Visual art, music, architecture, performing arts, and the creative forces shaping Arizona’s cultural identity.
Arizona art collectors and aficionados are undoubtedly familiar with the dozens of galleries and working studios throughout Old Town Scottsdale. Three gallery/studios, Quan’tum Art, Inc., Leslie Sandbulte Art and Blink Gallery have created a unique art gallery and studio partnership that combines a vision of artistic appreciation, business acumen and good, old-fashioned friendship. All three are located steps off Main Street and west of Marshall Way in an area known as the Courtyard.
Bringing the natural beauty of the desert to discriminating clients through her art, Dyana Hesson gathers inspiration from a variety of sources. Each painting is a work of love and, like the desert, the unique elegance of each piece reveals itself during the weeks and months during which it is created.
Light pours in through the windows of Sam Pratt’s Paradise Valley home studio, illuminating abstract contemporary paintings on their canvases, the rustic flagstone floors and curated collections of things that inspire her: sketches from friends, a scrap of fabric, an artfully-arranged display of silver shoes and sculptures created by her son, who is a metal artist in Sedona.
Michael P. Johnson has presence. It’s not the fact that his 6-foot, 4-inch frame makes him tower over most of his friends or his distinct mane of long white hair that makes him stand out in a room; Johnson has a distinctive energy about him that isn’t seen so much as it is felt.
While many artists gain endless ideas from one central concept, Scottsdale-based sculptor Jeff Zischke, whose work appears throughout the Valley and around the world, is simply inspired.
Hardly a little girl alive in the 1960s didn’t dream of dancing and singing like Chita Rivera. The tiny, dark-haired dynamite had a high-energy sass about her that captured the imagination of America at a time when dance was becoming a popular language of its own.
There’s something mystically wonderful about the euphonious sound of chamber music resounding from the walls of Sedona’s majestic red rocks. It’s indescribable, and a magic that is bringing casual music lovers and serious students alike to Red Rock Country for the Fifth Annual Sedona Winter Music Festival.
He stood as an imposing figure in front of the lecture hall, pacing the stage with furrowed brow as he observed the new faces of an incoming freshman class of architecture. A studied historian of architecture, this professor, who was also a child of the 1950s beat movement, a student of 1960s ethical liberation, and an ardent admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright, would later become one of my most treasured educators.
Glassblowing demonstrations and classes, chef demonstrations, live music and a roster of both new and acclaimed artists are returning to Phoenix for another year of camaraderie and creation of fine art. These are just some of the reasons to visit the Arizona Fine Art Expo, the popular 10-week fine art show that takes place January 12 through March 25. Known as one of Arizona’s best venues for collecting fine art, the Arizona Fine Art Expo runs daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. under the festive white tents at the southwest corner of Scottsdale and Jomax Roads, next to MacDonald’s Ranch.
Hollywood might be just a day’s drive from Phoenix, but as the center of the TV and film industries, it may as well be another planet. For aspiring actors, the chances of “making it” are roughly equivalent to being struck by lightning—twice.