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Capturing timeless, universal scenes, such as the abstract pattern of a flock of birds traversing the sky, a spray of branches in early bloom, or horizons unmoored from specific times and places, Marie Navarre’s photo constructions resemble the Japanese haiku form that inspires her.
Working with vast collections of images of natural phenomena captured on her travels, Navarre conjures images that appear to be from just outside the realm of human observation. Navarre’s prints are often collaged and hand-stitched over backgrounds of satin-like Gampi paper, enigmatic photographic constructions that document the implications of a moment in nature and in time.
“I have this trouble of being a photographer but wanting to make the photographs into something else. I still think like a photographer even though in some ways I’m sabotaging the way that photography works. I still begin my artmaking process by making pictures. I don’t know how to begin without the photograph.”
Celebrating a long-anticipated season of renewal, Marie Navarre’s timeless, universal scenes illuminate the contradictions at play during this current moment of dramatic environmental and social change.
Our Visual Wealth: Opportunity & Responsibility for Cosanti – Part 3
August 12th, 2021
“What makes Cosanti so special to me is the marriage between the earth and structure, the buff color from the silt integral in the concrete, for instance,” Scott Jarson says. “The decorative work is also so beautiful, an homage to indigenous people who carved petroglyphs,” he adds, noting that Soleri also learned from Wright, early Roman builders, even Chinese designers.
Designated a culturally significant site on the Arizona State Registry of Historic Places, Cosanti is also where Paolo Soleri perfected his “earth-casting” technique for building structures and procedures for casting bells, where he created his great bridge designs and where he wrote Arcology: The City in the Image of Man, which inspired him to build Arcosanti.
From the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s, Soleri and a cadre of apprentices and volunteers students designed and built Cosanti. Those dozen or so visionary dwellings and structures, including the Earth House (1956), Pumpkin Apse/Barrel Vaults (1967), Soleri Studio (1959), CatCast Home (1965), Gallery (1961) and canopied Pool (1966), represent Soleri’s pioneering vision to create a habitat balancing human needs and the environment.
With the name Cosanti, Soleri blended two Italian words, “cosa” and “anti” (“before things”), to describe his belief that humanity’s direct access to nature should also connect organically with its structures. The concept is aligned with his arcology, a portmanteau of architecture and ecology: “environment in harmony with man and nature.”
Surrounded by pricey El Maro Estates in Paradise Valley, one of the country’s wealthiest zip-codes, the Cosanti land is worth about $1.5 million an acre and continually increases in value, Jarson says, adding that this doesn’t necessarily jeopardize the future of Cosanti but remains a factor when discussing the preservation of a state treasure.
Also, the Taliesin School of Architecture and Cosanti Foundation hope to generate more attention to Cosanti through opening the venue for more tours, already expanded to weekends, explains Patrick McWhortor, former president and CEO of the Cosanti Foundation, who says the board is also considering pursuing a National Register of Historic Places designation for Cosanti.
The site should be reimagined as a uniquely public place in a town of superlative private places. “Cosanti and its history should serve as a point of pride for Paradise Valley,” Victor Sidy, former head of school and dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, and managing principal of Victor Sidy Architect in Phoenix explains. “It’s a remarkable record of ingenuity.”
Cosanti should be celebrated as a place where environmental responsibility, especially in the water-poor Southwest desert, was pioneered. “We have to remind ourselves that we are fooling ourselves if we think that we are preserving the desert the way we are going on,” Soleri said in the 1999 interview. “We are not preserving the desert, we are not preserving us, we are really destroying ourselves. In order to change that trend, we have to change our minds.”
Will Bruder, FAIA, the celebrated Valley architect who apprenticed with Soleri in the 1960s sees Cosanti architecturally aligned with Antonio Gaudi’s late nineteenth-century masterworks in Barcelona, Spain and Simon Rodia’s early-20th-century sculpted towers in Watts, California. “Cosanti has been, since its inception, a pilgrimage site of both architects, sculptors and artisans from around the world,” he explains.
“It is extremely important that these fragile architectural inventions of genius find the resources and commitment of professional restoration and landmark status to protect their structural integrity from the failure of age and ensure continued access for the general public and scholars alike,” he adds.
The revenue from the sales of Cosanti Originals windbells, sized tiles, vessels, planters and pots provides revenue support for Cosanti. In addition, The Cosanti Foundation is funded by its members, individual donors and charitable foundations and, in non-COVID-19 times, through tours, hands-on workshops and performing arts events. But more funds will be needed to renovate and restore this important American place.
“This is where the highest level of thinking took place,” Jarson says. “Bucky Fuller lectured here, and Mark Mills, another Wright apprentice who went on to great things. Its intellectual legacy for all of us is the furtherance of ideals in architecture, creative construction and living.
“This is a fragile and delicate place, and we need to restore it so that a new generation can get a glimpse of how Cosanti was created,” he adds. “You won’t see anything like this anywhere in the world. It is inhabited sculpture and it is sacred.”
For more information, visit cosanti.com and arcosanti.org.
Brown is a Valley-based freelancer (azwriter.com). This is the fourth in an ongoing written series celebrating Arizona’s “Visual Wealth.” His article on the Cosanti, first appearing in the June/July 2021 issue of Defining Desert Living, is being released over three segments. The first and second were published here and here.
To read the Editor’s Note on Dr. Daniela Soleri, Paolo Soleri’s daughter, please use the link here
Our Visual Wealth: Turin, Time with Wright and Then Cosanti – Part 2
August 6th, 2021
Born in Turin, June 21, 1919, in the Po Valley of northern Italy, Paolo Soleri visited the United States in December 1946 after receiving his master’s degree in Architecture from the Politecnico di Torino. Here he spent 18 months in fellowship with Wright at Taliesin West and Taliesin. For philosophical and personal reasons, they parted.
In 1950, Soleri and wife Colly traveled to Italy where he designed his only commercial commission, Ceramica Artistica Solimene, in Vietri south of Naples on the Adriatic. During the design and construction of the factory, he learned ceramics, a skill he used later to make his original bells at Cosanti.
The couple returned to the Southwest about four and a half years later, inspired by what Paolo called its “light and landscape” in a January 22, 1999, interview with Anne Andeen and Ann Townsend, Town of Paradise Valley Historical Committee members. He recalled: “We were in Santa Fe for one season and we found out that it was too cold for ceramics, the ceramics would freeze when we were working outdoors. So we came here because by looking around, we ended up finding these five acres for sale.”
Here they settled with their daughter, Daniela, today a researcher in California. They first lived in the Pink House, a still-standing redwood home built in 1920s, perhaps the oldest structure in Paradise Valley. At the time, the home was owned by painter Lew Davis and his wife, ceramicist Mathilde Schaefer. In 1963, the town annexed the area which includes Cosanti.
“Paolo fell in love with the unique environment of the desert. Here he found a place where you can live in harmony with nature and with others, using materials of the earth already here,” says Patrick McWhortor, former president and CEO of the Cosanti Foundation and an ex officio member of the board of directors. “It all started at Cosanti.”
“Paolo found the silt on the floodplain of the Indian Bend Wash great to work with. He could make molds with it and it could withstand concrete poured over it, as he and his students did with a number of the buildings,” says Victor Sidy, former head of school and dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, and managing principal of Victor Sidy Architect in Phoenix. He remains a board member of the school with others such as alumni, Bing Hu, founder and president, H&S International, and John Sather, managing partner, Swaback Architects + Planners, Scottsdale.
Soleri also designed his only other Arizona homes, the Dome House in Cave Creek (1949), built for Colley’s mother in Cave Creek, an inspiration for the Earth House at Cosanti, and the Deconcini House (1984), once owned by Arizona Senator Dennis Deconcini and his brother, Dino, in Phoenix.
In 1970, he and his students began building Arcosanti (“Architecture” + “Cosanti”) to test Soleri’s concepts of urban planning, how future cities can be more pedestrian-centric and less automobile dependent, more multi-use, and more vertically dense to alleviate strain on planetary resources.
Described at the time an “urban laboratory” by Ada Louise Huxtable, the New York Times architecture critic, Arcosanti was featured in a 1976 Newsweek article, which called it “. . . probably the most important experiment [in urban architecture] in our lifetime.” Adds Scott Jarson: “The concepts formulated at Cosanti are taken to a macro level at Arcosanti. They become huge.”
“Arcosanti is just an attempt to implement some ideas,” Soleri said in the 1999 interview. “The idea is the urban affect which is what made civilization. The point I am making constantly is that we have to re-invent the city in order develop our civilization.”
Only a few buildings, such as Antioch (1974) were completed at Cosanti after work at Arcosanti began, but molding and firing the windbells continued here and at Arcosanti, where Soleri focused most of his efforts on his city of the future.
There he is buried in a private cemetery next to Colly.
The Cosanti Achievement
The Earth House was the first experimental structure, built shortly after the family purchased the land. “The roof, it’s buried so that it was below grade,” Soleri recalled in the Andeen and Thompson interview. “The desert is very flat, so I shaped the desert by hand, then we cast the roof, then we excavated under the roof to make this space, we put walls in and divided it. So you do the roof and then the foundation.”
The Gallery is similarly constructed. Jeffrey Cook, AIA, described the innovative process in A Guide to the Architecture of Metro Phoenix – Central Arizona Chapter, American Institute of Architects, published 1983: “Moist earth was piled up and shaped as a mold for concrete construction. Rib shapes were cut into the mound of earth to hold the structural thickening and reinforcement. Polyethylene plastic film cut into patterns was placed on the earth-mold to defined smooth curved panels. The entire earth mound was sprayed with “gunite” . . . After the concrete hardened, the earth was removed from underneath with a bulldozer” (p. 189).
Bruder notes that Soleri and his students built every structure with similar care and craftsmanship.
“From the apse shells of the bell works to the sunken courtyards of the Earth House to the earth cast roofs of the CatCast Residence and the hovering concrete canopy over the swimming pool, each structure was ‘shaped’ and integrally carved with patterns and ornament by Paolo’s hands along with the support of his interns and apprentices,” he says.
Because of keen siting and construction, the campus is also an “an oasis of passive climatic comfort,” Bruder explains. “The site’s structures are thoughtfully recessed into the natural grade of the desert floor that surrounds them, creating a catchment of cool air along the pathways and courtyards connecting the buildings. The series of concrete apses and canopies is carefully oriented either to the north to optimize their shading from the heat of the summer sun or to the south to catch the warmth of the low winter sun angles.”
Sidy adds that the interior spaces provide shade and cooling: “They exhaust the hot air through an evaporative-cooling effect. Here is experimentation in a similar way as Wright. In fact, he engaged with the extremes of the desert much more than his teacher.”
“What makes Cosanti so special to me is the marriage between the earth and structure, the buff color from the silt integral in the concrete, for instance,” Jarson says. “The decorative work is also so beautiful, an homage to indigenous people who carved petroglyphs,” he adds, noting that Soleri also learned from Wright, early Roman builders, even Chinese designers.
Jarson’s favorite space is the Studio. “I remember looking through the windows as a young man, and there was Paolo Soleri at the same table that’s still there, designing,” he recalls. “It was very special then, and its magic remains with me now.”
Brown is a Valley-based freelancer (azwriter.com). This is the fourth in an ongoing written series celebrating Arizona’s “Visual Wealth.” His article on the Cosanti, first appearing in the June/July 2021 issue of Defining Desert Living, is being released over three segments. The first and third were published here and here.
To read the Editor’s Note on Dr. Daniela Soleri, Paolo Soleri’s daughter, please use the link here
Nourishment for the Soul: Architectural Libraries
June 22nd, 2021
The goal of a library as a simple repository for information shifted in recent years into one a place of gathering in the community. The world of modern architecture responded in kind as the aesthetic shifted from an unvarnished sanctuary for knowledge into one of communion where the sense of environment and place factor importantly into the design, whether by natural intent or the project demands. Despite the pandemic pausing the tenants of the gathering part of that mission, libraries still serve the local communities as spots for other vital public interest in the meantime.
In Summary: The architects entered the project with a mandate by the city to renew the area, yet retain the popular community aspects and green space. The library and park exist side-by-side allowing for a metaphysical dialogue between the mind and body, exemplified by a “reverse lantern effect” of the trees moving through the mill-finished steel — and thus the mass of the building. The architects positioned the design of the new library toward the edge of the street to also contribute to that effect.
From Arch Daily: The Palo Verde Library and Maryvale Community Center has received numerous awards including a 2009 Honor Award, AIA/ALA National, 2007 National Honor Award, and a 2006 Merit Award, AIA Western Mountain Region.”
From the Architect: “Some of the inspiration for the building was an old Circle K which projects what it is selling to the street. When you drive down 51st Avenue you see into the library, you see books, people reading, into the community center, people playing basketball, a karate class and then the pool. You understand the civic program of the building in the community.” —Wendell Burnette
Burton Barr Central Library — Will Bruder Architects
Built: 1995 | 1221 N Central Avenue, Phoenix, 85004
In Summary: Described by Nader Tehrani as a literal monolith on the downtown skyline, which evades “any architectural reference to scale, aperture, or signs of inhabitation,” this idiosyncratic library defied budget restraints to produce a distillation of what a community sought to house its knowledge. The 1,000,000 volume collection’s ground floor opens to a “crystal canyon” atrium to expose its contents through structural glass sheathing on every floor. Its design culminates on a fifth floor reading room which notes its location and the passing of seasons in the architecture on the Summer Solstice. Considered the greenest building before widespread application of the LEED certification.
From the Architect: “We have this great public room at the top of our library, which houses the non-fiction collections and all these studied positions with fantastic views north and south, I knew the roof had to float above this space like a cloud. As we challenged our engineers at Ove Arup to come up with an idea [for the fifth floor], they came with this cable cat’s cradle across the roof. We can literally flout at the tip of the column from the steel detail which looks like a candle illuminated. Which gives this special mythical quality to this room and space.” —Will Bruder, at the 2018 Summer Solstice Event
Hayden Library — Weaver & Drover, Redesign by Ayers Saint Gross + TRUEFORM
Year: 1966 | 300 Orange Mall, Tempe, 85281
In Summary: Slowly over fifty years, Hayden Library on the ASU Tempe Campus became a mausoleum, of sorts, when the library entrance was sealed in 1988, as the then-new subterranean entrance to the library was opened south of the Hayden Lawn. A literal reinvention was undertaken by the local architecture team of Ayers Saint Gross and TRUEFORM Landscape Architects to reinvent the library services provided and promote an openness which past updates obscured.
From the Architect: “It’s the heart of campus. It really encourages a porosity to its edges. When we see these old buildings like this, we’re always looking for chances to repurpose, reuse and recycle, all those “re”-words. Ayers Saint Gross [the project architect] pulled all the granite slabs off the plaza deck level and created this raised platform plaza with the stairs and ramp to access it all the way around the entire library, with that material used as the retaining wall system. It didn’t disappear, we kept that history in close context. It tells that story right there.” —Todd Briggs, of TRUEFORM
Scottsdale Library – Bennie Gonzales
Year: 1968 | 3839 N Drinkwater Blvd, Scottsdale, 85251
In Summary: An appendage to the masterplan of Civic Center, the Scottsdale Public Library was created in an International Style and his own regional stylings with an aim for openness. The famed architect Bennie Gonzales built the space to replace the original library, one of the oldest buildings in Scottsdale which still exists on site. Constructed as a 37,000 sf facility, ten times the size of the original, it was designed to be truly open with massive pillars and obtuse angles to give the literal and figurative space to hold its weight of contents.
From the Architect: Referring to City Hall, “I don’t think there’s anything more painful experience of separation than when you walk down the halls of a government building and see rows of rooms,” -Bennie Gonzales, (Oct. 22, 1967) to the Arizona Republic.
South Mountain Community Library — Richärd+Bauer
Year: 2011 | 7050 S 24th St, Phoenix, 85042
In Summary: Modeled after a circuit board, the project presents that same ethos of connection to that vital piece of electronics — even down to the Copper PCB-like material, which adorns the outside, which Bauer likened to a barcode. Reference and academia are balanced even on this project: The library occupies the first floor space, with all the usual elements, while the academic meeting spaces and centers were laid on entirely on second floor. However, like their inspiration they are interconnected in their functionality.
From the Architect: “Libraries are inherently tied to the transformation of informational systems that are changing at an exponential pace. The challenge is not to capture a moment in time, but develop an open-ended flexibility,” -Richard Bauer, to world-architects
Our Visual Wealth: The Birth of Cosanti – Part 1
June 29th, 2021
“. . . to make conditions in the future a little better than they are now . . . that’s the function of architecture.”–Paolo Soleri
Paolo Soleri will be dead eight years this April 9 –– 13 days before Earth Day 2021.
But his legacy as architect, ecological pioneer, urban philosopher, artist and craftsman remains at two of Arizona’s most architecturally significant sites: Cosanti in Paradise Valley and Arcosanti in Cordes Junction, 70 miles north of Phoenix.
Many know Soleri from the one-off bronze and ceramic Cosanti Originals windbells produced at both sites or the Soleri Bridge crossing the Arizona Canal at Camelback Road in downtown Scottsdale, but his achievement at Cosanti should be more widely celebrated and utilized, says Scott Jarson, who with wife Debbie is celebrating 31 years of azarchitecture Jarson & Jarson Real Estate, Scottsdale, which specializes in the sale and purchase of historic properties.
“Cosanti is a genuine experiment in living, combining wood, silt and concrete and ingenuity,” he explains. “For Paolo Soleri, it was a way of totally integrating life and work. Here he walked the talk for some time.”
In 1958, Jarson’s parents purchased a home a quarter mile north of Cosanti on Mockingbird Lane in what was then the Doubletree Ranch area in Maricopa County. “I used to ride by here on my bike and watched the Ceramics Studio and other structures being built,” he explains. “I spent a lot of time there.”
Cosanti significantly influenced him in his life’s work. “I remember speaking with my high school art teacher and telling him that the CatCast House at Cosanti was the kind of home I wanted to build one day for myself,” he recalls. “That would be great, I thought.”
Fortunately, a new partnership between the Cosanti Foundation and The School of Architecture, formerly at Taliesin, is offering architectural students from around the world hands-on education at Arcosanti, and in a limited capacity at Cosanti as well. In January 2021, the first students began studying and working in person at Arcosanti under this plan.
In 1932, Frank Lloyd Wright founded the school as an apprenticeship program; it is accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board and the Higher Learning Commission, offering a project-based Master of Architecture degree, focused on an immersive, hands-on educational experience. The school left Taliesin West in May 2020. In 1965 Soleri and his wife Colly (Carolyn Woods) established the 501(c)3 educational nonprofit foundation to further his ideals of ecological and architectural accountability.
As students live, attend classes, and design and build their traditional shelters at Arcosanti, the collaboration also envisions guests and tourists better enjoying the structures at and lessons of the earlier Cosanti.
“We see the school’s new location and leadership as an opportunity to reinvigorate our dedication to our entire community, including students, faculty, staff and alumni,” says Dan Schweiker, chair of the governing board for the school and a 20-year resident of Paradise Valley, where he served on the town council for 12 years. He now lives in Scottsdale. “Cosanti is an iconic place in Paradise Valley, and we look forward to working with the foundation for many years,” he adds.
From the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s, Soleri and a cadre of apprentices and volunteers students designed and built Cosanti. Those dozen or so visionary dwellings and structures, including the Earth House (1956), Pumpkin Apse/Barrel Vaults (1967), Soleri Studio (1959), CatCast Home (1965), Gallery (1961) and canopied Pool (1966), represent Soleri’s pioneering vision to create a habitat balancing human needs and the environment.
Designated a culturally significant site on the Arizona State Registry of Historic Places, Cosanti is also where Soleri perfected his “earth-casting” technique for building structures and procedures for casting bells, where he created his great bridge designs and where he wrote Arcology: The City in the Image of Man, which inspired him to build Arcosanti.
“Soleri’s Cosanti studios and experimental structures, while modest on their five-acre site, are architecturally as important as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West residence and studio,” says Will Bruder, FAIA, the celebrated Valley architect who apprenticed with Soleri in the 1960s, helping build Cosanti structures such as the two-level CatCast. Jarson remembers watching Bruder, about ten years his senior, labor at his work; today he and Debbie live in a Bruder-designed home in Paradise Valley.
“With this structural variety and the complex’s poetic continuity, these varied structures appear to link together in an organic wholeness,” adds Bruder, who lives and practices in Portland, Oregon.
With the name Cosanti, Soleri blended two Italian words, “cosa” and “anti” (“before things”), to describe his belief that humanity’s direct access to nature should also connect organically with its structures. The concept is aligned with his arcology, a portmanteau of architecture and ecology: “environment in harmony with man and nature.”
“Cosanti represents the legacy of a thinker, artist, and architect combined in one location,” Jarson says. “A sculpture of buildings and a must place to go for architects as well as anyone interested in our environment, Cosanti is the work of a visionary who thought about environmentalism, sustainability, and climate change long before those concepts became mainstream.”
Brown is a Valley-based freelancer (azwriter.com). This is the fourth in an ongoing written series celebrating Arizona’s “Visual Wealth.” His article on the Cosanti, first appearing in the June/July 2021 issue of Defining Desert Living, will be released over three segments. The second and third were published here and here.
To read the Editor’s Note on Dr. Daniela Soleri, Paolo Soleri’s daughter, please use the link here
IN FOCUS: Chen + Suchart Studio
June 17th, 2021
Periodically in December every few decades, a celestial period marks the time of the “Great Conjunction”, where two shining planets, Saturn and Jupiter converge in our night sky. The sum of each becoming synergistic display of brilliance. The same could be said about this architectural power couple, Thamarit Suchart and Patricia Szu-Ping Chen Suchart, the creative force behind Chen + Suchart Studio.
Quietly creating some of the most thoughtful designs built today, their creative genius is making a significant impact in our Valley. From highly interesting in-fill and adaptive re-use, to stunningly clean and beautiful residences, this firm seems to be coming into their own, with a humble elegance that is both refined and timeless.
Chen + Suchart Studio works at a variety of scales ranging from small well crafted projects and single family residences to larger scale urban design. Thankfully, their practice is not interested in “style.” The common thread between all projects undertaken in their studio is the integrity of design that transcends any stylistic references.
Thamarit and Patricia completed their studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Thamarit was born and raised in Arizona. Having left Arizona for education on the east coast of the United States, he chose to return to Arizona to raise his family and to start a design practice with Patricia in 2002. Patricia is a native of Taipei, Taiwan.
After working for numerous award winning architecture firms in both Boston and Phoenix, the pair officially established their own architecture firm in 2010. In 2012, the firm was identified as “15 Young Firms to Watch: Chen + Suchart Studio” by Residential Architect Magazine. Since 2015, the firm has been the recipient of a total of nine AIA design awards. 2015 also included an award from Residential Architect Magazine, where The Staab Residence was singled out.
A registered architect in the State of Arizona, Georgia, and New Jersey, Thamarit has also served as a faculty associate and adjunct lecturer, teaching undergraduate and graduate design studios at both Arizona State University and the University of Arizona. He is committed to sharing his knowledge with the future generations of architects.
At azarchitecture we are been proud to have represented their work and look forward with delight at what comes next. Like many creative outpourings, the “Great Conjunction” comes only rarely and never often, but the results is always delightful. We know this couple’s future is as bright as those the two circling planets!
Lloyd Kiva New: He Built It, They Came – Part 2
April 27th, 2021
In writer David Brown’s three-part series, he examines the life and legacy of artist Lloyd Kiva New, a Cherokee Naval veteran, whose initial goal to bring new attention to American Indian Art through his Arizona Crafts Center and Craftsman Court shops inadvertently lead to Scottsdale’s reputation as a place for fine art, galleries and specialty shops! In the second part of this series, he focuses on that initial legacy of this maker whose shops inspired many locals — including our very own Scott Jarson!
“My mother, Eileen Jarson, was, if nothing else, a maven of interesting design. I vividly remember while I was a child her visiting these shops [at the Kiva Craft Center] while I played in the courtyard, a relaxed setting dappled with shade from the eucalyptus trees, overhangs and plants,” recalls Scott Jarson, a Valley native who works in Scottsdale and lives in Paradise Valley.
Craftsman Court was a “Who’s Who of Craft and Design,” he remembers. Lord Latigo, for example, was one of the first “hippie”-inspired leather shops, where Jarson worked as a teenager a day each week as an apprentice. “It was one of the first places in town you could find a Soleri wind bell for sale,” he says of the now renowned bells designed and forged by architect Paolo Soleri (1919–2013), associates and students at Cosanti, his workplace and home, in nearby Paradise Valley.
Jarson’s sister, Gail, opened the second of her El Chango Loco stores here, offering a compilation of local arts and crafts including her signature batiks.
Later, one of the building’s owners offered Jarson a summer job. “I liked to think of myself as ‘landscape engineer,’ but basically I swept and hosed the place once a week on a Saturday morning,” he says with a smile.
When Sam Campana moved to Scottsdale in 1969 from Idaho, she recalls that “Craftsman Court was a hidden jewel of its own. I distinctly remember the perfumerie tucked in the southeast corner with a scented fountain in front. The owner would invite you in, get to know you through an informal interview and then craft a scent just for you!” Campana was a city councilwoman from the mid-1980s to the 1990s and the city’s first female mayor, 1996–2000.
Campana’s favorite shop was Glass Arts Studio. “I did all my gift-shopping for weddings, baby showers, birthdays in the aisles of beautifully displayed candles, mirrors and bowls. I probably purchased over 50. I loved the interior and how the stained glass played with the desert light streaming in,” she adds. She first met Lloyd Kiva in the 1970s when Loloma had a Phoenix show and later in Santa Fe at the IAIA, which Lloyd New helped found in 1961 to forward Native American art and educate its future exponents.
“The Kiva Craft Center has been a focal point for creative innovation since the mid-1950s. Lloyd Kiva, along with other artists and crafts people, put Scottsdale on the map as an arts and crafts and fashion center in the late 1940s,” says Scottsdale resident Joan Fudala, who has written numerous books and articles about the city for three-plus decades.
Because of his promotional acumen and the quality of his products, local and national attention followed, including articles in Holiday, Town and Country and Life (“Sands of the Desert Turn Gold”). Wintering north of town, Mr. and Mrs. Fowler McCormick (the farm equipment manufacturer), were early patrons and gave him a no-interest “angel” loan of $7,500 for the Arizona Crafts Center on 5th Avenue. The name of the city’s first master-planned community, McCormick Ranch, honors the family.
In the late 1940s, Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962), wife of the former president and world figure, visited the Kiva workshop twice, extolling it both times in her national column, “My Day.”: “There is a fascinating Indian shop where Lloyd Kiva has developed his handmade leather articles, decorated with silver and brass,” she wrote in March 1947. “I think they will last longer than any machine made article I have seen, beside being attractive in color and design” (Sound of Drums, page 160). Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959), who wintered nearby at Taliesin West, was also a visitor and supporter.
Lloyd Kiva joined with other craftspeople for Saturday fashion shows during the winter on a 5th Avenue runway; he emceed, local celebrities modeled. Their spring/end-of-season sale event, Thieves Market, was an annual tradition during the 1950s and 1960s. One model was then-Miss Arizona and Hollywood star, Valerie Perrine, Fudala explains.
Moreover, with other artisans of the late 1940s/1950s, he was a community builder. In 1947, they helped create the Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce, with Wes Segner the chamber’s first president. They also supported Scottsdale’s 1951 incorporation.
Lloyd Kiva New was a Scottsdale maker.
Brown is a Valley-based freelancer (azwriter.com). This is the second in an ongoing series celebrating “Our Visual Wealth.” His article on the Kiva Craft Center will released over three segments, the first of which can be read here.
He thanks the many city of Scottsdale employees who assisted, the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe and other resources. The updated Scottsdale downtown plan is here.
Why the Kiva Craft Center is Important – Part 3
May 18th, 2021
In writer David Brown’s three-part series, he examines the life and legacy of artist Lloyd Kiva New, a Cherokee Naval veteran, whose initial goal to bring new attention to American Indian Art through his Arizona Crafts Center and Craftsman Court shops inadvertently lead to Scottsdale’s reputation as a place for fine art, galleries and specialty shops! In the third part of this series, he interrogates the legacy of his shops as a new cycle of development in Old Town begins, with the expectation of harmony to preserve the new existing buildings.
“What makes these buildings special to me is not just the memories; it’s the scale and optimism that are simply so unique to the time and place,” says Scott Jarson. “You find this in the best of mid-20th-century design; a simplicity of material, humble concrete block elevated by the simple but judicious use of deeply raked joints and the considered placement of the storefront windows, some full height.”
He adds: “The buildings certainly have a ‘Modern-Ranch’ feel to them, with exposed dimensional pine ceilings and deep overhangs that have held up beautifully over the years, but perhaps it’s the courtyard and the shade that give it a special anchor.”
“The courtyard created a pleasant cool microclimate with a reflecting pool, landscape, and walkways; it was accessible by a few narrow breezeways off 5th Avenue and Craftsman Court,” adds Doug Sydnor, FAIA, principal of Scottsdale-based Douglas Sydnor Architect + Associates.
The Kiva Craft Center architect, Thomas Stuart ‘T.S.’ Montgomery (1917–1970), established his practice on 5th Avenue in Scottsdale while designing Craftsman Court; three years later, he moved T. S. Montgomery Architecture to the historic Harry Walker House in Tempe.
With 200-plus projects completed, he is also remembered for two local churches, notes Jarson: First Church of Christ Science on Indian School Road in Scottsdale and the “sublime” St. Barnabas on The Desert Episcopal Church on Mockingbird Lane in Paradise Valley, “with its procession of perfect arches: low, sparse and clean like the Sonoran desert.”
Kiva Craft Center exemplifies Montgomery’s crisp, desert-sensitive work: simple detail, a clean line and a sense of place, Jarson explains. “It’s timeless desert architecture, like the work of his contemporaries, Blaine Drake, Frank Lloyd Wright and Al Beadle. All three men took the rigor of living in the desert and incorporated it into their designs.”
The city is now envisioning redevelopment downtown in implementing the Old Town Scottsdale Plan. Its Executive Summary concludes: “Merchants, property owners, and civic leaders need to make strong and innovative decisions within the context of the Old Town Scottsdale Plan to insure a continually vital and sustainable downtown, “where the new west meets the old west”, for generations to come; and to achieve the community’s vision of a “dynamic city center which recognizes its western heritage while boldly looking to its metropolitan future” (page 9). As a Historic Property Overlay Zoning District, any proposed alteration of the buildings or site must receive approval from either the Historic Preservation officer or the Historic Preservation Commission, explains Steve Venker, the city’s Historic Preservation officer.
A number of years ago, Scottsdale’s Allen & Philp Architects renovated Kiva Craft Center and, recently, the city has, in fact, received a rehabilitation application for the property by Sydnor’s firm. including site improvements such as burying utilities, exterior upgrades, lighting, signage and wall finishes.
Sydnor and Simonson anticipate that construction should be completed in late 2021 and plan to nominate Kiva Craft Center for the National Register of Historic Places. “We want to assure our Scottsdale neighbors that Kiva Craft Center will remain a vibrant affirmation of city history and architecture for years to come,” Michael Simonson says. “We are looking forward to working with Doug Sydnor and city officials to restore the luster and panache of this important property.”
As a result, the site will remain as part of the shared “Visual Wealth” of the community, says Jarson –– vibrant as profitable real estate and celebratory of what Scottsdale was and what the city has become in part because of it.
He suggests other places with similar panache and importance, which can harmonize with new builds, horizontal or vertical: the building across from Kiva Craft Center, site of the original Trader Vic’s, with its signature triangular beams from the landmark restaurant; the Cavalliere Blacksmith shop; the Bischoff’s Gallery building on Brown Street; the “charming and quaint” Adobe Apartments on First Avenue; the Christian Science Church on Indian School and designs by architects Ralph Haver and Joe Wong.
Scottsdale residents Sam Campana and Joan Fudala agree that places such as Kiva Craft Center should be enjoyed as Scottsdale legacy sites. “I hope any developer who comes again trying to make changes will take into consideration Craftsman Court and Marshall Way,” says Campana. “These places are worth preserving and finding a compelling use.” And Fudala: “I would love to see the Kiva Craft Center not only preserved but again populated with arts, crafts and fashion studios.”
For Ryan S. Flahive, an archivist at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, which Lloyd Kiva helped found in 1961, the legacy resonates with stories within the buildings. “The beginnings of the Scottsdale arts and crafts movement was here. This is where it started,” he says.
Jarson compares Craftsman Court to the resurgent Town and Country Shopping Center at 22nd Street and Camelback Road in Phoenix: “The open-air nature of this site invited you to shop, relax and connect. It took the commerce side of a retail shop and made it a more communal ‘village’ experience.”
And today’s retail models, such as mixed-use open-air Kierland in nearby north Phoenix, thrive because of their pedestrian-centric village configurations, similar to Craftsman Court. “This simple space inspired those that occupied it and those who shopped here. It was new, innovative and, what’s more, ‘bespoke’ in a way that shopping is simply is not anymore. In part, that’s because it has the soul of the artist and the ethic of the craftsman.
“Kiva Craft Center signaled in the focus on art, craft and design that made Scottsdale popular,” adds Jarson. “It was what helped make 5th Avenue the major tourist stop for Scottsdale and took Scottsdale from the sleepy ‘West’s Most Western Town’ to the cosmopolitan arts and crafts it is.
“Intimate moments of design such as this, what made Scottsdale popular, need our celebration so that they won’t be left behind as the city takes a new path to the future,” he continues. “Kiva Craft Center shows us the very roots of what brought us together as a community. To lose that would be to lose the collective memory of how that happened and what we are.”
Brown is a Valley-based freelancer (azwriter.com). This is the second in an ongoing series celebrating “Our Visual Wealth.” His article on the Kiva Craft Center was released over three segments, the first and second can be read here and here.
He thanks the many city of Scottsdale employees who assisted, the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe and other resources. The updated Scottsdale downtown plan is here.
Kiva Crafts Center: Then and Now – Part One
April 20th, 2021
‘It was the . . . catalyst for Scottsdale as a nationally-known resort center with fine art galleries, Indian arts & crafts and specialty shops . . .’ –Lloyd Kiva New (The Sound of Drums)
In 1946, Lloyd Kiva New (1916–2002), a Cherokee/Scots-Irish Oklahoman, returned to Phoenix from the war, including “hellish days and nights at Iwo Jima” as a Navy officer aboard the USS Sanborn. A graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, he had worked before the war at the Phoenix Indian Boarding School, managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
Lloyd Kiva was cruising east to Scottsdale, thinking of “islands, oceans and ships,” but he also wanted “to hug the trees, the rocks, the mountains and to feel the sky I used to know,” he wrote in his memoir, A Sound of Drums, which vividly relates his quest for authenticity as a Native American in an assimilationist environment (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 2016, p. 136 ff).
Ahead was what appeared to him as a “Hollywood ghost town.” In the middle of the “village” was Scottsdale Road, which was “paved for a few miles to the north and then turned to gravel before rolling out through greasewood, Saguaro cactus, and monumental boulders for some twenty-five miles to its beginnings in a small group of houses and stores called Cave Creek.” (p. 142).
In town, Lloyd Kiva serendipitously met some pre-war artist friends, including painters Lew Davis and Phillip Curtis. Soon after, in February 1946, he joined the Arizona Craftsmen demonstration studio on the southwest corner of Brown and Main streets, sponsored by businessman and developer Tom Darlington, who later founded Carefree; four years later, in April 1950, that wood building burned.
Inspired by his vision of marketing premiere Native American handmade wares, he followed in September 1950 with the Arizona Crafts Center, featuring wearable art, in the undeveloped Fifth Avenue area north of town. Finally, he built Craftsman Court, also called Kiva Craft Center, in phases from 1955 to 1958 on the southeast corner of 5th Avenue and Craftsman Court.
Listed on the Scottsdale Historic Register on July 1, 2002, Craftsman Court pioneered a pedestrian-friendly retail environment in Scottsdale with its seven one- and two-story shops surrounding a shaded courtyard with a reflecting pool. The city uses the Historic Register, established in July 1999, to identify, designate and promote its historic buildings.
In designing the center, architect Thomas Stuart ‘T.S.’ Montgomery (1917–1970) combined western and contemporary styles and sun-withstanding materials.
Lloyd Kiva’s shops, including his Studio 10, helped Scottsdale develop as an arts colony and established the Indian crafts movement in the young city. An artist and leather craftsman, he employed, inspired and mentored Native Americans such as Hopi artists, Charles and Otellie Loloma, who made pottery; Charles (1921–1991) later crafted the jewelry he is now particularly remembered for.
“Lloyd Kiva New’s legacy is, above all, the empowerment of Native American artists, to encourage pride in who they are and express themselves as individuals and in their communities,” says Ryan S. Flahive, archivist at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, which Lloyd Kiva helped found in 1961.
Flahive, who also edited The Sound of Drums, adds that just prior, Lloyd Kiva was the keynote speaker at the Rockefeller Project in Tucson 1958 to 1961, whose goal was to revivify American Indian art.
An innovative promoter, Lloyd Kiva oversaw the design and creation of stylish high-quality handbags, dresses and other goods that found enthusiastic markets in department stores such as Goldwater’s in Phoenix and the homes of well-to-do customers in the Valley and nationwide.
His tenants were also artisans, including Glass Art Studios, which pioneered large pieces of glass in cement; its stained glass can still be seen on walls at Kiva Craft Center. Erne’ Wittels was a custom perfumer, and fashion artist Leona Caldwell was prominent in the Scottsdale modern crafts movement. Others were acrylics specialist, Dick Seeger Gallery; jeweler Fred Skaggs; leather craftsman, Lord Latigo; silversmith Wesley Segner, one of the original Arizona Craftsmen; and El Chango Loco, an arts and crafts store.
More diversely mixed today, the six-decade-old Kiva Craft Center houses one of two Kactus Jock stores in Old Town Scottsdale, Estate Watch & Jewelry, Leela Market, Accentuated by Diana, BS West, Elizabeth’s LPG Endermo Center Spa and FnB restaurant in the original Glass Arts Studio building.
The Simonson family of Scottsdale, today as Sunbrella Properties Ltd., have owned the center for almost 50 years, acquiring it in April 1972 from Lloyd Kiva New’s wife. “My late brother Richard and I represent second-generation ownership, very soon transitioning to third generation,” says Michael Simonson, a University of Arizona graduate, tax attorney and former municipal judge who is teaching the business to his son, Paul.
“Kiva Craft Center is so approachable and still in use; kudos to the owners for leaving it pretty much untouched,” recalls Scott Jarson, who with wife Debbie is celebrating 30 years of azarchitecture Jarson & Jarson Real Estate, Scottsdale, which specializes in the sale and purchase of historic properties. “I think that’s the greatest compliment, that now, all these many years later, there’s still a creative draw to the place.”
Brown is a Valley-based freelancer (azwriter.com). This is the second in an ongoing series celebrating “Our Visual Wealth.” His article on the Kiva Craft Center was released over three segments, the second and third can be located here and here.
He thanks the many city of Scottsdale employees who assisted, the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe and other resources. The updated Scottsdale downtown plan is here.
FEATURED ARTIST: Mayme Kratz
March 31st, 2021
Mayne Kratz’s work is emblematic, standing at the intersection of her life and her artistic practice.
Possessing a deep love of the natural world, she has hiked and camped in many of the wild places and National Parks of the Southwest. These desert walks renew her sense of awe in the face of the enormity of the landscapes, the ephemeral radiance of its harsh environment and the delicate calibrations of these fragile ecosystems. They also provide her with material: seedpods, insect wings, cactus roots, bleached animal bones, leaves, grasses and flowers. Carefully organizing these organic elements into shapes, patterns and compositions, she casts them in resin.
Her work immortalizes and celebrates that which we all too often dismiss as detritus and reveals a luminous beauty in the ignored, overlooked and stepped-on. Her precise formal designs lead the viewer to contemplate the infinitely large, calling to mind the cosmos of stars and planets, as well as the impossibly small, alluding to cellular and crystalline structures. It is at once deeply personal and utterly universal.
Let’s start with basics – the ARMLS numbers for March 1, 2021 compared with March 1, 2020 for all areas & types:
Active Listings (excluding UCB & CCBS): 4,491 versus 11,003 last year. Down 59.2% from last year and down 13.3% from 5,180 last month.
Active Listings (including UCB & CCBS): 9,094 versus 15,776 last year. Down 42.4% from last year and down 6.5% from 9,727 last month.
Pending Listings: 8,027 versus 7,215 last year. UP 11.3% from last year and up 13.5% from 7,070 last month.
Under Contract Listings (including Pending, CCBS & UCB): 12,630 versus 11,988 last year UP 5.4% from last year and up 8.7% from 11,617 last month.
Monthly Sales: 8,020 versus 7,470 last year. UP 7.4% from last year and up 9.1% from 7,354 last month.
Monthly Average Sales Price per Sq. Ft.: $227.89 versus $185.09 last year. UP 23.1% from last year and up 4.8% from $217.47 last month.
Monthly Median Sales Price: $349,000 versus $295,000 last year. UP 18.3% from last year and UP 2.9% from $339,000 last month.
In March 2020, The Cromford Report wrote that the lack of supply was making life extremely difficult for buyers. It is now down almost 60% since then and doesn’t look to slow down any time soon! In fact, AZ Big Media Article recently referenced a Zillow expert survey that lists Phoenix as the second hottest housing market!
So, what does this mean for buyers and sellers in Maricopa County? It means that home buyers might need to get creative on ways to craft a winning offer and sellers need to be savvy about evaluating the offers they receive. In both instances, we believe it will pay for both buyers and sellers to work with real estate agents that know their craft. Here are a few things you might want to know right now:
What kind of tactics are BUYERS are using to successfully acquire property in this market?
Shortened or waived inspection periods
Appraisal Waivers or offers to pay the difference between appraisal and purchase price in the event the appraisal comes in low
Escalation Clauses which are clauses that are added to the purchase contract that essentially allow a buyer to say: “I will pay x price for this home, but if the seller receives another offer that’s higher than mine, I’m willing to increase my offer to y price.”
Post-recordation Occupancy or Leaseback to the sellers
Full cash Offers
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In order to be successful as a buyer in this market, we highly advise you to work with an experienced real estate agent. It vital to have a full understanding of the tactics listed above as well as the possible ramifications of using these tactics. It is important to understand that you may not even be able to make offers using the tactics above if you are financing a property. A good agent will be able to guide you and help determine which, if any, of these tactics may be able to help you be able to craft the winning bid.
What can sellers expect in this market?
Because we are in such a strong sellers market, many people may think that there is no need to use a REALTOR® to sell their home. Instead, they put their home up for sale as a For Sale By Owner. Unfortunately, this is most likely not the smartest move a seller can make. Not only will the homeowner have to deal with people coming in and out of their home regularly, they will also need to be able to decipher the language written into the purchase contracts. In order to fully understand the terms of a real estate contract and what those terms could potentially mean for you as the seller, we highly recommend you use a trusted professional real estate agent. Many of our agents are well versed in reviewing and comparing multiple offers. They can alert you to potential pitfalls in the language of the contract and help you decipher which offer is going to help you achieve most, if not all, of your goals as a seller. A good agent will also be able to pre-market your home in ways you could not if you were to list it For Sale By Owner. A good agent may actually be able to sell your home, for the amount and terms you want, prior to it even hitting the market or being syndicated to sites like Zillow or Realtor.com.
If you are looking to buy or sell right now, we have a team of seasoned professionals ready to help you. Email us at info@azarchitecture.com, and we will set you up with an agent who knows your area and can help you achieve your real estate goals!
Starring “Phoenix, Arizona”
March 23rd, 2021
We can’t claim there are any life lessons to be drawn from the Valley’s appearances on film. I’m warning myself as much as anybody else — be careful. Any fleeting images of former versions of the city are to be held at arm’s length, between thumb and forefinger, as completely, thoroughly, inherently fictional, not to be trusted, even for a half-second. That’s especially true of “documentaries.” The city playing the role of “Phoenix, Arizona,” voyeuristically searched by Alfred Hitchcock’s camera in the first few minutes of Psycho, in its single most red-carpet moment in the movies, with its visibly revolving VNB sign and all the rest, was and is truly “Phoenix” the same way Anthony Perkins was actually Norman Bates. Please don’t fall for it, I tell myself.
And yet. It’s a good game. You get drawn in. You know you mustn’t trust the movies. But some of the moments carry a back-in-time truth that it’s hard to get elsewhere. Is it worth the risk of being fooled?
Sure.
The films below tend to have good, long views of what we want, related to architectural or at least spatial observations & pleasures. The important parts of all of them are findable online — as of this afternoon, anyway.
My favorite of these is set in the freshly completed Maryvale of 1961, as it appears in a 25-minute short called “The Homeowner”, directed by Joe Parker. It’s a sales job. The developer and showman John F. Long always went to preposterous lengths to get your attention: clowns, seals, carousels, snappy names of models with calculated price-points, even hiring Ronald Reagan once. This time he called in the old, endearingly battered professional Buster Keaton, who brings his own ancient vaudeville shtick and treats Long’s new houses as the straight man. It totally works. The footage includes a textbook pitch about how the house’s desirable features add up to a simple, clean, effortless lifestyle, also found in the simple, clean, easy little town John F. Long built for you practically next door. You get the idea of the spaces being radically straightforward, and modernism sold as attractive because you don’t have to think about it.
The west valley is also shown off in William Wellman’s Thunder Birds, from 1942. As Hollywood as it gets: about 80 efficient minutes of ripe true Technicolor, war-era, major-studio, patriotic opinion formation wrapped in a simple narrative, easy to look at, plenty of swooping zooming airplane footage, and Gene Tierney introduced skinny-dipping in an open-topped water tower. Wellman gives us a minute of credits, then two minutes of a narrated mini-documentary which roots the story at Thunderbird Air Field in Glendale, scene of the quick training of British, Chinese and American flyers zipping around in biplane training aircraft. Boring exposition all done — on with the show. Other films might teasingly show an empty horizon where you know there are five Home Depots now, but this one takes you up in the air and looks down, revealing the runways laid out in the shape of a Thunderbird, and the undeveloped canvas of the entire west valley. Get a good look — only 20 years before John F. Long shows up.
I have a soft spot in my — well, head — for Robert Altman’s O.C. and Stiggs. Shot in 1983, it wasn’t released as much as it finally escaped in 1987, with its sources akin to Animal House and other teen-oriented comedies of the 1980s already long stale. Something about this movie requires a lot of patience. As with other Altman there’s a loosely rambling storyline and a multi-valent audio track that murmurs under its breath. The two leads are not easy to sympathize with, they come with some unanswered questions, and they share with Altman an urge to target “suburbia” without a clear grasp on how to get that done. All that said, there are pleasures in the cast, which includes Jane Curtin, Dennis Hopper, Melvin van Peebles, young Jon Cryer, Martin Mull, old Ray Walston, Tina Louise, Bob Uecker, and, importantly, the excellent Paul Dooley, who comes closest to manifesting Reagan-era materialism in human form. There’s also an unexpectedly sweet, familiar verisimilitude about its display of the back yards and sunny back bedrooms of south Scottsdale, the alleys of Arcadia, and a truthfulness about the colorful golf shorts of the 1980s.
The Phoenix observed and celebrated in Bus Stop (1956, directed by Josh Logan) has a loud, strong personality to match its lead characters. It’s a Phoenix I honestly don’t recognize: hootin’, hollerin’, decked out in Nudie western gear, bronc-busting, throwing a big annual regional rodeo like Calgary or Cheyenne, and the colorful stage setting for a big broad slab of countrified humor akin to Lil Abner. The twangy music starts in immediately. Arthur O’Connell (as “Virgil Blessing”) here prefigures similar services he performed for Elvis in 1962’s Follow That Dream (as “Pop Kwimper”) and then in Kissing Cousins (as “Pappy Tatum”). And, oh, Marilyn Monroe is in it, as a prostitute with a heart of gold. The crowds shown in the grandstands, and all the social and style information visible in their hats, boots, and looks to each other, are apparently authentic; we get a good thorough presentation of the Western Ho, the fairgrounds, the parade, the stands, inside the old Greyhound station on Van Buren, and a brief but marvelous glimpse of downtown neon on the VNB and the Hotel Adams just before the hour mark. Somebody’s going to have to tell me if the Jaycees rodeo really turned this part of town into Fort Worth every year.
Waiting to Exhale (1995), directed by Forest Whitaker, with Whitney Houston, Angela Bassett, and Gregory Hines, begins with a title sequence of Whitney driving into a stylized desert landscape, which is fair warning about what you’re about to see. On a narrative level this film’s interested in its four Black protagonists, four women in four social classes, and the gradations of their emotional reactions to relationships with their husbands, lovers, sons and neighbors. We get views of the Borgata and Fashion Square, the Hermosa Inn, the Arizona Biltmore lobby bar (Jesus, I love that place), and the yearly ostrich races at Turf Paradise, presented as if they race ostriches every day, all of it amounting to a grand, mythologized, stylized, fantasy, surreally plush and lush portrait of the eastern half of this metropolitan area at its most impeccably groomed, with good art borrowed from local galleries. This is mid-1990s style taken to the point of science fiction.
One critic of the time called Zabriskie Point (1970), directed by Antonioni, with Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin) a “spasm of oversimplification.” Subtlety is no problem here. The film also doesn’t reach Arizona until its last half-hour, when of course we linger over dozens of saguaros. It’s reasonable and prudent to skip straight to the climactic explosion, the explosion of the “Boulder Reign” house in the Carefree Grandview Estates, on the south slope of Black Mountain in Carefree, just northwest of the intersection of Stagecoach Pass and Whileaway Road, designed by Hiram Hudson Benedict. The owners Karl and Vija Hovgard were away on a sailboat cruise when all this happened. It’s a sign of MGM’s commitment to the project that the studio put $100,000 and its veteran production designer Dean Tavoularis on the task of entirely re-creating Boulder Reign on a nearby slope at full scale, completely furnished with replicas, with “the same type of concrete slab roof, individually cast concrete facia trim blocks, and balcony. Even the large foundation area was hand faced,” (AZ Republic, 12/8/68) in order to point about 15 cameras at the blast. It’s a sign of Antonioni’s filmmaking that the house blows up about 15 times in the film. He shows it all. They say the rocks are still scorched up there.
Used Cars (1980), directed by Robert Zemeckis, with Kurt Russell and Jack Warden, is easily going to be the most entertaining movie on this list. If you have to pick only one, this is it. Used Cars bubbles over with rude transgressive comic energy but it’s also rooted, somehow truly rooted, with a strangely strong sense of place, as one view of Mesa’s underbelly circa 1980, specifically on Main Street eastward out to A.J., specifically on the two disreputable fictional car lots warring across the road at 837 W. Main, one of them played by the former Darner Chrysler Jeep. We also get views of the City Courthouse downtown in the film, also some glimpses of ASU, also the inside and outside of Macayo’s on Central (just as it should be), but in its main setting on the Old Road Out of Town, zoned for motels and liquor stores and trailer parks, with the steady hustling transient energy and threat of a busy arterial, somehow that feels emotionally true.