Where do they all go?

At 5:00 on Friday afternoon (THIS Friday, the 25th of February), all of the Joes, the Juds and the Charmanges will come off the wall. Imaginatively, I picture the lights shutting off in the gallery, and all of the characters from within the frames and from the sculptures become unhinged, leap to the carpet, grab their bags and waddle on home, leaving a noiseless void behind. Obviously it won't happen quite that way - but sort of, if you imagine the FCP staff and another helper or two as characters, prancing around over-sized boxes and wooden crates, diligently packing up the two gallery spaces like worker bees on a buzz of a late-afternoon coffee run and six packs of packaging tape.

But where will all the pretty paintings go? Truth is, they represent a variety of zip codes. (And even accents!) Joe Sorren's works are on loan to us from collectors all over the place. Several paintings including Interruption and By Day I Dream Of Night, live in New York or California. Because of Toast lives in Kansas, and Bump lives in Seattle. The Mushroom Hunter lives in the U.K. The other paintings are going their separate ways to Oregon, Colorado, Virginia, and Massachusetts.

As for the sculptures, Charlie and Me (the largest sculpture featuring the sitting boy and the stacked paper bags) is going to Jonathan Levine gallery in New York City. Spooning has a home with someone outside of Arizona, but the rest of the sculptures are moving in with Joe in Flagstaff until they find forever homes.

Many of Charmagne's work sold too and have forever homes of their own in Flagstaff. Word has it, she is working on new works.

Many thanks to Joe, Jud and Charmange for a month of intrigue! Your work has proved, as always, to be thought provoking - I've enjoyed working at the front desk catching everyone's comments and questions as they've grazed in the gallery. Let's do it again sometime!

The FCP Top 5 - October

Here in the offices of Flagstaff Cultural Partners, we are obsessed with lists. We love to rank the things we love (and even the things we don't love so much). For over a year now, we have done informal staff "Top 5 Lists" of everything from our favorite lunch spots, to music we can't stop playing, to exhibitions we can't wait to see. These were once in our own little world - a way for us to break up a busy day. But now, we have decided, for better or worse, to release one of our Top 5 Lists each month in the Culture Club.

So... *gulp* here goes...

The Top 5 "Hot Now" Local Artists
We define this as local artists that are catching our eye right now, or receiving a lot of exposure recently (or should be). Click on each artist to learn more about them. In no particular order...

Jason Bohnert
Jessica Dawn
Sambatuque
Karen McClanahan
Charmagne Coe

How did we get to these five? Individually, each of the five staff members at FCP created their own top 5 and then we met and chose these. Want to know what other artists were on our lists? Keep reading...

First of all, we have a special Honorable Mention. Four of our five staff members wanted to include two exciting artists in our final top 5: Joe Cornett (photography) and Robin Cadigan (ceramics, photo to left). One problem: they are both members of our five-person staff! We felt that we couldn't put them up there because we'd appear biased (and we also didn't want to exclude them because they are on our staff). Regardless, we feel that they are really, really, really good artists.

Here are the other names that were listed by individual staff but didn't make the final top 5...

Telescope
Molly Holland
Nick Rosso
Edward Haswood
Joan Scott
Sam Jones
Julie Heisterman
Jeremy Singer
Cate Ziebell
The Shindaggers
The Merkins

Our next FCP Top 5 will be unveiled beginning of November...