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.

 Her favorite is her rendering of a Picasso that hangs on the wall of her room at the Via Elegante assisted living home on the city’s Northwest side where she now lives.

Jane Poston's favorite painting

Her eye and her imagination see a story in that painting: a woman boldly emerging from a jungle – some dark and foreboding past – her left arm strongly muscled with the hand clenched into a fist ready to fend off danger – her right arm and hand in a nurturing, cradle-like arc – an iconic image into which one might even read the whole 20^th century struggle of women for a place of equality in a world of strife and conflict.

At age 86 that’s a struggle Jane Poston knows something about. Whether it’s a story Picasso intended in the original, who knows, but it’s one she sees there and that makes the painting her favorite.

 While she no longer paints, the paintings she loves, her acquired collection of fine art and the stories it tells to her continues to adorn the walls of her room and the corridors of the home she shares with others.

 Her collection is as eclectic as her own experiences in life.

She’s lived in Beirut, did a stint in the Peace Crops, served in the WAVES, resided in Java, Bali, Germany and Guam and with her husband even had a brief jig as a jitterbug dancer in Bangkok when that was the rage. She’s taught yoga and English, was drawn to Buddhism while living in Cambridge and for 40 years has counted Tucson as home.

 She’s drawn to color and imagination and says of cubism, “The invention of the camera changed art dramatically. After the camera they had no use for narrative realism.” She loves a hidden tiger in a Klee, the drapery of a huge eucalyptus tree in a village scene, the warmth of color that glows from several of the pieces she’s chosen to make her own.

“I’ve put more into these pieces and gotten more out of them than I can describe,” she says in a comment on her paintings that could as well be a comment on her experience of life.

 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. 

Jos Villabrille is definitely not a man confined to a box.

 His training was unconventional, rigorous and perfect for the work he now does.

Ceiling angels by Jos Villabrille

As a boy in the Philippines, Jos when to the movie theatre where he father ran the projector, and became fascinated by the fast working painters who created 12 by 12 foot poster displays for the features running that week.

 He took up the work himself while an art student at college and was soon doing posters for a pair movie houses while pursuing his studies. The work led him to Hawaii where he did large signage work for a tourist firm and finally to Tucson in 1988 where his projects included hand painting 14 by 48 foot billboards.

Fountain mural

These years of training made him comfortable with large, wall-sized formats, and a huge variety of topics and styles to which he added his own meticulousness of technique which belies the speed with which he works.

 Jos’ work is also informed by his love of travel. “I’ve been to 32 countries so far,” he says. “Every time I go to a different country and experience a different culture, I see something I can add to my palette. It’s learning and I never want to stop learning.”

On a recent visit to his home, Jos told me he’s always steered away from advice to simply hone a particularized, individual style. “I don’t want to be categorized,” he says.

 That shows in his work – that includes portraits of classical realism – and in his love of travel, entertaining, dancing and even a jig as the vocalist in the band he recently formed with friends, Jimmy and the Jitterbugs.

 Since coming to Tucson, Jos has painted roughly 200 murals, many at area homes and others at the Desert Diamond Casino, several restaurants, hotels and malls.

He dreams of someday doing a huge mural of Tucson’s history and cultural richness. “I don’t want to be limited. I want to be versatile. Every time I see a blank wall, I see pictures.”

More of Jos’ work is available at his website www.muralsbyjos.com.

 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.

She quit the job, took some turning classes at Woodcraft on North Oracle and began the pursuit of her dream.

 Today Yamaguchi is an accomplished artist, a member of the newly opened Flux Gallery  and the creator of bowls, vessels and wood sculpture that convey a sense of beauty, simplicity and inner calm.

Lynne Yamaguchi

She’s also enthusiastically happy, as I found on a recent visit to her converted garage shop, chock-a-block with two turning lathes, a band saw and drill press, wood blanks, cut sections from whole trees, sawdust and projects in progress.

 “I’m Japanese-American,” she explained. “My upbringing was very much infused with Japanese culture and esthetics. The shape of vessels, like rice bowls, from my childhood is part of my sense memory and is deeply a part of my hand.

Yearning to Soar, Lynne Yamaguchi

“I am attracted to containers, bowls, vessels, boxes. I like to hold them, stroke them, just touch them.”

 Her approach to a new project with a fresh blank of wood “is very much a dialogue,” she explains. “I think about what’s in there, what’s to be revealed. Sometimes I’m right. Sometimes it has something in it that makes me change my idea. Flaws become features.”

Nestling, Lynne Yamaguchi

She enjoys working in pear – “such a sensuous wood” – in cottonwood – an untypical species for turners – and in walnut. “We’re really lucky here in Arizona to have mesquite,” she says, “with its richness of color and complex character.” She sees wood as a metaphor for people, with the record of survival showing in a person’s face just as it does in the grain and texture of wood.

 Yamaguchi’s pieces range in price from as low as $30, up to $1,800 for her hollow formed In Her Dream nestled among black stones, a sculpture that is a perfect island of peace. Making ends meet can still be a struggle, she says, particularly in the current economic downturn where the market for art is one of the first to suffer.

In Her Dream, Lynne Yamaguchi

To remain viable, Yamaguchi became a founding member of the Flux Gallery, a cooperative inspired by painter/sculptor/photographer Steven Derks to give artists control over their own marketing efforts. The Gallery, featuring the work of nine local artists, is located at Plaza Palomino, 2960 N. Swan Rd., Suite 136. You’ll see more posts on them here in the weeks ahead.

 Day to day, Yamaguchi remains active in her shop, turning perhaps two small pieces in one session, holding her dialogue with wood. “It feels,” she says, “like I was born to do it.”

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.

On entering the gallery at 135 S. 6^th Ave. some people react by saying, “This is so beautiful, I want to live here.” While that may not be possible, all Tucsonans can experience this first of its kind exhibit though it run to November 28.

 As a woodworker myself, I was especially pleased to see furniture and cabinetry exhibited as works of art. In making the rounds over the past two years I’ve lived here, the names of three woodworkers consistently rise to the top. One is the door and entryway maker Wayne Hausknecht who was profiled in this blog earlier. The other two are Stephen Paul and Scott Baker whose works are part of the current Etherton Gallery exhibit.

Stephen Paul furniture with lamp by Paul and Tom Philabaum and rugs from David Adler.

Paul is the master craftsman in chief at Arroyo Design, 224 N. 4^th Ave., designers and creators of hand made mesquite furniture that ranks among the finest being made in the country today.

 Baker, the partner in BAKER-HESSELDENZ design, 8125 E. Moonstone Dr., is arguably this region’s preeminent master cabinet and furniture maker.

Wall suspended server in cherry and steel by Scott Baker; Agua Caliente painting by Nancy Tokar Miller.

Their work is displayed along with several excitingly colorful blown glass pieces by Tom Philabaum, who has also been profiled earlier on this blog and whose studio at 711 S. 6^th Ave. is one of Tucson’s artistic gems, and a selection of contemporary Tibetan rugs collected by David Adler of David E. Adler, Inc. in Scottsdale.

Blown glass by Tom Philabaum.

Large contemporary paintings by Tucson artists Jim Wald and Nancy Tokar Miller help frame the exhibit creating a space both beautiful in itself and abounding with ideas to create beauty in one’s own home.

 “Our goal here is to set a high bar,” Etherton says, “one with warmth where everyone is welcome. Shows like this help us meet that standard.”

 My take: Go. See. Enjoy.

 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.

 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.

On a recent evening visit to her home – she works at night, well into the morning – back lit glass in window and door frames held a shimmering mermaid on the porch, Van Gogh like sunflowers in the yard, a saintly icon in one frame and flapper girls in another inside. It was a wonderful color and light celebration of intricate imagery seemingly etched onto the glass.

Mermaid by Chrissy Goral

Goral arrived in Tucson about a decade ago from New York City to be with friends as she recovered from a car accident. “I was mummified,” she says with the sharp laugh and vivid metaphor that mark the rapid fire, New York minute pace of her conversation.

 She began working with found objects until she went into the dark warehouse where she discovered light.

From Goral's Van Gogh is Dead series

Goral's Klimpt inspired Mother and Child

Her path from there defied conventions of the struggling artists seeking recognition. “I am the most scattered all over the place person you’ll ever meet,” she says. She’s also disciplined, has a sharp eye for business and knows how to seize the chance where others don’t even see it.

With a special exception she feels for the DeGrazia Gallery, Goral has no time for “stuffy, white walled galleries where the owner takes 60 percent and most of your work may be staked up in a back room where no one can see it.”

At her urging, a local businessman gave her the keys to four vacant downtown properties he owned and Goral produced the Flash Gallery where she and other local artists could mount exhibits and keep the proceeds. “I was doing back flips” coordinating that project for two years and doing her own work, she says. But she was also building her reputation and developing her skills.

Goral's Blue Eyed Geisha

Today she works largely on commission with recent sales in London, the Virgin Islands and Mexico. She sometimes goes 12 hours a day on one piece, using her nails and fingers rather than brushes to paint.

Pieces in Goral's home

“In five years I see myself working with architects doing big, beautiful skylight domes,” she says. “Right now, I’m very content. I’m proud of my work. I feel like I live a very charmed life.”

Visit her website here.

 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.

Cass Fey, the Center’s Curator of Education, was kind enough to walk me through the exhibit on a visit there the other day.

Education Curator Cass Fey and Mapplethorpe portrait of Isabella Rossellini

“The exhibit gives people the chance to rethink the name Mapplethorpe,” she said. “By allowing the portraits to stand alone you can draw a fresh assessment of his work.”

 Welcome to the New York arts and cultural scene of the 70s and 80s. They are all there – the artists, actors, painters, musicians, and writers who were at the center of New York when New York was the center of it all. The actress Kathleen Turner fairly smolders in one portrait. A rakish Donald Sutherland arches an eyebrow. A young body builder, Arnold Schwarzenegger, makes an appearance.

Paloma Picasso by Mapplethorpe

Mapplethorpe considered himself a perfectionist. He was painstaking in composition and lighting in the studio where he did nearly all of his work. He often took but about 10 images and allowed only those of his own selection to be printed. The face was what he captured. The background often makes no impression at all.

 The results are dramatic.

Louise Nevelson by Mapplethorpe

These portraits take their subject, amp it up through Mapplethorpe’s vision, and project it out of the frame with gripping clarity.

 He once said that he was “looking for things I’ve never seen before.” These portraits – many of them of personalities we’ve seen in scores of other images – show how he achieved that.

 Next month, exhibition curator Gordon Baldwin will conduct a gallery walk at 5:30 and on the 23rd also at 5:30 photographer Brian English, who was Mapplethorpe’s studio assistant, will give a lecture.

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.

Try the tarot card readings at Old Town Artisans (201 N. Court), the beef skewers at Painted Cave Cattle Co. (on Congress), free face painting at the Children’s Museum, Happy Hours all over the place, the Tucson Birthday Cake competition at the Hotel Congress (5 pm), the antique car show at the historic train depot, the Harley Davidson motorcycle show at La Placita Village, the Hot Rod show at Maloney’s ,and the kilt contest at Flanagan’s Celtic Corner (222 E. Congress and you’ve got to be wearing one to enter).

You're Invited!

Along 4th Avenue live outdoor music will begin around 5 pm: Desert Bluegrass Association at the Chocolate Iguana, Nowhere Man and a Whiskey Girl at Delectables, a TBA group at Magpies Pizza and Phantom DJ, The Rowdies and El Camino Royales at Winsett Stage.

Tucson’s Mat Bevel will provide a performance sculpture – a unique experience.

A Mat Bevel Original

A full events listing is provided at the Downtown Partnerships web site.

Politicians will get things rolling with a 4 pm ribbon cutting at the new underpass – Mayor Bob Walkup presiding.

The downtown trolley – that hasn’t been downtown since 1930 – is scheduled to bust the ribbon and run continuously to midnight from the UofA campus, along 4th Avenue to downtown where it will circle around the Rialto Theatre block for a new circuit.

All this for a railroad underpass?

You bet!

The UofA and 4th Ave. have been choked off from downtown for years by what was a narrow, dingy, ill-lighted underpass that seemed to say “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.”

Work in progress on underpass

After two years of work (Sundt Construction), and $46 million in regional gas tax money (way over budget, but that’s another story), the new, well-lit underpass provides two traffic lanes, separate bike lanes and two pedestrian paths (one 10 and one 20 feet wide) – along with artwork that’s still in progress.

This project is vital to downtown revitalization.

“It’s hugely worth celebrating,” says Susan Gamble of WAMO – the Warehouse Arts Management Organization. “It’s the unification of downtown, where there’s been such limited access in the past, and it sets the stage for the light rail project.”

So if you want to see where Tucson’s going – go to Thursday’s downtown celebration.

(Full disclosure: I volunteer with WAMO’s communications team.)

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.

Bicyclists at celebration

Council member Regina Romero at Bike Sanctuary ceremony

A previous post here provides details about the sanctuary, and the creative impetus for it provided by Joe O’Connell of Creative Machines and Blessing Hancock of Skyrim Studio along with grant support from the Pima Association of Governments and the Tucson Pima Arts Council.

What I like best is the opportunity the sanctuary gave eight Ward 1 teenagers for hands-on experience as the team that assembled the sculpture at the Creative Machines shop over the summer.

 “This is an investment in the creative hearts of young people,” Ward 1 Council Member Regina Romero said to those assembled for the inaugural.

Sanctuary creators take a bow

Team member Elizabeth Raskob, for example, intends to make that investment part of her career in life as she enters the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, OR, next week. “I loved being part of this project,” she says. “I realized that public art is part of a process in which the artist needs to be sensitive and receptive to the people” for whom the art is created.

 “It’s really exciting to see the work completed,” student and team member Leah Edwards says. “I’m surprised and gratified by the number of people who came out for the inaugural celebration.”

Having fun at the Bike Sanctuary

At the night the structure is lit from above by solar powered light that projects through multicolored “story panes” created by the students. Chimes hang inside for visitors to ring. The next step is a tree planting project to augment the space around the sanctuary.

 Note to readers: I welcome suggestions for future posts – contact me at benmcnitt@gmail.com

 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.”

For several years he’s successfully run the Artists at Work gallery, next door to 2402, where he welcomingly displayes work by fellow artists. But he found nearly all the sales are of his own pieces, including stained glass work, often priced quite modestly.

 “We needed a big space,” he says. “After a lot of thought, I came to the conclusion that art flows through me and if I was going to sink or float it might as well be in something that makes me want to get up in the morning.” Thus Gallery 2402.

Erika Parrino painting at Gallery 2402

George Collins' Solitude at Gallery 2402

 El Kaim was joined in the new venture by woodworker George Hubbard.

 The opening gala a couple of months ago was a smash hit, but business has been thin since then. A new show featuring 14 Tucson artists is set to open with a reception September 20.

 As we spoke, artist George Shively came by to drop off some of his pieces selected for the new show. “I love the idea of this gallery opening,” he said. “Your work has to keep in circulation even in the worst of times. No matter what, my job is to keep creating a body of work and keep growing as an artist. This gallery helps me do that.”

George Shively with one of his pieces at Gallery 2402

Instead of the normal 50 percent commission, Gallery 2402 gives 75 percent of the sale price to the artist. “We try to be flexible,” el Kaim says.

 Chris Zabramny, who was a theatre designer in Poland before moving to Tucson with her husband in 1997, also stopped by. She explained that while in Poland her work tended to the dark and black. “But here in Tucson there is so much happiness,” she says, and her work shows it with more vibrant and bold use of color.

Chris Zabramny and two of her work on display at Gallery 2402

Gallery 2402’s pieces tend to average in the $500 range, “not a copy, but an original by an artist who has earned recognition,” el Kaim says. A few pieces, such as those by long established western artist Dale Strong are more costly.

Dale Strong's Heading Out at Gallery 2402

“I think the people of Tucson are very supportive of the arts and artists and that they would like to support us,” el Kaim says. “But because of the economy, they’re putting things off for a better time. We’re here now and we’ll be here then. I survived in the Middle East and I’ll make it here.”