piece of art that excites us more than does the piece itself. So even if youve never been nuts about 17th-century dusky interiors or girl doing meaningless task paintings,…
After famous artists die, their work inherits and perpetuates their celebrity status. The Mona Lisa may not be your favorite, but if you happen to be cruising through the Louvre, there’s no way you can’t make a pit stop. She’s just too famous to pass up. Sometimes, it’s the fame…
