Last fall’s ARTELPHX, the third iteration of the multi-night mash-up of visual and performance art founded in 2013 by Tara Sharpe, was fresh and funky. The event, held at The Clarendon Hotel, even earned our best arts festival praise. Still a relatively new enterprise, its foibles were easily construed as…
“Momentum” Desert landscapes, posable wooden mannequins, and a PT Cruiser. These are some of the subjects you’ll find in Heather J. Kirk’s multimedia pieces shown within the Herberger Theater Art Gallery. Kirk’s “Momentum” features a range of photographic art from straight prints to prints on aluminum with 3D elements added…
CANNES, France — “Je m’appelle Max.” Now that’s an opening line, so much better in French, and it’s just one reason I’m glad I waited to see Mad Max: Fury Road here in Cannes on the morning of the festival’s second day, Thursday, rather than at home in the States…
Pitch Perfect 2 hit a few wrong notes for the Village Voice’s Alan Scherstuhl and special guest Monica Castillo, but LA Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson interpreted the film’s humor a little differently. We circle back to Sofia Vergara’s performance in Hot Pursuit, before arriving in the desert for Mad…
Astronomy in the Garden Humankind has often looked to the skies for answers, but when was the last time you, personally, got a good look at the stars? This weekend you can become re-acquainted with the Sonoran sky at the Desert Botanical Garden, 1201 North Galvin Parkway. An instructor from…
Scottsdale artist Saskia Jordá, whose flocks of suspended wooden birds were recently featured at both Mesa’s Spark! Festival of Creativity and Scottsdale’s Canal Convergence, received the 2015 Arlene and Morton Scult Contemporary Forum Award at Phoenix Art Museum on Wednesday, May 13. The Contemporary Forum, a support organization for Phoenix…
Odds are, you know who Chris Tucker is. You probably first saw him in Friday, or maybe Rush Hour, and you’ve almost definitely seen him since then. What you might not have known is that Tucker will be bringing his stand-up to Celebrity Theatre on Saturday, May 16. Like many comedians,…
Seeing everything on your Third Friday wish list is going to be more challenging than usual this month if your top picks include ARTELPHX at The Clarendon Hotel, which features 29 performances and installations. So we’re sharing a relatively short “must-see” list, but also offering a friendly reminder that ARTELPHX…
You might think, walking the aisles separating large cases of ceramics at the ASU Ceramics Research Center, that ceramic works are simply objects. Grouped by decade, they appear to be mere artifacts from bygone days. Some are functional, decorative, or both. But few beckon viewers to consider the fluid nature…
A lot of comedians get their start because of their love for being on stage or their desire to make the world laugh. Deon Cole didn’t start for either of those reasons. According to the comic, a friend bet him $50 to do stand-up one time, and the rest is…
“Everybody knowns mid-century is a money maker,” Dominic Fasano says. He’s sitting on his Paul McCobb-designed Widdicomb couch with his girlfriend Alba Serrato and their French bulldog Remi, in the small but well-staged 1965 Al Beadle Boardwalk condominium that they share. From big-time TV shows like Mad Men to highly…
Blues legend Bessie Smith was arguably America’s most powerful black woman during her heyday in the ’20s and ’30s. Her reign wasn’t just based on being the highest-paid African-American entertainer of her generation, but, according to the new HBO movie Bessie, on the freedoms she allowed herself after breaking with…
Jen Lancaster hasn’t always gotten it right. The New York Times bestselling author’s love of Kraft American singles prevailed when she tried to “culture up” (and bring fancy but stinky cheeses to her life), and she wrote an entire book about weight loss without reaching her goal. But Lancaster isn’t one…
Good news for minimalists who enjoy applying their favored aesthetic principle to their bank accounts: Luxury basics fashion label Vince will open a boutique at Scottsdale Quarter on Friday, May 15. While the brand is available at select Valley department stores, including both Barneys and Nordstrom at Scottsdale Fashion Square,…
What happens in the studio, shouldn’t always stay in the studio. Studio Visit Q+A is a weekly series that profiles artists in their studios. We ask them questions, they provide answers, and then we have a nice discussion about their work. This week: Phoenix artist Nathaniel Lewis. Since returning to…
This doesn’t feel like a film that exists. How is George Miller’s bonkers, exhausting, no-future smash-’em-up Mad Max: Fury Road not one of those almost-was boondoggles mourned and dreamed of by fans, a revered director’s…
Maybe we contain multitudes, and maybe we contain a couple great splashes of primary color. With one arm stretched high above his head, puppeteer Caroll Spinney has spent the past decades…
Iris Apfel isn’t exactly a household name, unless we’re talking about very stylish households. From 1950 to 1992, Apfel ran Old World Weavers, the business she co-founded with her husband, Carl, which faithfully re-created antique textiles for…
Some people complain about sequels to beloved movies, while others welcome the possibility that a part deux might be even better than the first. Sometimes that happens: While The Godfather is great, The Godfather: Part II expands on…
Memories of last fall’s ARTELPHX installations, from a room filled with suspended paper fish to a soft screen of mouths that made sounds when people poked it, still linger. It might be hard to top the event we dubbed last year’s best art festival, but event director Tara Sharpe is…
Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but some very exciting things have been happening in the world lately — the second royal baby was born, Morgan Freeman is pushing for the legalization of marijuana, and the general public has opened a conversation about transgender people. And, hey, we’ve got three more…
Starting tomorrow, PhoenixNewTimes.com is going to look a little different. Make that a lot different. Much like your favorite Real Housewives, our website’s getting a facelift…
