Minimum Daily Requirements at the post office

While I love art museums and galleries, there’s something really delightful when art pops up in unexpected places like libraries or alleyways or under bridges.

What about the post office? Art isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when I think of post office buildings. However, the downtown Tempe post office has rotating installations just inside its large windows, so you can see works both from inside and from the street.

I didn’t realize this until artist (and fellow CraftHack-er) Crystal Daigle told me about the exhibition she was curating.

It’s called “Minimum Daily Requirements,” and will be on display in the Mill Avenue post office until December 10. Each of the windows displays mixed media work by a different Phoenix-area artist, exploring their own daily requirements.

Crystal’s piece was truly a community effort, funded by a Kickstarter campaign and partially pieced together by volunteers at maker spaces under her direction. It’s called “Push Down & Tango” and, in Crystal’s words, is “designed to celebrate the resiliency of survivors, thrivers and caretakers.” The centerpiece is a large circle of fabric roses. At the base are leaves formed from prescription bottles covered with images of people dancing tango, since learning tango was a turning point for Crystal. The 3 leaves are surrounded by hand-lettered names to pay tribute to resilient people.

Phillip and I stopped by the exhibition during its opening celebration in September, just as a dust storm was rolling in. We took shelter inside the post office during the worst of it and it blew over quickly, leaving a dramatic sky as a backdrop for the gathering.

– More info –

“Minimum Daily Requirements” (PDF) dates: 8/15-12/10/14
United States Post Office windows at 500 S. Mill Ave. (5th Street and Mill Avenue)
Parking: on-street meters or nearby garages
Transit: Light rail (Mill Ave/3rd Street stop) or Orbit Mercury
There is no admission, but feel free to bring along any packages or cards you need to mail.
Just found the exhibition schedule for all Tempe Community Galleries! This includes the post office and Tempe Public Library’s Connections Cafe. (Remember when I was lamenting they didn’t list the Tempe Library exhibitions anywhere? Turns out they do. Just not anywhere obvious.)

October 20, 2014September 1, 2021

It took 10 years to get here

Chairs on a porch near the Dragoon Mountains

Phillip and I just celebrated our 10th anniversary with a mini road trip.

I try not too get mushy here often.

But this seems like a fitting occasion to mention I am so crazy about this super smart, sweet, handsome guy. Phillip is my favorite person to be with on a road trip – or just hanging out at the house – and he makes me laugh harder than anyone.

There’s no one I’d rather share the journey with.

–

I’m participating in Microblog Mondays. More quick reads at Stirrup Queens!

July 22, 2014September 3, 2014

Historic Globe

I stumbled across the Arizona Good Roads Association Illustrated Road Maps and Tour Book at the Tempe Public Library. It’s a reprint of a 1913 book full of hand drawn maps and photos of Arizona towns as they were back then. (Yay libraries! And yay maps!)

Phoenix was sparsely populated when there wasn’t air conditioning blasting away the desert heat. All the recent development makes the city feel so new that it’s easy to forget that people have lived here for centuries. I love the window back in time this book provides.

I brought the book along when we went to my uncle’s house in Globe over Fourth of July weekend. Globe is an old mining town about an hour and a half east of Phoenix with lots of quirky antique and thrift stores. In 1913, it already had 5 hotels (!)

As we drove, I looked for surviving landmarks and tried to picture the route we would have taken in an early Ford or horse-drawn wagon. The map from Phoenix to Globe passes through Tempe, over railroad tracks no longer in use (but still there), right by the old creamery that now houses a handful of businesses – including the ever-popular Four Peaks Brewery. It continues down Apache Boulevard, which I believe was part of US 60 before the freeway was built, and winds through the Superstition Mountains over Apache Trail, and past the Roosevelt Dam.

It would have been a much slower route. Instead, we made it to Globe early enough to grab a coffee before heading out to the cookout at noon. We had a great time catching up with cousins I hadn’t seen in forever, picking cherry tomatoes from the garden, sitting in the shade and chatting.

On the way home, Phillip and I stopped in the historic downtown and tried to spot a few of the buildings in the book.

We found the 1st National Bank (now an antique store with a new facade), the courthouse, and Gila River Bank Building (currently empty and for lease).

I thought the school looked like what’s now The Noftsger Hill Inn, but, once we were in front of it, the details weren’t quite right. Turns out it was built in 1917. We’ll have to find the school in the picture another day. I think I’ll just have to get my own copy of the book.

July 8, 2014July 5, 2022

Papago Park and Making Time to Celebrate

hole in the rock at Papago Park in Phoenix

The celebratory Nutella brownie bites I made last month for Craft Hack were actually part two of the Travelcraft-Journal-turns-one festivities.

On the actual day of the site’s anniversary, Phillip and I took a little break to commemorate it on our own. It had been a tough day, and he was swamped with finishing up school stuff. So we couldn’t do anything big, but he said “let’s do something.”

So we picked up donuts at our local Tempe favorite, Arizona Donut Co., and headed to Papago Park. (I’m back to eating gluten – at least temporarily, so I’m taking advantage of it. Carpe donut.)

There are some nice picnic areas just beyond the Phoenix Zoo parking lot with ramadas and grills, but we hardly ever see anyone there. It’s a short drive for us, and it’s a very peaceful spot.

It was windy enough that it took several tries to light the birthday candle we stuck in a chocolate coconut donut. The wind blew it out again a second later. Maybe it made a wish.

We enjoyed our donuts and then went down to the little lake to feed crackers to the ducks. There was one that had this super noisy way of paddling that made us laugh.

Our little break only lasted about an hour, but we were both so much happier and more relaxed when we came back.

—

PS More info about Papago Park below. Also, Phillip took the donut shop sign pic. Gotta love the dizzying angle! :)

Things to know about Papago Park:

Papago Park is home to the Phoenix Zoo, Desert Botanical Gardens, rock formations (such as Hole-in-the-Rock, which you can see in the background of a photo above), picnic areas, and hiking trails. (There are also several other attractions in the area.)
The park encompasses an area that used to be a fish hatchery, which is why it includes several (manmade) lakes.
The city of Phoenix has a PDF map that shows some of the picnic tables, but there are more out there than the map shows.

July 3, 2014July 9, 2014

Hollywood Costume: The art of film costuming

Last weekend I got to meet Marilyn Monroe’s dress.

It was (and will be through this weekend) at the Phoenix Art Museum, along with 100 other costumes from both recent and classic films.

Fun fact: The last time I was there was for Arts & Flowers. While I was waiting for Phillip (and getting lost on the second floor), he stopped in the lobby to talk to Phoenix Comicon volunteers. Which inspired us to go to the Con, where we stopped to talk to Phoenix Art Museum volunteers, snapped a photobooth pic for their Hollywood Costume Instagram contest, won it, and found ourselves in the Museum lobby again, thus completing the circle.

It was our destiny.

Officially, we’d won an Audrey+Marilyn grab bag. But when the Museum heard we hadn’t made it to the exhibition yet, they made tickets part of our prize. Super nice, right?!

This time we didn’t even get lost. The Hollywood Costume exhibit is on the first floor with a giant marquee.

You pass the velvet ropes and ticket taker (also a no photos sign). Before entering the main exhibit, you pause in a room with a large screen showing the most famous clips for the most well-known costumes inside. It’s like a sneak peek.

Inside, there’s exhibit information projected onto glass, teleprompter style. Costumes are clustered together based on themes. We snaked around the edges of these costume islands with the rest of the visitors, lines forming at points where people were lingering longer. In front of each costume is a stand with what looks like a script page that gives details on the costume and sometimes additional backstory. Woven throughout the exhibit, there are video interviews of actors and costume designers talking about what goes on behind the scenes, as well as animated projected images that explain the process.

We learned that costumes for movies have a lot to do: they need to be true to the time and the character, fit with the film’s artistic vision, and be practical for the actor to actually play their role in – whether they’re running or dancing or just wearing it during long days of shooting a scene.

I loved checking out the details of the costumes – the way the light shines on different fabrics, beaded gowns that must’ve weighed a ton, “dirt” and frayed edges added to make clothing look worn. Meryl Streep’s Mamma Mia! costume was made to sparkle. Darth Vader’s costume had more layers than we realized and buttons that reminded me of ’80s electronics (which, I guess, makes sense).

It’s always a little surreal to come face-to-face with something (or someone) that has previously only existed for you on a screen.

We spent awhile checking out Indiana Jones’s Raiders of the Lost Ark costume and the video that explained how the different components were designed, sourced, and adapted. You could see the individual distress marks in his signature leather jacket.

There was a whole section devoted to Elizabethan period costumes. One dress was hand-embroidered to match a painting exactly, while another costume designer felt it was more important that the clothing convey the right message to a modern audience than to be historically accurate in every detail. We also spotted two dresses used in films about Queen Elizabeth that expressed two very different takes on the same historical portrait.

The exhibit ends with two iconic dresses – the sexy halter back Marilyn Monroe wore in Seven Year Itch and the innocent blue gingham Judy Garland wore in The Wizard of Oz. Both are behind glass, unlike the rest of the exhibit. You walk out to a “The End” montage and find yourself back in the real world – or, at least, a museum corridor.

We perused the gift shop and wandered through a few galleries. Then we decided there’s no place like home, so we headed that way.

If you get a chance to see the Hollywood Costume exhibit, do it!

Here’s what you need to know.

Hollywood Costume at Phoenix Art Museum

This Sunday (July 6) is the last day the exhibition will be in Phoenix.
You need both Museum admission + a Hollywood Costume ticket to see it.
Tomorrow (July 4) is First Friday, so Museum admission is free and Hollywood Costume admission is discounted. It’s also Independence Day, but it would be a nice, air-conditioned thing to do before it’s dark enough for fireworks.
No photos are allowed in the exhibit.
The exhibition is touring from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. ~~I don’t know where it goes next.~~ [Update below.]
Visit phxart.org for exhibition details, including a list of all the costumes on display (PDF).
Have fun!

UPDATE: The next and final stop for Hollywood Costume will be the historic Wilshire May Company building in Los Angeles from October 2, 2014 through March 2, 2015. It will be presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.