Tom in front of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, photo by Tom Grotta
We had reason to visit my old high school haunts in Scottsdale, Arizona earlier this month. It was a picturesque and delicious trip replete with stirring desert vistas and intriguing art and architecture site-ings.
Hotel Valley Ho, photo by Dru Bloomfield
Among them, the mid-century modern Hotel Valley Ho. The Hotel Valley Ho opened in 1956 and was a hideaway for Hollywood stars including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Janet Leigh, Tony Curtis and Bing Crosby. It also hosted Robert Wagner and Natalie Woods’ 1957 wedding reception. The hotel was saved from the wrecking ball in 2003 and re-opened in 2005 after an $80 million restoration, which Chicago reporter Hoekstra noted retained the original “Jetsons-in-the-desert flavor”. We had a terrific lunch outside the pop-colored, revamped bar area. We saw similar splashes of lime and aqua and orange that people have added to adobe and concrete facades throughout the city — a lively change from the olive that predominated in the 70s.
Rhonda and Carol underneath Randy Walkers “Entanglement”installation, photo by Tom Grotta
We also found two art installations sponsored by Scottsdale’s Public Art Project. The first was Randy Walker’s Entanglement, his installation of solution-dyed acrylic braid at Scottsdale’s Bell Tower, which we knew about and made a point of finding and photographing.
Randy walkers “Entanglement” installation detail, photo by Tom Grotta
With Entanglement, Randy Walker asks “What if the boundary of container and contained was blurred?” The other was Rachel Bowditch’s Memory Room, which we stumbled upon on Marshall Way, one of two art sites set up in empty storefronts, in the greatly diminished gallery area of old Scottsdale. Loosely inspired by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and the concept of a “memory palace’” first attributed to the Greek poet Simonides (556-468 BC) and further developed by Giulio Camillo (1480-1544) , Memory Room is a durational multi-media performance installation that investigates the relationship between women, writing and memory.
Rachel Bowditch’s Memory Room
A “memory palace” is a mnemonic system to spatially organize memories using specific ‘loci’ or spatial locations organized along a predetermined path. When items need to be remembered, one walks along the path to recall one memory at a time. Memory Room layers a series of “memory palaces” of women writers—Emily Dickenson, Zelda Fitzgerald, Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, Audre Lorde, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath among many others—all women who made an indelible mark on the world of literature. There are live performances that are documented by video cameras, but the storefront site includes some exquisite textiles on which memories are written and women are memorialized in photos. We did a bit of memory walking in the area ourselves, happy to see the Sugar Bowl still holds its own on Scottsdale Road and even better, that the cheese crisp and Gaudi-esque decor at Los Olivios are just as good as we remembered.
Los Olivios, photo by Tom Grotta
More than 60 years since it opened, the restaurant is still family-owned and the tortillas and salsas are still homey and handmade.
Randy Walker, who works regularly with threads and ropes and cables, writes, “Although it is a story involving only a single length of fiber, 
by Raoul D’harcourt (Univ of Washington Press, 1974; Dover Publications, 2002). I discovered this book in the Public Library in Chicago around 1958. It was a reference book and only in French. Later it was translated in English, and a few years later it was reprinted. Wonderful examples, history and diagrams; there’s nothing like it. It was like my bible. Not sure if it still available. There are many other books on Philosophy and Architecture that I would recommend, but the D’harcourt book was the most influential.
by Eric Broudy( Littlehampton Book Services Ltd., 1979; Published by the University Press of New England, 1993). This book is absolutely fascinating from a visual, historical, and technical point of view. The forms of looms have inspired me as sculptural elements in themselves. Understanding the evolution of their forms in a cultural context is invaluable. I have to imagine this book of interest to non-fiber people as well as serious fiber artists.
, ed. Dieter Schwarz (Hatje Cantz Publishers; Bilingual edition 2005). Agnes talked about waiting for inspiration… and waiting…and waiting…and waiting. She also spoke of not having unnecessary distractions in your life such as pets and unnecessary friends. I put my husband and the two cats up for adoption but so far no takers.
by Bernard Leach (Faber & Faber 1988).
(and all of its variations)(recent reprint, Weatherhill, 2008) had a HUGE influence on my work. The Japanese have a wonderful way of using indigenous materials to wrap things…packaging, transporting, presenting. Even now, years later, the influence of these old techniques prevails. This book and its information, not basketry nor bamboo, drove me to Japan in the first place. Who knew it would have such a profound influence on my work? If you look at some of the earlier work I exhibited through browngrotta arts, you’ll see Japanese packaging everywhere. In New York, the recent reprint can be found in Kinokuniya Bookstore on 6th Avenue. Love that place!
(University of California Press, 2004) is the absolute cornerstone of the project I have worked on for six years for the North Dakota Museum of Art. The book contains a series of papers and artist interviews that resulted from a year-long project all up and down the west coast (why not Portland???) in which Jacquelynn Bass and independent curator Mary Jane Jacobs looked at how curators shy away (to say the least) from work that has anything to do with spirituality. There were several retreats at a Zen Center in California, where papers on the topic were delivered. There’s more information about the project on the UC Press website. As to pursuing a career, I never really did that. I do what I do because I have to. It is what keeps me in the world.
by Frederick A. Horowitz and Brenda Danilowitz (Phaidon Press, 2009) It’s an account of Albers’ teaching at the Bauhaus, Black Mountain College and Yale. I took a summer course with him at Harvard when I lived in Cambridge and this book sums up some of the thing he had us do. It was very exciting.
Books Make Great Gifts 2011: Artist Recommendations
This year we asked the artists we represent just one question:
What was the most enjoyed/most inspirational book you read this year?? Here are their wide-ranging replies:
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, illustrated by Ellen Forney (Little, Brown; National Book Award) . This is a semi-autobiographical novel by award-winning author, poet and film-maker, Sherman Alexie. Alexie has been named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists and has been lauded by The Boston Globe as “an important voice in American literature.” He is one of the most well-known and beloved literary writers of his generation, with works such as Reservation Blues and War Dances. He also wrote the screenplay for the film, Smoke Signals, based on a short story from his book, Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. In his novel, Alexie tells the heartbreaking, hilarious, and beautifully written story of a young Native American teen, Arnold, as he attempts to break free from the life he was destined to live. Arnold’s drawings illustrate the book.”
Sensual Relations by David Howes (University of Michigan) is Deborah Valoma’s recommendation.