Championing the makers, artists, and wanderers in all of us.
Floating above downtown Phoenix is a permanent public art sculpture inspired by monsoon clouds and hot Arizona summers. “Her Secret Is Patience” was created by artist Janet Echelman, specifically for the site it is now suspended above. At night it’s illuminated with the colors changing with the seasons.
The name comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.”
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I’m taking part in Microblog Mondays!
I have two words for you, friends: chocolate. tour.
Yep. That is now a thing that is happening here in the Phoenix area. So I did you a huge favor and checked that out for you.
I know. Sacrifices.
Stephanie Haworth also sacrificed and came along, tasting chocolate and taking the photos for this post (except the one of her below).
The Chocolate Tour of Scottsdale winds through Old Town to Fashion Square. You taste chocolate in various forms – hot, cold, cake pops, candies, cupcakes – from 8 different merchants. Some share a little about what they do and what sets them apart, and they all offer discounts to tour-goers.
The tours are lead by owner/operator Ofelia Montelongo, whose passion for chocolate lead her to start the company just this fall, and it’s off to a great start! In fact, she’s already quit her day job to devote more time to her business.
She meets tour-goers at the outdoor patio of Gloria’s Cafe with bottled water, maps, and bags for your extra chocolate. (Really. “Extra chocolate” does exist. I have a pretty serious sweet tooth, and I still couldn’t keep up with all the cocoa confections). She sets a friendly tone, keeping everyone oriented, and sharing points of interest along the way.
One prestigious Phoenix chocolatier, Julia Baker, has her own Cooking Channel show. Since her shop isn’t in walking distance, Ofelia brings Julia Baker chocolates to the tour. So you’re sampling even before the first step.
Then you head to the Paula Jacqueline bakery, which stays open late to greet the tour and hand out delicious fudgy cake pops.
Next, from behind a counter stocked with chocolate in all kinds of inventive shapes (squirrels, anyone? what about mushrooms? corn?) and flavors, a man in a Chocolade Van Brugge apron explained how their chocolate is imported from Belgium. He also claimed we were about to taste “the best hot chocolate [we’d] ever had.”
I was skeptical about that. But he may have been right.
The hot is followed by cold with a stop at Petersen’s Old-Fashioned Ice Cream, where you can sample your choice(s) of their wide variety of favors.
We continued through the 5th Ave Art Festival, which happened to be that weekend, pausing at the Bronze Horse Fountain for a group photo.
Our next stop was Classic Cakes and Confections, a bakery with such elaborate creations that some require signs explaining “this is a cake,” because otherwise you’d never guess. In addition to cakes, they had lots of amazing-looking desserts, teas in tins, and quirky coffee and tea accessories.
In Fashion Square, we stopped at Godiva for truffles and at the locally-owned Caketini for cannoli.
Across the street at Sprinkles, we snacked on mini cupcakes.
It was also the opening week of their cupcake ATM – one of only 8 in the world. It’s located outside, so, if you get a sudden after-hours craving, you just select the flavor you want and swipe your card. The machine gently delivers a boxed cupcake to a compartment with a small door that dramatically raises up to reveal your treat.
Our final stop of the day was actually an alternate, but it was one of my faves. If a merchant isn’t able to accommodate the tour on a certain day (due to an event, etc.), Ofelia has a whole list of pre-vetted backups.
The Chocolate Tour was a lot of fun, and I’d definitely recommend it to both local and visiting chocolate lovers.
Thank you to Chocolate Tours of Scottsdale for providing press passes!
While I love art museums and galleries, there’s something really delightful when art pops up in unexpected places like libraries or alleyways or under bridges.
What about the post office? Art isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when I think of post office buildings. However, the downtown Tempe post office has rotating installations just inside its large windows, so you can see works both from inside and from the street.
I didn’t realize this until artist (and fellow CraftHack-er) Crystal Daigle told me about the exhibition she was curating.
It’s called “Minimum Daily Requirements,” and will be on display in the Mill Avenue post office until December 10. Each of the windows displays mixed media work by a different Phoenix-area artist, exploring their own daily requirements.
Crystal’s piece was truly a community effort, funded by a Kickstarter campaign and partially pieced together by volunteers at maker spaces under her direction. It’s called “Push Down & Tango” and, in Crystal’s words, is “designed to celebrate the resiliency of survivors, thrivers and caretakers.” The centerpiece is a large circle of fabric roses. At the base are leaves formed from prescription bottles covered with images of people dancing tango, since learning tango was a turning point for Crystal. The 3 leaves are surrounded by hand-lettered names to pay tribute to resilient people.
Phillip and I stopped by the exhibition during its opening celebration in September, just as a dust storm was rolling in. We took shelter inside the post office during the worst of it and it blew over quickly, leaving a dramatic sky as a backdrop for the gathering.
Gotta love public art! Here are 3 fascinating pieces in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle!
1. Underneath the Aurora Bridge is the Fremont Troll. Made of reinforced concrete, wire, and a VW bug, it’s large enough for several people to climb on at once. The troll has inspired several annual events and is often decorated with chalk art.
2. The Interurban Sculpture depicts several people waiting at a bus stop, along with a dog with a human face (said to be the likeness of either a particularly beloved or hated public figure, depending on who you talk to). It is regularly decorated, dressed up, and/or yarn bombed. Community members are welcome — encouraged, actually — to adorn the statue as they choose for a week, as long as they are not displaying commercial messages.
3. So this conversation actually happened:
“Do you want to see the statue of Lenin?”
“Lennon? Like John Lennon?”
“No. Like Marx and Lenin.”
“What?!”
Yep. Imagine all the people who could be depicted in statue form in a Seattle neighborhood, and I bet you wouldn’t have guessed the Russian communist leader either. The statue was originally installed in Slovakia, toppled during the 1989 revolution, and currently stands on a street corner in Fremont. I don’t think the community is trying to promote his ideals. As I understand it, it’s about great craft extending beyond ideology. All they are saying is “give art a chance.”
Fremont prides itself on its quirkiness. And with a giant Volkswagen-eating troll under a bridge, a statue that residents dress, and one of a Russian revolutionary, I don’t think it’s in danger of losing that distinction.
With a little research help from my friends Ian Smith and Christine Smith of Four Windows.
One of the things San Francisco’s Mission District is famous for is street art.
There are portraits painted on shop entryways, sketches on sidewalks, and whole alleyways covered in giant murals, like public open-air museums. Some murals have social messages, some are funny, some are abstract. They’re all fascinating.
I visited the mural-covered Balmy Alley in 2012, during the San Francisco portion of our Epic California Road Trip (that I keep alluding to and still hope to write all about one of these days). More recently, on my BlogHer Pro trip in October, I got to wander through Clarion Alley with two of my cousins. They got deep into a discussion, while I snapped the photos I’m sharing with you in this post.
Art in Clarion Alley and throughout the Mission is raw and colorful. It speaks a different language than art that hangs in air-conditioned buildings and says “Hey! I am in a frame, so adore me!” Instead of being enshrined, it must be discovered in the wild, searched out in the nooks and crannies of the city.
You have to keep your eyes open in the Mission. You might step on a statement or pass by a masterpiece.
Art is everywhere.
