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Arts
 Art is Where Her Heart Is
June’s Artist of the Month, Rebecca Carlton
By Nina Welch
Tucson Arts District Partnership
 ack in the 1880s, Southern Pacific workers built homes in proximity to the railroad yards in the Armory Park neighborhood. Today, Tucson Arts District’s Artist of the Month Rebecca Carlton lives in one of those Anglo-Territorial style homes with a pyramidal roof and a wooden porch. One can hop off the porch swing and walk around the back following the periwinkle wall along the alley that leads to her Bardo Studio with a conical tin roof. Carlton’s periwinkle art studio is named for a Tibetan word meaning rebirth. She divorced five years ago, purchased the charming house in the heart of Downtown Tucson and created her own studio with hot pink doors. When she found her Armory Park dream house and everything fell into place, this mother of two sons knew she was entering a state of independence that she fondly calls her “female zone.” With a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree and Masters in Education at the University of Arizona, Carlton teaches art at Manzanita School and is owner of KIDS STUDIO, a private art program. Fresh out of her undergraduate studies in Sculpture and Art History, she designed and manufactured children’s toys called Endangered Creatures. These innovative soft toys sold at various locations throughout the country including the Smithsonian Institution and the Wolf Sanctuary. Serious about art since she was six years old, she’d ride to painting classes on the back of her mother’s bicycle. Unlike most young women entering college in the late 70s, Carlton knew she wanted to study art and anthropology as a double major, though such a combination of majors wasn’t allowed in those days. She believes that images are created globally by human beings and stories are told through this universal language of many cultures.
Bardo Studio is filled with Carlton’s colorful clay tile works and charcoal drawings. She starts her clay tile projects with a sketch and then creates each piece individually by rolling the design over the edges and carves intricate details by hand. A tile bench could take three weeks to complete working every day for four hours. Baptismal fonts mainly used for birdbaths, bench seats, bowls, wall hangings, masks and huge charcoal drawings of irises are abundant in Carlton’s busy workspace. She is currently working on two public art projects that satisfy her love for anthropology and art as a dual effort. The Picture Rock Park and Community Center in Avra Valley hired Carlton to revitalize their track and signage at the park’s recreation center. Colored flagstone and concrete with petroglyph imagery will make up a unique running track, while signage carved in large rocks will identify recreational areas. She is also designing an entrance at Kinney Road, which is a County roadway project. Carlton is excited about her public art projects and was quick to add enthusiasm when asked about her opinion on the controversial Mountain Avenue public art. “If it gets people riled up enough to talk about art even if it’s negative, I’m all for it.”
Carlton works on her art until midnight each day and then rises early the next day to teach art to 548 students in grades kindergarten through 6th at Manzanita Elementary School. Teaching art has made her a better artist says Carlton. “I’ve learned through teaching how to hone my problem-solving skills, to break things down, to know that everything is an experiment and how to work and dance to get it right.” She is not only passionate about art but also about giving back with her creativity, especially to kids. Following 9/11, Carlton guided her students in the creation of red, white and blue clay hearts. Students even signed the back of each heart and included a personal message. Her art classes worked in assembly line fashion for 6 weeks to complete 5,000 decorated hearts. These precious gifts were then mailed to the families in New York City who lost loved ones in the World Trade Center tragedy. Her classes received an avalanche of thank you responses in return. Her students were also involved in another important project closer to home. The classmates of Christa Parseghian, who died from a rare genetic disease (Niemann-Pick Type C), helped design a memorial bench with memories of Christa’s favorite things and dedicated it to the school in her honor. The students also conducted a penny drive to support the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation, named after Christa’s grandfather, a retired Notre Dame football coach.
Rebecca Carlton is a downtown artist who believes in the revitalization of the arts and artists in the downtown area. She has been a vital member of the Tucson Arts District’s Open Studio Tour committee and feels that the heart of the city is where the artists belong. According to Carlton, the urban setting is viable for artists to work alongside one another and as an outreach to kids and the community. “Artists, writers, dancers and musicians belong downtown,” says Carlton. She worries about the fate of the artists in the Tucson Historic Warehouse District if rents are raised and artists are displaced. As the June Artist of the Month, Carlton’s work will be displayed in the Tucson Arts District’s window at 4 E. Congress in the Bank One Building.
A Big Night for Downtown Arts
by Kate Mahady
 aturday, June 7th, is a big day and night for Downtown’s arts scene. All in the same day, Downtown Tucson is hosting the Summer Arts Cruise, Tucson Museum of Art’s Island Hopping event, Art Square, and the 7th Annual Tucson Poetry Crawl. With all of this going on, June 7th promises to be an eventful day for gallery owners, artists, museums, poets, and art patrons.
Michael Dominguez, owner of the Davis Dominguez Gallery and head of the Central Tucson Gallery Association (CTGA), is coordinating the Summer Arts Cruise with seven of the member galleries of the CTGA. Dominguez created this event as a kickoff for the summer arts season for Downtown’s contemporary art galleries. Throughout the evening, galleries Downtown will be hosting receptions and will have many of the featured artists present for discussion of their works. Dominguez’s gallery is hosting a small work show, which is made up only of artists that were invited personally to display their work. Galleries that will be included in this event are Davis Dominguez Gallery, Dinnerware, The Drawing Room Studio, Metroform Limited, Museum of Contemporary Art, Raices Taller, and 3Falk Gallery. All galleries will be open free to the public from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Dominguez described himself as having a “strong, almost Don Quijote-like, attitude towards Downtown” and its arts scene. He stated that he formed the CTGA so that Downtown’s galleries could coordinate their events and so that “galleries can be an anchor” for the Downtown business and arts communities. He uses this event, along with its fall counterpart, The Big Picture, to draw business to the area. To promote Downtown’s arts scene, he targets his marketing at the foothills residents and the big resorts, hoping that people will “come down to where the museums are, come down to where the contemporary galleries are” and patronize the many galleries Downtown.
Just west of these galleries, the Tucson Museum of Art (TMA) will be hosting its 3rd annual “Island Hopping” event from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., which is a tropical dance party featuring tropical food, drinks, and music, and invites its patrons to come dressed in tropical clothing. Two local bands will play in the museum’s courtyard, Descarga, a Salsa band, and Apocalypso, a steel drum group. Enjay, TMA’s graphic designer, stated that TMA holds this event to draw people of all ages to “something fun to do Downtown”. The museum’s exhibit space will be open throughout the event, featuring a biennial exhibit of Arizonan artists. Tickets to the Island Hopping event are $10 per person and all proceeds will go to scholarships to TMA’s Children’s Art School.
A few blocks east of the museum, the Tucson Arts District Partnership is celebrating the season finale of Downtown Saturday Night with an outdoor art market at Art Square, located at 172 E. Broadway. This event will host the art of three featured artists, Lisa Stotska, William Skiles, and Jeff Schwartz, along with the music of Homero Ceron & Cool Breeze and the dance of Human Project’s Urban Dance Theater.
All over Downtown, the Annual Tucson Poetry Crawl will bring poetry to Downtown’s many unique stages. This event is coordinated by Growing Poetry Productions and is in its seventh year of “crawling” poetry and music through Downtown. The groups of poets traveling with this event will begin at the Tucson Museum of Art at 6:00 p.m. and will hit the stages of the Screening Room, the Hotel Congress, and the Art Square. This event will include Tucson Poet Laureate Ofelia Zepeda, Simon Ortiz, and Dave Mitchell and will be accompanied by the music of Ajule Eneke-drums, Cosmic Touch-Blues & Jazz, and Mariachi groups.
With these four exciting events, June 7th promises to be a stimulating day and night for Downtown. Those involved with these events see Downtown’s artistic presence as an important aspect of Tucson’s personality and are proud to share that personality with the public.
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