Peeking inside desert art studios

There is an artist community in Cave Creek, a town north of Phoenix nestled into the desert wrapping around Black Mountain.

Every year they host a self-guided open studio tour with over 100 working artists participating. You can meet the artists, see their work and a little bit of their space, ask questions, buy art.

If you’re in the Phoenix area, check out the Hidden in the Hills tour this Friday through Sunday (11/28-30)!

Photos: 1) Cave Creek Sunset. 2) Studio and artwork of Judy Bruce. 3) Paul Diefenderfer demonstrating ironwork at Desert Rat Forge. 4) Booths and artwork of (l to r) Betsy Halford, Christiane Barbato, Nicolette Maguire Bonnstetter. 5) Artwork in progress by Gordon Paul Mischke.

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Microblog Mondays: I’m thankful for Mel, the fabulous founder of the Stirrup Queens community!

November 12, 2014May 23, 2023

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.

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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.

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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.