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261 • OCT 2017<br />
Kara<br />
Roschi<br />
ROBERT WILLIAMS • WALTER PRODUCTIONS • CURATOR ENGINE
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CONTENTS<br />
8<br />
12<br />
22<br />
32<br />
34<br />
FEATURES<br />
KARA ROSCHI<br />
Curating a Life<br />
By Demetrius Burns<br />
Cover: Kara Roschi<br />
Photo by: Enrique Garcia<br />
8 12 22<br />
34<br />
WALTER PRODUCTIONS<br />
Leaving a Giant Footprint in Phoenix<br />
By Jeffery Kronenfeild<br />
UNMASKED<br />
Photographer: Andy Hartmark<br />
Art Director: Nikola Vendettoli<br />
SMALL LEAKS SINK SHIPS<br />
Golden Calf<br />
By Mitchell L. Hillman<br />
ROBERT WILLIAMS<br />
at MCA Museum<br />
By Amy Young<br />
COLUMNS<br />
7<br />
16<br />
20<br />
30<br />
38<br />
40<br />
BUZZ<br />
Curating Culture<br />
By Robert Sentinery<br />
ARTS<br />
Repositioning Soleri at SMoCA<br />
By Jenna Duncan<br />
Contemporary Aboriginal Women’s Art<br />
By Amy L. Young<br />
FOOD FETISH<br />
Glai Baan<br />
By Sloane Burwell<br />
SOUNDS AROUND TOWN<br />
By Mitchell L. Hillman<br />
GIRL ON FARMER<br />
Suburban Scares<br />
By Celia Beresford<br />
NIGHT GALLERY<br />
Photos by Robert Sentinery<br />
JAVA MAGAZINE<br />
EDITOR & PUBLISHER<br />
Robert Sentinery<br />
ART DIRECTOR<br />
Victor Vasquez<br />
ARTS EDITOR<br />
Amy L. Young<br />
FOOD EDITOR<br />
Sloane Burwell<br />
MUSIC EDITOR<br />
Mitchell L. Hillman<br />
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR<br />
Jenna Duncan<br />
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS<br />
Jack Cavanaugh<br />
Jeffery Kronenfeld<br />
Tom Reardon<br />
PROOFREADER<br />
Patricia Sanders<br />
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS<br />
Andy Hartmark<br />
Enrique Garcia<br />
Johnny Jaffe<br />
ADVERTISING<br />
(602) 574-6364<br />
<strong>Java</strong> Magazine<br />
Copyright © 2017<br />
All rights reserved.<br />
Reproduction in whole or in part of any text, photograph<br />
or illustration is strictly prohibited without the written<br />
permission of the publisher. The publisher does not<br />
assume responsibility for unsolicited submissions.<br />
Publisher assumes no liability for the information<br />
contained herein; all statements are the sole opinions<br />
of the contributors and/or advertisers.<br />
JAVA MAGAZINE<br />
PO Box 45448 Phoenix, AZ 85064<br />
email: javamag@cox.net<br />
tel: (480) 966-6352<br />
www.javamagaz.com<br />
4 JAVA<br />
MAGAZINE
GRAND OPENING<br />
COLLECTIVE<br />
Aileen Frick<br />
FunWow<br />
Jon Wassom<br />
Kathy Taylor<br />
Lynn Hoyland<br />
Kathy Taylor<br />
"Gift of Fire"<br />
Opening<br />
October 6th<br />
Artist Reception<br />
October 20th<br />
COLLECTIVE<br />
1229 Grand Ave.<br />
Phoenix, AZ 85007<br />
Visit us at 9thegallery.com or call 602.465.3264
2017_ATF__JAVA_3.875X7.75.pdf 1 9/8/17 3:24 PM<br />
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CURATING CULTURE<br />
By Robert Sentinery<br />
BUZZ<br />
This month JAVA looks at how the urban landscape is changing with the<br />
integration of art into community spaces. As chief curator for Curator<br />
Engine, Kara Roschi connects some of the Valley’s most talented<br />
artists with large-scale projects often initiated by developers and<br />
municipalities. Because Roschi came straight out of ASU’s art studios<br />
and has been an active member of the downtown arts community,<br />
she has special insight into the street-level makers who are often<br />
overlooked by more bureaucratic programs. As a result of her efforts,<br />
some of our most beloved struggling artists have landing well-paying<br />
gigs and gotten their work into the public eye (see “Kara Roschi:<br />
Curating a Life,” p. 8).<br />
Walter Productions is one of the most impressive creative groups<br />
working in the Valley. The sheer scale, along with fun factor, of their<br />
projects grabs the attention of people from all walks of life. “Walter<br />
the Bus,” a giant replica of VW’s beloved symbol of hippiedom, was<br />
one of their first projects. Things have really grown from there,<br />
with a entire fleet of oversized art cars, including “Heathen” (a firebreathing<br />
repurposed fire truck), a giant Baja bug named “Big Red”<br />
and “Kalliope,” a mobile soundstage packed with neon, lasers, fire<br />
and 65,000 watts of sound.<br />
Inspired by the Burning Man ethos, Walter Productions continues<br />
to evolve, enlisting a growing team of both paid and volunteer<br />
workers to execute projects that inspire a childlike sense of wonder.<br />
The Walterdome, Walter Gallery and Walter Depot are three of the<br />
spaces they occupy around town, with more on the way, including a<br />
50,000-square-foot super-project that is yet to be publicly announced.<br />
In the meantime, you can check out some of their handiwork at this<br />
month’s inaugural Lost Lake Festival, where they produced all the<br />
oversized games in the Lost Playground (see “Walter Productions:<br />
Leaving a Giant Footprint in Phoenix,” p. 12).<br />
Robert Williams is a living legend. His traveling exhibition “Slang<br />
Aesthetics!” is currently on view at Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum<br />
through mid January. As founder of Juxtapoz magazine, Williams<br />
almost single-handedly pioneered a counter-cultural force that is itself<br />
unclassifiable, more of an anti-art movement. Now Juxtapoz outsells all<br />
other art magazines, including such haloed titles as Art Forum and Art<br />
in America. As he enters his golden years, Williams is still extremely<br />
active in the studio. His realistic/surrealistic paintings exhibit a sharp<br />
wit and playful mockery of societal norms. JAVA was fortunate to have<br />
the opportunity to sit with him for a candid conversation (see “Robert<br />
Williams at MCA Museum,” p. 36).<br />
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Kara<br />
Roschi<br />
Curating a Life<br />
By Demetrius Burns<br />
Photos: Enrique Garcia<br />
8 JAVA<br />
MAGAZINE
We are all creatives.<br />
Kara Roschi and Tim McElligott of Curator Engine<br />
This is the essential promise instilled by Apple when you purchase any of<br />
their products, and in many ways this outlook represents the current<br />
state of art in the Western world. Within a post-modern lens, our<br />
antiquated, haloed notion of the creator becomes rather irrelevant.<br />
There is no artist with their back turned to the audience creating works that<br />
are somehow divorced from the context of where they are from or whom they<br />
have encountered.<br />
The artist does not have power over interpretation, either. Rather, they are<br />
merely the holder of meaning, vessel of a contextualized understanding<br />
who yields to the interpretations of their audience. In that sense, the line<br />
between curator and artist has begun to blur. The democratization of art has<br />
dethroned the artist as someone sacred and different from a curator who<br />
acts as steward of art. In many ways, both artist and curator are stewards of<br />
meaning.<br />
Phoenix’s Kara Roschi is what one would call an artist-curator. She got<br />
her start in the Phoenix scene by performing at poetry readings hosted by<br />
Ernesto Moncada and grew up working in photography, painting and writing.<br />
What began as finding spaces to read work turned into finding spaces for<br />
others to create work. What’s important is that she is in the business of<br />
developing artists and connecting them with spaces, which is an art of<br />
creation in itself. Her position as Chief Curator at Curator Engine allows her<br />
to do that.<br />
JAVA 9<br />
MAGAZINE
Roschi’s story starts as a kid in Girard,<br />
Pennsylvania. Girard is a tiny town. There are only<br />
two traffic lights, one into and out of town. A selfdescribed<br />
“loner” who spent her time in books or<br />
on four- to six-hour bike rides, Roschi sought out<br />
herself—though she would never say it in those<br />
words. Her parents were high school sweethearts,<br />
but like a lot of people who fall in love in high<br />
school, they grew apart as the years went by.<br />
Roschi’s parents couldn’t spend any time together,<br />
as her mother worked the second shift and her<br />
father worked the first shift. This, combined with<br />
the fact that they had become less compatible,<br />
made her nuclear family not quite so idyllic. Still,<br />
they charged ahead, like most families do in small<br />
Midwestern towns.<br />
“My dad is pretty reserved and was in the blue<br />
collar field,” Roschi said. “He was very analytical.<br />
My mom liked to be out in the world and talking<br />
to people. She is funny in a goofy way, and my<br />
dad was funny in a dry, witty way. I thought they<br />
were complementing each other, but they were<br />
fundamentally different people,” said Roschi.<br />
Most artists have pivotal, foundational texts<br />
that sort of disoriented them and altered their<br />
path forever. For Roschi, it was reading Stephen<br />
King in the fifth grade. Her first big King book<br />
was Needful Things, which deals with murder—not<br />
something a typical young Midwestern girl would<br />
gravitate toward.<br />
As Roschi puts it, “I have a love for learning<br />
about the softer stuff in the world, kind of like the<br />
nuanced things between the actual things.” In that<br />
sense, the schizoid world of Stephen King led her<br />
down a path of inquiry as an outsider who wanted<br />
to connect. Eventually she found comfort in<br />
Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha and Voltaire’s Candide,<br />
which led her to a set of ethics that would serve<br />
as her north star for years to come.<br />
Roschi resisted her parents, which is natural.<br />
But resistance is futile. Roschi in many ways<br />
is an amalgamation of her parents. She’s<br />
someone who’s grounded in the winged wisdom<br />
of philosophy and can easily navigate among<br />
people with social gravitas. She is her parents’<br />
portmanteau. But that didn’t happen without<br />
struggle. Rather, it happened because of struggle.<br />
The crucible birthed a diamond strewn with the<br />
residuals of her parent’s spiraled longings.<br />
Roschi was in accelerated reading programs<br />
throughout school, and her parents—who didn’t<br />
10 JAVA<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
go to college—urged her to attend university.<br />
Roschi was fine with that, but by her late teens<br />
she wanted to move out of the house. She didn’t<br />
want to feel obligated to anybody. She wanted to<br />
wander. However, her mom insisted that she stay<br />
until she was 18. Roschi obliged.<br />
After turning 18, Roschi moved away from home<br />
and attended school in Pennsylvania, majoring<br />
in interdisciplinary arts. “I grew up always<br />
noodling in creative work—photography,<br />
writing, drawing, collaging—and wound up in<br />
college for an intermedia arts degree,” Roschi<br />
said. “I still couldn’t settle on a medium. Every<br />
field and format seemed just as suited as another<br />
to express ideas.”<br />
A year into college, she decided to move with<br />
her boyfriend out to Arizona. “We woke up one<br />
morning and he was like, ‘Do you actually want<br />
to do this or do you want to move somewhere<br />
else?’” said Roschi. “I didn’t even think there<br />
was an option. I was totally on board with moving,<br />
so we [got] the computer up into the bed and<br />
looked for a place where it never snows, had a<br />
comparable cost of living to PA, and had a school<br />
with an intermedia arts program, because that’s<br />
what I was enrolled in. And then Tempe, Arizona<br />
popped up.”<br />
Roschi eventually graduated from Arizona State<br />
University in 2007. What helped shape her interest<br />
in curating and arts advocacy was a class in<br />
performance work with Angela Ellsworth and an<br />
introduction to Gregory Sale’s work—specifically<br />
how the work helped her explore ideas of<br />
intangible mediums. “I could work with time,<br />
with experience, with interactivity, with friends<br />
and strangers; I could play with the fabric and<br />
reweave or tug on the threads of social and civic<br />
interaction,” said Roschi.<br />
“I wasn’t as compelled to create objects at that<br />
point; it seemed there was a more direct and<br />
immediate, visceral way to engage people. Being<br />
present for the actions and reactions of a work,<br />
those actions and reactions BEING the work… the<br />
relationships born from those moments…. That is<br />
all particularly attractive to me,” said Roschi.<br />
Around 2008, Roschi came in contact with arts<br />
advocate Jane Reddin at Legend City Studios,<br />
who was looking to open up a retail store<br />
dedicated to selling local functional art. At
the time, Roschi was working two jobs and<br />
performing at various venues. Eventually the<br />
conversation crystalized and Kara joined Reddin<br />
for the Practical Art launch.<br />
Roschi enjoyed working with the team at Practical<br />
Art, but after Reddin passed in 2011, she began<br />
to lose some agency and felt she would be better<br />
suited to furthering her education. A year or so<br />
prior starting graduate school, Roschi met and fell<br />
in love with fellow artist Chris Miller. They have<br />
enjoyed a strong, blossoming relationship as an<br />
artist couple.<br />
Roschi decided to sign on as a research assistant,<br />
and this led to grow closer to the School of Art’s<br />
then-director Adriene Jenik. Through Jenik, Roschi<br />
helped start an arts placement service called<br />
Art Xchange, which would later lead to a more<br />
developed idea: Curator Engine. Jenik introduced<br />
Roschi to Tim McElligott, who decided to fund the<br />
Curator Engine project and serve as the founder.<br />
“Curator Engine focuses on placing local artists’<br />
work according to client needs—organizing the<br />
work in response to interest, theme, palette,<br />
demographics and budget,” said Roschi. “For our<br />
clients, we hub everything they could want into<br />
one simple transaction—high service from start<br />
to finish. For artists, we take care of the business<br />
side of their practice so they can keep their head<br />
in the generative creative space that yields the<br />
best, most inventive work.”<br />
Having already completed around a dozen large<br />
projects, with another dozen actively in the works,<br />
things really starting to ramp up at Curator Engine.<br />
“Our very first big project was doing a suite of<br />
artwork for Marina Heights, which was one of<br />
the largest developments in Arizona history,” said<br />
Roschi. “We did a couple of the executive floors<br />
and also introduced a local art option for their<br />
public art component.” The Rise student living<br />
complex on Apache and Rural has been one of<br />
Curator Engine’s larger overall packages, with a<br />
collection of photography, five murals and a huge<br />
exterior wall installation.<br />
Roschi and McElligott come from different<br />
backgrounds, as Roschi has an arts education and<br />
McElligott went to school for business. Together<br />
they’re able to form a nucleus that reaches out to<br />
businesses and artists alike. “Tim is really good<br />
at connecting up with development companies,”<br />
said Roschi. “He likes those communities in the<br />
way that they can effect change in the world and<br />
he’s helping them connect with more millennial<br />
workers.”<br />
The future is still tantalizing for Roschi. She has<br />
myriad skills and has promoted a lot of artists to<br />
develop and profit from their work in many ways<br />
throughout the Valley. She is drawn to connect,<br />
but naturally doesn’t stray far from home—even<br />
as a wanderer. At heart, Roschi is forever that<br />
child cruising through the neighborhood on her<br />
bike seeking adventures—seeking herself.<br />
JAVA 11<br />
MAGAZINE
Walter Productions<br />
Leaving a Giant Footprint in Phoenix<br />
By Jeffrey Kronenfeild<br />
12 JAVA<br />
MAGAZINE
The metallic coating on the rigid foam<br />
insulation used to construct the yurts of<br />
Walter Camp gleams in the sunset as the<br />
playa dust is hosed away. Giant machine<br />
hulks are still strapped to the flatbeds that ferried<br />
them home from Burning Man, having returned<br />
this very afternoon. As I park and approach, a few<br />
crewmembers lay down their pressure washers<br />
and towels and converge upon me. Despite my<br />
awkwardness, they refuse anything less than a<br />
complete hug, pressing their mud-clad bodies against<br />
mine.<br />
This may be as close as I ever get to Burning Man,<br />
but this extension of that desert bacchanalia, with<br />
its genuine sense of radical inclusivity, art projects<br />
dreamed on an order of magnitude far beyond gallery<br />
cubes and a community united in an absurdist<br />
purpose. This is at the heart of Walter Productions<br />
and the rest of the Walter assorted ventures.<br />
Walter Productions is hard at work “activating”<br />
spaces and minds both around the country and in our<br />
sun-soaked Valley—from unique immersive yoga to<br />
an artistic fleet of oversized vehicles, some of which<br />
breath fire and project lasers, to the private parties<br />
Walter throws for a who’s-who list of Silicon Valley<br />
companies like SpaceX, Twitter and Google.<br />
Kirk Stronn, M.D., is the founder of Walter<br />
Productions, although he emphasizes its collective<br />
nature every chance he gets. If the easy laughter and<br />
whistle-while-you-work attitude of the crew is any<br />
indication, this isn’t just the usual corporate “new<br />
speak” filling the press releases of the so-called new<br />
economy.<br />
When we sat down in one of the several buildings<br />
currently occupied by Walter Productions, Stronn<br />
explained that it all began with a trip to Burning<br />
Man in 2007 with his family. What they saw and<br />
experienced inspired the Stronn family to bring<br />
something back the following year. “We actually<br />
collaborated with many people on the creation of a<br />
giant Volkswagen bus,” Stronn said, “which we then<br />
took to Burning Man and shared, and from there, we<br />
never stopped building.”<br />
Today, Walter occupies three spaces throughout the<br />
Valley: the Walterdome, the Studio and the Depot.<br />
It is currently converting a former fire station into a<br />
brewery, slated to open early next year, bringing the<br />
total to four. After that will come a very big but supersecret<br />
project.<br />
The Walterdome is the original home of Walter<br />
Productions, or home away from home if you take the<br />
customary Burning Man greeting, “welcome home,”<br />
literally. Housed in part of the repurposed Ponderosa<br />
Lumber Mill in south Scottsdale, the location is<br />
also home to Walter Art Gallery and its cooperative<br />
brewery.<br />
Here Walter partners (or “cohabitates,” in Stronn’s<br />
words) with the Maker Twins & Co., a collective of<br />
self-described hackers, makers and dreamers, started<br />
by two brothers who are closely tied to Walter.<br />
Through partnerships with many other groups and<br />
individuals, Walter augments its own deep reservoir<br />
of skills and equipment, which includes 3D printers,<br />
laser cutters and a CNC mill, to name a few.<br />
It was here at the Walterdome that the fleet of art<br />
cars was built, from giants like Walter the Bus, firebreathing<br />
Heathen and Kalliope down to the slightly<br />
less gigantic but oversized Baja bug, Big Red. This is<br />
also where Maker Twins built the giant animatronic<br />
tick that they brought to life earlier this summer at<br />
San Diego Comic-Con for Amazon Studio’s reboot of<br />
“The Tick.”<br />
The main entrance to the Walterdome is a pair of<br />
scaled-up giant doors fitted with equally large custom<br />
hardware. The doorknob is roughly the size of a bocce<br />
ball and positioned a little under halfway up the<br />
14-foot door.<br />
When Stronn coyly asks me how I might open a door<br />
like this, I stare up with a twinge of childlike wonder.<br />
I thought of the giant chair and table set of artist<br />
Robert Therrien housed in the Broad Museum in Los<br />
Angeles. (Legend holds these outsized pieces are so<br />
large, the museum had to be built around them.)<br />
What inspires this sense of wonderment is<br />
something Stronn and others discussed throughout<br />
our interviews. It is part of what Walter is. Not just<br />
a fleet of giant art cars, large buildings and assorted<br />
business units, but a complex of ideas complete with<br />
its own specialized vocabulary.<br />
One of the important terms is “activation,” which<br />
describes the way Walter transforms and reimagines<br />
the spaces it occupies. It brings with it a host of<br />
other words, many of which can be found within the<br />
“10 Principles,” a sort of constitution or algorithm<br />
for Burning Man. Participation, inclusion, communal<br />
effort and self-expression are a few of those terms<br />
and are part of Walter Production’s goal to extend<br />
the Burning Man experience beyond the temporary<br />
thoroughfares of Black Rock City.<br />
Walter’s second location, called the Depot, is housed<br />
in a former National Guard facility on 7th Ave. and<br />
JAVA 13<br />
MAGAZINE
Roosevelt in Phoenix. The day I visited, a group<br />
of volunteers and employees were hard at work<br />
cleaning and storing their disassembled camp, freshly<br />
returned from Burning Man.<br />
“We could not do what we do without hundreds<br />
of people coming together to make it happen. It’s<br />
volunteers really, it’s not just paid staff,” said Ryan<br />
Tucknott, director of operations for Walter. “It’s a very<br />
unique blending of community involvement, which is<br />
not typical of most commercial entities.”<br />
When I compared the operation to a small army,<br />
Stronn was quick to point out they even have a tank.<br />
The tank is called Mona Lisa—all Walter machines<br />
have names—and was modeled on Leonardo da<br />
Vinci’s famous sketch of a proposed war engine for<br />
the Duke of Milan.<br />
Walter’s third space is located a few blocks east<br />
of the Depot, also on Roosevelt. It was the original<br />
home to Canyon Records, the first label dedicated to<br />
American Indian music and one of the oldest studios<br />
in Phoenix. It boasts a massive green screen, or<br />
psych screen, as Stronn calls it. Over the next few<br />
years, half of the building will be torn down, and<br />
the remainder will be gutted and then rebuilt into a<br />
50,000-square-foot arts and entertainment venue,<br />
which Stronn promises will be “unlike anything else<br />
anywhere in the world.”<br />
We can’t say too much about it at this time, but<br />
Stronn does offer some tantalizing hints about the<br />
secret project. “It’s very Walter to have things big,”<br />
Stronn explained. “The inner kid comes out when<br />
you’re around big things. You kind of can’t help<br />
yourself. If there’s a big toy, adults like to play with it.<br />
We all like to play. Your inhibitions get broken down.”<br />
While we’re on the topic of gigantic games, we might<br />
as well hit pause and discuss Walter’s involvement<br />
with the first Lost Lake Festival. Scheduled for<br />
three days later this month (Oct. 20-22), Lost Lake is<br />
produced by Superfly, the people behind Bonnaroo,<br />
Outside Lands and other summer festival stalwarts.<br />
Walter has worked with Superfly on a number of<br />
projects over the past few years.<br />
Their first festival with Superfly was Bonnaroo in<br />
2014. They brought Big Red (a giant Volkswagen<br />
Baja Bug with neon accents) and Kalliope, Walter’s<br />
portable soundstage. Named for the ancient<br />
Greek goddess of epic poetry, Kalliope’s previous<br />
incarnation was as a 1969 Freuhauf semi-tractor<br />
trailer that had lain dormant and rusting at an old<br />
mine in Jerome for years.<br />
“It started out with us wanting to put a DJ on top of<br />
a fire-shooting fire truck,” Tucknott said. “With the<br />
collective effort of dozens of people applying their<br />
input throughout that process, it resulted in this<br />
highly unique machine that you see.” Kalliope is now<br />
a huge mobile stage resplendent with over 65,000<br />
watts of sound, vintage speakers, lights, lasers and,<br />
of course, flame effects.<br />
Traditionally known for jam bands, Walter<br />
Productions helped usher EDM acts into Bonnaroo’s<br />
festival repertoire. “That first year, Scrillex ended<br />
up doing a surprise sunrise set on Kalliope to about<br />
8,000 people,” Tucknott said. “That really started a<br />
momentum with Kalliope, and really the crowd grew<br />
even more the next year.”<br />
The trust they built with Superfly, plus a proven<br />
ability to engineer outlandish but safe spectacles,<br />
contributed to the decision to pick Phoenix as the<br />
home for Superfly’s first new festival in years, which<br />
will feature top musical acts, local cuisine, gigantic<br />
games and art.<br />
As you may have guessed, Walter is helping design<br />
and construct the Lost Playground, which will feature<br />
a variety of oversized lawn games with names like<br />
Life-size Connect Four, Mega Twister and, a personal<br />
favorite, Humongous Cornhole. “A lot of [the games]<br />
are going to have a technological component,”<br />
Tucknott said. “So, it’s responsive to lighting, like<br />
table tennis, but light is going to respond to the ball,<br />
or Connect Four, as the chips are falling, light and<br />
sound will feed back to you.”<br />
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Walter’s dancing tentacles extend further than just<br />
festivals, private soirees for Silicon Valley elites, giant<br />
vehicles and games. Walter also has a cooperative<br />
brewery located at the Walterdome and even a health<br />
and wellness venture, Walter Yoga.<br />
Walter Yoga was started to balance out the ecstatic<br />
all-night dance parties through yoga and meditation,<br />
explained Gordon Ogden, marketing manager for Walter<br />
Productions and the event producer/yoga instructor<br />
for Walter Yoga. Walter Yoga’s tagline is “love, lights<br />
and lasers,” which should clue you in to their unique<br />
approach. Integrating music and a variety of light-based<br />
special effects, Walter Yoga’s carefully designed classes<br />
create surprise and whimsy for participants.<br />
Another venture of Walter Productions, and of particular<br />
interest to the little pyromaniac inside us all, is its<br />
partnership with Purdue University Graduate School<br />
of Aeronautics and Astronautics in the design and<br />
construction of what Stronn somewhat understatedly<br />
refers to as “flame effects.”<br />
“The very first flame effect they helped us make<br />
was the world’s largest combustible vortex ring<br />
generator,” Stronn said. “It’s a six-foot-diameter<br />
piston. It creates a vortex ring, which is like a stable<br />
structure, like a smoke ring, but it’s made of propane,<br />
and then we ignite it up in the sky.” Or, as Johnny Cash<br />
might say, a burning ring of fire.<br />
It may not be rocket science, but it certainly bears<br />
the fingerprints of rocket scientists. There is also<br />
a third-party safety engineer and a dedicated<br />
fire team. When you’re shooting 50-foot fireballs<br />
around some of the nation’s top musical acts, you<br />
can’t afford mistakes.<br />
Tucknott explained that the most unique and<br />
challenging aspects of Walter’s work stem from its<br />
non-linear build process. “We don’t build things in a<br />
linear way, where you design and procure, then you<br />
build and refine—and you do those as block chunks,”<br />
Tucknott said. “Our design and our build happen<br />
concurrently, really throughout the entire process.”<br />
This has led Walter Productions to, at times, if not<br />
reinvent the wheel, at least rediscover the process<br />
of its invention. Working with a ragtag assemblage<br />
of old tractors and airport crash trucks, parts aren’t<br />
always readily available and have to be scavenged<br />
from scrapyards far and wide or painstakingly<br />
reverse-engineered and then reconstructed.<br />
Some might question the effectiveness of this<br />
approach, of wedding the old to the new, no matter<br />
the cost or challenges involved, but, as Stronn says,<br />
“That’s Walter.”<br />
“Everyone tells us we should just level this building,”<br />
said Stronn as we walked through the Studio. “There’s<br />
no possible way. You’d lose all that 1940s history.”<br />
“We love our old fire trucks and stuff. Giving things a<br />
second life is a big part of Walter,” explained Stronn,<br />
his voice rising a register and his eyes narrowing.<br />
After a long pause, he added, “People need second<br />
chances as well, just like old machines do.”<br />
“So many things mess up at Burning Man that you<br />
start to understand how important it is to kind of go<br />
with it and to be able to problem solve, and to work<br />
through the challenges. Its great training, and I’m<br />
sure that’s part of why Elon Musk, the Google guys,<br />
Tony Hsieh and everybody else like that are going to<br />
Burning Man.”<br />
Walter Productions and its crew are doing big things<br />
in Phoenix. See some of these yourself at the Lost<br />
Lake fest this month and, if you’re lucky, maybe you<br />
will get to press the massive red button controlling<br />
whatever infernal machines they’re currently<br />
dreaming up.<br />
walterproductions.com<br />
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REPOSITIONING SOLERI<br />
At SMoCA<br />
By Jenna Duncan<br />
A common perception of the ’60s to ’70s is that<br />
everyone involved in social change embraced<br />
communal, “free love” ideologies—hippie collectives<br />
with visions of utopia as a pooling of resources,<br />
reliance on peers and lots of groupthink.<br />
But not all of the tastemakers of that era embraced<br />
these attitudes. “Repositioning Soleri: The City Is<br />
Nature,” an exhibit opening at Scottsdale Museum of<br />
Contemporary Art, embraces the more artistic side of<br />
this well-known, visionary Italian architect.<br />
Taking the easy road, “tuning out” and unplugging<br />
was never part of Soleri’s vision, explains SMoCA<br />
contemporary art curator Claire C. Carter. “He was<br />
very suspect about institutionally enforced rules and<br />
order,” Carter says. “He didn’t want any religious or<br />
political overtones for his community.”<br />
The artist-architect, after all, came of age at<br />
university in Italy under fascism. When he relocated<br />
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to the United States, he embraced the American spirit<br />
of freedom and liberty, but he never was one to loaf.<br />
Soleri embraced hard work and individualism, Carter<br />
explains. This is evinced by his strict personal daily<br />
regimen and the hard manual labor he introduced<br />
to students and apprentices working at the Cosanti<br />
foundry and doing construction at Arcosanti.<br />
The “Arc-ology” plan for futuristic cities was<br />
based on ideals of efficiency, sustainability and<br />
walkability, along with an appreciation of the arts.<br />
Soleri did celebrate the sense of community, Carter<br />
says, but he still believed in a balance of individual<br />
thought and work. His plans for Arcosanti—the<br />
idea to build up instead of out—were very much a<br />
response to the materialism and urban sprawl that<br />
sprung from the 1950s.<br />
Carter began research on Soleri in 2010, and by<br />
2013 she knew there would have to be a much<br />
more well-rounded retrospective than any that had<br />
been mounted before. The book she produced to<br />
accompany the show and corresponding catalog,<br />
Repositioning Paolo Soleri: The City Is Nature,<br />
represents seven years of her research.<br />
The more Carter got into his timeline, the more she<br />
came to realize that 1969-1970 was a very important<br />
year, marking the height of Soleri’s prolificness. In<br />
that year, he had a well-referenced debut at the<br />
Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C. His work then<br />
traveled to the Whitney, then to Chicago, then<br />
Canada, and finally landed at Berkeley.<br />
But the last time he had a really large career show, it<br />
included only a small catalog. This motivated Carter<br />
to produce something more comprehensive—an<br />
overview of a lifetime of work, art and plans. “Soleri<br />
was really controlling about what was published on<br />
him. He always had a hand in the writing, editing
Ivan Pintar, Figure with Arcvillage model, ca. 1968. © Cosanti Foundation<br />
Stewart A. Weiner, Paolo Soleri carving the earth mound used to cast the North Studio at Cosanti, Paradise Valley, Arizona,<br />
1958. © The Stewart A. Weiner Estate<br />
Paolo Soleri, Single Cantilever Bridge, early 1960s. Plaster, silt and adhesive; top element: 16 x 78 x 15 inches and<br />
base: 45 ½ x 29 x 14 ¼ inches. Collection of the Cosanti Foundation. © Cosanti Foundation<br />
Stuart A. Weiner, Soleri sketching at his desk, Cosanti, Paradise Valley, Arizona, ca. 1960. © The Stuart A. Weiner Estate<br />
and crafting,” Carter says. She believes SMoCA’s<br />
catalog is the first impartial piece of writing on Soleri<br />
produced outside of his own foundation.<br />
Many of the items on view are very delicate, having<br />
survived decades of often not being kept in museumstyle<br />
archival storage. “The exhibition is filled with<br />
a lot of ephemera that has never been displayed<br />
before,” Carter says.<br />
Some of these items of interest include giant scrolls.<br />
Soleri liked to create city plans on rolls of butcher<br />
paper, unrolling as he went. He usually worked on<br />
a drafting table that was only 12 feet long. He’d<br />
keep drawing as he unrolled the paper. One of the<br />
scrolls to be placed on view is a large drawing of<br />
Macrosanti, the second major city design Soleri<br />
imagined for a high-density community. When<br />
unrolled, the scroll is 528 inches long—44 feet,<br />
Carter says.<br />
Another part of the exhibit that will captivate visitors<br />
is a collection of bridge models, thought to have been<br />
lost since 1971. “I was interviewing all these people<br />
about where these models might be, and everyone<br />
landed on the conclusion that they were thrown out,”<br />
Carter says.<br />
They had never made it home to Cosanti after a<br />
traveling show whose final stop was Phoenix Art<br />
Museum—so it was assumed. But Carter and friends<br />
searched high and wide across Cosanti and finally<br />
found the bridge models in a storage room that hadn’t<br />
been excavated in 40 years. Luckily, they were safely<br />
packed in crates, with nothing piled on top, only<br />
around, hiding them from view.<br />
SMoCA pledged to the Cosanti Foundation and to<br />
private collectors that it would return anything it<br />
borrowed in better condition than originally found.<br />
The museum paid for a lot of conservation, and if<br />
they mounted anything, they used archival materials,<br />
Carter explains. “It’s recent history in a lot of ways,<br />
but sometimes recent history is the easiest to lose<br />
track of,” she says.<br />
In 2013, shortly following Soleri’s death at age<br />
93, SMoCA hosted a museum show honoring his<br />
memory, Paolo Soleri: Mesa City to Arcosanti. Mesa<br />
City was Soleri’s first big vision for a whole city plan.<br />
That show focused on Soleri as an architect, but this<br />
one, Carter says, focuses on Soleri as an artist.<br />
Paolo Soleri: The City Is Nature<br />
October 14, 2017 through January 28, 2018<br />
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art<br />
For more information, visit smoca.org.<br />
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CONTEMPORARY ABORIGINAL<br />
WOMEN’S ART AT SMOCA<br />
By Amy Young<br />
Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women<br />
Artists From Aboriginal Australia is one of the<br />
current exhibitions at the Scottsdale Museum of<br />
Contemporary Art (SMoCA). It brings together work<br />
by nine contemporary artists hailing from remote<br />
Aboriginal areas.<br />
This work by artists Nonggirrnga Marawili, Wintjiya<br />
Napaltjarri, Yukultji Napangati, Angelina Pwerle,<br />
Carlene West, Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Lena<br />
Yarinkura, Gulumbu Yunupingu and Nyapanyapa<br />
Yunupingu is on a national tour, with this leg<br />
including the full spectrum of the collection—70<br />
works in total, many of which are on loan from<br />
personal collections, marking the first time they’ve<br />
been on public view.<br />
The exhibition includes several of Australia’s most<br />
prominent artists, some of whom have works in the<br />
Australian National Museum collection. What is<br />
tremendously vital about Marking the Infinite is reflected<br />
in its title. It is a testament to tradition, drive and<br />
perseverance. This work hails from a culture where<br />
only since the 1980s have women been able to sell<br />
their artwork—and that was only after work by their<br />
male counterparts was already in the market.<br />
This work shows each artist’s respective strengths<br />
and outlines the artists’ personal and cultural<br />
histories. This is a dynamic group of women<br />
who have numerous achievements among them.<br />
Nyapanyapa Yunupingu has exhibited at the Sydney<br />
Biennale, and her sister Gulumbu Yunupingu has<br />
work in the Musée du quai Branly in Paris. The sisters<br />
took their artistic cue from their father—a cultural<br />
leader and painter—who encouraged them to follow<br />
suit and study him as he practiced the technique of<br />
bark painting.<br />
Lena Yarinkura, from the central Arnhem Land,<br />
began crafting with lessons from her mother, a<br />
weaver. Together, they wove baskets and created<br />
fiber animals, building on that familial tradition. But<br />
Yarinkura’s need to evolve found her expanding on<br />
those initial techniques to play with new stitching<br />
and shape combinations. Painting and sculptural<br />
work became a part of her artistic toolkit, and she<br />
has gone on to utilize some non-traditional methods<br />
to create large-scale installations that tell stories of<br />
the people from her region.<br />
It’s the intricacies in many of these works that make<br />
the exhibition so engaging. There is an attention to<br />
detail that is meaningful. Regina Pilawuk Wilson’s<br />
large Sun Mat features synthetic polymer paint on<br />
canvas that invites you to take a slow journey to its<br />
center. That inner point, either an origin or a destination,<br />
doesn’t seem to signify a finality, but an option that<br />
lets you know exploration is a key part of your trip.<br />
Her work has been shown at the Moscow Biennale.<br />
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Wintjiya Napaltjarri’s Women’s Ceremonies at<br />
Watanuma, an acrylic painting on linen from 2007,<br />
shows her ability to make a strong statement through<br />
simplicity and starkness. Using a deep red paint on<br />
the white backdrop, her delivery is thick and solid.<br />
The depth and intention she gives to each of her<br />
individual shapes or designs add intention to the<br />
inherent conviction. Each design in her work is like a<br />
puzzle piece that unites with the others to ultimately<br />
form a meaningful pattern. Her heedful compositions<br />
come to life, jumping from their canvas homes.<br />
Nyapanyapa Yunupingu’s Light Painting, 2012,<br />
Light (or animated white paint pen on 110 acetates)<br />
is another work of intriguing starkness. Where<br />
Napaltjarri’s aforementioned piece was bold in its<br />
starkness, Yunupingu’s piece is equally, if not more<br />
haunting. That is partially due to its subtler nature.<br />
Filled with loosely precise straight lines that subtly<br />
mingle with curvier and motion-filled shapes, there’s<br />
a sense of chaos and mystery that is both undeniable<br />
and unforgettable.<br />
As we live, we create stories, we observe stories,<br />
and we tell stories. This deeply poetic exhibition is<br />
an immersion in cultural storytelling through artwork<br />
by a fascinating group of women who have embraced<br />
cultural and familial traditions. Each one of the<br />
artists exhibited here has taken her respective<br />
roots by the reins. Each one is an innovator who has<br />
expanded on the traditions of her life. They show<br />
the value in old stories, they create new stories and<br />
important messages, and they explore and develop<br />
new processes with the mediums they utilize.<br />
Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists From<br />
Aboriginal Australia<br />
Through January 21, 2018<br />
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art<br />
smoca.org<br />
Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Sun Mat, 2015. Synthetic polymer paint<br />
on canvas, 98 7/16 x 137 7/8 inches. © Regina Pilawuk Wilson,<br />
Courtesy Durrmu Arts, Peppimenarti, Collection of Debra and Dennis<br />
Scholl<br />
Wintjiya Napaltjarri, Women’s Ceremonies at Watanuma, 2007. Synthetic<br />
polymer paint on canvas, 57 7/8 x 71 7/8 inches. © Wintjiya<br />
Napaltjarri, licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency Ltd, Courtesy<br />
Papunya Tula Artists, Collection of Debra and Dennis Scholl<br />
Carlene West, Tjitjiti, 2015. Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 78<br />
3/4 x 53 47/50. © Carlene West, Courtesy of Spinifex Arts Project,<br />
Collection of Debra and Dennis Scholl<br />
Nyapanyapa Yunupingu, Light Painting, 2010-11. Digital file, silent, ed.<br />
AP. © Nyapanyapa Yunupingu, Courtesy of Buku-Larrnggay Mulka<br />
Center, Yirrkala, Collection of Debra and Dennis Scholl<br />
All images: Photo Credit: Sid Hoeltzell<br />
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Glai Baan<br />
Thai Street Food<br />
By Sloane Burwell<br />
Tucked into what feels like a modified living room is Glai Baan Thai Street Food,<br />
a charming and welcome spot from first-time restaurateurs Dan and Cat. It feels<br />
almost strange to call them Dan and Cat, like they are my friends, but after a<br />
handful of visits, anything else would seem overly formal and insincere.<br />
The name itself, Glai Baan, loosely translates to “far from home.” Dotting the<br />
interior is a family-style photo collection of Thailand’s beloved former king and<br />
his family, as well as a smattering of black-and-white photos of a more rustic<br />
Bangkok, displayed and arranged like you’d see in a living room. Which, if you<br />
are playing along, is obviously the express intent of our hosts.<br />
Our servers were two adorable and well-trained folks who know the menu and<br />
are quick to pull out water bowls for canine friends in the pup-approved patio.<br />
We saw them both on every visit, Dan as well (Cat’s in the kitchen but will<br />
probably swing by to say “hi” at least once), and they remembered our names<br />
and our previous orders. Pretty impressive, since one of our visits coincided with<br />
their soft opening, which happens if you’ve been eyeing a new restaurant and<br />
assume that more cars in the parking lot means the place is open for business.<br />
Always ask for the nightly specials. We missed the fish on our first visit.<br />
However, on subsequent visits we thoroughly enjoyed the Thai Beef Salad ($12),<br />
an impressive hunk of NY Strip steak grilled to smoky perfection alongside a<br />
melange of red onions, chiles and a robust hand-ground black pepper. Perched<br />
on a smallish shareable plate (Fair warning: pick your table carefully. These<br />
small plates take up much-needed real estate on the charming two-top tables,<br />
so order wisely and have empties removed post haste), the greens in this salad<br />
were mostly cilantro, which is exactly the best way to enjoy this dish. I’m<br />
impressed that locally sourced beef is this inexpensive for this kind of portion.<br />
The Northern Thai Grilled Sausage ($12) was spicy, and slightly sour from<br />
the Kaffir lime leaves and citrus, which is perfection for this regional dish. A<br />
small dish of grilled mild chiles comes alongside, and we devoured them with<br />
chicharrones (more on that later), scooping them up like salsa verde. It’s clear<br />
someone here is an expert at the grill. What was slightly disappointing was<br />
the price point. While I get that locally sourced everything impacts price points,<br />
twelve bucks for one smallish sausage seems a bit steep. It’s delicious, make no<br />
mistake, but at that price I’d expect a more generous portion.<br />
The house-made Chicharrones ($2) is an enormous portion—more than enough<br />
for two people, and I would expect them to be twice that price. Charmingly<br />
served on a repurposed piece of paper from a Chinese calendar, the presentation<br />
lends to the homey charm of the place.<br />
My absolute favorite thing on the menu is the Son-in-Law Eggs ($4), four half-egg<br />
morsels that remind me of the deep-fried egg Chris Curtis used to impress with at<br />
NOCA not so long ago. Somehow a deep-fried whole egg is sliced in half to reveal<br />
a totally creamy center, not quite hard-boiled. I pondered the simple physics of how<br />
this was done while we scarfed them down. I have no idea. I will keep eating them<br />
until I find out. Savory, umami flavors are kicked up a notch with the sauce they<br />
arrive on, which reminded me of a mild ramen broth.<br />
I absolutely inhaled the Larb Moo ($8), a heady mix of ground pork, mint, shallots,<br />
lime and fish sauce. With the wedges of cabbage that come alongside we<br />
attempted to make wraps, but to little avail. Nevertheless, we persisted. Think<br />
of the most savory and impeccable pork Thai lettuce wrap, and you’ll be close. Cat<br />
has a gentle, deft hand in the kitchen, and somehow this fried minced pork still<br />
managed to feel light.<br />
The Salted Crab Papaya Salad ($10) is a funky, fantastic flavor explosion. Meant to<br />
provide depth and salt, the adorable baby crab pieces disguised the fact that this<br />
dish is SPICY. Make no mistake, ordered as is, this dish kills it. Don’t ask for it to be<br />
dumbed down—just go for it. The cooling unripe papaya and tomato wedges are a<br />
great counterpoint to the blazing heat.<br />
We also loved the Kanom Jeeb ($8), in which five decadent and luscious steamed<br />
pork dumplings come served inside a cute bamboo steamer. Great freshly made<br />
dough wrappers managed to stay toothsome, even after cooking, with none of the<br />
nascent gumminess found in lesser dumplings. The freshly ground pork was perfect,<br />
with no greasy residue to negatively impact the steaming. The exceptional ginger<br />
dipping sauce should be bottled post haste. I would stock that at home in perpetuity.<br />
I wouldn’t normally review a place that hasn’t even been open three weeks. But Glai<br />
Baan is already delicious, homey and comfortable. While its name might indicate<br />
the owners are far from home, after the first visit, you’ll feel like it’s your second<br />
home. There’s no pretension, just great shareable small plates brought to you by<br />
people who want you to feel like family. The ingredients are fresh and local, and the<br />
dishes clearly prepared by people who love what they are doing.<br />
Glai Baan Thai Street Food<br />
2333 E. Osborn, Phoenix<br />
(602) 595-5881<br />
Tuesday –Thursday, 5 to 11 p.m.<br />
Friday & Saturday, 5 p.m. to midnight<br />
Closed Sunday & Monday<br />
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Unmasked<br />
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Art Director: Nikola Vendettoli<br />
Photographer: Andy Hartmark<br />
Models: Stirling Anderson, Bree Reiners<br />
Wardrobe: Hell on Heels Couture,<br />
Nikola Vendettoli original fashion and personal<br />
collection of vintage<br />
Hair/Makeup: Stirling Anderson, Bree Reiners<br />
Artist: YukoYabuki www.yukoyabuki.com<br />
Location: BLACKSTAR JAVA Studio 29<br />
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Small Leaks<br />
Sink Ships<br />
By Mitchell Hillman • Photo: Thom Sunderland<br />
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When thinking of bands beloved by other<br />
bands in Arizona, the first that comes<br />
to mind is Small Leaks Sink Ships.<br />
Much of their fan base is either other<br />
musicians or people who really get music (including<br />
failed musicians who write articles in their free time).<br />
Small Leaks Sink Ships are alchemists of sound and<br />
architects of orchestrated cacophony. They may have<br />
left Arizona a few years ago in favor of the cooler<br />
climes of Oregon, but they’re still hometown heroes,<br />
musicians whose inspirations were originally drawn<br />
from the desert.<br />
Whether it’s their captivating live show or their<br />
catalog of masterful songs, Small Leaks stay true to<br />
their style while creating something unique every<br />
time. Judd Hancock (vocals/guitar/piano), London<br />
VanRooy (vocals/drums/piano), Jim Mandel Jr. (bass/<br />
guitar) and Ryan Garner (keys/samples/guitar) have<br />
done it again, and on October 12 Lefse Records will<br />
release Golden Calf, the highly anticipated follow-up<br />
to 2015’s Face Yourself, and Remove Your Sandals.<br />
Recently, a friend asked me if Golden Calf was<br />
better than its predecessor, and all I could say was<br />
that it’s every bit as good, possibly better. But this<br />
is their record for 2017, a travelogue of their latest<br />
adventures in madness and motion. If Golden Calf<br />
was a double album maybe it would be better on<br />
quantity alone, but I would say it’s of equivalent<br />
power to its predecessor, though more consistent<br />
in its vision. Of note, JAVA Magazine has covered<br />
every release of Small Leaks (though the first review<br />
was by someone other than myself), so this is an<br />
opportunity to continue that trend.<br />
The distorted organ kicks in, with other keys, and<br />
before you get too fascinated with the layers of<br />
sound, they all suddenly appear on “Creepin’,”<br />
which opens the album, ending the two-and-a-halfyear<br />
wait. Angelic choruses swirl in the mix, words<br />
become disembodied sounds, and lyrics lose their<br />
meaning nearly as soon as you start to keep track<br />
of them. The album cover doesn’t feature sacred<br />
geometry like the last one, but this seems to be a<br />
far more spiritual affair—not in a religious way, but<br />
in the way musicians bloodlet their souls into their<br />
sound. There is something vaguely uplifting here, a<br />
vibe of ascension and seeds that sound like love.<br />
The stuttering start and distorted voices sound like<br />
they should start a song called “Creepin’,” but it’s<br />
the beginning of the rhythmic smorgasbord that is<br />
“Dancing Devil,” which SLSS wisely chose to serve<br />
as the album’s first single, released last summer.<br />
It’s a world unto itself that only SLSS could create<br />
and one of their best compositions to date. Lyrically<br />
it’s a fascinating tale of a devilish discussion, life<br />
regrets and the blame game—all delivered in rounds<br />
overlapping each other in the end.<br />
The soft, near acoustic approach on “Airplane<br />
Junkyard” is a brave minimalist step for a band that<br />
delivers such dense music, but here the air and empty<br />
spaces are featured. It gives the soul a bit of time to<br />
rest and just enjoy. Of course, it explodes into total<br />
madness for the last minute, while guitars rage and<br />
lyrics shatter across the floor.<br />
The cleverly titled “Dear John Connor” is another<br />
slow burner, beginning with solo piano. It feels<br />
like it has a close cousin on SLSS’s early records,<br />
so this is a song that makes you just feel right at<br />
home, especially when the fireworks begin a minute<br />
in. You can read into it what you want, but this is<br />
wonderfully dystopian rock that presumes Skynet<br />
is already self-aware (which probably isn’t far from<br />
reality). Another trick: due to the movements and<br />
rhythmic shifts, this song seems to bend time, and it<br />
feels like an odyssey without ever reaching the fourminute<br />
mark.<br />
Distant tribal drumming kicks off “Subtle Sadness”<br />
before Beach Boys–like harmonies begin and<br />
guitar strums appear in space. It’s one of the most<br />
intoxicating songs on the record, and you probably<br />
shouldn’t operate heavy machinery while listening.<br />
Whether it’s the ghostly backing vocals, the slurred<br />
lead or the haunting minimalism, this song is aural<br />
opium and gets you heavy lidded, ready to submit<br />
to the sound of frogs in the background. With its<br />
apocalyptic, hymnal feel, this is Small Leaks at their<br />
soul-searching best: “Calling upon the things that<br />
make me feel afraid, Laughing about the ways that<br />
I have felt ashamed, Caring enough to feel and cure<br />
the pain, Stubborn with haste in hopes that I would<br />
fade away ... I see trouble.” This is a crisis of faith in<br />
motion, an existential thread of reflection, and every<br />
minute of it is beautiful.<br />
“Psychotic Opera” was just unleashed as a single and<br />
is as radio ready as Small Leaks could ever be. The<br />
opening depends more on the vocal rounds, lyric-less<br />
harmonies and other laryngeal oddities. Sure, there’s<br />
guitar and the pounding rhythms of VanRooy and<br />
Mandel, but this song is almost completely about<br />
their vocal prowess and how they can weaponize<br />
their voices for good. It’s as hypnotizing as you would<br />
expect with a conceptual title like that, but it’s also<br />
catchy as hell. The chorus hook will be haunting me for<br />
years, with the refrain, “Don’t you blame it on me.”<br />
“Drug Lord” is the sole instrumental on Golden Calf,<br />
and it’s a five-man electronica jam heavy on the keys,<br />
with pleasing repetitive strokes. Their instrumentals<br />
fascinate me, with more voices being used purely as<br />
instruments as the keys swell around them in warm<br />
chords. At one point, a waltz appears in the sound<br />
from behind the velvet curtains before dissipating<br />
and becoming a dream. As the waltz is lost, the keys<br />
reach Philip Glass levels of minimalism, the guitars<br />
come in, the percussion changes things up and, once<br />
more, the waltz appears and disappears. It builds<br />
into a monumental crescendo that leaves your brain<br />
hanging in space as delicate bells take you away.<br />
The keys at the beginning of “Not Counterpoint”<br />
simply slay with repetitious madness (think Ravel’s<br />
“Bolero” or Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo à la Turk”).<br />
This song seems to be the synthesis of all that I’ve<br />
loved about this band in one four-minute blast: the<br />
crazy keys, peculiar percussion, vast array of vocals<br />
and the sheer neuroticism that adorns their best<br />
work. It’s a dizzying number to be sure and one that<br />
would lend itself perfectly to a video interpretation.<br />
It may even be, dare I say, danceable. The message<br />
in the end is, “You got to let it go, live for something<br />
more,” and that’s wisdom you can take to heart. It is<br />
a pretty heavy examination of what we are given and<br />
what we do with it, and while that may seem pretty<br />
broad, its application is endless.<br />
I approach the end of every Small Leaks album<br />
with trepidation because I never want them to end.<br />
“Tethered Wires” is the finale, and it’s as low key<br />
as Small Leaks gets. It’s another tune that imposes<br />
a sense of medicated drunkenness, and you may<br />
feel a bit woozy while its chords take hold. Twothirds<br />
through it starts to take off, instruments wrap<br />
around themselves, and the soft-spoken tones of<br />
soul-shattered introspection give way to a feeling<br />
of triumph with the refrain “Don’t sell your soul, it’s<br />
suicide.” As drums pound, guitars go wild and the<br />
bass pounds into you, then, just like that, in a flash<br />
it’s done. The album is over, but endorphins still race<br />
through your bloodstream, neurons fire wildly into the<br />
empty night, and you play it all over again in order to<br />
be fulfilled.<br />
During their time in Phoenix, I thought Small Leaks<br />
Sink Ships was the best band in town, and now<br />
they are one of our greatest exports. Golden Calf is<br />
an album for the ages that ensures their vision is<br />
delivered with perfect precision. My only hope now is<br />
that they visit their Arizona home for a show or two.<br />
JAVA 31<br />
MAGAZINE
CAPTAIN SAMURAI<br />
Two Years<br />
SOMETHING LIKE SEDUCTION<br />
It’s Gonna Be a Peaceful Night<br />
DADADOH<br />
You Can’t Rap Forever<br />
Captain Samurai began their young days with Rubber<br />
Brother Records back in its 2014 heyday. Three years<br />
later, that label is a memory, but Captain Samurai<br />
is still putting out amazing records. Just under two<br />
years after the release of Hey Thanks Goodbye, this<br />
crew of indie rocksters has released the sensibly<br />
titled Two Years. It’s a six-pack of delicious, authentic<br />
indie rock, like Sebadoh meets Codeine (the band) or<br />
Pavement meets Codeine (the cough syrup). But all<br />
comparisons aside, this album seems to have come<br />
straight out of the ’90s.<br />
It’s kind of magical to listen to a band grow up on<br />
record. There’s not as much rage of youth here, but a<br />
rather careful eye to composition and the architecture<br />
of both the songs and the entire record. Sure, there’s<br />
still some angst, but the way it’s used and controlled<br />
is a work of art. Just check out the backup vocals to<br />
the opener, “1997.” “Nia” follows, involving more<br />
pop elements in a decidedly danceable number with<br />
gliding guitar straight out of 1987. Amador Diaz’<br />
voice is magical on “Crush,” and because of its<br />
disaffected vibe, even if you don’t understand the<br />
lyrics you still get the malcontent nature of the crush.<br />
“Maybe” delves into Sonic Youth/Dinosaur Jr.<br />
territory without losing sight of the melody. That<br />
is the best of all worlds, while lyrically it obsesses<br />
over could-haves, should-haves and well, maybes.<br />
The jangling danceable guitar returns on “Watcher,<br />
Sleeper, Dreamer,” which is the catchiest track<br />
found here, while being slightly creepy in the best<br />
melancholic way. The title track reveals that the<br />
album’s title has nothing to do with the time between<br />
records, but getting over a lost love. While the middle<br />
of this EP is chock full of amazing moments, the<br />
artistry of Captain Samurai is captured best in the<br />
bookends with “1997” and “Two Years.”<br />
I’ve been digging Something Like Seduction for a<br />
while now, but never more so than with their new<br />
release, It’s Gonna Be a Peaceful Night. They’ve been<br />
rocking the Valley with their alternative reggae sound<br />
for over six years, totaling up three records. I wasn’t<br />
sure if this title was delivered with a grin or not, but<br />
turns out they meant it literally. This is five tracks of<br />
bliss to chill to—no drugs required.<br />
While there’s no mistaking the Caribbean guitar,<br />
calypso rhythms and lilted vocal, there’s also a<br />
prevalent alt-rock understructure and melodic pop<br />
buried in the mix. “Sexy Song” kicks off everything<br />
that will be explored throughout, like the David<br />
Gilmour guitar that comes out of nowhere on the<br />
bridge. That happens to be Joey Gutos from Sunset<br />
Voodoo, who wrote and played all the lead guitar on<br />
the record. The song is an icebreaker, an instant dose<br />
of the relaxing vibe that’s gonna make this a peaceful<br />
night. “Blurry Window” follows—a catchy pop song<br />
only thinly dressed in reggae intonations.<br />
The centerpiece of the record is the single “Frank<br />
Sinatra,” released earlier this year and still one of<br />
my favorite tracks of 2017. Connor Shea’s vocals<br />
are on fire and Tyler Cunningham’s bass groove is<br />
thick, while Esteban Obregon drums in circles around<br />
them. Lyrically it’s pop-culture heavy and clever as<br />
hell. “Late to Bed” is probably the biggest and best<br />
surprise, nestled in an easily ignored part of the<br />
record, but make no mistake, an entire career could<br />
be built on the trajectory aimed at here. The mildly<br />
or wildly ironic “I Don’t Get High” will reveal its<br />
reasoning upon listening and fill you with a bit of<br />
bliss all its own.<br />
By the time I met DaDadoh, his debut, Guerilla,<br />
had been out for a bit. I was hooked with each single<br />
and video released, and that culminated in last year’s<br />
masterful Radical. You can’t put DaDadoh in a corner,<br />
and if you need proof just take a listen to You Can’t Rap<br />
Forever. DaDadoh wrote and performed everything<br />
on the record, with some mixing help from Andy<br />
Warpigs. He’s assembled a band (The P.o.C.) for live<br />
performances, and a full album will follow next year.<br />
Doesn’t matter if you’ve heard every DaDadoh record,<br />
nothing will prepare you for the sound of “Trouble,”<br />
which is like mixing hip hop with Iggy & The Stooges.<br />
It’s more like indie punk from the 1980s than anything<br />
he’s ever recorded before. “Give You the World”<br />
returns you to more familiar territory, to the soulful<br />
DaDadoh heard on Radical, with a unique cadence<br />
that you can identify from miles away. “Just What<br />
You Like” almost sounds like DaDadoh is trying to<br />
find the groove, playing a guitar and delivering a flow,<br />
but then he finds it and you wonder if it’s a happy<br />
accident or intended TV Life. It’s also got an addictive<br />
chorus hook that may drive you out of your mind.<br />
The first single from this project was “FOH!”, and its<br />
electric guitar is monstrous, while DaDadoh returns<br />
to hard rock, howling with every bit of his being. It’s<br />
sinister, dangerous and a complete blast—in short, rock<br />
’n’ roll. “The Reintroduction” begins with an amusing<br />
sample before heading straight to minimalist acoustic<br />
guitar, while DaDadoh raps over Latin strumming in<br />
an amazing juxtaposition with politically charged and<br />
socially aware lyrics. You Can’t Rap Forever ends<br />
with “Not Yet,” another foray into dark guitars and<br />
nightmare rock, a fitting end to a new direction and<br />
another step in DaDadoh’s ascension.<br />
32 JAVA<br />
MAGAZINE<br />
Sounds Around Town By Mitchell L. Hillman
CITRUS CLOUDS<br />
Ultra Sound<br />
NEW CHUMS<br />
See It for Myself<br />
THE GLIDES<br />
Go Go Go!<br />
Since they appeared from the ether in 2015, Citrus<br />
Clouds have become the champions of the shoegaze<br />
scene in Phoenix. In less than two years they’ve<br />
released three stunning records, and Ultra Sound<br />
is their latest foray. Citrus Clouds are Erick Pineda<br />
(vocals/guitar), Stacie Huttleston (vocals/bass) and<br />
Angelica Pedrego (drums). Together they’ve released<br />
the perfect autumn record. The title is almost<br />
certainly a play on words in reference to the fact<br />
that Huttleston and Pineda were expecting a child<br />
while recording. It seems their love is the fuel behind<br />
the hurricane of beauty found in every Citrus Clouds<br />
release, adding heavenly textures in their sound.<br />
“Ocean Eyes” is notably dreamy, while “You Loved<br />
Me First” drips with gold and “Life Happens” mixes<br />
a Joy Division bassline with Pineda’s most tender<br />
vocal to date. The songs become movements in<br />
an overall experience—a lot like their previous<br />
records—different colors in the same crayon box.<br />
“Happy” feels like it was overlooked by RIDE, with<br />
a My Bloody Valentine wooziness to it. Huttleston<br />
takes lead vocals on “Is This Real?”, cementing the<br />
MBV influence on this particular record.<br />
“Here Is Where We Are” strolls into C-86 territory,<br />
leaving a wall of guitars behind—it never completely<br />
explodes, but it comes damn near. The finale, “A<br />
Dream of You,” is the perfect way to daydream into<br />
eternity and drift into a fantasy. This song feels like<br />
the entire record is melting on your soul. Oddly, it<br />
feels like an epic-length track, but it doesn’t even hit<br />
the five-minute mark as it fades into the sound of an<br />
actual ultrasound. Ultra Sound is Citrus Cloud’s most<br />
succinct, consistent recording yet and every bit as<br />
fully realized as last year’s sprawling Imagination.<br />
It’s been two years since New Chums showed up in<br />
town and dropped their first record on us. They’ve<br />
reworked their lineup a bit since then and are set<br />
to release See It for Myself on October 6. Original<br />
Chums Seth Boyack (vocals/guitar) and Ben Hedlund<br />
(drums) are joined by Matt Lloyd (guitar/vocals) and<br />
Cassandra Clark (bass/vocals), and their sound seems<br />
bigger than ever. But that might be due to hitting<br />
Flying Blanket with Bob Hoag for this one. Either way,<br />
New Chums are doing what they’ve always done<br />
best: hook-heavy power pop.<br />
The opening track, “Disposable,” makes that clear<br />
from the start, but the guitars are bigger than before<br />
and Boyack’s vocals have aged like fine wine. The<br />
last time I caught them live, “Cave In” was one of my<br />
favorites of the night, as it is here. Less intense than<br />
the opening track, but it makes up for that with hooks<br />
for days and a catchy as hell chorus. If “Come On,<br />
Come On” sounds familiar, it’s because it was their<br />
first single, but it’s punched up a bit here by Hoag and<br />
the new lineup. I dig the 2017 version as much as I<br />
did the original two years ago—a power-pop classic.<br />
Of the new songs, “The Right Thing” is my favorite<br />
and should be considered for the next single/video,<br />
because it holds similar weight and power to “Come<br />
On.” It’s the most immediately accessible upbeat<br />
rocker here and should be used as a weapon of aural<br />
seduction. It’s also a song that really bears the mark<br />
of Flying Blanket on every note. “Blossom” comes<br />
off a bit like Southern-fried rock meets Cheap Trick<br />
with a hint of Arctic Monkeys. New Chums maintain<br />
all their power as they pop again with yet another<br />
addictive collection.<br />
Sounds Around Town By Mitchell L. Hillman<br />
The Glides appeared on the scene last year with a<br />
debut EP of clever-as-hell arrangements with sounds<br />
of the past converted into hymns of the future. It was<br />
a four-track gem that delivered two amazing singles,<br />
“One Time” and “In the Night.” In case you’re worried<br />
about missing out on those, they’ve appended the<br />
entire first EP to the brand-new tracks for Go Go Go!,<br />
creating a fairly comprehensive debut album. They’ve<br />
cranked up the volume and the intensity for the<br />
second go around, and it’s wonderfully effective.<br />
The title track is delivered at breakneck speed and<br />
turns into an anthemic chant that should rage through<br />
bars and taverns from coast to coast. This is just smart<br />
rock ’n’ roll designed with your good time in mind. If<br />
The Glides were holding back on their debut, they’re<br />
unbounded here for sure. A super-thick bassline opens<br />
“The Next Thing,” which slows the pace a bit but<br />
gets down and dirty in a completely different way. It’s<br />
funky as hell and best served with soul food that will<br />
set your mouth on fire. They explore blues-rock with<br />
the suitably titled “Nursery Rhyme Blues.” Amusing<br />
and clever, it falters only because it had to follow two<br />
back-to-back mindblowers.<br />
“Good to Be a Glide” is the finale for the new songs,<br />
and it’s another rave-up retro rocker that serves as<br />
something of a theme song for the band, including<br />
lyrical nods to local luminaries that have helped them<br />
along the way. While their debut showed off what<br />
The Glides were about, Go Go Go! shows the world<br />
everything they’re capable of. Be sure to pick up the<br />
actual CD because it collects all of their recorded<br />
output so far, and there’s not a duff moment from<br />
beginning to end.<br />
For more on these events and other highlights of the<br />
Phoenix music scene, check out Mitchell’s blog at http://<br />
soundsaroundtown.net. For submissions or suggestions<br />
contact him at mitchell@soundsaroundtown.net<br />
JAVA 33<br />
MAGAZINE
34 JAVA<br />
MAGAZINE
Long before artist Robert Williams founded Juxtapoz magazine, the printed paradise of<br />
underground and outside-the-box artwork that debuted in 1994, he was creating bombastic,<br />
original artwork that forged the direct pathway to that publication’s birth. Slang Aesthetics!<br />
is a touring exhibition featuring a selection of his oil paintings, drawings and immoderate<br />
sculptures that is currently viewable at Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum through January 21, 2018.<br />
While Williams and his wife, Suzanne—herself a talented artist—were here earlier this month for the<br />
opening reception and related events, tragedy struck back in California. Williams’ dear friend, and<br />
a member of the team responsible for the creation and development of Juxtapoz, Greg Escalante<br />
passed away at 62. The gregarious and generous gallery owner, collector and longtime supporter of<br />
the arts took his own life, after years of battling mental conflict and turbulence. It is a tremendous<br />
loss that has leveled the arts community. “It’s such a very sad and unfortunate happening,” said<br />
Williams, adding, “The vacuum that he’s going to leave will be huge in the months to come. He was so<br />
charitable and organized. He helped so many people, especially young artists.”<br />
The depths of Escalante’s inner turmoil came as a surprise to many, even dear friends like Williams. “He<br />
was a very close friend of mine. As I look back, maybe I could have been more sympathetic to him,” said<br />
Williams, “but I do come from a nastier world, and at the time, I didn’t realize how emotionally embroiled<br />
he was by the devils that continually worked on him.” Escalante was always known for being happy go<br />
lucky, but Williams said that he got more of a view of Escalante’s troubles in the very recent weeks<br />
before his death.<br />
That “nastier place” Williams himself came from includes what he calls a “very difficult” childhood<br />
and teenage years that were loaded with unhappiness. He was thrown out of schools, did jail time and<br />
bopped around from job to job. He got a firm<br />
understanding of what hard work was and what<br />
it meant to succeed and decided to implement<br />
that knowledge fiercely when he became an<br />
artist. “When I made the decision early in life to<br />
be an artist,” he said, “I realized that very few<br />
people succeed, and I knew I had to do it.”<br />
He wasn’t entertaining other possibilities as<br />
options. “The art community is a very sensitive,<br />
caring, delicate world, and I come from a rough,<br />
brutal world where the chances of surviving are<br />
very tough. I saw the alternatives and I knew I<br />
had to make it as an artist.” Even with his view<br />
of the art world’s sensitive side, he didn’t kid<br />
himself for a minute about the challenges that<br />
come with exploring that landscape and hoping<br />
for exceptional results. “Everyone can be an<br />
artist, but only about three or four percent can<br />
be professional artists that make a living at it.<br />
It’s a ridiculous percentage—it’s brutal!”<br />
Williams left Albuquerque for art school in<br />
Los Angeles in 1963, armed with fantasies of<br />
comic book art and pulp magazines and other<br />
inspirational imagery, only to land in art school<br />
during the heyday of abstract expressionism,<br />
where his lean toward bold and imaginative<br />
realistic works was stifled. Fluent in art<br />
history, Williams understood the why’s of what<br />
was being taught at the time, he just didn’t<br />
appreciate how abstract work seemed to foster<br />
a devaluation of representational art.<br />
“I don’t really favor impressionism and abstract<br />
expressionism. I understand the theories and<br />
the backbone, and it’s of course legitimate—<br />
there’s no bad art—there’s just been a<br />
complete denial of representational art.” He<br />
sees that changing, now that there are younger<br />
generations not being raised on abstract<br />
expressionism and conceptualism, but back<br />
then, he recalls, “It was omnipresent, it was<br />
fucking everywhere, and it was a law.”<br />
He thought pop art might be a pathway toward<br />
highlighting the beauty of realistic work, but<br />
those hopes didn’t last long. “The problem with<br />
pop art,” he says, “is that it is appropriating.<br />
It’s not really a free use of the imagination or a<br />
way to exercise the imagination. It’s just simply<br />
referencing things in your everyday life. If you<br />
consider that realistic work, I can’t argue with<br />
you, but it’s certainly inhibiting.”<br />
JAVA 35<br />
MAGAZINE
“Inhibited” is certainly not a word that should be<br />
included in any description of Williams’ work. He<br />
comprehended what was being handed down at<br />
art school and honed his skills, but it was different<br />
imagery that loaded his mind. “I was attracted to<br />
pulp magazines from the 1920s and 1930s, with<br />
the licentious, lustful graphics of the woman being<br />
attacked by the maniac, that had this specific<br />
lighting,” Williams said. “To me, that was real<br />
adventurous stuff, and so stimulating, but I<br />
was taught that this was not sophisticated. It’s<br />
been just in the last 10 to 15 years that I really<br />
started examining what in the hell sophistication<br />
is.” And? “It’s an inhibition,” he said. “Picasso said<br />
it perfectly: ‘The greatest enemy of imagination is<br />
sophistication.’ And he was right.”<br />
Out of art school, Williams found himself in<br />
a couple of new situations, one being getting<br />
hitched to Suzanne, also an art student at the<br />
time. The couple has been a team ever since.<br />
He also was in the working world, taking<br />
some art-related jobs, including art director<br />
for a karate magazine, before landing a position<br />
with Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, an artist and custom<br />
car designer.<br />
This environment felt like home for Williams,<br />
who came from a youth steeped in hotrod culture.<br />
“When I came to California,” he said, “I gave up<br />
on hotrods and wanted to be a young, urbane<br />
sophisticated man and get rid of hotrods and<br />
motorcycles and become a professional artist.<br />
Then I find myself right at Ed Roth’s studios as<br />
his art director, making a lot of money.” The fit<br />
was undeniable. “I fit in so well, and I knew so<br />
much about hotrods and the culture, I just really<br />
started weighing the worth of art.”<br />
He was still working on his paintings at night,<br />
sold some to a wealthy appreciator, and<br />
began to see a demand. “I couldn’t get these<br />
paintings shown anywhere, and no one in the<br />
fine art world would tolerate ’em, but there<br />
was a demand. I was getting a lot of money for<br />
them, so there was a real obvious contradiction<br />
going on.”<br />
While he was working with Roth, Williams met<br />
San Francisco psychedelic poster artists Rick<br />
Griffin and Victor Moscoso, who later went on to<br />
do Zap Comix in the late ’60s, which Williams<br />
got involved with. He loved comic books, and<br />
these artists, including R. Crumb, Spain Rodriguez<br />
and S. Clay Wilson, faced some of the same<br />
challenges he did with producing brash and realistic work in an art world that might not have initially<br />
appreciated them.<br />
Not waiting for an engraved invitation, they all forged forward, and Zap Comix revolutionized the<br />
comic world. Counter-culture to the max, plump with great art from this treasure trove of artists,<br />
Zap fearlessly depicted the underbelly of humanity with brains, humor and frankness. “Zap,” said<br />
Williams, “started a whole slew of underground comics in the ’60s and ’70s. It was very influential<br />
and changed American culture.”<br />
Punk rock was another movement happy to fly the finger in the face of all that was staid and afraid during<br />
its early days. For Williams, it was a chance to connect with other iconoclastic artists. “I’d go to punk<br />
rock clubs and afterhours clubs,” he said, “and they’d have these art shows, and the work was so brutal<br />
and salacious and nasty that I thought, ‘Gosh, this is a real deviation from academic art, and if I sloppied<br />
up my work a bit, I could join these guys.’”<br />
He found excitement in discovering a peer group of painters and was thrilled to make lurid work where<br />
he said he had “absolute social and psychic freedom.” He challenged himself to take it as far as he could<br />
go. “It was like, ‘How wild can you get?!’ and ‘What happens if you pull out all the stops?’” He did his<br />
Zombie Mystery series and couldn’t sell them fast enough. Things really spiraled from there. Williams’<br />
following continued to expand, attracting innumerable fans and collectors. The “lowbrow” tag—echoed<br />
in the title of his book The Lowbrow Art of Robert Williams—stuck with the movement he created, which<br />
eventually splintered off into different arenas, like pop surrealism. Williams understands that with the<br />
growth of any movement comes the need to create more and deeper definitions, but to him, it’s all feral<br />
art. “It’s just feral art—art that has raised itself—raised out of the wilderness.”<br />
36 JAVA<br />
MAGAZINE
He started showing with New York’s Tony Shafrazi in 1992, and then Juxtapoz<br />
happened not long after that. Williams had previously helped create Art<br />
Alternatives magazine, which was successful but went south after the<br />
publishing company fired the woman who was instrumental in getting<br />
that project going. After Williams had tried some different publishers,<br />
Escalante suggested he talk to High Speed Productions, who publishes<br />
Thrasher, which often featured Williams’ art. That was a go, and Juxtapoz<br />
has gone on to outsell all the biggies, like Art Forum, Art News and Art in<br />
America. It also fulfilled Williams’ vision of putting the spotlight on the<br />
work itself, not the text.<br />
Williams said he didn’t think it would sustain as long as it has. “We thought<br />
we’d never be anything other than an alternative fanzine, but the fact it’s still<br />
going strong proves there was a desperate need for this magazine.”<br />
There’s so much to know about Robert Williams. His history is rich. He’s<br />
working on his eleventh book. His imagination is boundless. But, truly, the<br />
best thing you can do is to get to this exhibition and completely lose yourself<br />
in it. That’s what the artist would like you to do. Slang Aesthetics! debuted in<br />
Los Angeles in 2015 and will be making its way to the LSU Museum in Baton<br />
Rouge after its stint in Mesa.<br />
When asked what he hopes absorption in his work will bring viewers, he<br />
said, “I hope that I am bringing out in a person their investigative skills. In<br />
other words, I’m not so much interested in if a person likes the painting as<br />
much as if they’re interested in investigating it. Investigating it exercises their<br />
imagination. If they do that, then they’re gonna want to see the next one and<br />
so on. And if I can get them to go to three or four paintings, I know they’ll start<br />
liking the paintings.”<br />
Welcome to Robert Williams’ world. What is not to like? From the<br />
electrifying, brilliant colors in pieces like “Fast Food Purgatory” to the<br />
dominant purple palette in “Purple As An Explicable Poetic Force,” his<br />
mastery of color is enough to bowl you over. His subjects, ranging from sultry<br />
to outlandish to nightmare inspiring, are sincere, vivid and believable. The<br />
subject matter ranges from hilarious to insightful, provocative and gloriously<br />
wild, sometimes—oftentimes—all at once.<br />
As magnificent as it is to be in rooms that have you surrounded by Williams’<br />
paintings and drawings, his fiberglass sculptural work is nothing short of<br />
incredible. Flawless and creative, they are 3D manifestations of the artist’s<br />
wickedly divine imagination. And, according to him, a hell of a lot of work.<br />
One features 196 impeccably shiny teeth that Williams hand-carved himself.<br />
He loves the results but doesn’t know if there will be many more like this<br />
in the future. He said, with a laugh, “I’m an old man now, and I just stick<br />
with painting, unless some wealthy person comes up and says they’d like to<br />
underwrite sculptural work. I’d tackle that in a heartbeat. Those things are so<br />
problematic to exist, so the next time you see them, appreciate the hell out of<br />
’em, okay?”<br />
He’s thrilled to be showing here in Mesa and is appreciative of the curators<br />
“sticking their necks out for me.” He’s continuing to paint constantly and<br />
says his imagination is incontinent. “I wish I had three lifetimes to empty my<br />
basket, but for now, I’m pecking away all the time.”<br />
Robert Williams posing with one of his large scale sculptues, The Rapacious<br />
Robert Williams, Purple As An Inexplicable Poetic Force, 2015. Oil on canvas, 30 x 36 inches.<br />
Robert Williams, Veil Of Paternity, 2017, Oil on canvas, 33 x 29 inches.<br />
Robert Williams, Puppets Orchestrating Puppets, 2013, Oil on canvas, 42 x 42 inches.<br />
Robert Williams, Terra Facia, the Exaggerated Persona of a Poetic Location, 2013, Oil on<br />
campus, 24 x 28 inches.<br />
JAVA 37<br />
MAGAZINE
GIRL ON FARMER<br />
Suburban<br />
Scares<br />
By Celia Beresford<br />
The rural Jersey neighborhood I grew up in was small<br />
and safe. The only cars you had to watch out for were<br />
those driven by neighbors. You knew everyone, which<br />
doesn’t necessarily mean there weren’t some creeps,<br />
but you knew who to stay away from. For example,<br />
I avoided Raymond Johnston, who told me that<br />
penises were as long as fire hoses and needed to be<br />
rolled up and tucked in. But I was lucky to grow up<br />
in relative safety. I know this wasn’t the situation for<br />
everyone. My husband’s parents declared his whole<br />
neighborhood dangerous. As a result, his dad trained<br />
all five kids on different musical instruments and<br />
created his own mini-Irish supergroup, which swept<br />
the awards at local talent shows.<br />
This was not the case at my house, where you were<br />
given the choice to “go outside and find something to<br />
do or I’ll give you something to do,” which translates<br />
to: get outside. Even in the safest suburban<br />
neighborhoods, there is usually some locally known<br />
scary place. My house was up a gradual hill, which<br />
then flattened out before getting steeper. You had to<br />
stand up to pedal to the very top of the street, which<br />
then branched out into three dead ends. A narrow<br />
street led to the scary place: a very steep dirt hill<br />
known to the kids as Suicide Hill.<br />
The word on the street, or hill, was that, back in<br />
the day, some of the tough kids sledded down the<br />
hill when it was covered in ice. The sled got out<br />
of control and one of the boys split his head open.<br />
While it was sad, I wasn’t sure an accidental death<br />
warranted the name Suicide Hill. When I suggested<br />
the name Satan’s Sled, my older sister called me<br />
stupid because I was missing the point. “Idiot. No<br />
one said he actually tried to kill himself. It’s called<br />
that because anyone who sleds down it now would<br />
have to want to die.” I made a mental note not to<br />
be so literal. When my best friend Susan and I rode<br />
up there and she asked who killed themselves, I<br />
took the opportunity to chastise her so I could feel<br />
older and smarter. “Idiot. No one actually tried to kill<br />
themselves…”<br />
Susan had three older brothers who were all<br />
known as town bad-asses. The youngest of the<br />
three boys was nine years older than Susan and<br />
me, so they were pretty much adults. We were<br />
their entertainment, and in the days before remote<br />
38 JAVA<br />
MAGAZINE
I avoided Raymond Johnston, who told me that<br />
penises were as long as fire hoses and needed to<br />
be rolled up and tucked in.<br />
control, they would demand that we just stand in front of the TV and do their<br />
channel bidding. Susan whined, but I thought two of the brothers were incredibly<br />
cool. This was before I was old enough to realize that being 20 and drinking<br />
and smoking pot all day while living in your parents’ basement doesn’t register<br />
terribly high on the Richter scale of cool. Susan would complain, and I would roll<br />
my eyes so the brothers could see. I wanted to let them know I was on their side<br />
and was having fun changing channels and being taught curse words I didn’t<br />
know existed. Or, in some cases, learning words I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed<br />
to know.<br />
Her brother Sal won a shirt at the boardwalk. It was an iron-on of a scuba diver<br />
with the words: “Muff Diving Team. We Dive at Five.” The back, just to keep it<br />
classy, read “No Muff Too Tuff.” We thought it was very cool, especially because<br />
it was Sal’s. “Listen, Sue, you can have it,” he said, and tossed the shirt over to<br />
her. “It looks great. You should wear it to school tomorrow.” We could not have<br />
been older than 10 at the time. “Muff” was definitely in our vernacular, but we<br />
thought it was the name of a guy on the team. She did wear it to school and was<br />
promptly sent home.<br />
Still trying to impress Sal, we told him we were not scared to go to Suicide Hill<br />
and had even ridden our bikes there a few times. “Babies,” he snorted. “There<br />
are places way scarier than Suicide Hill. There is a cabin up in the woods and<br />
sometimes the ghost of the kid who died on the sled is there. I’ve seen him. I bet<br />
you guys won’t go there.” After a vigorous round of “bet you will, bet you won’t,”<br />
Sal explained how to get to the cabin. It required not only climbing the notorious<br />
hill but then following a narrow path into the woods. When we headed out, we<br />
were both terrified. Naturally, this led us to calling each other accusatory, wimpy<br />
names, hoping the other person would just admit to being scared so we could get<br />
the hell out of there.<br />
We did make it to the cabin, which was really more of a broken-down wooden<br />
shed. It was still straight out of a horror movie. Out in the woods, broken<br />
windows, a creaky door. Susan and I spent the first few minutes convincing<br />
ourselves we weren’t scared and the next few minutes talking ourselves into<br />
believing we saw the sled kid’s ghost inside. What we actually found when we<br />
got inside was not a ghost at all, but it was still a shock. It was old-ass porn with<br />
the pages all matted together. Never having seen porn before, it was probably<br />
more frightening than the ghost. At least I was expecting to see a ghost. But as<br />
we flipped through the pages, there was something else I was not expecting, but<br />
was greatly relieved to see. “Wait a minute,” I said, stopping at the first image of<br />
a naked man, “that is not as long as a fire hose.”
NIGHT<br />
GALLERY<br />
Photos By<br />
Robert Sentinery<br />
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1. Davina poses with her piece at “La Dada”<br />
2. This duo came in town for the “Pipe Brothers” show<br />
3. Nico on the decks at Phoenix Art Museum<br />
4. Husband & wife art duo, FunWow, at {9}<br />
5. Undertow one-year with this lovely<br />
6. Jobot crew in the house at Unexpected<br />
7. Tondra is gorgeous, hands down<br />
8. “Pipe Brothers” art show with Tom Franco<br />
9. Jerome Indie Film & Music Festival attendees<br />
10. Yuko with a Robert Williams sculpture at MCA<br />
11. “Past/Future/Present” opening at PAM
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12. Jerome Film Fest with this beauty<br />
13. Shipwrecked with the Undertow crew<br />
14. Brazil night at Phoenix Art Museum<br />
15. Saskia Jorda’s opening at Eric Fischl Gallery<br />
16. Funkhouser and friends at PAM<br />
17. Getting their tiki on at Undertow<br />
18. Taco Tuesdays with Mikey B at Unexpected<br />
19. VIP opening of “Past/Future/Present”<br />
20. Axé Capoeira performs at PAM<br />
21. Footsie fashionistas<br />
22. @Vaksheen with his painting “Po$h Regrets”<br />
23. Estrella and Gabriel at ASU’s Project Space<br />
24. {9} Collective show with this lovely trio<br />
25. Angelica and her cuz at Phoenix Art Museum<br />
26. Mykel, Mello and Johnny at Royse Contemporary<br />
27. Tondra and Jesse at Unexpected Art Gallery<br />
28. When the body becomes a canvas<br />
29. “Past/Future/Present” opening with Dennita and beau
Beautiful Mid Century inspired mailboxes by<br />
ModRanch<br />
TheModRanch.com<br />
@Mod_ranch<br />
TheModRanch@gmail.com<br />
Cobra_Joystick_Ad-1.pdf 1 9/24/17 7:00 PM<br />
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CM<br />
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It’s not the size of the joystick,<br />
It’s how you use it!
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30. São Paolo museum of modern art director at PAM<br />
31. Robert Williams opening at Mesa Contemporary<br />
32. Magic glass octopus by Mikey B<br />
33. First Friday at {9} Gallery<br />
34. The legendary Robert Williams at MCA Museum<br />
35. Mike and pal, Studio Gallery at Found:Re Hotel<br />
36. Undertow celebrates one year<br />
37. Joe and Vaiden at MCA Museum<br />
38. Axé Capoeira in the house for First Friday at PAM<br />
39. Jenna and Margaree Past/Future/Present” at PAM<br />
40. All together now for the “Pipe Brothers” show<br />
41. ASU Ceramics Research Center for “Pipe Brothers”<br />
42. Lisa, Sean and Amanda at the Robert Williams opening<br />
43. Iris and Tom at “Pipe Brothers”<br />
44. Opening at ASU Ceramics Research Center<br />
45. “La Dada” show at Megaphone Phoenix<br />
46. Rembrandt and pal at Royse Contemporary<br />
47. Jerome Indie Film Fest founder Toni Ross and friends
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48. Lovelies Charmagne and Mia at Royse Contemporary<br />
49. Lauren and pal at the Let’s Be Better Humans Bus<br />
50. Red wine time at the “Pipe Brothers” show<br />
51. Lani, Airi and Christian, the crew behind Megaphone<br />
52. First Friday fund at Phoenix Art Museum<br />
53. Bowtie bro at Royse Contemporary<br />
54. Always great to see Lindsay and Skyler<br />
55. This lady gets the award for most funky outfit<br />
56. “La Dada” DJ<br />
57. Long time, no see John and Karen Hall<br />
58. Happy birthday Andrew<br />
59. Looks like double trouble<br />
60. Artists extraordinaire Yuko and Jennyfer<br />
61. Angel and Nicole at Royse Contemporary<br />
62. Yummy strawberry wine slushy at Ncounter<br />
63. Is it ok if I call you “babes”?<br />
64. “La Dada” show at Megaphone Phoenix<br />
65. A perfect pair
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66. Monica and Rafael at Royse Contemporary<br />
67. Julio does the introductions at ASU’s Project Space<br />
68. Nicole and pal at Megaphone<br />
69. Artist Sky Black and his lady at Grand ArtHaus’ 1-year<br />
70. Devin and Daniel at Megaphone<br />
71. Aileen Frick with her work at Grand ArtHaus<br />
72. Anthony from Caffio, the coolest mobile espresso bar<br />
73. First Friday with Steve and Ashley<br />
74. Kick ass abstract painter at ArtHaus<br />
75. Tattoo artist Tariq and his lovely lass<br />
76. Kudos to the dude in the kilt<br />
77. Facial hair fun with Abbey, Vaiden and Marcelle<br />
78. Ncounter Roosevelt grand opening fete<br />
79. Champ and Such styles at Grand ArtHaus<br />
80. First Friday with Mary and Jennyfer<br />
81. Thaddeus showed up for Fausto’s birthday<br />
82. Two cool artist couples<br />
83. More fun at Ncounter Roosevelt’s grand opening
Calling ALL Artists<br />
BidUp!<br />
Silent Auction Fundraiser<br />
Sat, Nov 18 (6-8pm)<br />
Artists 18+ years<br />
2D & 3D Artwork 12 x 12 x 12” or Smaller<br />
Artwork Deadline: Nov 10, 2017<br />
Info & Form:<br />
mesaartscenter.com/index.php/<br />
museum/programs/events/bidup<br />
One East Main Street • Mesa, Arizona 85201 • 480-644-6562 • MesaArtsCenter.com