Author Archive: Craig Baker

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Fluxx’s Final Funding Push

May 28, 2014 |
Fluxx Productions has hosted a bevy of art, music and cultural events at its 414 E. 9th St. locale. photo: Chris Summitt/courtesy Fluxx Productions

Fluxx Productions has hosted a bevy of art, music and cultural events
at its 414 E. 9th St. locale. photo: Chris Summitt/courtesy Fluxx Productions

On a Thursday morning in early May at nonprofit gallery and performing arts space Fluxx Productions, the main performance area was undergoing a sort of shift change. The chairs for the evening’s improv comedy show had only been set up on one half of the room when I found Executive Director and Founder Dante Celeiro by himself amidst the echo of hardwood floors and high ceilings. He and I each pulled a chair from a stack and parked across from each other in the open area. We were both wearing white v-neck T-shirts, jeans, and two-day-old beards. He was sporting a black and white trucker hat with the word “QUEER” printed on it in red.

The space at 414 E. 9th St., just east of 4th Avenue, is impeccably clean and brightly lit. A statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe overlooks everyone who enters from a nook just above the front door. The nook glows slightly red. The adjacent room features hardwood flooring and all of the trimmings of a flourishing theater company: a red-curtained stage in front; a cumbersome tech booth at the back complete with a mixing board of sorts (the kind with buttons that slide rather than push); a spotlight. A tiny altar has been erected behind the booth of colored bits of paper, hand-drawn pictures, words of inspiration in blue and yellow, the biggest of which reads HOPE in bold hand-lettering. Celeiro says that he and his volunteers have done all of the renovating—the stage construction, the flooring, the painting, even the construction of the tech booth—themselves, without the help of contractors. He is committed to this place and had even hoped to one day buy the building. Currently, it is a dream deferred.

When Celeiro demonstrates the lighting capabilities for me after our hour-long conversation, his enthusiasm about what Fluxx has to offer is clear. He explains that when he moved to Tucson from New York 14 years ago, he was in the middle of his transition toward having the male body that matched the gender-wiring in his brain, and that it was the gender-bending performance group Boys R Us—really still in its infancy at that time—that made him feel at home here.

“They had this energy,” says Celeiro, “and I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I knew I wanted to be a part of it.”

Fluxx Productions' Executive Director Dante Celeiro. photo: Craig Baker

Fluxx Productions’ Executive Director Dante Celeiro.
photo: Craig Baker

He began performing with the group early on and eventually became their manager. Celeiro began building an extensive collection of theater equipment just to make sure that the troupe had ready-to-go what some venues didn’t keep in their own arsenals. And thus, after gaining some local attention for hosting the 2009 International Drag King Exposition Downtown, Fluxx Productions’ name and logo began appearing on the literature for Boys R Us shows. Another year later, Celeiro signed the lease to the current space on 9th Street.

He has operated the goings-on of the only lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer (LGBTQ) focused art space and venue in the Southwest ever since and says the announcement of Fluxx’s “imminent closure” at the end of June was intensely emotional for him.

“When I started writing everything down,” says Celeiro of the 900-word farewell/plea for help that appeared on the venue’s website and in press releases at the end of April, “what it is we do, the stuff we’ve done, and so much more we want to do—I had a meltdown.”

It is understandable. There is a lot more at stake here for the gallery/performance space owner than the loss of this art space if the organization can’t meet the roughly $50,000 goal by the end of June. Celeiro is also living in a loft at the rear of the building. Space, he says, that he eventually intended to utilize for the expansion of the stage and seating area.

It was about six months ago when agents from the Arizona Department of Liquor dropped by a potluck-style performance event at Fluxx to inform the nonprofit that their model of pouring beer and wine for 21-and-over patrons in exchange for donations was against the law. Celeiro maintains not only that the idea to serve alcohol in exchange for donations is still common practice among nonprofits and arts groups without liquor licenses, but goes on to say that his organization was “targeted.” Celeiro says that another business owner had filed a complaint against Fluxx specifically and so they were forced to take the booze out of the business plan.

The goal was to get a liquor license and eventually restore their regular fiscal model, but that, it turned out, was going to take a lot more than Fluxx had initially thought. To do so would require funds to meet the almost $5,000 monthly rent and expenses while the license was in review, $10,000 to renovate a bathroom to make it Americans With Disabilities Act compliant, and finally, the basic cost of getting the license, which was another roughly $10,000—not to mention back-paying bills that had apparently already begun piling up. And thus, the total figure needed to save the LGBTQ art hub now seems insurmountable without some sort of windfall.

Celeiro says that nonprofit dollars in the form of grants and even member funds have been on the decline, explaining that the community buzz about what they were doing at Fluxx seemed to have worn off after the first few years of operation. Add to that the loss of grants and Celeiro has been barely making it on a month-to-month basis for some time.

“Everybody’s fighting for the same funds,” he says of the nonprofit-operating game, “and the arts (budget) is the first thing to get slashed.” Once they were forced to stop selling alcohol, Celeiro says that keeping people’s—and even performers’—attention became an impossibility. Celeiro says that a number of his regular performers, from dance troupes to DJs, have stopped signing up to play at the gallery in favor of the crowds they can find already at the bars. “It all comes down to alcohol,” he says, frustrated.

Still, Celeiro and Fluxx have promised to honor their responsibilities through the end of June; events like the Queer Prom, the 3rd Annual LGBT Film Festival “Out in the Desert,” as well as their regular Tucson Improv Movement, Boys R Us, and Odyssey Storytelling engagements. Celeiro insists that he’d be happy to keep on doing what he’s doing much longer, too, should a huge chunk of money fall into their lap. But in the meanwhile, he has sold off most of his belongings and is in the beginning stages of moving his loft into boxes, though he was admittedly unwilling—in mid-May—to even think about what will happen if Fluxx is forced to vacate its current location.

For the time being, it’s business as usual, plus an online campaign and a series of fundraisers, even though the outlook from all objective angles is bleak. Either way, it’s passion we’re talking about, and that is a terrible thing for a community to lose.

For more information on Fluxx, events at the space in the month of June, or its fundraising campaign, visit FluxxProductions.com, check out its Facebook page, call 882-0242 or visit 414 E. 9th St.

Upcoming fundraisers include: A Fluxx Fundraiser at La Cocina Restaurant, 201 N. Court Ave., on Tuesday, June 3, from 5 p.m.-10 p.m.; Save Fluxx & Rainbow Defense Fund “Big Queer Extravaganza” on Saturday, June 7 at Fluxx, starting at 9 p.m., $5-$10 donation; Moist Heat II: A Drag Cabaret Fundraiser for Fluxx on Friday, June 13 at Fluxx, $10-$15; “The Boob Tube Saves Fluxx” on Saturday, June 21 at 9 p.m., $5-$10 at Fluxx.

Fluxx's sign outside of its doors on 9th Street. photo: Craig Baker

Fluxx’s sign outside of its doors on 9th Street.
photo: Craig Baker

Tucson: The Heart of American Mariachi Music

April 29, 2014 |
The Tucson International Mariachi Conference features youth showcases on May 1. photo: Kevin Van Rensselaer

The Tucson International Mariachi Conference features a variety of traditions.
photo: Kevin Van Rensselaer

It’s a tradition veiled in mystery. We know it came from Mexico. We know that it started when the Spanish introduced stringed instruments to the indigenous people of Mexico, and we know that around the turn of the 20th century, it was a music that employed stringed instruments alone. The trumpet—largely considered a staple in any mariachi group—didn’t find its place in mariachi music until the 1930s. But beyond that, it gets a little cloudy.

Ask any mariachi musician to define the music in a sentence or two and you will likely be met with silence. There is the Son Jaliscience school, the musical form from Guadalajara, Mexico from which modern mariachi music arose, the Bolero style, which incorporates Afro-Cuban and Caribbean rhythms, and the Ranchera style, which Pueblo High School’s Mariachi Director John Contreras describes as “pretty much like the Mexican version of country western music.” And then there are more styles, as well. Many more. Too many to list here, in fact.

Contreras lives and breathes mariachi. Not only is he the director of Mariachi Aztlán de Pueblo High School, he also plays in a group on the weekends and serves on the board of directors for the Tucson International Mariachi Conference, which is largely considered the foremost conference for the genre in the world. Appropriately, he also acts as the Workshop Coordinator for the conference, taking the reins on the educational side of the event he has attended since he was just nine years old.

Though Contreras explains he was not there for the first Tucson conference in 1983, he showed up within the first few years, guitar in hand, to learn from the best in the business as Mariachi Vargas and Tucson’s own Mariachi Cobre conducted workshops on the traditional form. Mariachi Vargas, Contreras says, is now widely regarded as the foremost mariachi group in the world, and Mariachi Cobre went on to become the house mariachi band at Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida, where they have been for more than thirty years. Contreras says that he didn’t realize how lucky he was to have such quality musicians as teachers year after year.

“It’s like having a little league team and saying, ‘OK, we’re gonna have the Yankees and the Red Sox come and teach you guys how to play ball,’” says Contreras. And that tradition continues today, though with a rotating lineup of professional mariachis.

Dance and music converge at the Tucson International Mariachi Conference. photo: Kevin Van Rensselaer

Dance and music converge at the Tucson International Mariachi Conference.
photo: Kevin Van Rensselaer

The Tucson International Mariachi Conference, now in its 32nd year, is primarily an educational endeavor, offering workshops from beginning to master levels to approximately 550 mariachi and about 150 folklórico (traditional Mexican dancing) students annually from across the U.S. and Mexico, but the public is also invited to take part in the most festive of all the festivities.

The student groups attending the conference will perform in the showcase concert at 6 p.m. on Thursday, May 1, where the groups are able to raise a little bit of money for themselves through ticket sales. The following night—Friday, May 2 at 7 p.m.—is the big show, known as the Espectacular Concert, which will feature the world-renown talents of Mariachi Internacional Guadalajara and the two-time Grammy-winning all-female group known as the Mariachi Divas de Cindy Shea. Saturday, May 3 offers a free mariachi mass at 10 a.m. followed by the pool-party-style Festival Garibaldi, from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.

For the Mariachi Divas, this marks the second trip to perform at the Tucson conference, and this time Shea promises to “bring the energy” along with a pair of local Tucson violinists, Alissa Gonzales and Catherine Baeza. An Irish-Italian American from California, Shea does not look like your typical mariachi. But having trained and performed in a number of styles including orchestra, jazz, and ska, she says there’s a special place for Mariachi amongst other mundial (or world) genres. Shea says that the prestige of the Tucson conference has a very strong global appeal to all mariachis, and that it gives serious credibility to the local scene.

With regard to the music itself, Shea says that there is a “beautiful tradition” and “elegance” in the mariachi style unequaled in other genres. “You really have an attentive audience when it’s a mariachi show. You can get people of all ages to laugh, dance and cry within the same hour,” says Shea. “That’s pretty affective music.”

The Tucson Mariachi Conference’s public performances take place at Casino Del Sol Resort, 5655 W. Valencia Rd., May 1-May 3. More information, as well as concert and Festival Garibaldi tickets, can be obtained at TucsonMariachi.org.

The Tucson International Mariachi Conference hosts the Espectacular Concert on Friday, May 2. photo courtesy of La Frontera/Tucson Mariachi Conference/Kevin Van Rensselaer

The Tucson International Mariachi Conference hosts the Espectacular Concert on Friday, May 2.
photo courtesy of La Frontera/Tucson Mariachi Conference/Kevin Van Rensselaer

April’s Bicycle Hullabaloos

April 3, 2014 |
Cyclists of all ages and abilities participate in Cyclovia. photo: Kathleen Dreier/Esens Photography

Cyclists of all ages and abilities participate in Cyclovia.
photo: Kathleen Dreier/Esens Photography

Paolo Soleri, the architectural mastermind often credited as the grandfather of sustainability, saw the city as earth’s newest organism. More accurately, he called the city a “hyperorganism,” meaning that it exhibits traits of a living thing (consuming materials, putting out waste, supporting the lives of smaller organisms), but that it lacks the self-governing mechanisms (like a brain) that are available to truly organic things. To Soleri this meant one of two things for cities in general—either a transition to hyper-organization, or degradation into chaos. And by choosing to become so reliant on the automobile to get around our cities, Soleri would say we have been choosing chaos for nearly a century.

“What has been happening in the last few generations,” Soleri said in a 2012 talk to students at his famous experimental city, Arcosanti, Arizona, “is that we are no longer persons, but we are car persons. Because the car has become such a familiar part of the family, an indispensable presence in our lives, we are not separable from the car itself… we have accepted the motorized hermitage of a person in a car.”

Enter the Living Streets Alliance (LSA). According to Kylie Walzak, event coordinator for Cyclovia Tucson (a project of LSA’s Bike Fest), LSA is “Tucson’s non-profit organization working toward a more sustainable city and safer, more people-oriented street design.”

This April marks the fifteenth year of Tucson’s annual Bike Fest, which started in 1991 as “Bike to Work Week,” but has evolved over time into the month-long celebration of all things pedal-powered that it is today.

“The festival is not about the bicycle as much as it is about imagining what our streets could look like if we allowed equal access to them,” says Walzak. “Right now they’re very dominated by one type of transportation—the personal vehicle… Our streets are public spaces but they’re not publicly accessible to everybody.” Walzak explains that taking cars off of the road and opening the streets up to safe bicycle and pedestrian traffic “humanizes (a) landscape that’s often dominated by the loud noise and fast pace of cars.”

And that’s just what the organization is doing.

Cyclists of all ages and abilities participate in Cyclovia. photo: Kathleen Dreier/Esens Photography

Cyclists of all ages and abilities participate in Cyclovia.
photo: Kathleen Dreier/Esens Photography

Twice a year, LSA takes over a loop of pavement in either Downtown or midtown Tucson for the bi-annual Cyclovia event, which makes the vision of public streets imagined by the likes of Soleri and Walzak a reality, at least in microcosm. Modeled after similar events that have become extremely popular in places like Bogotá, Columbia (Cyclovia comes from the Spanish ciclovia, or “cycle street”), this spring’s affair will link the neighborhoods of Downtown and South Tucson with a roughly 10-mile corridor of car-free roads.

Perhaps the most exciting part of Cyclovia 2014 is the fact that two independent music festivals are flanking the north and south ends of the loop along South Sixth and South Fourth Avenues. To the north, Armory Park hosts the first ever Tucson Hullabaloo—a Flagstaff transplant that has been voted Best Annual Event by Flagstaff Live! (a weekly alternative magazine) four-years running, and to the south, the City of South Tucson stages a mini-revival of their Norteño Music Festival at Tucson Greyhound Park with Feria De Sur Tucson.

Though Cyclovia is undeniably the pinnacle of Bike Fest, events will be held throughout the month of April in observance of the festival. Walzak says, for instance, that the folks behind the local Tuesday Night Bike Rides are putting on a bike-in movie series in secret locations throughout the city only accessible to non-motorized modes of transportation, and the two-mile commuter challenge will run citywide the entire month long.

Ann Chanecka, bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the City of Tucson, says that an estimated 43 percent of all trips (yes, that means ALL trips) are less than two miles long, and that a whopping 85 percent of those trips are still made by car—a fact she attributes largely to a lack of bicycle accessibility in the city. She says that, in addition to the $5.5 million put into bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure last year, the City of Tucson is poised to invest another $5 million this year, including the installation this summer of Tucson’s first physically protected bike lane, along St. Mary’s Road between I-10 and Main Street. By making bike lanes safer and getting more of its citizens on bicycles, the goal is to take Tucson’s community rating from the Legion of American Bicyclists from Gold to Platinum—a designation shared by only four cities nationwide.

photo: Kathleen Dreier/Esens Photography

photo: Kathleen Dreier/Esens Photography

Even Mayor Jonathan Rothschild is weighing in on the importance of bicycles to our community—he’s agreed to join in on the two-mile commuter challenge himself, for one. He says that, not only are alternative modes of transportation like bicycling and walking great for the environment, making bike safety and accessibility a priority in Tucson will help supplement the local economy. In addition to their obvious appeal to cycle-loving tourists and as an alternative source of transportation, Mayor Rothschild says that tech companies are looking to associate their businesses with bike friendly towns. “We have found, and studies have shown, that the folks that are going to be the economic drivers of the next generation… love bicycling and want to be in communities where there is a strong bike ethic,” says the Mayor.

Mayor Rothschild is also quick to talk about the personal benefits of stepping away from your car once-in-a-while: on a bike, he says, “you really get to know your city better… life moves just a little slower, although not much slower, but slow enough to where you notice [things in] your neighborhood” you might otherwise have missed.

Perhaps that’s why bikes seem to be making such a strong resurgence as a primary mode of getting from A to B—says Walzak, “it’s fair to say that the bicycle has reached mythical proportions in terms of marketing and cool cachet.”

If only that were true when I was in high school.

Bike Fest is ongoing throughout the month of April. More info at BikeFestTucson.com. Cyclovia takes place on April 6 from 10am-3pm, CycloviaTucson.org. Feria De Sur Tucson runs concurrently with Cyclovia and is free to attend, see FeriaDeSurTucson.com. Tucson Hullabaloo, TucsonHulla.com, runs April 5-6 from 10am-9pm on Saturday, 10am-8pm on Sunday. Tickets are $5 or free to the first 500 people with two cans of food.

Hilarious Homegrown Theater

April 3, 2014 |
The cast of "Kill Grandpa" rehearing in March. Pictured, left to right, is Tony Ecstat, Nell Summers, Maria Fletcher, with Callie Hutchison on the couch. photo: Craig Baker

The cast of “Kill Grandpa” rehearing in March. Pictured, left to right, is Tony Ecstat, Nell Summers, Maria Fletcher, with Callie Hutchison on the couch.
photo: Craig Baker

Local playwright Peré Summers never aspired to write humor. In fact, until she retired two years ago, Summers spent her previous life as an occupational therapist—a job she once described as “being in a new play every forty-five minutes.” In her capacity as a medical professional she says she published a handful of papers in journals and presented at international conferences, but writing plays—especially comedic plays—had never crossed her mind. “I’m surprised that I have a sense of humor,” says Summers with an enthusiastic smile, “my mother never thought I did.”

Summers’ mother, who she describes as “the Wicked Witch of the West,” found her way into her daughter’s first play (titled A Pain in the Aunt) as the lead character in a production that ran for six weeks at the Comedy Playhouse last year. She says the reception was good enough that they asked her back for round two, and a number of Playhouse regulars have even been asking about when another play by Summers might surface. Well, the wait is over.

Her most recent effort—a comedy of familial errors in two acts titled Let’s Kill Grandpa—is at times laugh-out-loud funny. In it, the audience is welcomed into the home of the loveable-yet-dysfunctional Daggot family; Grandpa died over a year ago and the Daggots failed to notify the social security office, or anyone else for that matter. Now, with the family fortune missing and their secret under threat of exposure, the Daggots decide to “kill” Grandpa once-and-for-all to collect on his life insurance policy. The resulting ride of ridiculousness is nothing short of delightful.

Both acts are set in just one room of the house, with a view of the front stoop and entryway providing the opportunity for some hilariously ironic moments. The play is written specifically for the Comedy Playhouse and its team, where Summers’ daughter Nell both acts and directs. Because Summers is so familiar with the small theater’s available resources, the constraints that might limit other productions actually benefit Summers’ work. She writes her roles to the players’ strengths, wittily incorporates available props and costumes, and says she genuinely has fun doing it. And it’s a good thing since no one at the Comedy Playhouse sees any payment for their work—these guys are all there literally for the love of the art form.

If you weren’t searching for the Comedy Playhouse at First Avenue and Prince Road you’d likely drive right by without seeing it. The building is set back from the road about two-hundred yards in a single-story adobe complex that looks as if it were built in the late 1970s and left to manage itself. The theater is a bit of a hole-in-the-wall—one of those places that always seems to be occupied by either a military recruitment office or a karate school. But in this thirty-by-sixty foot space humbly located behind a coin-operated laundry and a tattoo parlor, a handful of local drama buffs are leaving it all on stage more than 150 times per year.

Bruce Bieszki, owner and operator of the Playhouse, got the troupe together in its current space after the Top Hat Theater closed down five years ago. Bieszki says he’s not expecting any “big life epiphanies” to take place in his thirty-two seat arena since he sticks pretty much exclusively to mystery and comedy shows. “My goal is to make you walk out the door feeling better than when you walked in,” says Bieszki, “what I’m offering is two pleasant hours.” And that’s just what patrons of the Playhouse can expect to get.

The Comedy Playhouse is located at 3620 N. First Ave. Performances of “Let’s Kill Grandpa” run this month on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. through May 4. Tickets are $18 general admission, $16 for students and seniors. For more information or to make reservations, call (520) 260-6442 or visit TheComedyPlayhouse.com.

Tucson’s Local Food Rave

April 3, 2014 |

These days, the world’s rapidly growing population has got a lot of people thinking about resources. Concern about where the food and water will come from to meet our ever-increasing demand has swept across America, and especially Arid-zona, like a sandstorm, and as a result, more and more Arizonans are looking to sustainable local sources for their comestibles.

Maynard James Keenan, owner of Merkin Vineyards and Caduceus Cellars photo courtesy Speak Easy PR

Maynard James Keenan, owner of Merkin Vineyards and Caduceus Cellars
photo courtesy Speak Easy PR

Maynard James Keenan, owner of Merkin Vineyards and Caduceus Cellars, moved to northern Arizona near Jerome in the mid-1990s. He says the small-town environment “kind of set better” than the fast-paced lifestyle of his rock star peers in L.A. and New York, and so he snatched up a plot of land and settled in more-or-less off the grid. After just a few years on the property, Keenan realized that the environment was “not unlike” a lot of areas in the Mediterranean, and so he planted his first crop of grapes. He says of his transition from artist to vintner, “My practical side and my artistic side got together (when) I saw the communities around Europe that are based around vineyards and wine, and it just seemed like they were a tighter knit community—there seemed to be a lot more going on (in those communities) that was kind of ‘weatherproof’.”

As the front man for bands like Tool, A Perfect Circle, and Puscifer, it is no wonder that Keenan rapidly became the best known face among Arizona’s agriculturalists. But, rocker status aside, Keenan’s take on food sourcing is common sense enough. “Just putting stuff in your body to fill a hole is not acceptable behavior,” he says. “The sooner you can wrap your head around that, great. You know, treat yourself to some snacks now and then—who doesn’t?—but, come on; pay attention to what you’re putting in yourself.” As well as the Arizona wine market, Keenan also has his hands in local food as owner of an organic produce market in  Cornville, Arizona.

Here in Southern Arizona, one organization responsible for bringing local growers and vendors together at open-air markets around town is Heirloom Farmers Markets. Most notably, their farmers’ markets at St. Philip’s Plaza sees about 3,000 shoppers every weekend. When Heirloom’s owner Manish Shah found out that St. Philip’s was planning an art fair for the weekend of April 5, he looked at the market’s temporary displacement as an opportunity. “The idea was to throw a big food rave,” says Shah. “It was something that I had been contemplating for a long time.”

So, Heirloom and company is packing everything up for a one day celebration at Rillito Downs called the Viva La Local Food Festival. The festival, says Shah, will feature the biggest farmers’ market in Southern Arizona, with more than eighty independent vendors as well as thirty-plus local restaurants serving up some local delicacies alongside a number of Southern Arizona wineries and breweries. But if it all sounds too lavish for your blood, not to worry. “We’re trying to really keep (Viva) accessible to everybody,” says Shah.

Delectable offerings await at the Viva La Local Food Festival. photo: Michael Moriarty

Delectable offerings await at the Viva La Local Food Festival.
photo: Michael Moriarty

Instead of the hundred-plus-dollar entrance fees charged just to get into similar all-inclusive food events, Shah is offering free admission to his “pay-to-play” festival, where every vendor, vintner, and brewmaster on site has been asked to serve plates at a cost of five dollars or less. How vendors choose to use the real estate on those plates is up to them, Shah says.

In addition to a spectacular array of local food and drink, Viva La Local Food Fest will also be showcasing some of Tucson’s best local music with acts like Sergio Mendoza y La Orkestra, Carlos Arzate, and Naim Amor providing the entertainment.

Shah sums up the party with glittering eyes that telegraph his unbridled excitement: “Amazing food, beer, the farmers’ market, the party… it’s gonna be insane—I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like it!”

Viva La Local Food Festival is Sunday, April 6 at Rillito Downs, 4502 N. 1st Ave., from 9am-5pm. Parking is free until 10:30am and $5 per vehicle after that. Find more info at VivaLaLocalFoodFest.com.

Tiny Buildings, Enormous Impact: Dirk Arnold’s Endangered Architecture

March 22, 2014 |

Dirk_ArnoldWhen local artist Dirk Arnold went to architecture school in the mid-1980s, he says it was because he wanted to build models. “But it turns out building models was the thing you did at the last minute in a panic in architecture school,” he says, and so he put models aside after graduation for a career in graphic design. When he picked them back up decades later, the soft-spoken Arnold quickly became one of Tucson’s strongest voices for historical preservation.

He arrived in the Sonoran Desert in 1996 by way of Ann Arbor, Mich., though given Arnold’s dedication to (and obvious love for) Tucson’s community treasures, you’d think he’d been here all his life. Like many local transplants it was the climate that ultimately roped him in, but his love for the mid-century modern buildings here had a hand in his decision to relocate to this pueblo in particular, he says. When he was laid off from his job with a local software company in 2002, Arnold decided it was time to completely reevaluate his day-to-day, and so once again, he started building.

Arnold built his first piece in the Endangered Architecture (EA) series in 2003: a miniature of the Tucson Warehouse and Transfer Building on Sixth Street east of Stone Avenue. He took a series of photographs of the building, stitched them together on Photoshop, and set to work recreating the building’s façade piece-by-piece out of matte board, balsa wood, and glue.

“The truck on the (Tucson Warehouse and Transfer) sign blew off during that process,” explains Arnold, “and that got me thinking about all of the endangered signs around town.” From there came the idea to recreate Tucson’s classic neon signs as refrigerator magnets and EA was officially in business.

Arnold says each shadowbox model in the EA series can take anywhere between a few weeks and several months to complete by hand and it’s easy to see why; his recreation of the Berkshire Shopping Complex alone measures roughly seven feet in length.

He calls them “elevation views popped out into three dimensions,” harking his finished products back to artistic presentation posters of old that were “meticulously rendered and painted” by the architects themselves before the industry transitioned to digital. Arnold’s minimalist approach to his miniatures is attributable to his personal sense of architectural puritanism: “No cars, no people, no plants,” he says with a distinct air of humility, “I left all of that off.”

Demion Clinco, Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation president, met Arnold in 2008 at the First Annual Miracle Mile Open House and Tour. Clinco and Arnold later served together on the committee responsible for amending Tucson’s sign code to incentivize the preservation of signs like those depicted on Arnold’s magnets. The interest in local neon created by the project, says Arnold, led to his first major public art installation—the towering “Gateway Saguaro” which illuminates the intersection of Oracle Road and Drachman Street.

Clinco, recently appointed to the state House to fill the seat vacated by Andrea Dalessandro, says that Arnold’s approach to local preservation was more artistic than policy-driven; a welcome and important angle with respect to the efforts of the Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation. “Using his remarkable artistic aesthetic and sensibility, (Arnold) is able to shine a light on our city’s historic resources in a way that no one else does,” says Clinco.

And you thought we were just talking about magnets and miniatures.

Though Arnold insists that his art is “not overtly political,” it is hard to deny the preservationist undertone of a moniker like “Endangered Architecture.” Still, the threats to Arnold’s beloved mid-century modern structures are real. In fact, two of the buildings represented in his current show at the Tucson International Airport Gallery—namely, the 1968 Levy’s Department Store at El Con Mall and the Berkshire Village Shopping Center formerly at Broadway Boulevard and Camino Seco—“have been demolished for Walmarts just in the last couple of years,” Arnold says. The push to widen Broadway Boulevard, he says, could bring down many more.

Ultimately, through his own contribution toward preserving our local architectural heritage, Dirk Arnold is providing our community with a number of classics all his own. And though it is perhaps an understatement, most Tucsonans would probably agree with Representative Clinco when he says of Tucson’s Master of Miniature, “We’re really lucky to have him.”

Lucky we are, indeed.

Dirk Arnold’s Endangered Architecture miniatures are on display in the Tucson International Airport Gallery (on the east end of the baggage claim area, 7250 S. Tucson Blvd.) through the end of March. The closing reception is on Saturday, March 22, 4 p.m.-7 p.m. Arnold’s magnets can be purchased on his Etsy store, or at EndangeredArchitecture.com.
Dirk_Arnold_2

Literary Giants Flock to Tucson for Festival of Books

March 5, 2014 |
Author Luis Alberto Urrea is the emcee for the Author’s Table Banquet during the Tucson Festival of Books.

Author Luis Alberto Urrea is the emcee for the Author’s Table Banquet during the Tucson Festival of Books.

Award-winning author Luis Alberto Urrea describes his move to Tucson in the summer of 1995 as “a gesture of faith…like stepping off a cliff.” On advice garnered from famed southwest writer Charles Bowden over a beer at a bar somewhere on Speedway Boulevard, Urrea packed his life in Boulder, Colo. into his jeep and hit the pavement, heading south.

When he got to Arizona, Urrea was already a decade into his research on a distant relative of his named Teresita. An Indian medicine woman from pre-revolutionary Mexico, she came to be known as the Saint of Cabora, though she was never officially canonized. And although his goals here in town were purely academic, Urrea himself was surprised by where he ended up along his journey to bring Teresita’s story to life.

“When I moved to Tucson, that started an avalanche,” says Urrea. “I thought I was going to spend all my time at the Historical Society in the archives, and I spent my time wandering around the desert talking to cactus with shaman.” He laughs. Through a fortuitous twist of fate, Urrea connected with another distant relative while he was here—a woman named Esperanza who herself was the granddaughter of a Mayo medicine woman. The culmination of Urrea’s research ultimately became the best-selling novel, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, and Urrea’s story, like Teresita’s before him, was indelibly tied to Southern Arizona.

Though he has since moved on from our sleepy town at the foot of a black mountain (presently, he teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago), Urrea says that he makes it a point to return every spring for the Tucson Festival of Books, now in its sixth year. Even when other Latin writers were boycotting the Copper State for that egregious civil rights travesty known as SB 1070, Urrea remained loyal to his one-time hometown.

“I invested lots of blood, sweat, and tears there,” he explains, “and Tucson has always been super good to me.” This time, his primary role at the festival is as emcee for the Author’s Table Banquet the night before things gear up on the UA campus, though Urrea says he will be making other festival appearances as well.

Thousands of people attended the Tucson Festival of Books. photo by James S. Wood/www.jswoodphoto.com

Thousands of people attended the Tucson Festival of Books.
photo by James S. Wood/jswoodphoto.com

The Tucson Festival of Books—billed as “the fourth largest event of its kind”—hosts more than 450 writers, illustrators, entertainers, and educators as well as some 120,000-plus visitors each year through the support of roughly 2000 volunteers and one part-time employee (Executive Director Marcy Euler), according to Festival Marketing Committee Co-Chair Tamara McKinney. McKinney is also Program Director for the youth-focused literacy program Reading Seed. She says planning for the annual Festival is a year-round job. “Really,” says McKinney, “we’ve already started planning for the 2015 Festival…dates are confirmed and we have feelers out already (for talent).”

Featured presenters this year include Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo (who will be honored with the Founders Award at the opening-night banquet), mystery master Scott Turow, and a return visit by last year’s Founders Award Recipient, R.L. Stein.

“If you’re a book lover,” says McKinney, “there’s no reason for you not to go.” She points out that a number of hands-on activities and demonstrations will be hosted in Science City and the Children’s Area, as well as live cooking presentations, and even a performance by a small traveling circus, ensuring that the festival has literally something for everyone.

And the impact of the festival doesn’t stop with the two-day event: the budget surplus each year is divvied out to local literacy organizations like Reading Seed. This year, the total amount of money brought in by the Festival of Books for local charities over the course of its six-year existence is likely to top $1 million. What’s a better word than incredible? Extraordinary? Remarkable? Stupendous? Look it up in a thesaurus and pick your favorite—the Tucson Festival of Books is that.

The Tucson Festival of Books takes over the mall of the University of Arizona Campus March 15-16 from 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Admission and parking are free, but space for some events may be limited. Get more information on the Festival of Books, including a featured author list and event schedule, online at TucsonFestivalOfBooks.org. Be on the lookout for the ten-year-anniversary release of Luis Alberto Urrea’s non-fiction classic, “Devil’s Highway” out soon from Little, Brown.

Gardeners Square off at “Growdown”

March 4, 2014 |

On your mark. Get set. Grow!

An outdoor space created at Growdown 2013. photo courtesy Tucson Botanical Gardens

An outdoor space created at Growdown 2013.
photo courtesy Tucson Botanical Gardens

It’s time for the Tucson Botanical Gardens’ (TBG) second annual Growdown!, and this year’s gardening gurus are leaving nothing to chance. Three local landscape design firms will put their trowels to the test between March 18 and 22 in a battle to create the best small garden space in Tucson. Each of the three finalists—chosen by a committee from a pool of about ten design proposals—will be given $1500 in “seed money” and a fifteen-by-twenty-foot plot of dirt on which to craft a backyard sanctuary fit for desert royalty.

The winner will be announced on Saturday, March 22 at a ceremony and reception following a day of demonstrations by the competing designers. Judges will score the displays based on five criteria: aesthetic appeal, connection to Tucson, appeal to multiple senses, the use of space and practicality. The winner gets a handsome trophy as well as priority attention in the June issue of Tucson Lifestyle Home & Garden Magazine. Last year’s cover article meant some well-earned attention for Growdown! 2013 champions Phil and Janis Van Wyck of Van Wyck Projects.

Phil Van Wyck says that the cover story led directly to a handful of projects for the company, as well as countless complimentary phone calls from the community at large. But, Van Wyck says, the pride they felt in their work was the biggest payoff.

“We used every square inch of that space,” said Van Wyck, adding that, even though they prefabricated as much of their garden as possible before the three-day installation period began, putting it all together literally came down to the final two minutes of the competition. Their winning design included custom tile art by local artist Nick Tranmer, a water feature, as well as a raised, covered platform built along a soil cement wall—a technique the Van Wyck’s demonstrated at TBG last year.

Plans for the 2014 installations (billed as “Small Gardens, Big Ideas”) appear even more ambitious than the year before: Allen Denomy and Micaela Machado of Solana Outdoor Living partnered up to create a design which features a green-roofed chicken coop; Iylea Olson of LJ Design & Consulting envisions a garden full of local edibles with a water feature that uses harvested rainwater; Petrichor Design + Build’s Maria Voris aims to erect a modern suspended swing as her small garden’s centerpiece.

People work to create the best pocket garden at Growdown 2013. photo courtesy Tucson Botanical Gardens

People work to create the best pocket garden at Growdown 2013.
photo courtesy Tucson Botanical Gardens

Like the Van Wycks last spring, this year’s green-thumb gladiators can expect a few sleepless nights in the mad dash to install everything from gravel to gazebos from scratch, including every plant, rafter, fountain, and artistic accent in each of their pre-planned plots. And, though the time table leaves very little room for construction errors, TBG’s Marketing Director Melissa D’Auria assures us that these local agriculturalists are up to the challenge. D’Auria says that since Growdown! lets designers work without adhering to a client’s specifications, the annual competition at TBG is one of “the best opportunities for them to be creative in their profession.” And the small spaces that spring up as a result of that freedom are “really elaborate,” says D’Auria, incorporating fire elements, cisterns, and just about everything else you could reasonably think to put in your backyard.

The designers will all be on hand to answer your questions on the Saturday that follows installation, making it a spectacular opportunity to pick the brains of a few extremely talented professionals for design insight. For anyone looking to spruce up their own outdoor living areas, Growdown! 2014 is the perfect excuse to swing by TBG; you can learn a new trick-or-two from the demos, get some inspiration on how to give your small garden a big impact by checking out the finished gardens, and take an extra minute to stroll through the butterfly aviary before the exhibit flutters away again next month.

So, put on your best pruning gloves and some sunscreen and we’ll meet you in the garden.

It all grows, er, goes down March 18-22 with the final results presentation and contestant demonstrations taking place on Saturday, March 22. Growdown! exhibition is free with paid admission (adults, $13; student/military, $12; children 4-12, $7.50). More information available at TucsonBotanical.org or by calling (520) 326-9686.

Casa Libre Celebrates a Decade of Literary Arts

February 21, 2014 |
Casa Libre's "storefront" sign on 4th Avenue. photo: Craig Baker

Casa Libre’s “storefront” sign on 4th Avenue.
photo: Craig Baker

It is a Wednesday night and the place is packed, with overflow spilling out into the open-air courtyard. The lack of legroom is no surprise seeing as the venue only seats about 25 shoulder-to-shoulder. And tonight, the first event after their annual month-long recuperation period, Casa Libre en la Solana is showcasing the work of what Assistant Director TC Tolbert calls “three rock stars” of poetry.

Word junkies in every shade from casual hipster to staunch academic mill about, nibbling on free cookies and sipping wine from clear plastic cups. Few are able to overlook the opportunity to speak face-to-face with the talent—the real reason anyone comes to one of these things—their excitement telegraphed by frequent fits of nervous laughter.

There is perhaps no literary locale on earth quite as cozy as Casa Libre, probably because multiple artists at any given moment literally call it home. When founder and current resident Kristen Nelson opened the spot on North Fourth Avenue a decade ago, it was with the two-fold goal of furnishing writers with long-term residency opportunities in Downtown Tucson and providing a place for those writers to share their work. The artist-in-residence program went on uninterrupted for several years but unfortunately, says Nelson, “it became unsustainable” soon after the 2008 economic downturn.

By opening the vacant units in the space to lease by artists, Nelson was able to salvage Casa Libre as a venue and still offer weekend residencies to traveling writers. “So it’s very much still the same atmosphere, but there has been a slight shift in focus,” she says, adding that it was “very hard” for her to suspend the residency program in any capacity.

Casa Libre has thrived as a venue and quasi-communal artist living space for the past few years by continuing to offer programs like the emerging writers’ series “Edge,” the Native-focused “Stjukshon,” the multi-genre collaborative series “Trickhouse,” and regular classes taught by local writers.  There is hope, though, of restoring the residency program to its full glory. “We just wrote a three-year strategic plan (to bring the residency program back),” says Nelson. And that’s something to celebrate.

To that end, the Libre-rators (too far?) are holding their Tenth Anniversary Gala—what Nelson is calling a “friendraiser”—this month, Saturday, Feb. 22, at the YWCA just west of downtown. Nelson says she wants to “honor all of the people that have given their time and love and energy to Casa Libre,” and what better way to do that than by throwing a big-ass party? She says without contributions by people like former board president and current Tucson Poet Laureate Rebecca Seiferle, new president Elizabeth Frankie Rollins, Assistant Director TC Tolbert, and the audience members that keep the readings attended, Casa could not have survived as long as it has.

Casa Libre Founder and Executive Director Kristen Nelson poses with the books donated to the organization by writers who have stayed or read there. photo: Craig Baker

Casa Libre Founder and Executive Director Kristen Nelson poses with the books donated to the organization by writers who have stayed or read there.
photo: Craig Baker

“So the primary purpose (of the gala),” says Nelson, “is to celebrate all of those people.” According to Nelson, their tenure on Fourth Avenue has also been a key to Casa’s survival, so part of the ceremony is meant to celebrate the district itself. Local merchants, for example, have been invited to contribute hors d’oeuvres and centerpieces that reflect their specific flavor.

For the sliding-scale entry fee, gala-goers can expect to enjoy spoken word performances by local writers like Logan Phillips and Teré Fowler-Chapman as well as food, live music, dancing, and even a screening of local filmmaker Bob Byers’ short documentary about Casa Libre (still in production as of press time). A cash bar will also be in service.

If you are a writer, a reader, a poet, an artist, or just someone searching for a stimulating new scene, Casa Libre has got something to pique your interest. And though Nelson is not talking about physical proximity when she says she “hope(s) to have very little space between audience and performer” at Casa events, the level of closeness between literature buffs at one of their readings gives new meaning to the term “intimate.” And yet, that intimacy is the reason that Casa Libre might be the best place in town to “rub elbows” with the literary elite.

Here’s to another decade of pondering and mingling.

Casa Libre’s tenth anniversary gala is Saturday, Feb. 22 from 6 p.m.-10 p.m. More information, including tickets, is available at CasaLibre.org or by calling 325-9145. The YWCA is located at 525 Bonita Ave. Casa Libre is located at 228 N. 4th Ave.

Cirque Roots Examines “The Conscience of Love”

February 3, 2014 |

Music, Motion & Fire

photo: Pedro Romano

photo: Pedro Romano

Entering the Cirque Roots Studio on Toole Avenue just east of Stone Avenue is like walking into a parallel universe—one where the smart phone and tablet explosion never quite took hold. The small lobby and reception area is filled to near capacity with acrobatic props and pieces of hand-painted sets. Plastic hoops of every color imaginable dangle from the ceiling in neat clusters. And don’t be surprised if you have to step around one or more of the regulars twirling with hoops splayed across outstretched arms to get through the two oversized wooden doors which separate the lobby from the large, open practice space in the back of the building.

Cirque Roots has been using the building in the Warehouse Arts District as a practice space since its founding in 2011, when the local hula hoop performance troupe Orbital Evolution decided to make their group more of a community driven, all-encompassing performance arts company. With the expansion of their reach to a broader community of performers, Cirque Roots grew into an umbrella organization which supports other performance troupes like pyro-performers Elemental Artistry and the daredevils of Flight School Acrobatics.

The nucleus of the crew is a group of just under twenty made up of acrobats, fire spinners, stilt walkers, classical and belly dancers, and even a pair of house musicians (a DJ duo billing themselves as Unianimity), all of whom bring their dark-carnival vibe to the Tucson Museum of Art (TMA) this month for three performances of “The Conscience of Love”—their third major production over the brief course of the company’s existence, and the first show which features all of Cirque Roots’ spotlighted acts.

Cirque Roots photo: Pedro Romano

Cirque Roots
photo: Pedro Romano

The show, complete with its own custom electronic score, is their second major performance piece using TMA as a backdrop (both performances of their Native American inspired “Feather” sold out last summer) and this time, since “The Conscience of Love” will be performed outdoors, they plan to bring the fire—literally. On a heated patio underneath the Arizona full moon with an intimate crowd of less than 250 people, this 45-mintue show promises to dazzle.

Says Cirque Roots Founder and “Conscience of Love” Director Brittany Briley (she was around when Cirque Roots was still all about hula hoops) on how they arrived at their chosen theme, “We had this opportunity to say something” and the concept of love and its myriad methods of expression provided the perfect “positive affirmation of our existence.” Thus, the multifaceted metaphor in motion began to take shape.

Appropriately, it all begins with Briley in a flaming headdress and skirt performing a sort of whirling call-to-the-spirit to set the tone for the evening. Briley, whose mother was recently diagnosed with cancer, says that pouring her heart and mind into choreographing these various expressions of mankind’s most powerful emotion has helped her keep her head on straight during this time of duress. And though it means the troupe will be forced to practice briefly without her as she heads home to Little Rock, Ark. for a brief visit, Briley is not worried. “I have complete faith in them,” she says of her performers. She plans to stay involved during her absence, though, by watching video of the group’s practice sessions online.

Another original hoopster and Cirque Roots co-founder, Zoë Anderson, says that the money earned from the show will go right back into the studio and production company to help improve their practice space and support their many ongoing programs like the free, open-to-all Tuesday Night Circus Jam and almost-daily performance-and-fitness-based classes and workshops. The ultimate goal, though, says Anderson, is to take “The Conscience of Love” on the road.

“There’s plenty of circus to go around,” says Anderson. She invites anyone in the community interested in a little spirited activity to come and play—step behind the shadow wall, work on your tumbling, dance, sing, or just hang out for the experience. Though the organization is young, Anderson says  it is growing. And she assures us that, though (like other local arts groups) Cirque Roots has seen its fair share of economic difficulty, no amount of financial struggle is going to keep them from some serious clowning.

On Cirque Roots’ upcoming show, says Anderson, “This is our offering to the community… and we’re going to bring it.”

“The Conscience of Love” takes over Tucson Museum of Art courtyard at 140 N. Main Ave., on Saturday, Feb. 15 for one night only. Show times are 6 p.m., 7:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 day-of. Get more info at CirqueRoots.com. Cirque Roots’ studio is located at 17 E. Toole Ave.

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