On March 2nd I dropped by the reception at the new Wee Gallery in the back of OZMA Atelier (vintage clothing) at the building on the SW corner of 6th St. and 6th Avenue. Address there is 439 N. 6th Avenue, and it’s a wee bit hidden but worth the search. Website: www.gallerywee.com. And it’s also a wee bit small for any art gallery, hence its appropriate name.

Exhibiting for the month of March is the Tucson Weekly’s cartoonist Rand Carlson, with his unique tin collage art pieces/pictures made out of recycled cans and auto license plates. If you haven’t seen his creative art over the years (he used to exhibit at Bohemia), drop by the Wee Gallery which is open Thursday to Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

This particular show of 11 pictures is all about guns and the American craze over them, hence the name “Armed and Dangerous”. I particularly liked the one entitled “The Gunited States of America” (take off of United States of America) with cut out pieces from cans depicting portraits of past U.S. Presidents and their First Ladies. I remember eating cookies out of similar cans, as I had saved them for our son to learn about American history.

From Rand’s artist statement:

Collage seems to be a medium of this modern world. It mimics the elements of thought, emotions, and even a diverse society. A collection of similar and dissimilar pieces quilted together to form a new larger whole, a composite reality.

The element of recycling is also a contemporary notion in the art. To reuse and reinvent these materials into a conceptual whole that borrows from folk art, and even a manufacturing environment, morphing into a ‘new’ object.

Over the years we’ve also seen Rand exhibit at the Temple of Music and Art and at the Tucson Museum of Art downtown, and my husband and I started saving our used cookie cans for him to use in his art.

Rand’s art studio is at the Citizens Artist Collective at 44 W. 6th Street (upstairs), and his artist website is: www.randomshots.com. Go to his website to see lots and lots of other one-of-a-kind collage art pieces.

I hope these educated celebrities/politicians (District 5 Supervisor Richard Elias, Superintendent Dr. Linda Arzoumanian, LD 28 Rep. (newly-elected LD 9 Senator) Steve Farley, cartoonist David Fitzsimmons, and Cox VP Lisa Lovalo) can spell well enough to compete in this spelling bee. The competition looks t-o-u-g-h.

Support Voices for Education, www.voicesforeducation.org by attending this fun event. But tickets online or call for tickets-520-324-0881. And bring along a dictionary to check those spelling words.

“Put your right hand in, put your right hand out… and do the hokey pokey and turn yourself about”.
I loved that song in Kindergarten. And here it is again in a new play at the Cabaret Theater of the Temple of Music and Art.

In case you can’t read the small print above:

What happens when a clown who isn’t funny, a writer who doesn’t write, a black magician who wants to turn himself white and a con-man selling an elixir that cures baldness and hemorrhoids confront one another in the common room of the institution in which they are housed? Madness!

Kayner’s plays have won a variety of awards and played to full houses and noteworthy reviews.
These include -
Thumbs – ‘The play wraps profound ideas in true-sounding interchanges for an incredible effect’
Noche de los Muertos – ‘a brilliant schematic’’, ‘lyrically written’, ‘a fine play’
The Funniest Joke in the World – ‘heartfelt and compelling’
Language of Flowers – ‘is a hauntingly beautiful play’

SEE YOU AT THE HOKEY POKEY!

Produced in association with Old Pueblo Playwrights.

Call 520-297-3317 for tickets. I wonder why the word playwrights isn’t spelled “playwrites” as that is what they do, write plays. Enjoy this play.