#ArtLitPhx: Draw-A-Thon

Participate in an indoor festival celebrating the arts and sciences of drawing on June 22 from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. at Tempe Center for the Arts, 700 W. Rio Salado Pkwy.

Family Focus: 10 a.m.–2 p.m.
Booths include exhibiting artists Brandi Lee Cooper, Emily Ritter, Abbey Messmer and Maria Salenger and organizations including Crayola Experience Chandler, Edna Vihel Arts Center, Tempe History Museum and Xico Inc. Activities include printmaking, Suminagashi floating ink painting, topography map drawing and a fantasy station dedicated to dinosaurs and unicorns.

Teen Focus: 2–6 p.m.
Booths include exhibiting artists Jerry Jacobson and Justin Rodier and organizations including Architekton, ASU School of Art, Tempe Public Art, Scottsdale Artists School and FABRIC of Tempe. Activities include virtual reality drawing, portfolio reviews, animation, costume design, fashion design and open studio sessions with a live model and artist Matt Dickson.

Adult Focus (with live music and happy hour): 6–10 p.m.
Booths include exhibiting artist Laura Spalding Best and date night activities including competitive drawing games, fashion show by FABRIC designers and open studio sessions with live model and artist Matt Dickson.

For a complete Draw-A-Thon schedule, click here.


Summer Parking: Enjoy free cart rides from your vehicle to the Tempe Center for the Arts’ front door! Due to construction, the parking lot is located at Hardy Dr. and Rio Salado Pkwy. Just follow the signs.

#ArtLitPhx: LACDA Art Competition

Are you an artist? Enter the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art juried competition for digital art and photography. Entrants submit three JPEG files of original work. All styles of artwork and photography where digital processes of any kind were integral to the creation of the images are acceptable. The competition is international, open to all geographical locations.

Forty artists and photographers will be selected! The selected winners receive one print up to 24×36 on museum quality paper to be shown in an international group exhibition in our gallery. The show will be widely promoted and will include a reception for the artists. Multiple entries are permitted, separate entry fee required for each set of three images submitted.

photo of art gallery

Deadline for Entries: May 27, 2019
Winnners Announced: June 3, 2019
Exhibit Dates: June 13-July 6, 2019


LACDA Artists’ Reception: Saturday, June 15, 6-9pm

Artwalk preview: Thursday, June 13, 7-9pm

Curating Jurors: 

Bryan Barcena, 
MoCA, Museum of Contemporary Art

Nicholas Barlow
LACMA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Complete information: http://lacda.com/juried/juriedshow.html

Online registration only. 
For questions email us at lacda@lacda.com

#ArtLitPhx: Observation & Imagination

Due to popular demand Observation & Imagination exhibition has been extended at Royse Contemporary through May 25, 2019. This group exhibition examines the ideas of observation verses imagination, reflecting upon the artists perspective and creative process. Showcasing an eclectic selection of work from thirteen noteworthy artists: Cherie Buck-Hutchison, Angel Cabrales, Charmagne Coe, Bill Dambrova, Lee Davis, Cam DeCaussin, Gennaro Garcia, Rafael Navarro, Dan Pederson, Daniel Shepherd, Marilyn Szabo, Casey Wakefield, and Scott “ColorOrgy” Wolf.

Typically, one would define “Observation” in art as drawing or painting from life, while “Imagination” emphasizes the artist’s ability to produce images and ideas without any immediate input of the senses. Owner/Curator, Nicole Royse has selected artists who both typify and transcend these categories, creating powerful work that offers a distinctive voice, mastery of medium, and unique perspective. This exhibition offers an eclectic selection of work with artists working in an array of mediums including collage, drawing, painting, photography, sculpture, and mixed media. Observation & Imagination aims to create a dialog and connection with these artists, highlighting their use of imagery, engaging styles, and strong voice. 

Royse Contemporary will host an Artist Reception for Observation & Imagination on Thursday, May 9, 2019 from 6 to 10 p.m., coinciding with the weekly Scottsdale ArtWalk. The evening will feature an opportunity to meet the artist’s and curator, along with light hors d’oeuvres and refreshments.Observation & Imagination will be on display at Royse Contemporary through May 25, 2019.

Royse Contemporary is located in the Scottsdale Arts District in the Marshall Square complex at 7077 E. Main St., Suite 6, Scottsdale. Royse Contemporary is open Monday, Tuesday, Friday 9:30 to 1:30 p.m., Thursday 6 to 9 p.m., and Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information about Royse Contemporary or the featured artists, visit roysecontemporary.com.

#ArtLitPhx: Tikkun Olam 3-Repairing the World Exhibition

#artlitphxEvent Description:

The Arizona Jewish Historical Society (AZJHS) presents Tikkun Olam 3 – Repairing the World  (TO3) exhibition is a significant and timely mixed media art exhibition curated by respected environmental artist Joan Baron. This exhibition showcases thought provoking and beautiful contemporary art by exceptional Arizona artists that raise awareness and address the theme of “Tikkun Olam: “repairing the world” and “not to stand idly by.”

Seven acclaimed Arizona based artists were invited by Baron to be apart of this powerful exhibition include:  Susan Beiner, Liz Cohen, Fatimah Halim, Marie Jones, Janelle L. Stanley, Christine Lee and Deborah H. Sussman, who created new works that explore climate change, environmental justice and sustainability through ceramics, wood, fiber, drawings, printmaking, textiles, graphic design, text pieces and spoken word performances.

The exhibition consists of three key components: The Power of Art, The Power of Food, and The Power of Words. This collaborative presentation by this talented group of artists highlights the ways in which art and artists can help to heal our world. As we all seek understanding and inspiration as to our role within these challenges, along comes a mixed media art exhibition that looks at these very imperatives.  Tackling social and political issues of our times without focusing on the political is the goal of Tikkun Olan 3. How the artists use materials in unexpected ways makes this exhibition intriguing and exciting.

The original idea for a series of shows where artists would explore this concept began with a show of Beth Ames Swartz paintings at the gallery several years ago. Her passion to bring forward the spiritual aspects of how to live peacefully in the world around us through art was significant in establishing and building a relationship with the Jewish Cultural Center. The response has been quite positive as we continue to engage with our growing population.

The Opening Reception for Tikkun Olam 3 – Repairing the World  will take place on Sunday, October 7, 2018 from 1:00pm until 5:00pm. During the reception, Baron has planned a special presentation of specialty lite bites prepared by Chef Sasha Raj owner of 24 Carrots Restaurant and Chef Danielle Leoni, owner of The Breadfruit and Rum Bar, while sharing how they incorporate the principles of Tikkun Olam into their work. Together with organic farmer, Maya Dailey, they will present delicious seasonal foods that reflect our unique region. Two films will be shown during the run of the art exhibition in the small auditorium adjacent to the gallery: “SEED: The Untold Story” and “Tomorrow”, selected by Baron to illicit discussion and reflection on reaching our collective highest potential. Check the Website for TO3 for dates and times https://azjhs.org/. There will also be activities for children during the opening and the dedication of a raised garden bed to the Center.

This exhibition will be installed in the newly renovated Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Centera historic former synagogue and church that now serves the community as a museum, cultural center, and event venue. Built in 1921, this historic Phoenix landmark served as Phoenix, Arizona’s first synagogue. The center is a Phoenix Point of Pride and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Exhibitions and programs educate the public about Jewish heritage as well as the diverse history of Arizona.

Tikkun Olam 3 – Repairing the World  will be on display through January 23, 2019. The gallery is open for First and Third Fridays of each month from 6:00pm until 9:00 pm (or by appointment). The Arizona Jewish Historical Society is located at 122 E. Culver St., Phoenix 85004 (Free parking available on site). For more information about this exhibition or AZJHS visit (www.azjhs.org). Direct all exhibition inquires to Joan Baron 602-616-0223 or email joanebaron@gmail.com. AZJHS inquires refer to Executive Director, Lawrence Bell, PhD by phone: 602-241-7870 or email: LBell@azjhs.org.

Link to Official Press Release

#ArtLitPhx: “Touch of Pop” Opening Exhibition at Royse Contemporary

ArtLitPhxRoyse Contemporary is excited to announce Touch of Pop, the joint exhibition of artists Nigel Clouse and Benjamin Goens. This exhibition will showcase the latest work of these talented artists, highlighting a dynamic selection of pop surrealistic digital composites and multi layered mixed media stencil paintings infused with Pop Art. “Popular Art was dominant movement in early 1960s American art, widely recognized and is easily accessible with diverse audiences around the world,” states Curator, Nicole Royse. Elaborating further stating “its use of common household objects, consumer products, and forms of media, creates mass appeal not to mention greatly inspired both artists and the overall direction of their work.”

Nigel Clouse is a Phoenix based artist known for his pop surrealistic digital composites incorporating femme fatales, pop culture references, and dystopian themes. He combines graphic elements to form alternate realities where the fabled American Dream exists only in myth. His work is based upon a childhood spent in a section of the American Midwest commonly referred to as the Rust Belt. The rural landscape of his youth is juxtaposed with the urban environments he currently inhabits working for corporate America. “My work is influenced by classic film, literature, television, science, technology, and social commentary, who goes on to elaborate further stating “I create art to share my misanthropic perspective with the world and to provide social commentary on personal experiences.” Clouse received his Bachelors of Art in Digital Design from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and he has worked as a creative for over a decade in the American Southwest.

Benjamin Goens, known as Benjam is a stencil artist based in Gilbert Arizona. He creates mixed media original artwork utilizing hand cut stencils, oil, and aerosol paints on canvas. His process includes up to 20 hand-cut stencil layers in a single image, used to apply vast colors of aerosol paints as well as various other mediums to create photorealistic tonal gradations in his imagery. He received his Bachelors of Fine Arts Degree in Art History and traveled extensively across Europe to study the art of classical antiquity and European masters. “I have always held a fascination for hip-hop culture, graffiti, and the evolution of street art which inspired him to begin cutting his first stencils in 2008.” Goens goes on to say “it wasn’t until 2014 that he began further experimenting with stencils and ultimately production of his own multilayered artwork, learning to cut intricate stencils to create detailed depictions of his subjects.” In 2018, he was a recipient of the inaugural Carmody Foundation Grant Project and recently participated in the inaugural Phoenix Mural Festival. Benjam has shown his work extensively in both solo and group exhibitions in the Phoenix metropolitan area and his work can be found in galleries and private collections around the world.

The opening reception for Touch of Pop will take place this Thursday, June 7, 2018 from 6:00-9:00pm coinciding with the weekly Thursday Scottsdale ArtWalk with an opportunity to meet the artist. Touch of Pop will be on view from Thursday, June 7 through Thursday, June 28, 2018. Royse Contemporary is located in the Marshall Square complex at 7077 E. Main Street, Suite 6, Scottsdale, AZ 85251 (located on the south side of Main Street just west of Marshall Way).

ArtLitPhx

#ArtLitPhx: spark! After Dark: Collective Kaleidoscope

Fade the lights and turn up the music. Every third Saturday from October to June Mesa Art Center’s campus will be taken over by a new artist with a unique, crazy-fun theme–complete with live art, live music, great eats, and much more.

This month, create art with these amazing artists:

Melissa Waddell, Sierra Joy, Matt Dickson and Claire Worden

Projection art with Sylvia Frost and Bryn Corbett

Live painting with Tara Sharpe

Mural zone by Ciara Bernal and Kyllan Maney

Interactive large scale window coloring

DJs The Ladies of Wax (Victoria Aguilar and Karen Hartman)

 

This month’s spark! After Dark: Collective Kaleidoscope will be on Saturday, February 17 from 8pm to 11pm at the Mesa Arts Center (1 E Main St, Mesa, Arizona 85201).

 

#ArtLitPhx: Masculinity in the Mix – Phoenix

Masculinity in the mix Bocafloja“Masculinity in the Mix” presents the artists Mark Gonzales and Bocafloja. The event takes place on Friday, September 30th at 6:00 p.m. at the ASU Art Museum International Artist Residency
Project Space at Combine Studios (821 N. 3rd St. #11, Phoenix, AZ 85004)

In partnership with: ASU Art Museum Project Space at Combine Studios, the ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, ASU School of Social Transformation.

The event will explore the healing of trauma influenced by social and political contexts through storytelling, poetry, film, and community conversations. For more information visit the Arizona Humanities Facebook event.

Project Humanities’ Hacks for Humanity 2015

Project Humanities invites you to their upcoming event, Hacks for Humanity 2015. Hacks for Humanity is a 36-hour hackathon for the social good, starting at 8am on Saturday, October 3rd, and ending at 8pm on Sunday, October 4th. They invite techies, programmers, developers, humanities, artists, students, educators, and creative visionaries to hack with one mission: to create technology solutions and initiatives that will contribute to the social good and address the needs of humanity using the seven principles of the Humanity 101 Movement: respect, kindness, integrity, forgiveness, empathy, compassion, and self-reflection.

Last year, the winning team went on to win the $10K grand prize from the ASU Changemaker Innovation Challenge last spring for their life-saving mobile application “ARKHumanity.” This team of five determined individuals not only showed their talents in technology, but also their love and dedication to the needs of humanity. Furthermore, they show their everlasting support of our Humanity 101 Movement. You can win Hackathon this year and move on to greater competitions, too! Join for another exciting 36-HOUR event!

Sign up for this event here: www.hacksforhumanity2015.eventbrite.com.

Project Humanities' Hackathon 2015

Guest Blog Post, Brad Modlin: Before I Tell You about the Puppet Parade

Before I tell you about the puppet parade, let me tell you about my past two weeks.

I was stressed, and as I told a friend, “feeling under.” I alternated between 1) accidentally waking an hour before my alarm and then—afraid to waste time—reaching for a stack of papers to grade and 2) sleeping until 8:30 and feeling guilty for it. Each day I needed to accomplish three tasks, but then one of them ate up all my hours until suddenly it was bedtime. I struggled for days to get to the grocery and in the meantime had cereal for dinner. When I finally bought a carton of eggs, I dropped them in the driveway and five cracked.

I know that a month from now, I won’t even remember the frazzle of these two weeks, and I know that other—truly sad—stories have taken place or been written down in the past 14 days.

But yesterday I was concerned with my story. I vented (whined?) to an artist friend over coffee. She, too, had been feeling under. One of the projects that had kept her busy was to paint a puppet. Apparently, while I had been rushing around, a group of artists had recruited dozens of townspeople and together they were recycling old materials into twenty enormous puppets. The next night they’d march them in their own parade.

I was too curious to grade papers, so I left the coffee shop and went to the artists’ studio space. So far they had constructed: a fluorescent orange owl in a dress; a giant red vulture head wearing flowing strips of garbage bags; several six-foot tall “talking” skulls with Christmas ornament eyes and mirror teeth; a gauzy whale; and imaginary animals with VHS tape clothing.

I spoke with one of the leaders as he measured some scraps of wood. He said about 70% of their supplies were leftovers, things other people had trashed. Of course, I thought about writing. A lucky trick writers have is that we can take a crummy, or disappointing, or even heartbreaking real-life experience (or pair of weeks) and use it to make something new. We can—at least in part—redeem it, give it purpose as material for creating. And then some good has come from it.

The project leader went on to say they dumpster-dove for many of their supplies. I asked, “So how do you know what material is valuable when you see it—what’s worth harvesting?”

He said, “Everything is.”

This answer was enough to get me signed up as a volunteer puppeteer for the parade. And so this evening I led a line of fanciful creatures down the main street of our town. I wore a huge praying mantis whose arms and legs moved with mine. Cloth people with balloon hair hopped behind me, the birds flew on poles, the whale swam circles around us, and the metallic lion heads bopped in time with the snare drum.

As we processed through downtown, kids climbed onto their parents’ shoulders to see and college students cheered from their apartment balconies. When people noticed us through coffee shop windows, I waved a mantis hand to them.

I picked up my insect legs, which were made from bamboo shoots and tied to my ankles with old bike inner tubes. In the heavy green body—made from styrofoam swimming pool noodles, PVC pipe, wire tomato cages, and packing cardboard—I shuffled lightly. And my shuffling grew into even sort of a samba step by the time we paraded back to the studio entrance, where the snare drummer played softer and softer as if not wanting to end it, and we all danced in place on the sidewalk, each of us trying to stall before we had to take off our puppet costumes.

Past Intern Updates: Sarah Snyder

Sarah Snyder, from Issues 1 and 2, has traveled to the Far East and back–and discovered a true passion for teaching English as a foreign language. She shares with us her experience:

Grandma always said, “Everything in moderation—even moderation.” As a junior at ASU, taking 18 credits a semester, being the Reading Series Coordinator for Superstition Review, working at the Polytechnic campus Writing Center, serving as the President of ASU’s Devil Dancesport ballroom dancing team, and volunteering as a Peer Advisor for the School of Applied Arts and Sciences, I was no stranger to overextending myself, to going deeper than I could swim back up in time for air.  When I graduated in 2009, I made a strategic career move and took a job in Japan teaching English in two high schools. It was only strategic because I couldn’t even get anything close to a job in the United States. Luckily for me, this job helped me realize what I really wanted to do with my life: create positive cultural exchange and communication. This lesson came to me through all of the artists that I coordinated through SR, the students that I worked with in the Writing Center, as the President of a student organization, as a Peer Advisor and in Japan.

After a year in the Land of the Rising Sun, I moved back home to the Valley of the Sun. My parents were happy to have me home in the flesh instead of pixelated and robotic on Skype. They were perfectly content to keep me there, but I was soon restless. I needed something to keep me happy, healthy and productive, but I experienced the same depression that my father remembered as an adolescent. He told me his story from the 1970s when he was expressing the same feeling of helplessness to his grandfather. To that, Great-Grandpa Krebbs said, “There is always work for those who want it.” To this day, my father doesn’t know whether or not that was a challenge or a jab, but I took it as a challenge. I pulsed all of my networks for careers in academia for months. I applied to everything. I also kept myself busy taking Spanish and Japanese at the local community colleges to keep my morale up. Around month six, I was called for my first interview. It was my chance to vie for my dream job of being an academic advisor! At the age of 24 (my lucky Japanese year of the Rabbit) I was hired as the youngest member of an academic advising team with my mentors from undergrad as my supervisors.

After some serious soul-searching, I had to sacrifice my dream job in favor of the English and TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) programs at Northern Arizona University, where I am happily immersed in concurrent graduate programs and teaching freshman composition for native and non-native speakers of English. I hope to pursue a Ph.D. in Rhetoric, Composition and Linguistics in the near future. This, I believe, will help me bring positive cultural exchange and communication to more people than I could have ever hoped while being one teacher working with just 30 students at a time in a sea of millions. It will be more work that I have probably ever had in my life—but I also have itty-bitty daydreams of being the President of the United States as well, so bring it on.

As I look back now, all I can say is that Grandma was right. “Everything in moderation–even moderation.” If I could go back in time with all of this 20/20 retrospect, I wouldn’t change one thing. Now, I am making sure that I give just as much as I have received, and these last sentences are little karmic presents for anyone who wants them: In order to survive in the world that we live in today, concentration and positive thinking are the keys to getting what the universe thinks you deserve. Nobody gets anywhere anymore by stepping on people. We’re in the age of Google, people! Also, it really DOES matter who you know and how you treat the people around you…No one ever knows who they will be interacting with in the future. Network, network, NETWORK! Oh, and always brush your teeth (another Grandma quote).