Summer Art Classes!

“The arts…are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

 

Grow your soul this summer by participating in one of Practical Art’s 8 artist led summer classes!

Did you know that art can relieve stress, enhance creativity, improve brain connectivity and plasticity, make children better students, ease the burden of chronic health conditions and dementia in patients, and increase empathy, tolerance and love? Whether you are 6 or 96, here at Practical Art, we know that everyone can benefit from practicing a little art– plus, it’s just downright fun! 

That’s why we are inviting you to come down to Practical Art throughout the summer to work with your favorite local artisans. Whether you are interested in designing jewelry, learning to sew, burning wood, or painting ceramics, we have the class for you!  Sign up for one or try them all. The unique creations you make will be yours for the taking. Every Saturday, starting July 9th, visit us from 2:00-4:00pm, get out of the sun, meet a new artist, and learn a new skill. We can’t wait to see you there.

For a full list of classes visit http://practical-art.com/artist-classes/. Sign up online, call us at 602-264-1414, or swing by the shop today!

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“Before Dawn” by Alexandra Bowers

“Pyrogra-what now?”
“Is that laser-etched?”
“Queen of the Night? Like, from The Magic Flute?”

The above? Bits of conversation that’ve come up thus far in December surrounding Alexandra Bower’s exhibition, “Before Dawn”… and to answer them simply and in order: Pyrography is wood-burning (“fire writing”), NO, and, also….no.

Alexandra Bower’s incredibly detailed, scorched renderings of desert flora and fauna immediately trump our expectations of the human hand, but with a more measured viewing, the delicate graphite under-drawing is visible and the inherent ‘life-of-line’ found in a hand-drawn visual translation can be seen in every piece. Each wing nearly flutters.

The locus of the show itself is directly addressed by the show’s title.

For a single captivating night during the hot summer months, cactus flora known as Night Cereus, or Queen of the Night, choose to bloom. Creatures eager for sustenance pollinate them during the night. As the sun rises to heat the following day, the blooms fold, collapse into themselves, and fall from the cactus. What began in the night as often unnoticed white blossoms ends as a black massscorched by the summer sun, but pregnant with possibility for the coming year.“Before Dawn” is a study of these exquisite species of flowers and of the creatures that are ready, on that one night, to pollinate them. Together, flowers and creatures continue the cycle year after year, but only one night at a time.

Bowers often works with fish & game commissions, universities, and botanical parks to secure time with live and preserved specimens. The Night Cereus bloom proves tricky to schedule for, as Lee Mason, a Director of Tohono Chul Park, notes  “We’ve been studying the Night-Blooming Cactus for over 20 years now and we still don’t know what triggers the bloom. The best we can figure is there is some type of chemical communication amongst the cacti.” People, like Bowers, who want to view this one-night flowering sign-up for digital alerts for day-of notification. The NBC is difficult in other respects as well; it cannot self-pollinate. “Since the cactus cannot self-pollinate, the plants must all bloom on the same evening to ensure pollination, usually by hawk moths. The more blooms that are open, the greater the chances of pollination.”

It’s this magic, this rare and unpredictable synchronicity that occurs late on one single evening, that drew Bowers to these subjects. She also notes that she was compelled to somehow archive and preserve these flowers and their pollinators as they are dwindling in numbers with the impacts of human encroachment on desert habitats. Come by the reception this Friday to see and celebrate Bowers’ work– and be sure to ask her about the other featured evening beauty, the Datura or Moonflower! It’s a toxic beauty.

“Before Dawn” by Alexandra Bowers
Exhibition: December 1-31, 2014
Reception for the Artist: Friday Dec 12th, from 7-9pm

www.practical-art.com

Announcing the Artists of “HEAT”!

Each summer, Practical Art hosts its anomaly show during the month when the intense heat is making everything a little off-kilter anyway. There’re mirages, things are melting & warping, our brains are probably baking just a teensy little bit… so maybe it makes sense that July is the month where our rules bend slightly? Instead of a month-long solo show selected and curated by us, we invite all AZ artists who’re creating wall-hanging works to pass their HEAT-themed pieces in front of a panel of art-savvy community jurors. This year there were about 100 entries, so the jurors had their work cut out for ’em! But now that all the votes’ve been tallied, we’re pleased to announce the participants!

Practical Art’s Third Annual Juried Group Exhibition, “HEAT” features these 11 creative local talents:

Barbara Bagan
Lexie Bowers
Christine Cassano
Brenda Edwards
Kim Gluscic
Kevin Hummelgard
Chet Provorse
Nora J. Steele
Tiera Sue
Jordan Alexander Thomas
Patricia Turpin

The show will be an eclectic round up of encaustic, mixed media, solar prints, pyrography, metal work, concrete, watercolor, oil, and more. Whether it’s the content or the material itself (or both!), each work embraces the presence of our common summer oppressor– the hot, hot, heat. It’s internal, it’s external, it’s fire, it’s sun, it’s artistic implement, it’s political issue– it’s all here during July at Practical Art.

And we would like to extend a special thank you to this year’s panel of community jurors, who, though much of their work and life is already occupied with AZ’s arts & cultural happenings, they took the time to squeeze in just this much more. So thank you for your time, energy, and expertise– Adriene Jenik, Director of ASU’s School of Art; Chris Kontakis, Producer and Editor of LocalRevibe Magazine;  Jessica Rajko, Artist Services Coordinator with Arizona Commission on the Arts; Audrey Thacker, Owner/Operator of Artisan Markets AZ; and Kirstin Van Cleef, Outreach and Temporary Projects Manager for Scottsdale Public Art.

The exhibition is up from July 1- July 31, and due to the holiday weekend, the artists reception will be held the Second Friday, July 11th, from 7-9pm.

www.practical-art.com

Fierce! Showing Art in Phoenix, Arizona

Leading up to our call for our Third Annual group show, we want to take a minute to talk about our monthly exhibitions, and I want to bookend this post with two quotes from Sarah Thornton’s “Seven Days in the Art World”.

“We have to make the same decisions as the artists. Do they create great art or art that sells well? With the galleries, it’s the same. Are they commercial or do they believe in something?”

We aren’t a traditional gallery space. Given that our main arena of representation is locally-crafted, handmade, functional art– mugs, bowls, wine racks, pens– our layout is designed to be more touch-n’-handle friendly than the tenet pillars, vitrines, and stark displays of the great white cube. In that decision, we’ve embraced some limitations, gained some strengths, and ultimately, have found that the versatility of the liminal space between retail shop, community hub, and gallery is right where we belong. And though we were founded on a model specifically designed to give locally-made contemporary craft work a home and an audience, we built in a 33′ “gallery wall” because we love all art. Over the years, we’ve found out just how complementary monthly visual art exhibitions are to the regular representation of the craft work we carry. As it turns out, an art lover is an art lover is an art lover.

Since our inception, we’ve developed professionally and gained experience as gallerists, and our bookings have developed to follow suit. The work is extremely varied from month-to-month, but more so than ever, there is a consistency to the quality of the work we show and the commitment of the exhibitors to a continued path in the arts. Over six years, we’ve not only garnered a following of folks who put stock in our taste and trust in our selection, but we have come to appreciate and understand the interests of our audience. That’s the tricky thing for an artist: finding the space that connects with an audience who will be receptive to the artist’s particular work, and making sure the gallery knows its audience well enough to be able to determine that. Given that we’re nestled right in the main milieu of fun and commerce that is CenPho, our audience is looking for price-accessible pieces, work that is innovative and engaging because of its interesting conceptual investigations or unique material processes, and for work that would be inviting for any audience in a buyer’s home, something to compel conversation at a dinner party with friends and family. Every gallery should have a voice and a mission, and that’s ours. 

We book for a variety of mediums: painting, photography, drawing, ceramics, assemblage, metalworks, and everything in between and beyond. We receive around 100 submissions a year, and we only have 11 slots to give out (we have a group show in July)– so the competition for one of our wall shows is becoming evermore fierce. And we’re still proud to be that rare kind of approachable gallery that can offer early guidance to these emerging artists about navigating the tricky waters of representation and the art market. Many of our shows are for artists who’ve only shown their work a couple of times, or never before, and many of the folks that collect through our space frequent here because of that special connection that comes from being an artist’s early buyer. And with that, I’ll leave us off with that second quote from Thorton’s book:

“When you’re buying from a first or second show, you’re inside the confidence building, the identity-building of an artist. It’s not just about buying the piece. It’s about buying into someone’s life and where they are going with it. It’s a mutual commitment, which is pretty intense.”

www.practical-art.com