A visit to the Tempe Center for the Arts, FREE!

0

We often head over to Tempe Town Lake to stroll on The Tempe Pedestrian Bridge, which always leads us inside the Tempe Center for the Arts to the gallery.

Currently they have a great family oriented exhibition entitled “Animal Crackers”. This show celebrates animals from around the world with artwork by an incredible group of 12 artists, Dick George, Jeff Falk, Christopher Jagmin, Carolyn Lavender, Christy Puetz and Joe Ray, Lauren Strohacker, Barbara Burton, Anne Coe, Jasen Evoy all local Arizona artists plus Luis Jimenez, Rosen Jane. There is a great variety of artwork including paintings, photography, and sculpture, a perfect summer exhibit to take the family to.

When you first enter the gallery the exhibition includes amazing photography of animals from the Phoenix zoo by Dick George. Exciting to recognize the photographs of beloved orangutan Duchess and Ruby the painting elephant.

It was wonderful to see and talk about the paintings created by Ruby the elephant with my kids as well. There is an animal forest complete with simulated natural environment with beautifully made colorful fiber animal sculptures by artist Christy Puetz entitled “Mind Forest”. We especially enjoyed the large-scale painting by Carolyn Lavender depicting a forest with mounted animal heads, beautifully detailed entitled “Preservation Woods”. Christopher Jagmin’s encaustic pieces were colorful, bold and whimsical  our favorite was  “Who Gon Wonder”.

The children found the small sculptures by artist Jasen Evoy entertaining and I loved that the animals took on human mannerisms with a touch of irony about life, like with his piece “Conflict of Interest”. This was a great exhibition for the children to connect with the art  and discuss the different types and styles. They really enjoyed searching through the works in the gallery finding the animals and what each animal was doing.

There is a great interactive side to this exhibition as well, with tables set up for kids to create. Kids can make there very on animal mask, cutting and pasting creating a one of a kind fun souvenir from the show.

Plus there is a Pet Wall of Fame to enjoy, a collage of pets and zoo animals having fun. Throughout the exhibition the local artists featured in the show as well as the Phoenix Zoo were invited to hold interactive events in the gallery. We were lucky on our visit the Phoenix Zoo had brought interesting creatures all native to the Arizona desert for us to observe, great addition to the artwork.

There are still three more weekend events on 8/31 “Walk-in Family Art Workshop: Lauren Strohacker, “Silhouette Animal-Scapes” Noon-2 p.m., Aug. 31”. Then on 9/7 Walk-in Family Art Workshop: Phoenix Zoo “Desert Discovery”: Noon-12:45 p.m., followed by Walk-in Family Art Workshop: Visit with Phoenix Zoo Animal Ambassadors 
1-2 p.m.

There is something for everyone at this exciting animaltastic exhibition and best of all its completely free to the public.

Gallery at Tempe Center for the Arts: http://www.tempe.gov/index.aspx?page=575

Nicole Royse Art Blog: http://blog.nicoleroyse.com

 

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here