My Own Top Five - Recycled Art Exhibition

We post a monthly Staff Top Five here in the Culture Club. And the Recycled Art Exhibition has it's own awards program, a panel of good people recognizing a half dozen outstanding pieces in the show. These things are nice enough. I respect them.

But I want to do my own Top Five of the Recycled Art Exhibition, because, well, it's just that cool of an exhibition.

In its 8th year, the Recycled Art Exhibition showcases the most vivid aspects of the imaginations of Flagstaff's residents. Here below, in no particular order, are my favorite pieces in this year's show (please forgive my poor photography):

Nancy DeBlois' Maiden Japan is one of the most striking pieces in the show. You first get a glance of it out of the corner of your eye - you think that someone has been standing silently watching you. Nancy repairs mannequins for a living actually, but creates mesmerizing artwork with them, too.

Curtis Smith's Lazer Tazer is almost impossible to photograph, but it's the perfect Marvin the Martian weapon, complete with a real crystal from which I am sure it draws it's earth-destroying power.

Brian Painter's Going Mobile might be the most brilliant work in the show, just for the statement it makes. It's hard to see here, but that's tricycle holding up a Saguaro cactus with a spigot spewing water, holding up a platform on which rests a mobile home and small plot of fake grass. Draw your own conclusions.

Here's where the creepiness really sets in. Psychic Resonator, by Tim Thomason, seems to be a science experiment gone horribly awry. Bunnies and babies morphed, skeleton blondes, spiders with barbie doll heads... it's all very Mike Frankel-esque.

Andrea Hartley has been entering her unique monsters made of socks into the Recycled show for a couple of years. But this year's submission, Sock Monster, takes it to a whole new level of madness and brilliance. I can only show half of the piece here, but the monster-face-bra should be enough to just begin the narrative of a must-see work.

Rebecca Borowski's George The Inner Tube Elephant is just that: an elephant made out of inner tubes. A simple work of art, actually. It's just that it comes out looking like a cross between a midget elephant and the Gimp from Pulp Fiction.

The Recycled Art Exhibition remains open through May 15 at the Coconino Center for the Arts. There are artist demos and workshops on April 24, May 1, and 8. Click here for the schedule.

Cheers,
JT

December FCP Top Five

For our December FCP Top Five, we're back to the local. This time, it's about food. We are trying to decide the best local restaurant for a special, FCP staff holiday celebratory dinner. There will be six of us, and we're looking for something fancy with really, really good food. We're celebrating a year of success working together.

The problem is, we can't make a final decision. This is our list of options, in no particular order. Where would you go? What restaurant would you advise us to choose? Please help! Comment below to vote for your favorite option. We'll go to whichever restaurant gets the most votes!

Top Five Local Restaurants for a Celebration Dinner

Brix
Cottage Place
Sakura
Tinderbox Kitchen
L'Auberge

Yes, we threw in a Sedona option in there. Not sure about that. What do you think? Comment below...

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...