As a native SoCal girl with roots still sunk deep into Southern California and its crazed cultural scene, I was really looking forward to seeing “southwestNET: PHX/LA” at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Touted as a fresh look at urban life in Phoenix and Los Angeles, it was to feature…
Angel Cabrales lives and works in alternate realities. While driving through Cabrales’ neighborhood in east Mesa, you find that the cliché of suburban mass production — identical two-story floor plans inhabited by 2.something kids, canines and/or cats — ends at Cabrales’ property. Save for the unkempt lawn that hasn’t been…
Pantyhose with cotton crotches, old cut-up tablecloths, Hopalong Cassidy, Cesar Romero. Yup, Mesa Contemporary Arts certainly has selected a strange mixture of materials and subject matter for its “Two-Person National” exhibition, purportedly its very last before MCA bids adieu to its old location in Mesa Arts Center’s venerable Leave It…
“Landscapes in the Fireplace: The Paintings of Pedro Alvarez”: This exhibition is a bittersweet experience for those familiar with this well-loved young Cuban artist and his irony-laced work. A collection of Alvarez’s most recent paintings, ASU’s exhibition unwittingly stands as a final tribute to the irreverent spirit that infuses his…
At first glance, Ellen Wagener’s works look like photographs. Crisp lines of crops splay out in agricultural landscapes set below dreamy skies, looking like snapshots out the window of a car as you pass through the endless Midwestern prairies. But these are pastel drawings. Pastel — the grown-up version of…
Just a quick scan of the home-based studio of installation artist Heidi Hesse confirms that this native German has a serious thing for the Statue of Liberty, among other classic American icons. The 42-year-old artist, who grew up in the rural outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa, and a small…
Trust me when I say that “Landscape in the Fireplace: Paintings by Pedro Alvarez,” an exhibition of 40 large mixed media paintings by the Cuban artist currently on display at Arizona State University Art Museum, may be your very last opportunity to see so much of Alvarez’s work — particularly…
The downtown Phoenix gallery scene is often lauded as a place where you can discover fresh, young artists. But if you want them even younger and fresher, head to Tempe. In contrast to the established work shown at the university’s museum, Arizona State’s art department runs on-campus galleries that exhibit…
The ads running in Phoenix’s local media couldn’t be more straightforward, and seemingly guileless. Beneath a photo of one of the art world’s most popular icons, Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen, is the title of the exhibition now on display until May 30 at the Phoenix Art Museum, “Degas in Bronze.”…
Used to be Art Detour was a depressing event — a benchmark of just how far the downtown Phoenix arts scene hadn’t come. The three-day tour of Phoenix art venues was held at the end of March, always landing, it seemed, on the first uncomfortably warm day of the year…
The artistic offerings vary from metal giraffes to New York-sophisticated paintings. Before First Friday, there was First Thursday. For many years, snowbirds and equally gentle folk have flocked to Scottsdale on cool Thursday evenings, to sip wine and stroll through the galleries that line the city’s downtown streets. The artistic…
Better double-time it to Shemer Art Center on Camelback if you want to see “Land: Unconventional Approaches to Landscape” — billed as an exhibition that’s “pushing the boundaries” of the Phoenix municipal gallery — since it’s only going to be up for a mere two weeks. Considering the safe, watered-down…
Photographs of murdered men and women in grocery store parking lots. A picture of an enormous man made of cell phones and DVDs. And a guy in a karaoke bar. Not images you’d expect to see at the Heard Museum. But the Heard, like the Native cultures it showcases, is…
Putting a face to the name is the name of the game in “Bill Jay: Photographers Photographed.” The exhibition, now on display at Segura Art in downtown Mesa, pairs black-and-white images of internationally renowned artist-photographers taken by Jay over a 35-year period with a characteristic photographic image made by each…
Though white-bread Scottsdale may seem like an improbable venue for an exhibition about African-American hair and its vast implications, it’s actually the perfect place for “HairStories,” one of the current offerings at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. This hit me as I was following several SMoCA docents who were…
The room is dark and loud, and a projector plays the image of a guy in a suit slamming his body against a wall, again and again, as strobe lights flare. No, it’s not a Sid Vicious video and this is not a bad flashback. It’s art. And it’s what…
They call it “Phantasmagoria: De Trop Capsule Episode #2,” but the scene looks like Trading Spaces meets Alice in Wonderland. Mark Freedman and Grant Wiggins wrestle with the sand-colored carpet as Oliver Hibert looks on, dark circles rimming dazed eyes. It’s one day before the innovative exhibition is set to…
Picture a painting, suffused with a golden glow, in which naked men and women writhe in what appears to be a bed of gleaming black lava, like tortured souls in purgatory waiting to be released into heaven. In the foreground, a man with an amputated leg is helped to the…
Several years ago, I was soundly excoriated in the pages of this newspaper by a seriously disaffected letter writer from the arts community. She was incensed about a review I wrote concerning a downtown art gallery event that I found less than, shall we say, aesthetically enriching. In fact, she…
If appearance counts for anything, the art scene in Phoenix is thriving. Literally thousands of people make their way from gallery to gallery the first Friday of each month, flooding Roosevelt Street and Grand Avenue. The interest of locals has been echoed nationally, even drawing notice in Art in America…
Aderelict-looking Toucan Sam clutches a wad of money in one wing, a paper-bag-wrapped liquor bottle in the other. Behind him Cap’n Crunch and Lucky the Leprechaun (of Lucky Charms fame) are in a purple convertible lowrider; Crunch is riding shotgun, firing a semi-automatic handgun at a Keebler elf and that…
The middle of a scorching summer seems like the worst possible time to open a coffee shop and art space. Especially since, restricted by anal Tempe business ordinances about announcing your “grand opening,” you don’t dare advertise the place until students come back to Arizona State University. But Three Roots…
