Photos by Courtney Pedroza, Carolyn Corcoran and Alex Scoville
The second annual Phoenix Festival of the Arts was held Friday to Sunday at Margaret T. Hance Park, giving local artists another opportunity to come together and work on the large-scale murals that are a centerpiece of the three-day festival.
Hugo Medina, a local muralist, said he decided to become a part of the event last year by proposing the idea of a collaborative mural.
“When I found out about the festival, I wanted to make sure it had a community element to it,” Medina said. “I approached the organizers with what I wanted to do and it happened. This year they brought me in again because it worked so well last year.”
Last year, Medina was able to round up 80 artists for the first collaborative mural. This mural was then transferred to Steele Indian School Park.
For this year’s festival, Medina said two murals would be completed with the help of 120 local artists. While one mural was worked on just as it was the previous year, the other had a more direct theme.
“It’s part of a project to tell the history of Phoenix,” Medina said. “The idea is to tell stories about Phoenix and then artists interpret those into murals.”
On Dec. 11, Phoenix Center for the Arts hosted a storytelling event called Phoenix Phabulous Experience that described the history of Phoenix since 1867 to the projected future. These stories were then used as inspiration for the second mural, which illustrates the history of Phoenix.
“The storytelling (mural) is an extended one that will go beyond this weekend,” Medina said. “The festival one is going to be completed by the end of the weekend.”
Marisa Hall, one of the participating artists, did not attend the Dec. 11 storytelling event, but was just as inspired by the vibrancy of the city.
“The theme this year was downtown Phoenix, so it was kind of free range and your interpretation and your attribute to the history of downtown Phoenix,” said Hall, who painted the mythical phoenix bird rising from the Phoenix skyline in the “traditional” festival mural.
David Morgan, a native Phoenician, said he was very excited to be a part of the mural painting.
“I got involved about three, four months ago,” Morgan said. “I wanted to make my mural colorful and as far as the color scheme, make it have more relation with the subject matter as far as green, the scenery, the landscape feel to it.”
Artist Jesse Perry brought both his bold cartoon and sea-life styles together to create his mural for the festival. Perry painted a large jellyfish and a brain with big, pink tentacles.
“It’s ironic in a way because this used to be all ocean and now we’re a desert,” he said. “It really lends itself into the form I like to paint in which is fluidity, and that’s what a lot of the sea creatures and tentacles offer.”
The festival also showcased local bands and performers, including Teneia Sanders, City Jazz and the Great Arizona Puppet Theatre. Food trucks Short Leash Hot Dogs, Pizza People and Paletas Betty were among others to provide different cuisines while vendors displayed and sold their goods to those at the event.
Festivals like this one are held throughout the city to cultivate and strengthen the art community of downtown Phoenix.
“We’ve all been able to meet each other and we have been able to collaborate on different projects, and it’s awesome because one door keeps opening another and another and another,” Hall said. “For artists that are up-and-coming, this is a very awesome opportunity.”
Contact the reporter at ruby.ramirez.1@asu.edu
