The city of Phoenix is putting on a series of talks with the goal of educating residents about the large collection of art the city has collected for nearly one hundred years.
Starting in 2012, the city’s Office of Arts and Culture began to hold lectures to accompany the art showcased in The Gallery@City Hall and other locations in Phoenix. The artwork has been amassed by the city since 1915 and could total as many as a thousand pieces, according to Donna Reiner, the vice chair for the Phoenix Arts and Culture Commission.
“This is education,” Reiner said, who is also the volunteer coordinator for the gallery. “It makes people understand that art is not a luxury. It really does help to improve the quality of life.”
The series, now in its third exhibit, is currently presenting “Feel the Heat: Desert Prints,” a show featuring more than 40 Arizona and Southwest landscape-themed prints by George Elbert Burr and Oscar Strobel, two 20th century illustrators and print makers.
“This has been kind of an experiment. Our previous lectures have been in the evening at the art museum,” Reiner said. “This is much more informal. They’re shorter. It’s kind of a drop-in.”
The lecturers for the exhibit were Jerry Smith, the curator of American and Western American Art for the Phoenix Art Museum, on Oct. 22, and master print maker Brent Bond on Oct. 29.
“Having a good grasp of the process and having a good enthusiasm for the process is really the foundation for any skill I think I might have as a public speaker,” Bond said. “Because I know the material and I’m enthusiastic about it, I’ll talk about it.”
Bond, who received his graduate degree at ASU and worked as a print instructor for ASU’s art school, owns his own printmaking company based out of Scottsdale. He was introduced at the program by members of the Arts and Culture Commission, who asked him to talk about the process behind printmaking.
“If there’s a bunch of George Burr’s I’m coming. You don’t get an opportunity to see this many en masse at one time,” Bond said.
Bond lectured to a group of about 15 people on Oct. 29. He described the different types of techniques used to make the various prints around the room and showed tools borrowed from his studio used in the art-making process.
According to Bond, most of the prints on the wall were taken from copper plates using a method called “intaglio,” where ink is taken from the deeper areas cut into the print plates.
Ink is spread over the plates and they are wiped, leaving the ink in the recesses of the etching, Bond said. Paper is then placed over the plate and pressed with different pounds of pressure, drawing the ink from the etching and leaving the impression of the image on the paper.
“We’re lucky. We have a lot of talented thinkers in the Valley,” said Edward Lebow, the public art program director for the Office of Arts and Culture. “We can tap those folks to do series of lectures.”
Lebow said the gallery held a series of talks last year regarding its last show, which featured images of historic landmarks in Phoenix.
“We hope to continue the series,” Lebow said. “As long as we have new exhibitions in here we’ll try to select people to talk about the work and branch off about areas related to it.”
Lebow said the exhibitions cost approximately $2,000 to host and that they are privately funded and ran by volunteers.
“Phoenix has an incredible collection,” Bond said. “It would be a shame for that work that is a part of the culture to not be shared with the culture.”
The current exhibition at the gallery will run until early January.
The next showcase will feature samples and images from the terrazzo art floors at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, and will focus on the physical labor that went into the construction of the floors. It is scheduled to begin early next year.
Contact the reporter at thawtho@asu.edu
