Community members are collaborating to make local art interactive in an unexpected way by building a miniature golf course.
The Icehouse art gallery will host Icehouse Garden’s Minature Golf all weekend. Visitors can golf for $5, and $3 for children younger than 12. The golf course will feature nine holes by different local artists.
Self-proclaimed Phoenix historian Marshall Shore is planing the event with Icehouse executive director Peter Conley.
“It is really great that we have high school students up to professional artists who are working on holes, so it is a really wide, diverse crowd that has turned up,” Shore said.
The profits will go toward expanding the Icehouse garden.
The idea of a miniature golf course had been a longtime goal, Shore said, and there was no better time than both Art Detour and the Icehouse’s 25th anniversary.
“There has been talk of doing this for several years and I finally said, ‘OK, let’s do it, let’s make it happen,’” Shore said. “It is going to be a different take where it is not just the standard miniature golf with windmills and things like that. It is going to be much more local based.”
The goal of the miniature golf course is to allow people to experience art in a different way.
“You will be able to walk on it, play golf with it, as well as interact with other people,” Shore said.
The golf course is going to be family-friendly. Putters and golf balls will also be decorated to match the creative show, which Shore said he hopes will be an annual event.
“What is really exciting is we have already started looking toward next year about what to do,” Shore said. “We have to get this part done and then we can talk about next year, so hopefully this becomes a tradition.”
The golf course will be open to the public on Friday from 5-10 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.
Metropolitan Arts Institute is creating a golf hole alongside local artists Hugo Medina and Brad Stone.
Trunk Space owner Stephanie Carrico teaches at the high school and is helping students put together a golf hole.
“Because it is the 25th anniversary for Artlink, we decided we wanted to do something silver, so we are doing a silver reef,” Carrico said. “We didn’t find out about it until a little later so it’s been a little more last minute than we had hoped or planned for.”
Carrico said she was excited about the change in atmosphere Art Detour brought to the arts community in Phoenix.
“Art Detour is this fun weekend that’s about people getting out during the day and interacting and experiencing art and this is just one more way they can interact with the art,” she said. “Art Detour is a little more lighthearted and it is open to everyone. Miniature golf is something that is fun for everybody.”
The golf holes will not be shut away after Art Detour. They will make another appearance on April 7 for the Hance Park Conservancy’s Hance Park Classic 100, a fundraiser for local nonprofits.
Participants will play a total of 100 holes in the course of the day to raise money for their nonprofit. There will be nine miniature golf courses and nine standard golf courses.
Hance Park Conservancy board member Margaret Dietrich is organizing the event for the group.
“We’ve invited a lot of the small nonprofits that are near us to join with us,” Dietrich said. “Many of these groups really don’t have the mechanisms and the ability to put on a fundraiser, and so by working with us, they are able to have a fundraiser and it helps everybody. It will introduce them to a lot of more people.”
Artlink and Hance Park Conservancy board member Robert Diehl said the funds raised by the event will benefit the future dog park and temporary amphitheater. He said he hoped this event would make the conservancy stronger.
“With various members of the Hance Park Conservancy, this will be the first opportunity they had to work together towards a common goal,” Diehl said. “Hopefully as that develops, relationships builds, trust develops the kind of familiarity the conservancy will need.”
Dietrich added that the goal of Hance Park Classic 100 is to introduce people to the 32-acre park that “people don’t even know exists.”
Arizona State University Barrett, the Honors College students will be volunteering at the fundraiser. College of Public Programs Professor Dale Larsen, who teaches a special topics course downtown, is having his students focus on civic engagement.
“The main thing is that in establishing a vibrant, livable community for the downtown campus, there needs to be a park-like open space for students to feel comfortable, to be able to bike to, run to, walk to, enjoy the different facilities that are around,” Larsen said. “In terms of civic engagement, the whole notion is to reach out, bond with (and) bridge with nonprofit, public groups– neighborhood associations that largely are part of our Downtown ASU campus.”
The golf course will be at Icehouse on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and at Hance Park on April 7.
Dietrich said she was excited to be working with Icehouse to incorporate the miniature gold course into the fundraiser. It has become a wide-spread community effort.
“It will support all their efforts and we’re just 100 percent behind that idea,” Dietrich said. “Who cares about windmills? The typical miniature golf thing is kind of whatever.”
Contact the reporter at aimackli@asu.edu
