art rpieces - azwriter.com · that her net sculpture forms are often described as resembling jelly...
TRANSCRIPT
Arizona Art ______ RPIECES
From the ever-photographed LOVE sculpture in Old Town Scottsdale to the unmistakable Joe Sorren mural in Flagstaff's Heritage Square, Arizona is full of wondrous works of art. For residents as well as visitors, take the
tour of these 12 diverse, must-lmow artists, pieces and places, and we hope these lead you to the many more
artworks located through the Valley and beyond.
Story by David M. Brown with Lesley Oliver
Dennis Oppenheim Sculptures: "Garden of Evidence," 2009 In .front '
CENTER FOR CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY University of Arizona
Cosanti Foundation Bells Goldwater Bell Assembly at the Soleri Bridge Cos anti Foundation and Soleri Bridge in Scottsdale
T he Goldwater Bell Assembly at the Soleri Bridge across the historic Arizona Canal just south of Camelback Road represents not only the largest of Paolo Soleri's signature cast-bronze bells but quintessentially reflects his life work in architecture and ecology.
Produced by Soleri at Cosanti, the artist's home studio where he and his staff create bells for homes, businesses and public places, the massive cluster of bells dates from 1969 and was part of his first U nited States retrospective at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC.
The bell once hung in the Scottsdale Goldwater's department store, hence the name. It can now be viewed next to the Soleri Bridge's 22- foot pylons near the south edge of the plaza. T he culmination of 60 years of remarkable bridge designs, the span, containing the artist's largest bell sculpture, is the only built bridge in the world designed by the visionary architect and urban philosopher. 480.948.6145, www.cosanti.com; www.scottsdalepublicart.org.
JANET ECHELMAN SCULPTURE: •HER SECRET IS PATIENCE"
Massively important for the history of photography, The Center for Creative Photography is a research center and the leading archive of modern American photography. Founded in 1975 by photographer Ansel Adams and then-University president John Schaefer, the collection has grown f rom core works of Adams, Wynn Bullock, Harry Callahan. Aaron Siskind and Frederick Sommer to nearly 90,000 fine prints and 4.5 million archival objects. Other 2oth century photographers represented are Edward Weston, Lola Alvarez Bravo, Richard Avedon, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, W. Eugene Smith and Garry Winogrand.
Downtown Civic Space Park at Central Avenue and Taylor Street in Phoenix
Fixed but always in motion, · Her Secret is Patience" is a monumental outdoor sculpture. Its multi-layered net form is suspended from three t01vers secured by cables and caisson footings with deep foundations.
A project of the City of Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture Public Art Program, the award-winning sculpture lifts viewers' eyes upward. Hovering nearly 100 feet above the cityscape, it projects what the artist calls · shadow drawings" onto the ground during the day. Its illumination at night changes colors through the seasons by means of blue and magenta filters. The brightness of the sculpture's lighting also varies, glowing softer some nights, like moon phases.
The Center's history is explored in an exhibition through Nov. 2 7, "Creative Continuum: The History of the Center for Creative Photography." And, new this year, patrons can view original unframed works of photographic art during Photo Fridays, the first Friday of every month, 11 :30 a.m.-3:30p.m .• in the second-floor Print Viewing Room. For this event, new works are offered monthly, and reservations are not required. 520.621.7968, www.creatlvephotography.org.
114 www.AZFoothills.corn
The artist was variously inspired by the endless sky of the desert, the ominous monsoon cloud formations, desert w inds, whirls of dust, lightning, the always-changing colors of the desert, the structure and pace of desert flora, in particular the rare-blooming Cereus, and the fossil record revealing that the site was once an ocean with marine life-significant in that her net sculpture forms are often described as resembling jelly fish. www.phoenlx.gov/arts.
HEARD MUSEUM-COLDWATER KATSINA DOLL COLLECTION 2301 N. Central Ave. in Phoenix
Louise Bourgeois Sculpture: "Art is a Guaranty of Sanity" Inside the Phoenix Convention Center
The signarure artwork in the grand atrium entrance shared by the Phoenix Convention Center and Symphony Hall, the sculpture was commissioned by the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture Public Art Program and its installation completed in August 2006.
A large mirror rises approximately 90 feet from its steel base in the lower level food court. The face is highly polished steel cut into a spider-web pattern that gives viewers constantly changing views of themselves, the atrium and the phrase ''Art is a Guaranty of Sanity," reflected from the mirror yoke. Spiders and webs are recurring motifs in Bourgeois' work as nature's artists and weavers.
The back of the mirror is brushed aluminum, shaped as scalloped ridges.
A French native, Bourgeois was awarded the National Medal of the Arts, the nation's highest honor for visual arts, by President Clinton in 1997. She lived and worked in New York City until her death in May 2010. 602.534.8334, www.phoenix.gov/arts.
JOE SORREN MURAL: "THE VERIDIC GARDENS OF EFFIE LEROUX" 120 N. Leroux St. and can be viewed from Heritage Square along Aspen Street in Flagstaff
A large curved wall in Flagstaff's welcoming Heritage Square serves as the enormous canvas for painter Joe Sorren's colorful park-scene mural, installed in 2000. (It's next to the Diablo Burger.)
Sen. Barry M. Goldwater donated his 437 katsina dolls to the Heard Museum in 1964. The dolls comprising the collection were carved between the late 1880's and the early 1960's. c hanging selections of these katsina dolls are always on display at the Heard.
The lush piece, with its serene aquatic hues and curious surreal inhabitants, took Sorren, who grew up in Scottsdale, more than 14 months to paint. The artwork's title character. Effie Leroux, is not affiliated with the famous Flagstaff explorer Antoine Leroux, but carries a fictitious name and a full set of make-believe life details that are every bit as enthralling and capricious as a trip through Alice's Wonderland.
Teaching tools in the Hopi culture, the dolls represent supernatural beings living in the springs of the San Francisco Peaks overlooking Flagstaff. The katsinam emerge from their mountain home and descend to the Hopi villages around the time of the winter solstice and return home around the summer solstice.
John Kibbey, a Phoenix architect who introduced 7-year-old Goldwater to the Hopi culture in 1916, acquired some of Sen. Goldwater's older dolls. After World War II, he acquired Kibbey's collection and later commissioned the Hopi carver Oswald White Bear Fredericks to make approximately 90 dolls to add to his collection. 602.252.8848, www.heard.org.
Art history enthusiasts will also enjoy discovering references in the piece, like the angel boy seated in a floating toy resembling the horse from Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" or a twist on Jacques-Louis David's "Death of Marat" so that Marat, the dying revolutionary, lies in lake flowers instead of a bathtub.
0ctobe,.20JJ / ARIZONA FOOTHILLS 115
SAN XAVIER DEL SACMURALS AND ALTAR PIECES 1950 W. San Xavier in Tucson
James Turrell Skyspace: "Knight Rise" Scottsdale . \tfuseum rf Contemporary Art
Often considered a sculptor of light, James Turrell uses it to create spectacular visual effects. H is skyspace concept is part science and part art, filtering and shaping light to give it a solid appearance.
Commissioned by Scottsdale P ublic Art and accessible during museum hours, the skyspace at SM oCA (2001) is an elegant cylindrical viewing chamber where viewers will feel as if they are seated in an ocean of air. The unusual visual effect achieved within the skyspace-celestial vaultingis quite difficult, if not impossible, to describe.
Some report that spending several minutes in the space becomes a meditative activity. O thers sense great emotional tranquility. At sunrise and sunset, the illusion is most dramatic: T he sky appears to descend upon the viewer almost as if it were tangible.
Under construction near Flagstaff, Turrell's largest project, Roden Crater, is a monumental environmental work utilizing an extinct volcano as his iconic viewing chamber. 480.874.4666, www.scottsdalepublicart.org.
RIORDAN MANSION STATE HISTORIC PARK 409 W. Riordan Rd. in Flagstaff
In 1783, Franciscan missionary Fr. Juan Bautista Velderrain began construction on the landmark building in what was then New Spain. He hired architect Ignacio Gaona and a workforce of local O'odham people to create the present church, constructed of low-fire clay brick and stone and lime mortar. Its masonry vaults make it unique among Spanish Colonial buildings within US borders.
An Arts and Crafts masterpiece from the state's Territorial period, the 13,000-sq.-ft. Riordan Mansion also houses one of the largest collections of furniture inspired by Gustav Stickley, the father of the American Arts and Crafts. Five pieces were designed for Stickleys Craftsman Workshops by Harvey Ellis, American architect, painter and furniture designer. In addition, the walls feature photographs of Native Americans by John K. Hillers, who participated in John Wesley Powell's second Colorado River expedition.
The murals, altar pieces and sculptures were probably commissioned by Fr. Velderrain's successor and most likely created by artists from Queretero in what is now Mexico. The sculpture was created in guild workshops and carried by donkey to the mission. Craftsmen created gessoed clothing once the sculpture was in place.
From 1992 to 1997, an international team of conservators cleaned, removed over-painting and repaired the interior. To promote this ongoing conservation of Mission San Xavier, a group of community leaders. formed Patronato San xavier in 1978. 520.294.2624, www.sanxavlermlsslon.org, www.patronatosanxav1er.or9.
116 www.AZFoothills.com
Entered on the National Register of Historic Places, the 40-room, six-bathroom mansion was built in 1904 for lumber magnates Timothy and Michael Riordan and their wives, sisters Caroline and Elizabeth Metz.
Charles Whittlesey, architect of the El Tovar Hotel at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, designed the mansion, which comprises two 6,000-sq.-ft. w ings, one each for the brother/sister couples and a central meeting space, where they entertained friends and public figures. 928.779.4395, www.azstateparks.com.
Cattle Track Art Compound 6105 N. Cattle Track Rd. in Scottsdale
A community of studios, galleries and homes (some original adobe), the one-block area five miles from Downtown Scottsdale is home to
musicians, architects, writers, dancers, divers, acrobats, printers, even
a blacksmith. Adjacent to the Arizona Canal, the area was annexed
by the city of Scottsdale in the 1960's.
In the 1930's, George Ellis named it because pioneers used the trail
to herd sheep and cattle up and down to the high country. His
daughter, Janie, a former Balanchine-trained dancer, lives here.
Artists who have lived, worked and shown here include Philip
Curtis, whose dreamlike work is well represented in the Phoenix
Art Museum; Fritz Scholder, known for his Native American art;
and Disney cartoonist Don Barkley. Abstract expressionist Louise Nevelson, whose "Windows to the West" sculpture is in Scottsdale's
Civic Center Park, stayed for a short time at Cattle Track. In
addition, Dick Griffith, a rodeo trick rider, also practiced here, and
the car Mario Andretti raced to victory in the 1969 Indianapolis 500 was built here. 480.607.3658.
In Brief Lucky for local enthusiasts, the notable art in Arizona cannot be contained on just six magazine pages. A few more works and sites to check out ...
''Arizona Fails" public art (City of Scottsdale with SRP) at 56th St. Indian School Rd. on the Arizona Canal by artist Mags Harries; Ed Mell's horse sculpture in 0 ld Town Scottsdale; the Late Gothic Revival stained glass murals by Emil Frei in St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Bisbee; Luis Jimenez sculptures at the ASU Art Museum and the Tucson Museum of Art; and, at National Historic Landmark, Taliesin West, in Scottsdale, the Native American and Asian decorative pieces from Frank Lloyd Wright's personal art collections.
LOVE SCULPTURE BY ROBERT INDIANA Scottsdale Civic Center Mall Park between the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts and the Civic Center library
The colorfu l, poly-chrome LOVE sculpture by Robert Indiana is one of the most celebrated works in the Pop Art movement and one of the Valley's popular photo op sites. Conceived when the US was consumed by the Vietnam War and a revaluation of values, LOVE became a symbol for peace.
The iconography first appeared in a series of poems written in 1958; Indiana stacked the letters " LO" and "VE" on top of one another. The idea for the sculptural piece originated from a visit to a Christian Science church in Indianapolis, where the artist was taken by a banner that read "GOD is LOVE." He then created a painting reversing this as "LOVE is GOD.·
A number of colored editions exist. Scottsdale Public Art purchased the first red and blue sculpture in a series of five in 2002. Others include blue and green, and red, white and blue. www.scottsdalepubllcartorg.
• Octobe,-2011 1 ARIZONA FOOTHILLS 117