Phoenix Music Blog

In the past 20 years or so, Americans of all ethnicities throughout the country -- especially here in the Southwest -- have been making a big deal of Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration that spans several days and just happens to coincide with All Souls and All Saints Days (November 1 and 2) in the Catholic liturgical calendar. Leave it to those eminently creative Mexicans to concoct fabulous, regionally unique traditions that meld pre-Columbian rituals honoring the dearly departed with gory 16th century Spanish Roman Catholic beliefs -- traditions and ceremonies that simultaneously honor the memory of deceased family and friends while thumbing a nose at death, The Great Leveler of Us All.

Phoenix's venerable Icehouse, located at 429 W Jackson Street, (602) 257-8929, is mounting its own unique version of Dia de los Muertos on Sunday, November 1, beginning at 7 p.m. at its downtown Phoenix digs. Admission is a mere dollar plus a flower, cactus plant or small offering that will be buried in the Icehouse's Garden of Thorns that evening. All admission funds will go to planting and maintaining the garden. According to Helen Hestenes, artist/owner of the Icehouse, The Garden of Thorns is a memorial desert garden on the Icehouse grounds -- years in the making -- marking the gallery's upcoming 20th anniversary. It's dedicated not only to specific Phoenix creatives who have passed on, but to particular personal causes such as cancer, suicide, HIV/Aids, domestic violence and other ponderous issues. Hestenes says it will evolve cause by cause, plant by plant, artist by artist and transform from barren earth to lush oasis in time.

Tom Marrs

Freshly dug courtyard is ready for the Icehouse's new Garden of Thorns

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A central part of the upcoming Icehouse celebration is Dia de los Muertos Motel II by local artist Janet de Berge Lange; it's the fifth in a series of participatory memorial installations for de Berge Lange's "Recuerdo Project." Historically, recuerdos (literally, "memory," "momento" or "souvenir" in Spanish) were small votive images painted by unskilled family members, not by artists, and hung in remembrance of a loved one who died. The paintings were offered as a healing to those left behind, as well as a validation of life well lived, notes the artist.

De Berge Lange will set up recuerdos she has painted in the past as an ofrenda or offering to the memory of Phoenix artist and long-time best friend, Sean O'Donnell, who committed suicide by self-inflicted gunshot in 2006, an event originally reported by New Times' Robrt Pela.

Tom Marrs

"Lady Hoover," a 3-D assemblage by the late Sean O'Donnell

​ The commemorative paintings will be displayed in a room at the Icehouse that was used, according to Hestenes, by Phoenix police to store evidence in the Don Bolles murder case in the late 1970s. Bolles was an Arizona Republic journalist who was the victim of a car bombing in 1976 after he began reporting on organized crime and a high-profile Valley businessman.

In addition, a desert willow will be planted in the Garden of Thorns in O'Donnell's name. De Berge Lange says that everyone is invited to paint a recuerdo in honor of a loved one who has passed away and needs to be remembered. "...[T]hen check them into the motel," says the artist.

Her prior "Recuerdo Project" installations include Dia de los Muertos Motel I (October 1992); 13 Women in the Ice Chambers (May 1993); World Aids Day (December 1995); and Rose Johnson Memorial (June 2009). Recuerdos created for artist Rose Johnson will also be on display for the last time in a small room adjacent to the Day of the Dead "motel."

Another memorial piece slated for display in the Icehouse's White Column Room is Helen Hestenes' latest freezer installation work, A Purple Heart, which, she says, is dedicated to twenty deceased local artists, writers, journalists, poets and musicians who have impacted Phoenix in a profound way. Besides journalist Don Bolles, they include, among others, musician, artist and song writer Michael Swanson (suicide 2008), New Times journalist Deborah Laake (suicide 1994), artist Rose Johnson (accidental methanol poisoning 2009), artist Tony Gowen (heroin overdose 1992), poet George Dillon (accidental fall from truck 1991), artist Fritz Scholder (diabetic complications 2005), sculptor and ASU professor Lew Alquist (liver cancer 2005), and psychologist/artist Mel Roman (colon cancer 2002).

To cap the evenings festivities, Terra Dance Company will perform in the courtyard area on top of a 50-foot by 25-foot mural painted on asphalt by Lucas Bostrom, a 19-year-old Phoenix artist who single-handedly raised $3,000 to buy paint used for the mural project.

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Did you get caught up at the "Chaos Theory" show at Legend City during First Friday two weeks ago and didn't get a chance to see the "Phoenix as Wonderland: Art from New Times' Best of Phoenix 2009" exhibit? Maybe you got too liquored up at Bikini and spaced on it?

Well, no worries because the exhibit continues tonight with a free Third Friday reception. The event will showcase awesome art as well as killer tuneage by The Coitus, the Phoenix Chorale, and psych 101. Many of the shows originals art pieces are available for purchase as well as the Joe Arpaio votive candles and artist-made postcards. Also, Giant Coffee will be giving away free coffee and ice tea. So light rail, walk, drive, or bike down to the centrally-located [merz]project, 1437 North First Street, and check it out.

Reception hours are from 6 to 10 p.m. Music will get started at 7:30. For more information, call 602-229-8478 or write to steve.jansen@newtimes.com.

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The art is hung, the floors are swept, and the touch-up paint has been applied. The "Phoenix as Wonderland: Art from New Times' Best of Phoenix 2009" exhibit is ready for its First Friday reception tonight.

Here are some cool-as-all-get-out things you can expect to see:

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There are a number of snarky depictions of our beloved Sheriff Joe Arpaio in the "Phoenix as Wonderland: Art from New Times' Best of Phoenix 2009" exhibit - what else would you expect from a Valley-wide call to Phoenix-based artists? - including Luis Gutierrez's Sheriff Joe, Patron Saint of Clowns. The piece makes ol' Joe into a saint.

It's true, admits Gutierrez, that his work is poking fun at "America's Toughest Sheriff," but it's also a commentary on the artist's heritage. "My wonderland is a place where you can walk along with the saints so my piece is a play on Mexicans who make ordinary people saints. I used an obvious twisted sense of humor to make Sheriff Joe the saint," he says.

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Some folks may label Corey Busboom as a curious DIY-mad scientist, but at least one person doesn't think that the man's homemade musical instruments are too far out there. Namely, Mark Mothersbaugh of '80s band Devo.

As documented in this January 2009 story by Benjamin Leatherman, Mothersbaugh snatched up a grip of Busboom's one-of-a-kind instruments, all which were built using case-mod technology. One such piece of art will be on display at "Phoenix as Wonderland: Art from New Times' Best of Phoenix 2009" exhibit.

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The cheapest and most indicative souvenir of a place is definitely the postcard. Thanks to Cindy Dach and Greg Esser, Phoenix now has some of the coolest take-home keepsakes around.

The two integral players of the downtown Phoenix creative community designed, from scratch, four different styles of postcards that will be on sale for a buck apiece at the "Phoenix as Wonderland: Art from New Times' Best of Phoenix 2009" exhibit. (Also on display and for sale is Dach's stunning hand-stitched piece of the cat-tree-bicyclist image that she turned into a postcard image. The accompanying wood frame that displays the artwork was hand built by Esser.)

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"Rising from the ashes" may be a cliché, but for the Phoenix Chorale's Holly Sheppard, the old saying was the catalyst for making great art.

On October 4, 2002, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral -- the wow-look-at-that church on Roosevelt Street in downtown Phoenix -- celebrated a remodeling job with a dedication concert. Five days later, the circa 1920 structure and its impressive 3,000 pipe organ burned to the ground. (Rumor has it that the fire started when somebody lit a match, didn't wave it out completely, and threw the aflame stick into the trash.)

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Gregory Sale and Kimi Eisele have a simple, yet profound question for Phoenicians: Ever wonder about the future of this place?

If so, you can immediately become an active participant in their interpretive piece Go Ahead, Wonder, which will have a presence at the "Phoenix as Wonderland: Art from New Times' Best of Phoenix 2009" exhibit.

Sale's idea for the piece - which is an amalgamation of media, text, photography, sound, interviews, and participation - was to envision his personal wonderland here in Phoenix as a community that gets involved with social issues.

Friday night was not your typical art opening at ASU Art Museum's Ceramics Research Center - no gallery goers milling about, gawking at art objects carefully mounted on vitrine-capped pedestals spaced strategically throughout a pristine gallery space.

No, this was literally an opening celebrating a large square one cut into the painted concrete floor of the CRC to expose the earth underlying its slick, man-made surface. Dangling over the rubble-filled void left behind was a microphone relaying ambient sound to the chunk of concrete that had been cut out and removed, like a necrotic wart, from the floor. The slab, a microphone embedded in a corner that crumbled during removal to pick up audio vibrations, together with small chunks of concrete lost in excavating (referred to as "collateral damage"), were the only things displayed on pedestals that particular night.

All was the handiwork of Postcommodity, an interdisciplinary indigenous artists' collective, including locals Kade Twist and Steven Yazzie. Twist (Cherokee), and Yazzie (Laguna/Navajo) collaborated with filmmaker/experimental sound artist Nathan Young (Delaware/Kiowa/Pawnee) and musical composer/sound artist Raven Chacon (Navajo) to produce Do You Remember When? It's the first piece in a series of site-specific art installations that are part of ASUAM's "Native Confluence: Sustaining Cultures." The project, curated by Peter Held of the CRC, was created to coincide with ASU's Global Institute of Sustainability's "Conference for Sustainability," a graduate school conference being held October 8-10 that's billed as one aimed at plumbing the depths of social-ecological transformations and sustainability.

Kathleen Vanesian

Concrete slab taken as a trophy in Postcommodity's installation, "Do You Remember When?"

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It's no rumor that Marilu Knode, associate director and head of research at Future Arts Research @ ASU (F.A.R.) is leaving Phoenix for considerably less dust storms and considerably more humidity to become Executive Director of the Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, Missouri. One of just a handful of open-air museums around the world and accredited by the American Association of Museums, Laumeier (pronounced "lo-meye-yor") is situated on 105 verdant acres in the greater metropolitan St. Louis area and boasts outdoor and indoor galleries that host a variety of art exhibitions, concerts, educational programs, lectures and special events throughout the year. It also mounts a fabulous, nationally recognized fine art and crafts fair annually. According to Knode, despite the threat of terminal basement mildew, the job offers exciting new job-related vistas and brings her closer to her mother, who lives in Kansas City, Missouri, as well as her Milwaukee-based boyfriend and other long-time pals.

Beginning September 14, 2009, she will be not only Laumeier's Executive Director, but also the Aronson Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, which is a part of the package. Knode will be Laumeier Sculpture Park's third director, succeeding Glen Gentele (2001-2008) and Beej Nierengarten-Smith (1979-2001).

The MiniDisc: Technology has been headed steadily downhill since this late 90s innovation.

All objects will be reviewed by SMoCA's curatorial staff and Prasad Boradkar, Associate Professor, Industrial Design at Arizona State University and guest curator of the exhibition. The exhibition will be on view at SMoCA from December 19, 2009 to May 23, 2010. SMoCA's Senior Curator Claire Schneider wants visitors to think back to the time when they first fell in love with music and to ask themselves: How did you play your first album, or was it a tape, a CD or an MP3 file? What instruments have you used to make music? Has that changed over the years? Chances are, some of the musical equipment that we all may have stowed away, that might even be an obsolete item by now, could be the perfect addition to the SMoCA exhibition!

Courtesy of The Lucky Princess Boutique

Don't you wish your kids wore hot clothes like Raul Ibanez's daughters?

Take a look at this behind-the-scenes video (courtesy of MLB.com) from Monday's 2009 All-Star Game Home Run Derby and let us know what you think of the cool threads on display.

Adorable, right?

By the way, we're not talking about the players' jerseys - that would be über-weirdo to call a baseball uniform adorable - but rather Raul Ibanez's daughters, who are sporting outfits crafted by a local textile designer.

Just got a heads-up from Eric Iwersen, Senior Planner for the City of Tempe, that the city's talking about preserving one of artist Rose Johnson's murals that graces a bicycle locker at Tempe City Hall. The locker mural was executed by Johnson in 1997.

Courtesy of City of Tempe

Tempe City Hall Bicycle Locker painted by Rose Johnson in 1997

Iwersen, whose job involves integrating public art with capital projects along bike paths, parks and streets, recalls that Johnson, who passed away on June 1, was the first artist he worked with when he started working for Tempe and that "[s]he was really supportive and generous and the imagery that she provided for us remains very popular in the community. I loved working with her. Rose did a lot of work in Tempe," he writes, "and it seems appropriate now to preserve one of her remaining public pieces."

But we know how painfully slow the wheels of government turn (actually, it's more like a torture rack), especially in these fiscally challenged times. So slather on some supportive axle grease by contacting Liz Lagman, who's in charge of the effort to preserve Rose Johnson's Tempe City Hall's bicycle locker mural. She can be reached at elizabeth_lagman@tempe.gov; tell her that you insist that Tempe preserve the mural as a part of Arizona art history.

Because once it's gone, it's gone and, like Jazz Zen at the Sub Stop, which was painted over for some ungodly reason, it can't be resurrected. Okay, maybe if you fly in an army of expert Italian art restorers to painstakingly scrape off all that beige, which would be obscenely expensive, it could be done. But I bet there's no money in the Tempe town hall till for obscenely expensive, expert Italian art restorers to rescue Rose Johnson's bike locker mural if it ever gets painted over.

For all the talk of Rose Johnson's good-bye fete at the Icehouse being a celebration rather than a memorial, the emotional climate at Saturday night's send-off was more somber than sunny, as hundreds of people gathered to honor the former Phoenix artist. The Icehouse proved to be a particularly fitting location for Johnson's memorial, since she had mounted a number of important performance pieces there during the late 1980's and 90's. (See a slide show from the event as well as this week's cover story on Rose Johnson's life and art).

Kathleen Vanesian

Gallery exhibit at Rose Johnson memorial at Icehouse

Longtime friends Susan Sutton, Johnson's early art rep in town, and Kim Blake organized an exhibition of her canvases for the occasion, which had been loaned for display by Johnson collectors throughout Arizona. Entering the gallery space, one encountered a line of black pedestals tied together by a path of fresh rose petals, one of which bore a baby sculpture from Johnson's most well-known performance, inspired by the artist's work with babies born addicted to drugs. Flanking either side of the doorway were two shrine-like tables bearing cherished photos of Johnson, candles and bouquets of roses.

Kathleen Vanesian

One of Rose Johnson's performance babies

In other Icehouse rooms, installation works featuring objects close related to the artist were displayed in moody settings, including a painting depicting Johnson as a veiled bride with floating fetus, as well as a brush-clutching artist, and another baby sculpture. A room across from the gallery, filled with the soft strains of classical music, had been set up for participants to create recuerdos, or little remembrances, to the artist, who died from methanol-tainted alcohol in Bali on June 1. In the Icehouse courtyard, an old, rusting refrigerator was the backdrop for a number of Rose Johnson-designed kitchen magnets, testament to the longevity and universality of her graphic arts work.

It seems that artist Rose Johnson, who died tragically in Bali on Sunday, Arizona time, as a result of alcohol adulterated with deadly methanol, touched the lives of those around her wherever she happened to be. Facebook is still buzzing over news of the artist's bizarre death at the age of 48, with fans of Johnson the world over posting photos of both her and her work, as well as comments detailing personal memories they have of the irrepressible woman who started as a performance artist in Phoenix. Subsequently, she became known for her free-flowing canvases and exuberant neighborhood murals, some of which still can be seen in Phoenix.

A small candlelight memorial was held Tuesday evening in front of the mural Johnson had painted on the Mercer Mortuary building on the southwest corner of 16th Street and Thomas Road back in 1998. According to longtime friend Kim Blake, while people were creating a shrine with flowers and candles in front of the neighborhood mural (reported on by the New Times back in 1998), Rene Barraza, owner of Deportes America, a sporting goods store across the street from Johnson's mural, visited with the group: "He came out and told us about helping Rose spell the words on the mural that were in Spanish. She painted it in '98 with some neighbor kids before she moved to Bisbee."

Speaking of Bisbee, flowers, candles and notes are also being left at the mural Johnson painted on the wall of the town's Jonquil Motel. The artist, who in her last days sported blond dreadlocks, moved to the small arts-based community, once a thriving copper mining town, in the late 1990's and made her distinctive mark there, as well. Photographer Terry Wolf, one of her Bisbee buds, has announced that this Sunday, June 10 at 5 p.m. a Life Celebration/Party for Rose Johnson will be held at Mimosa Market, located at 215 Brewery Ave in Bisbee's Historic District, (520) 432-3256. Plans are also in the works for a celebratory parade in Johnson's honor in the next few weeks, with details to be announced later. Meanwhile, Phoenix will be throwing their own celebratory memorial for the deceased artist at the Icehouse in downtown Phoenix on June 20, beginning at 10 p.m., with an exhibition of work lent by collectors and friends to run through June 27th.

TimesOnline, the online website for The Times of London, is reporting today that noted former Phoenix artist Rose Johnson, along with a number of other people in the past week, died in Bali from consuming arak, a type of local rice wine, tainted with methanol. According to the news report, police have arrested the owner and two employees of Tra Hita Karya, a small Denpasar rice wine factory, after finding three 650-gallon drums of arak that contained traces of methanol, a toxic chemical compound often used as an anti-freeze or solvent, though investigators have not ruled out the fact that the methanol might have been added to the liquor after it left the factory. The addition of methanol, which is virtually undetectable when added to spirits, has been used to boost the alcoholic content of the Balinese rice wine.

Arak is a traditional Balinese alcoholic drink made from fermented rice, palm sap and corn or other base ingredients, that is also used during Balinese religious ceremonies. The TimesOnline article notes, however, "it has become increasingly popular, especially amongst tourists, after an Indonesian Government crackdown on imported alcohol sent the price of wine and spirits soaring."

The making and selling of arak in Bali appears to be legal, though not well regulated by the Indonesian government. There is no evidence that artist Rose Johnson knew she was ingesting illegal tainted alcohol at the time she did so nor that she ingested it at an illegal party, as some in the blogosphere are claiming.

The Phoenix arts community is still reeling today from news that one of its pioneers, painter and muralist Rose Johnson, 48, died yesterday, Sunday, May 31, at Sanglah General Hospital in Bali. The Jakarta Post is now reporting that Johnson most probably died from acute alcohol poisoning as a result of ingesting liquor that had been laced with methanol. Also known as methyl alcohol or wood spirits, methanol is a toxic form of alcohol that is used industrially in antifreeze, fuel and solvents. The Post also notes that this is the 23rd fatality from the poisonous alcohol mixture in less than 10 days; Johnson was the second foreign fatality attributed to the tainted alcohol, according to the report.

British-born Rose Johnson was a fixture on the Phoenix arts scene for years and had done illustrations for the Phoenix New Times in the past. A gentle, well-loved and respected person, Johnson painted a number of murals in the Phoenix area, but moved to Bisbee, Arizona, in 1998 after a visit to the small-town arts enclave. There she continued to paint her distinctive, fantasy-based figurative work on both canvas and in mural form, including a mural featured in Sunset Magazine, entitled Sleepwalking, on the side of Bisbee's old Jonquil Motel. Trips to Bali had inspired Johnson's most recent work. A videotaped interview with the artist, as well as footage of Johnson in Bali, is available on line.

A special memorial ceremony celebrating Johnson's life and art featuring an exhibition of Rose Johnson's work will be held beginning June 20th at 10 p.m. at the Icehouse, located at 429 South Jackson Street, Phoenix, AZ. There will be a BYOB potluck reception after the ceremony and participants are asked to bring food for this. The exhibition will continue through June 27th until 6 p.m.

This week we had the chance to take an up close look at two new art exhibits on display at Perihelion Arts and SMoCA

Jonathan McNamara

"Aside and Besides" by Mark Maas
Mike Maas' unique blend of vector design with layered, wooden pieces that seem to jump out at you made for quite the graphical spectacle of a show opening at Perihelion Arts on April 2, 2009.

Roarke Lacey

"Seriously Funny" by Dan Perjovschi
Dan Perjovschi arrived at SMoCA to find a blank canvas which he filled with line drawings commenting on local social and political commentary; proving that life is much too important to take seriously.

"Art Burn" is a new series on Chow Bella that takes a look at various works of artistic expression hanging up in Valley eateries.

This week's features Santan Brewery's wall "art" which is...interesting to say the least.

Multi-media artist Angela Ellsworth never, ever disappoints me. And just when I think she can't outdo herself, she proves me wrong. Her aesthetic coup this time can be seen in "Angela Ellsworth: Underpinnings" at Lisa Sette Gallery in Scottsdale until January 31. And it's one for the books.

Right: One of Ellsworth's sister wives toting a machine gun in honor of Valerie Export's "Action Pants: Genital Panic" (1969)

It was during last night's ridiculously crowded opening where Ellsworth, known not only for her ever-morphing paintings, drawings and sculpture, but for her amazing performance work, wove her most provocative magic. Sette's gallery walls were lined with small, simply framed white paper napkins she had hand-embroidered in black thread with sketchy scenes taken from stills of landmark art performance works from the 1960s, 70s and 80s by famous women performance artists.

For the opening of her show "Underpinnings" at the Lisa Sette Gallery, Angela Ellsworth had performance actors dressed as members of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints and acting out performance works from the 1960s, 70s and 80s by famous women performance artists.