Tag Archives: Mesa

Nov14

Quackers

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Quackers is yet another sculpture in the permanent collection in downtown Mesa, AZ. It is located next to a large fountain near the northwest corner of Main and Center streets. (You can learn more about all of the sculptures in  Downtown Mesa’s Permanent Sculpture Collection by looking at the brochure for the self-guided tour.

img_5855Mike Dwyer of Loveland, CO created this bronze piece. According to Dwyer’s website,

Mike was inspired to sculpt “Quackers” around his two year old son Nathan and his love of feeding the ducks at the local park. Nathan would hold on to crackers or bread and try to get the ducks to come in as close as possible.

This was Mike’s first sculpture of a child. He used real measurements from Nathan, even going in with his calipers and measuring ears nose and extremities while Nathan was napping. He also took many pictures of the active, small boy in many different poses.

According to the Waymarking website,

The sculpture was purchased through the City of Mesa’s Permanent Sculpture Panel and was dedicated img_5856in April 2004.

I think this is a really cute piece of art. How can Mesa go wrong with a little kid feeding ducks? What I really want to know is how the city keeps people out of that fountain in the summer.

I took the photos in this post.
Oct28

Teaching Children Since 1878

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I’ve written before about the sculptures on Main Street in Mesa, Arizona. (You can read past posts about The Big Pink Chair and Booked for the Day.) Today’s featured sculpture is called Teaching Children Since 1878.

According to http://collections.si.edu/search/results.htm?q=record_ID:siris_ari_316604,

The sculpture is the central piece of a larger plaza setting, which includes 16 bronze or brass relief plaques on surrounding stucco wall with inscriptions on the history of education in Mesa and 4 columns from the original Mesa High School (formerly known as the second Abraham Lincoln School).

The brochure with information about the self-guided tour of the Mesa’s sculpture collection lists the sculptor as James Avati, but the img_5842aforementioned Smithsonian Institution website lists three people as sculptors of this piece: James  R. Avati, C. L. Harding, and Dennis Tidwell.

While writing this post, I learned James R. Avati is from a family of artist. According to Wikipedia,

“His [grand]father was a professional photographer in New York City and his father was “James Sante Avati…an American illustrator and paperbackcover artist. ”

James R. Avati’s biography on the Utah Artist Project website refers to Teaching Children Since 1878 as a “major commission.” It also says,

James R. Avati of Redbank, New Jersey, and Salt Lake City, is an excellent and sensitive sculptor who img_5845studied at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts, at the Arts Students League in New York City, at Ricks College in Idaho, and at Brigham Young University. He was also a graduate student in the Department of Art at the University of Utah where he earned his M.F.A. in 1988. While there he worked with Angelo Caravaglia in the development of his frequently powerful art.

This life-size bronze sculpture is located on the south side of Mesa’s Main Street, on the corner of Sirrine Street.

I enjoy the juxtaposition of the fashions worn by the teacher and her students against the backdrop of modern buildings and cars, motorcycles and traffic lights. The teacher reminds me of a statue of a pioneer woman in Austin, TX a friend and I once used as the star of a short film.

Next time you’re strolling in downtown Mesa, be sure to checkout these scholars.

I took all of the photos in this post.

Oct15

Booked for the Day

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I recently wrote about the public art on Main Street in Mesa, AZ and mentioned my favorite sculpture there, The Big Pink Chair.

Another piece in Mesa’s outdoor art collection that I like a lot is Booked for the Day by Dan Hill.

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The statue is made from bronze, and is 42″h x 16″w x 30″d. It has a copyright of 2000.

Of course, I like the fact that the girl is reading. I love reading and books, so I was tickled to see two of my passions depicted in art. I also like the fact that the sculpture is sitting on a bench, out in public, just like a real person. It’s fun to sit next to this depiction of a young reader or stand behind her and look at the pages of the book over her shoulder. Oh, the possibilities for photo opportunities for anyone visiting Mesa’s Main Street with friends! img_5783

Dan Hill’s website says,

        A good book is hard to put down and this girl won’t be putting her book down anytime soon. Ten-year old Erica, engrossed in Harry Potter, was the inspiration for this interactive sculpture. This sculpture is in the permanent public collections of the City of Mesa, Arizona; the Carnegie-Evans Public Library, Albia, Iowa; the Palos Heights Public Library, Palos Heights, Illinois; the Eccles Community Art Center, Ogden, Utah; City of Ankeny, Iowa; Cleary University, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Main Street Garden, Twin Falls, Idaho; the Prescott Public Library, Prescott, Arizona; and the Ligonier Public Library, Ligonier, Indiana. 

According to the aforementioned website,

[Dan Hill’s] talent for s[c]ulpting emerged accidentally in 1974 when he was lounging around at home recuperating from a work related foot injury.  While watching an old western on television, he began messing around img_5781with a toothpick and some playdough [sic]…By the time the movie had ended [Hill] had sculpted a small bust, capturing a remarkable likeness of actor Lee Marvin.  These humble beginnings as a sculptor were followed by the early success of two sports action sculpture commissions and a first place ribbon in the Professional Sculpture Division at the Utah State Fair.

Booked for the Day is located on the south side of Main Street, between Robson Street and MacDonald Street.

To learn more about public art in Mesa, view the brochure that goes along with the self-guided tour of the city’s sculpture collection.

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I took all of the photos in this post.
Oct7

The Big Pink Chair

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SAD UPDATE: I was in Mesa in mid March, 2018, and the Big Pink Chair was GONE. My friend and I walked up and down Main Street in the whole area where the permanent art pieces are and we found no Big Pink Chair. I was so sad. I was going to get my friend to take a photo of me sitting in it. I can only assume the folks who were loaning it decided to take it back.

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Mesa, Arizona is a very strange town in the greater Phoenix metro area. Mesa is full of Mormons and meth and…art. Well, at least downtown Mesa is full of art.

According to a brochure that goes along with the self-guided tour of the town’s sculpture collection,

Mesa’s Growing Permanent Sculpture Collection features 39 fine pieces, most of which are displayed downtown (four privately owned sculptures are also on loan). Enjoy a FREE self-guided outdoor walking tour of the sculptures any time of day or night, any day of the week.

(Do what you want, but I wouldn’t recommend hanging around Main Street in downtown Mesa in the middle of the night.)

My favorite piece in Mesa’s sculpture collection is The Big Pink Chair. The above photo does not do it justice. It’s not just a big pink chair. It’s a BIG pink chair. An adult sitting in it looks like a little child. When I sit in it, my legs don’t hang down. When I sit in it, my feet stick straight out.

And yes, folks can climb up and sit in the chair. It makes for a great photo op, so visit it with a group of friends (especially if you time your visit for 3am).

img_5918The Big Pink Chair is a work by Mary Consie. It’s located on the north side of Main Street, between Morris Street and Robson Street.

I took the photos in this post.

May5

AZ International Marketplace

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I recently shopped at the AZ International Marketplace on the second day of its grand opening weekend.

First, the particulars.

According to the AZ International Marketplace Facebook page, the store is comprised of

100,000 Square Feet of Groceries and General Merchandise from all over the world…Hundreds of thousand of products can be found in this marketplace.

It’s located at 1920 W Broadway Road in Mesa, Arizona, and is open 9am to 9pm every day.

I went with a friend and we walked down every aisle in the store.

Most of the packaged food seems to be Asian. A lot of the Asian food is highly processed, snacky food.IMG_6021 We saw a lot of crackers, chips, cookies, and candy. In addition to the junk food, we also saw a lot of dry noodles and rice, as well as spices and sauces and oils.

In the middle of the marketplace is a large meat department. If there is a part of a cow or pig you’ve always wanted to cook and eat, you can probably find it in that meat department. My friend is a vegetarian, and I don’t buy and cook raw meat, so we didn’t stay in the meat department long or even look at all the items available. However, I did see cow lips for sale for the first time in my life. There were only a few cow lips left, so maybe they are popular in some dish I don’t know. Next time I have access to pay TV, I hope to see an episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern in which cooking with cow lips is explored.

Just past the large meat department is a large produce department. In addition to many fruits and vegetables I am accustomed to seeing in supermarkets (red peppers, yellow peppers, green peppers, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes), I also saw huge jackfruits, tiny bananas, IMG_6039and bundles of cinnamon sticks which looked like doll-sized bundles of firewood and smelled delicious.

A small part of the store (a back corner really) was dedicated to prepackaged food from Africa. (Reminded me of the time I rode the It’s a Small World ride at Disney World and the entire continent of Africa was represented by three brown children and a pink elephant.) In addition to several brands and varieties of red palm oil, we also saw Mama’s Choice plantain fufu mix, bagsIMG_6016 of cassava starch, and Tropiway brand fufu flour in both cocoyam and plantain flavors.

 

 

 

 

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The marketplace also boasts a rather large section of food from East India. Unfortunately, by the time we made it to those aisles, I was in overload and didn’t get any photos of interesting East Indian packaging. We saw huge bags of spices, prepared vegetarian entrées at the good price of $1.69 per serving (I resisted loading my cart with them), cans of gulab jamun (delicious dough balls soaked in sweet syrup), and jars of ghee. I was most interested in the ghee, which looked a lot like the ghee I recently made: solid and pale yellow as opposed to the translucent liquid I was expecting. Maybe my ghee wasn’t a disaster after all.

We were looking at different bouillon powders when my friend picked up a package and declared it penis in a can.IMG_6027

Ok, obviously, that’s a mushroom. The can is even labeled granulated mushroom bouillon. But I’ll be damned if that doesn’t look like a walking penis. Do people in other countries not see that and think PENIS? Maybe Americans (or maybe it’s just me and my friend) have very immature senses of humor.

IMG_6026One of my favorite packages showed these kids carrying a giant peach. I don’t know what kids in rompers or a giant peach have to do with the dried noodles in the package, but I like the illustration a lot.

One of the most impressive parts of the store (at least to me) was the cooler containing tofu. I didn’t count the varieties, and I (stupidly) didn’t take a photo, but there must have been 15 to 20 kinds of tofu in the cold case. Some of the tofu had been pre-fried, and there were an assortment of brands. It’s the most tofu I’ve seen in the same place at the same time.

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I apologize for this washed out photo. I have problems dealing with my flash. I hate taking photos in artificial light.

Maybe because I’m an anthropologist at heart, I’m fascinated by products that seem completely normal in one culture, while closely resembling torture devices in another. Case in point: the ear pick. American culture says it’s dangerous to stick cotton swabs in the ears. Another culture says it’s ok to shove wooden sticks with scoops on the end into the ears.

In addition to aisle upon aisle of “international” food, at least one-third of the store was dedicated to American (as in U.S.A.) or at least North American food. We saw Eggo waffles and Aunt Jemima. We saw Oreo cookies and canned vegetables. I was surprised the store carries food available at any supermarket in the valley, but I guess they want the place to be a one stop shop.

I was most surprised to see that food from Louisiana is apparently exotic enough to have its own sections. Louisiana food perhaps seems less exotic to me because I grew up in Louisiana. But I was not expecting to see an IMG_6024endcap dedicated to Cafe du Monde coffee and chicory. I was also not expecting to see three sizes (including gallon jugs) of Louisiana brand crawfish, shrimp, and crab boil. Where’s the Zatarain’s? my friend asked. IMG_6035Unfortunately, it looked like Louisiana brand had a monopoly on the Louisiana products. There were all sorts of Louisiana brand products available for purchase.

To round out the food selection, the marketplace sells a variety of housewares (throw blankets, bowls, cooking utensils), cleaning supplies, and electrical appliances (rice cookers, teapots). Shoppers can also buy incense, joss paper (also known as ghost or spirit money), and other paper items to burn as offerings to ancestors.

While I did find some bargains at the AZ International Marketplace (on Huy Fong sriracha Sauce, children’s toothbrushes to fit in my little mouth, and sport sunscreen that’s not supposed to run into my eyes), I certainly did not find everything in the store to be inexpensive. Since I hadn’t been shopping at other international markets, I don’t know how the prices at the AZ International Marketplace compare to similar markets in the valley, or if any of the other international markets in the valley can be considered similar to this one. If I lived in the area, I would probably go back and compare prices on items I’ve been buying at other stores, and I would probably take advantage of the good deals in the produce section. I would also probably do some experimenting with all those varieties of tofu. I would not use this store as a one-stop shop or my go-to market. But walking around it did make for a fun afternoon.

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I took all of the photos in this post.

Mar3

The Salt Room

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During a stay in the Phoenix metro area, a friend invited me to make a trip to Mesa with her to check out a store that sells salt lamps. My friend was interested in buying a salt lamp for another friend and wanted to shop in person rather than through a website. I’m open to new experiences, so I said I’d tag along.

IMG_4365The store in question is Himalayas Salt Lamps & More, located at 240 West Main Street in Mesa, AZ.

While we were talking about taking a trip to the store, my friend told me that Himalayas Salt Lamps & More has a salt room. A what? I asked, then got on the store’s website to get more information.

According to the store’s website,

Salt Rooms have become popular in the U.S. because of the success of Speleotherapy [the respiratory therapy involving breathing of the mineral infused air of a salt mine] in Europe…Patients get lasting relief from Respiratory disorders with the benefits of Himalayan salt therapy. This Natural treatment is recommended by many doctors and relieves symptoms of Asthma, COPD, Sinus Congestion, Allergies, Migraines, Chronic Cough, Cystic Fibrosis and other Respiratory conditions. There are absolutely no side effects.

I teased my friend, telling her I was going to call Himalayas Salt Lamps & More and ask if I could lick the salt room. This joke made us laugh a lot, and after a while, all I had to say to get us both giggling was, Can I lick it?

The day of our excursion arrived. We were at the store not long after it opened. Before we walked in, we were able to read a sign with information about the history and benefits of salt lamps.

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We went in. We learned more.

IMG_4367The store was comprised of several small rooms lit by salt lamps. The dim lighting gave the store a sense of tranquility.

The rooms beyond the front counter where purchases are made housed salt lamps in a variety of colors, sizes and shapes. Most of the lamps looked somewhat like rocks in various shades of pink, but other lamps had been fashioned into hearts and crosses. I prefer the natural, chunky shapes.

In one of the rooms where lamps were displayed, there was a large, hand-painted sign which read, You lick it, you buy it. Apparently I was not the first person to make the connection between salt lamps and salt licks. And I had thought myself so clever!

Why would anyone want to own a salt lamp? According to the store’s salt lamp page,

Salt Lamps work like an air purifier. Removing bacteria, dust, allergens, smoke, odors and mold spores from the air we breathe and emit no noise, odors or HARMFUL OZONE…Salt Lamps never get dirty or dusty and require no maintenance (other than changing a bulb occasionally). They help you Breathe Easy and Sleep Better!

How Do They Work?

…when warmed by the low wattage bulb, the salt crystal lamp produces negative ions which bind with the excess positive ions (dust, allergens, etc.). It builds up the ion field by reacting with the humidity in the air. Best if left on 24/7 as it takes time for the lamp to warm and create the ions. Claims of the efficacy of Salt Lamps have a solid foundation in science. The positive effects of soothing light and color, air cleaning and negative ions have been studied for decades. The book, Water & Salt: The Essence of Life [by Dr. Barbara Hendel and Peter Ferreira] documents the use of Himalayan salt products for use in the home.

The combination of negative ions and their effects leads to relief in Asthma, Allergies, Migraines, Sinus congestion and more. Snoring is normally relieved by the clearing of sinuses within a few days…

After looking at all the lamps available, my friend and I decided to sit in the salt room. The floor of the salt room was IMG_4363made from multiple blocks of pink/orange/yellow salt  There were blocks of salt in the walls of the room as well. Behind the blocks of salt were lights, ostensibly to heat the salt so it produces the negative ions needed to clean up the air. I found the soft amber light in the room peaceful and quite calming. I was happy to sit in the salt room while my friend walked around the store and made her decision about which lamp to buy.

I didn’t think the salt room was going to provide anything more than a relaxing environment. I didn’t really believe it could help me breathe easier.

I do actually have problems breathing. Both of my nostrils always feel as it they are at least halfway plugged. I don’t have to breathe through my mouth, but do feel as if I’m having to stretch a little to get each good breath.

I’ll be dammed if after sitting in the salt room for about five minutes my nostrils didn’t open up, and I could breathe, really breathe. WOW! When my friend came back into the room and I told her about my breathing and my initial disbelief, she said I was experiencing the opposite of the placebo effect. With the placebo effect, a person feels better because they think the treatment will be helpful, but I was feeling better despite having been convinced the treatment wasn’t going to do anything for me.

My friend gave me a small salt candle holder, but I haven’t yet bought tea lights to go in it. Once I get candles and try it out, I’ll post an update in the comments about whether or not it helps.

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The Health Ambition website has a really good article on pink Himalayan salt lamps which includes a critical analysis of the health benefits they offer.

I took all of the photos in this post.
Jan22

Working Man Statue

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When I passed through Mesa, Arizona, I saw a statue that is obviously the fellow worker of the Toilet Paper Hero of Hoover Dam.

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IMG_4349According to the Waymarking website, this man is John W. “Pete” Peters. The statue was sculpted by Russell W. Bowers and stands on Main Street, near Morris Street. The statue was donated to Mesa’s permanent sculpture collection by Western Block Company, a company Pete owned. It was dedicated in January 2003.

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IMG_4350 I like the way this statue seems dynamic, as if Pete is about to actually lay down that cinder block and spread mortar on it. Most statues seem static, so this one really stood out for me.

I took all of the photos in this post.
Oct10

Humpty Dumpty

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Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again

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Mesa, Arizona has an outdoor permanent sculpture collection. Humpty Dumpty is one of my favorite pieces in that collection, and I took this photo of him in March 2015. I love his yellow bowtie that matches his socks! I love his metalic shirt and the color scheme of his striped bodysuit. Most of all, I like the big, big smile on his big, big face!

The artist who created Humpty is Kimber Fiebiger. According to the artist’s webpage,
Kimber Fiebiger creates bronze sculptures that range from fun and whimsical, to classical and contemporary. She lives in Minneapolis yet her sculptures have been sold all over the country where she has won numerous awards.
Kimber Fiebiger has crated a LOT of sculptures of Humpty Dumpty. See more here: http://artbykimber.com/humpty-dumpties/jumbo/, here: http://artbykimber.com/humpty-dumpties/small/, and here: http://artbykimber.com/humpty-dumpties/large/.