Lindsey Best

Andrew Youssef

[Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on Heard Mentality, the music blog of our sister paper OC Weekly. Longtime concert photographer Andrew Youssef found out almost two years ago that he had Stage IV Colon Cancer. In that time, he has continued to shoot tons of music events for us on top of other freelance work and working a day job at a hospital, of all places. As he continues to fight for his life, this series allows him to tell his story in his own words.]

It was close to two years ago that I passed out at work. Fortunately, I work as a pharmacist in a hospital and was immediately rushed down to the emergency room. During the several months prior to this incident, I had lost about 20 pounds and started to get fatigued very easily. The streaks of blood in my stool probably should have risen more red flags. At age 35, my thoughts jumped to a possible diagnosis of Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis.

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She's a multimillion-selling crop (country-pop) artist, a perfumer, and a maneater. Head over to your local Albertsons and take a gander at the greeting cards section and you'll discover Taylor Swift is also adept at slapping pictures of cute puppies onto cardstock and writing gems such as "Wow. Just Wow," on the front, too.

Yep, the 23-year-old mogul has the card market cornered, partnering up with American Greetings last year for a line of sugary-sweet visual cards that include images of everything from kids doing handstands to hands full of rose petals. So, how do the cards, uh, stack up?

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This poster by Nakatomi caused the kid behind me to say: "Dad, I want the giant squid poster. Now."

​See also: The Worst Moments from SXSW 2012

By Nick Rallo

Flatstock is a dangerous place to be with a credit card. This year, Flatstock 33 (presented by the American Poster Institute) featured over 100 artists with enough completely badass concert posters to drain your checking account dry. No, seriously: five minutes of walking around the Convention Center, and you'll start to imagine which pieces of furniture you'll sell later to pay the rent.

The 10 posters below were favorites from the bunch.

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​Internationally successful multi-platinum recording artists Local band Jimmy Eat Word released the cover art for their upcoming album Invented earlier this morning. As reported last week, the record is due on September 28.

​Pete Petrisko is moving to Tucson. The downtown artist and "jack-of-all-arts in the downtown community" says he wants to live somewhere a little more art-centric -- and who can blame him? He's just one part of the brain-drain that's leaving Downtown Phoenix ovah. Great, fine, cool.

However, a press release reporting his move apparently confused some literalistic clerk at the Arizona Republic, who took "with his passing (to our neighboring art-centric city of Tucson), Deus Ex Machina is proud to host a look back at Petrisko's work" to mean he was dead.

The Rep translated that into: "Browse through the work the artist created before his passing."

Daddy, do you go to Tucson when you die? Only if you're bad, son!

The listing still hasn't been taken down -- you can see it here.More »

​You might think you know the members of Phoenix hardcore band Royal Monsters by listening to the band's lyrics. Guitarist Jeff Owens gives fans (and comic book freaks) an even more intimate look into his life with his autobiographical comic, Screw Jeff Owens, found at www.screwjeffowens.com.

Owens (also a member of local metal band Satan's Monk) updates his online comic daily, with single-panel looks into his life, touching on everything from his relationship with his bands, to what he's eating for lunch and movies he's seen, to his opinion on world events. Some are serious, some are funny, but all are extremely simple and cute -- sort of like an online diary with cool illustrations.

Owens talked more about what his plans with the comic, which has been around since 2007, are. He's currently selling an anthology of the 2007 panels, titled Screw Jeff Owens Year One, which is available online and at local comic stores.

New Times: How did you come up with the idea to do the comic?

Jeff Owens: I was working at Samurai Comics at the time with my friend Brandon Huigens, and he started doing some mini-comics. His drawings and suggestions that, "Anyone can do this," really inspired me to start doing my own comics. I did some strips here and there for the following few years, and then finally took off with it in 2007.

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Good news for those who are cruising the downtown galleries on March's Third Friday Artwalk: You'll be able to see Katherine Zsolt's "Leaving My Father's House" at the Icehouse and Bob Carey Ballerinas at Bokeh Gallery.

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Kathleen Vanesian

Could this be a contender for SMoCA's upcoming "People's Biennial"?

The art community grapevine in this Valley is about three inches long, so it didn't take much time for me to get calls concerning a recent, very heated panel discussion at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SmoCA) about a show that's been proposed called "People's Biennial."

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Bob Carey

"Fame," just one of the 14 images from Bob Carey's "Ballerina Series" at Bokeh Gallery

The starring ballerina is the same in all fourteen of the mysterious color photographs hanging in Bokeh Gallery, Wayne Rainey's newest downtown Phoenix gallery venture dedicated solely to photographic art. Hairy barrel chest. Close-cropped haircut. Pink, stiff tulle tutu. Big muscular wrestler's calves ending in big, slightly flat, bare feet.

Artist/photographer Bob Carey portrays the ballsy ballerina in each image on display from his "Ballerina Series," an arduous, on-going project seven years in the making. And I mean ballsy both literally and figuratively.

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Against absurd odds, Lisa Sette Gallery on Scottsdale's Marshall Way can boast that three of her gallery artists -- Enrique Chagoya, Claudio Dicochea and Angela Ellsworth -- have been handpicked to show work at the 17th Biennale of Sydney, which runs from May 12 through August 2010. Sydney's Biennale, a multi-venue contemporary arts exhibition, will be spread throughout locations surrounding Sydney Harbor, including Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) (which, incidentally, has for the first time given over all its galleries to the Biennale). Other venues include the Royal Botanic Gardens, the Sydney Opera House and Cockatoo Island, whose checkered history embraces being a former imperial prison, industrial school, reformatory and gaol (that's Britspeak for holding tank). It is also the site of one of Australia's biggest shipyards, originally built by convicts.

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