Artistic Tucson

JANE POSTON HIT ON A CREATIVE WAY TO ACQUIRE FINE ART, deciding to reproduce in her own hand pieces that hold special meaning for her.

 On a recent visit, she told me with wry humor that she couldn’t afford to buy the originals and certainly wasn’t about to steal them, so the best alternative was to reproduce them.

Jane Poston and her paintings

“I’m a great appreciator,” she says.

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WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADD AN OCEAN BAY VIEW, a Tuscan countryside horizon or a Sonoran Desert panorama to your home? Then Jos Villabrille is your man.

 He’s Tucson’s muralist, adept at the trompe l’oeil (trick the eye) style of bringing three dimensional vistas to large two dimensional wall spaces.

Jos Villabrille at home with his own seaside view

Not only that, but Jos’s skill as a painter ranges credibly over a multitude of schools and styles – Renaissance, Baroque, Romantic, Southwestern, he’s even done futuristic murals of galaxy hopping spaceships in the Star Trek tradition.  (continue reading…)

“THE INSTANT I STARTED WOODTURNING, I KNEW I’D MADE THE RIGHT CHOICE,” LYNNE YAMAGUCHI SAYS. “It was the absolute most true decision I could have made.”

 That was seven years ago. Yamaguchi was stuck in a high pressure, deadline driven job that she felt was draining her life away. When she asked herself what would make her happy, the answer came instantly: woodturning.

Maple burl hollow vessel by Lynne Yamaguchi

Woodturning? She’d never done it, didn’t know how. No tools, no shop, no training.

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TERRY ETHERTON WAS APPREHENSIVE last spring when the concept for the current exhibit at the gallery that bears his name began to gel. 

Known nationally and beyond as a premier southwestern gallery of photography as well as of painting and other traditional art forms, this exhibit, Etherton says, “was a leap of faith” to create an ensemble from some of Tucson’s finest artists in a setting resembling spaces an exquisitely appointed home.

 The result is a welcoming balance among furniture with the design qualities of sculpture, marvelously hand blown glass, bold mural sized paintings and warm hand woven rugs.

Mesquite furniture by Stephen Paul; King's Canyon painting by Jim Wald.

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“OH MAN, IT’S CRAZY HOT OUT HERE,” Lucas McDonald said gulping water from a gallon plastic jug.

 McDonald was wrapping up a Saturday afternoon standing in the sun by the side of the road waiting for customers to pull over and check out his horseshoe saguaro creations.

Lucas McDonald

McDonald is a roadside art vendor, one of a coterie you’ll see at the side of North Thorneydale or South Silverbell in places where there’s room to set up shop and accommodate turn in traffic.

 McDonald is a novice at the trade, taking it up this summer while visiting from his home in Minnesota, using horseshoes he gets from a blacksmith friend for the pieces he makes that run in the $40 range.

 Mike Stephenson is a veteran.

 For 17 years, he says, “this is what I do,” surveying an array of objects he designs himself and crafts from steel using a plasma arc cutter. Sun symbols are popular and tourists, especially, like the kokopelli figures. 

Mike Stephenson

His repertoire now spans some 300 decorative items ranging from $20 up to the $950 asking price on an elaborate swing set he’s prepared to install at a buyer’s home.

 Over the years he’s traveled to art and craft shows in California, Utah and New Mexico and likes to make an annual trek to a show in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida. Mostly though, he sets up at one of six local spots over the weekend, finding that business tends to be best between about noon and 2 pm.

 It’s been a real slow summer, he explains, “but if I do good today, you won’t see me out here ‘till next week.”

 Terry Paschen is a veteran too, selling his hand made furniture by the roadside as a sideline for the past 11 years. His pieces range from tables and chests to beds, dressers, armoires and grandfather clocks.

Terry Paschen

He was packing up the first afternoon I met him, racing to get out from under a belt of rain headed to his spot on Silverbell on Sunday afternoon. A bust of a day.

Mesquite table by Terry Paschen $650

A couple of weeks later along Thorneydale, Paschen told me he’d gotten a commission for a wet bar in one customer’s home and another had stopped by for a repeat sale.

 That’s the way it goes  by the roadside. You never really know until you just get out there and see what the day will bring.

CHRISSY GORAL’S TRACK RECORD is the to die for envy of most artists – once she can just get her work exposed to the public, it’s an almost instant success.

 A put together show at a local club a few years ago – blowout. The one designer – Content Interiors – who said Yes to scores of other phone pitches to just look at her work – sales on the spot. A long desired chance to exhibit at the DeGrazia Gallery – near sell out.

Chrissy Goral at home

Goral sort of stumbled on to what’s become unique to her. Working in an old, dark downtown warehouse several years ago she was experimenting with acrylic on window glass when she decided to take a piece outside to see what it looked like in the sun. Like stained glass, rainbows of color. It came alive. She’s been mastering and expanding the technique ever since.

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THE UofA’s CENTER FOR CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY is offering a chance to see the work of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe again – and maybe for the first time.

 Mapplethorpe’s 1989-1990 exhibit “The Perfect Moment” – that reached the public months after his death at the age of 42 from complications arising from AIDS – created a major battle in the culture wars with its explicit homoerotic and sadomasochistic images.

Mapplethorpe self-portraits

 The uproar seared an image of Mapplethorpe into the public mind to the exclusion of nearly all his other work.

 And it is that other work – a vast body of strikingly dramatic portraits – that is represented in 104 Mapplethorpe photographs on display at the Center through October 4.

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THIS SHOULD BE ONE GOOD PARTY!

Beginning Thursday afternoon from the UofA Main Gate, to 4th Avenue, to Congress Street, La Placita and pretty much all downtown the celebration of the opening of the new 4th Avenue underpass will get underway – and keep going well into the evening.

Rendering from north side of 4th Ave. underpass

This should be fun. Make plans to go. Particularly, enjoy what this is all about – the linking, finally, of a continuous activity corridor from the UofA to downtown’s emergent arts, dining and entertainment center through 4th Avenue’s well-established cultural scene.

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THE BIKE SANCTUARY, TUCSON’S NEWEST PUBLIC ARTS PROJECT, got off to a celebratory start over the weekend.

New Bike Sanctuary in Barrio Anita

About 200 people gathered at the sanctuary site at the southwest corner of Main and Davis in Barrio Anita for the inaugural. The 12 by 12 foot steel frame sculpture is dedicated to bicyclists who have been injured or died and stands as the northern gateway to the proposed El Paso and Southwestern Greenway, a six-mile long bicycle and pedestrian path to run on a former railroad corridor from downtown, through South Tucson and to the Kino Sports Center.

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DEFYING CONVENTION SEEMS TO RUN IN HENRY EL KAIM’S BLOOD.

 Born in Casablanca, he found himself in Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day War. A Jew, he befriended Palestinians.

 Now, a decade-long Tucson resident, el Kaim is defying convention again. He’s opened a new art gallery in the face of an economic downturn not rivaled since the Great Depression.

 On meeting him – as I did on a recent visit to Gallery 2402 at the same address on Campbell just north of Grant – this all makes perfect sense. El Kaim is a big man – big in the sense of the spirit. His smiles, gestures, language, movements all bespeak an enthusiastic thirst for life.

Henry el Kaim with one of his pieces at Gallery 2402

“I bring people together,” he says. “I’m a unifier, not a divider.”

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