Java.FEB.2017

REIMAGINING PHOENIX
By Robert Sentinery
BUZZ
This month we feature several individuals who are helping to reimagine the way
we view our surroundings. Angela Ellsworth is an internationally known visual
and performance artist. Her work has taken her across the globe, including stops
at the Biennale of Sydney, Australia; the Getty Center in Los Angeles; and the
National Review of Live Art (NRLA) in Glasgow, Scotland. Ellsworth had a major
exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum in 2011 and has had gallery representation
in Phoenix, Tucson, Chicago and Melbourne to name a few.
Ellsworth has recently embarked on her most ambitious project to date—the
establishment of a museum. Co-founded with artist Steven Yazzie (whose busy
schedule now limits him to the advisory board), this is not your typical brickand-mortar
institution. The Museum of Walking (MoW) was conceived in a
120-sq.-ft. room on ASU’s main campus in Tempe. (They are currently looking
for a permanent location in downtown Phoenix.) The museum’s mission is to be
an educational resource committed to “the advancement of walking as an art
practice.” MoW’s first major fundraiser will take place on March 18, and the
hope is that 1,000 people (in groups of 20) will participate in a guided three-mile
walk through the Rio Salado Habitat Restoration Area (see “Angela Ellsworth:
Museum of Walking,” p. 8).
Justin Katz has turned his childhood passion for watching cartoons into
a lucrative creative enterprise called Flock of Pixels. Katz’s official job
description is “motion design,” which essentially fuses graphic design
with filmmaking. The result is the kind of animation one might see during the
title sequence of a film. While motion designers have been around for a while,
advances in computer technology and software have pushed the discipline
forward in leaps and bounds.
Katz has been fortunate to land some mega clients over the years, including
Apple, American Express, Canon and Coca-Cola to name a few. Although much
of his work falls into the category of advertising, Katz’s goal has always
been to reduce the amount of “visual pollution” that bombards us. One of his
proudest achievements was being asked to create the title sequence for the
AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) national conference in 2011, which
signaled the pinnacle of his profession (see “Justin Katz: Curating Cool, Creating
Good,” p. 12).
Charles Darr had a bit of an existential crisis after graduating from ASU with a
photography degree (not uncommon for new grads, but perhaps compounded
for creatives). In order to offset this, Darr started calling up his artist friends and
asking if he could come over to hang out and take some photos of them in their
spaces. The result is a body of work called “Stars to Satellites” that features
more than 60 portraits of the people that make up Phoenix’s creative core.
The series is a document of a city on the move and the arts community that is
directing it (see “Charles Darr: Seeing Artists in Their Environments,” p. 34).