An Artist Who Tends the Earth—and then Sculpts It
Arizona-based artist Farraday Newsome's studio extends into her high-desert garden, sprouting ideas for intricate ceramics about nature's self-perpetuating systems.
March 24, 2025
Lynn Trimble
Are an Arizona Museum’s Changes to Transfeminisms Exhibition “Violent” or Pragmatic?
The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art made last-minute revisions to a traveling show of women, queer, and trans artists. Museum leadership and a co-curator differ on what happened.
March 13, 2025
Field ReportArizonaTravelVol. 11 The Hyperlocal
Field Report: Eclectic Metro Phoenix
Some of best art offerings in metro Phoenix happen off the beaten path. Here’s our eclectic Phoenix art guide.
March 07, 2025
Tempe Artists Seek Answers Amid Alternative Art Space Redevelopment
The City of Tempe says there are no plans to demolish DIY arts hub Danelle Plaza, but the mayor is sending different signals. Local artists are demanding clarity.
February 04, 2025
Keith Haring’s City-Spanning Phoenix Takeover Almost Didn’t Happen
Keith Haring was a Phoenix teacher's second choice for a 1986 art workshop, but the invite made a major mark on the city.
January 14, 2025
Ditch Amazon and Support Local Artists with Our Southwest Holiday Gift Guide
E-commerce has nothing on these holiday shopping experiences at galleries, museums, and community art spaces in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah.
November 26, 2024
Former Curator of Mesa Art Museum Files Federal Lawsuit Alleging Censorship and Discrimination
Tiffany Fairall, former chief curator of Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in Arizona, sues the City of Mesa in the aftermath of censorship allegations.
November 05, 2024
“This is our power”: Afrofuturists Imagine Radical Futures in Reclaiming Hope: Afrofuturist Visions
Black artists imagine radical futures through hope, healing, and history in Reclaiming Hope: Afrofuturist Visions.
October 29, 2024
Scientists Are “Speaking to the Masses” with Help from Artists in Two Contrasting Phoenix Exhibitions
The traveling exhibition ARX3 pairs artists and scientists, while Brains and Beauty at SMoCA draws on neuroaesthetics, to visualize transformative research.
October 10, 2024
ArtistsTexasVol. 10 Radical Futures
Bonny Leibowitz: Radical Futures
Texas-based artist Bonny Leibowitz creates hybridized installations of natural and manufactured materials that reflect the impacts of isolation, environmental degradation, and human conflict.
September 06, 2024
ArtistsArizonaVol. 10 Radical Futures
Tra Bouscaren: Radical Futures
Tra Bouscaren blends critiques of waste culture with "dark beauty" in maximalist installations that speak to 21st-century paranoia.
September 06, 2024
ReviewArizonaVol. 10 Radical Futures
Feminist Theory and a Family Trucking Business Inform Fay Ray’s New Visions of the Borderlands in PORTALS
PORTALS at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson in Arizona features new works by California-based artist Fay Ray, who imagines radical futures in the Sonoran Desert and Southwest borderlands.
September 06, 2024
At SMoCA, Carolina Aranibar-Fernández Uses Soil, Sequins, and Blood to Explore the Impacts of Global Trade
California-based artist Carolina Aranibar-Fernández explores colonization, extraction, and exploitation in the Southwest in her exhibition Oleaje at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona.
July 30, 2024
How International Arts Collective The Place Where Clouds Are Formed is Shifting Borderland Narratives
Artists and poets from Indigenous nation bisected by U.S.-Mexico border join with myriad voices to counter borderland crisis narratives in Tucson.
July 18, 2024
How—and Why—a Contemporary Art Museum in Arizona is Amplifying Mormon History and Theology
New exhibition Materializing Mormonism at Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum has ties to the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts.
June 24, 2024
Arizona Commission on the Arts Gets a New Director—and a Major Blow to its Budget
Artist Christina You-sun Park becomes executive director of Arizona Commission on the Arts, just as its state funding is slashed by 60%.
June 19, 2024
Work in Progress with Annie Lopez
Phoenix-based artist Annie Lopez's brilliant blue dress forms—tailored from cyanotypes on tamale paper—embody personal, familial, and cultural histories.
May 08, 2024
How a Creative Couple in Arizona is Exploring South Phoenix History Through Photography and Poetry
Photographer Maria Nancy Thomas and poet Rashaad Thomas, a creative couple based in South Phoenix, are using their work to explore a region brimming with the histories of marginalized communities.
April 18, 2024
How Can Mural Artists Take Steps to Protect Their Legal Rights?
Do muralists have a legal right to keep their work from being altered or whitewashed? Experts and artists in the Southwest discuss artist contracts and the Visual Artists Rights Act.
April 11, 2024
Phoenix Artist and Curator Clottee Hammons Highlights Black History, Art, and Culture
Clottee Hammons, the Phoenix artist, curator, and knowledge-keeper who leads Emancipation Arts, has spent decades elevating Black history, arts, and culture while combatting historical and contemporary racism in Arizona.
March 22, 2024
ReviewArizonaVol. 9 Living Histories
Amalia Mesa-Bains’s Retrospective Mines an Archeology of Memory in Phoenix
Amalia Mesa-Bains, renowned for altar-style installations that helped bring Chicana art into the mainstream, recently had a retrospective exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum.
March 01, 2024
ArtistsArizonaVol. 9 Living Histories
Marlowe Katoney: Living Histories
Marlowe Katoney (Diné) draws on personal experience and Navajo, street, and popular culture to create weavings and paintings that defy conventional notions of beauty and Indigenous art.
March 01, 2024
ArtistsArizonaVol. 9 Living Histories
Jacey Coca: Living Histories
Jacey Coca uses photography and beadwork to explore her own Mexican and Korean heritage as part of an evolving creative practice that examines identity, memory, and nostalgia.
March 01, 2024
Landscape, Body, Identity: Laura Aguilar at Phoenix Art Museum
Landscapes and large bodies featured in the Laura Aguilar: Nudes in Nature exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona illuminate the artist’s explorations of gender, race, identity, and community.
February 19, 2024
MOCA Tucson is an Incubation Space and “Not Just Arbitrators of Archives”
Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, known as MOCA Tucson, supports regional and local artists through grants, community events, peer connections, and more. Here’s why artists and curators say that matters.
January 30, 2024
How George Floyd Protests Led to a Community-Created Exhibition in Arizona
Twin Flames: The George Floyd Uprising from Minneapolis to Phoenix at ASU Art Museum displays signs, artworks, and other community offerings from George Floyd Square.
January 26, 2024
Antoinette Cauley: I Do It for The Hood, Pt. 2 at Modified Arts
Antoinette Cauley creates expressive portraiture to bridge hyperlocal and global concerns in I Do It For The Hood, Pt. 2 in Phoenix.
January 16, 2024
Lloyd Kiva New Documentary Highlights the Late Designer’s Influence on Indigenous Fashion and Southwest Culture
The story of artist, fashion designer, and Institute of American Indian Arts co-founder Lloyd Kiva New is brought to life in a new documentary by Indigenous filmmaker Nathaniel Fuentes.
December 04, 2023
Southwest Cities Win Millions of Dollars from 2023 Bloomberg Public Art Challenge Awards
Bloomberg Public Art Challenge funding will help Phoenix and Salt Lake City address climate change, and Houston examine homelessness, through temporary public art that engages artists and community members.
November 21, 2023
Recent Allegations at Regional Art Spaces Beg the Question: Can Best Practices Prevent Censorship?
As Southwest art spaces such as Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum deal with art censorship allegations, national art censorship and art law experts weigh in on the broader issue.
November 10, 2023
