AZ Big Media Recognizes Mesa-born Artist Zarko Guerrero

 . . and little media too - like this MesaZona blog
Artist inspires Mesa multifamily development

Posted November 1, 2015 by AZRE

http://azbigmedia.com/azre-magazine/new-market/multi-family/artist-inspires-mesa-multifamily-development

Take the time to hit the link.
The important part of an artist in Creative Place Making
Rancho del Arte is featured in three posts on this site, latest on October 15 for the grand opening.

Community Development Partners has officially announced that El Rancho del Arte in Mesa is now open. Stakeholders recognized the milestone with a ceremony on Thursday, October 15, including speakers Eric Paine, CEO of Community Development Partners; Michael Trailor, Director of Arizona Department of Housing; Kelly Sands, President of ICON Builders; and Fatima Ortiz, a resident of El Rancho del Arte. The completion of El Rancho del Arte is a step toward creating an integrated, healthy community of engaged citizens.

The project features multiple artistic components to inspire and motivate the residents to partake in the creative process. Mandalas, is a Sanskrit word that means “circle,” are integrated into the building’s exterior. The Mandalas at El Rancho del Arte include environmental features, natural shapes, forms, and patterns which are found on historical baskets and pottery in the Mesa, AZ region. Additionally, the building’s staircases feature quotes from contemporary thought leaders such as Winston Churchill, César Chavez, and Henry Ford, as well as ancient thinkers and quotes such as Socrates, an African Proverb, and a Mayan saying.

Zarco Guerrero, an acclaimed local artist and longtime Mesa resident whose work was an integral component of the building design, states, “My job as an artist is to orientate people geographically. I have been wanting to communicate the ancient history of this area, and the symbols on the Mandalas at El Rancho integrate those historical symbols. They call our attention, they engage us while connecting us together in a shared ancient past. For me this is what art should do.” As a sculptor, mask-maker and performance artist, Guerrero has exhibited and received international acclaim and many prestigious awards.

Valley Metro Public Art >The Shadow of A Memory

 . . . with a monumental blast of color in a new pocket park/sculpture garden on Main Street along the path of the Central Mesa Light Rail Extension
CREATIVE PLACE MAKING
This time with a repeated sense of Mesa history and the strong memory of an artisan harkening back when the city was an Agritopia or urban farm before that word became a registered trademark for the166-acre mixed-use planned development in Gilbert.

This new place in the New Urban Downtown Mesa is sited on the north side of Main Street between fast-food/casual Taco Bell and full-service Il Vinaio close to the Country Club Drive & Main Street Light Rail Station.
As you can see by reading the sign for Valley Metro's Public Art Program, orchards of pecan trees were once located adjacent to Main Street. Originally they served as crop trees and later as shade trees for the neighborhoods that replaced the groves.
For station artist Mary Shindell growing up nearby the images of these beautiful trees became a part of her memory producing these expressions of art recently installed at the Traction Power Substation.
Grapes flourished in this surrounding area in the 1880's and 1890's. The name of the restaurant is a reminder of those times.

Brushed acrylic/Plexiglas abstract-free form sculptures and benches are getting unwrapped and installed on the side. At the time yours truly was here today, two guys doing some electrical work didn't have much to say, but Cindy Ornstein - Arts & Culture Director for the City of Mesa - certainly had plenty of information at her fingertips about the interactive Twilight Garden @ Morris Park sending images via email at the same time.


Twilight Garden – A new public art project called Twilight Garden is located at Morris Plaza on the north side of Main Street, adjacent to Il Vinaio.  The City collaborated with a Tucson artist, Joe O’Connell (Creative Machines), to develop a concept that would be in harmony with the other public art features in close proximity such as Mesa Flora figure at the Country Club Light Rail Station and the Memory of a Tree pecan tree-themed screen wall at the Traction Power Substation.  With consultation from the Arts and Culture Department, Joe developed, fabricated, and installed four acrylic sculptures that are internally illuminated at twilight and are human scaled to encourage interaction.  The sculptures automatically cycle through all colors in the spectrum, but can be manually adjusted to a specific color by visitors pressing a button.  Since the installation of the piece, people of all ages in Morris Plaza are seen interacting with the artwork daily (changing the colors, sitting in them, taking pictures with them)!

The Kids Are All Right



CAREER AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION
IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK.

IT'S WHAT YOU DO [Infographic in this post]

Hey! wazzup with that? We need both, right?

Big crowd of students today at Mesa Arts Center.

It was Manufacturing Day 2015 for Career and Technical Education students in Mesa Public Schools.
Today’s cutting-edge, rigorous and relevant career and technical education (CTE) prepares youth and adults for a wide range of high-wage, high-skill, high-demand careers.
The Arizona Regents, thanks to a change in education policy by Gov Ducey, are stating that CTE and Fine Arts credits will now be accepted on applications for higher learning by the state's universities - it's way overdue for that to get recognized. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxihu13fvT6BSVRldWttY2xOeVk/view?pli=1

 



Students from Westwood High were happy to get into the picture with a robot that took first prize at a statewide competition last year
Way to go Westwood!

3-D Printer Display

The Manufacturing industry offers over 17 million jobs in the United States. Career opportunities include engineers, machinists, computer programmers and so much more. Mesa Public School’s CTE department is proud to sponsor MFG 2015 and educate students on the vast college and career opportunities available in manufacturing.

Really Retro Big Picture Show in Vacant Lot on Main Street

Creative Place Making + Pop-UP > 
How to turn empty land into an outdoor entertainment venue

RAILmesa and Valley Metro have been screening family-oriented movies on a blank wall in a "sliver lot" on the south side of Main Street near Country Club Drive for quite some time now - now it's a billboard for free movies on 2nd Friday Night's Out in the new urban downtown Mesa that developed from an idea by business owner/artist + community-building activist Amy Castillo.
The empty lot was one of the locations that owner Brian Marshall of Village Bloom talked about in the July 14, 2015 visit here by John Williams, head of the San Francisco Federal Bank featured in a post on this blogsite August 06.
The downtown tour was organized by Terry Benelli, executive director of LISC/Phoenix to focus on local initiatives for sustainable communities.

Doing The Time Warp Again > The Rocky Horror Picture Show



WARNING: Viewer Discretion is Advised - Watch the trailer anyway
YOU'VE SEEN A LOT OF MOVIES BUT NEVER ANYTHING LIKE THIS

 . . be it

[It isn't the Junior Chamber of
Commerce]

It's the 40th Anniversary of this campy cult classic - the storyline goes like this: sweethearts Brad (Barry Bostwick) and Janet (Susan Sarandon), stuck with a flat tire during a storm, discover the eerie mansion of Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry), a transvestite scientist. As their innocence is lost, Brad and Janet meet a houseful of wild characters, including a rocking biker (Meat Loaf) and a creepy butler (Richard O'Brien). Through elaborate dances and rock songs, Frank-N-Furter unveils his latest creation: a muscular man named "Rocky."

 

It's here in Mesa, slightly south of downtown on Country Club for a Halloween Party on October 31 at the Arizona Event Center
[see 411 below]

 



Maker-Space in The New Urban Downtown Mesa

Yours truly has been "on the beat" walking, synchronizing, absorbing and getting in-touch all around downtown for nine months, not exactly the new kid on the block birthing this blog site. 

For some mysterious reason I was always put off by, yet on the other hand very curious about  this location with performance art-on-the-couch in the window in the "historic and authentic" downtown. Heat Sync Labs is wildly wonderful . . . maybe it brought back times gone by, the wild and wonderful good high-energy creative 20-something + 30-something [yea, 40- and 50-something also] years living in cities like Philadelphia, Boston and New York > getting excited all over again . . . but here in Mesa?
Believe it.

ICYMI > Why Should You Be a Voice For Public Transit?

In case you missed it, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee passed a transportation bill with three years of funding with the possibility of longer-term funding after the three-year period. With strong bipartisan support, the Committee approved the Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2015.

While this is certainly a step in the right direction, there could still be a long road ahead of us. The full House still needs to vote on the legislation, and we will continue to advocate for the funding levels to be increased for public transportation. The next step will include the House and Senate reconciling their two bills into a final bill and then sending it on to President Obama.

Even though the House bill raises concerns about the need to increase the funding levels, this development will at least enable the process to move forward. We are hopeful that Congress will be able to pass a final bill with increased investment in public transit before the end of the year.

This is it—crunch time. The deadline for Congress to pass long-term transportation funding is just around the corner.

http://www.publictransportation.org/Pages/default.aspx