Learning through the Arts Prepares Students for the Future

For more than 15 years, Scottsdale Arts has partnered with the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., to provide Scottsdale and Paradise Valley Unified School districts with professional development opportunities through our Education & Outreach program. The program empowers teachers to integrate the arts into science, language arts, math and social studies curricula. Formally called arts integration, it is an approach to teaching in which students demonstrate understanding through an art form.

This partnership was featured on the front page of the Scottsdale Independent on Aug. 9, 2017, and highlighted the power the arts play in shaping future leaders of our community.

Get Ready for the Brazilian Independence Day Festival

Now in its eighth year, the Brazilian Day Arizona Festival features numerous live bands playing everything from dance-friendly sambas to Brazilian street funk to drum corps. The festival is presented by Afro Baile Records, in partnership with the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. Enjoy the many athletic dancers in glitzy sequined costumes showing off their perfect moves.

This year's theme is Samba, a celebration 100 years in the making. There also will be a parade and visual artists and food vendors at Civic Center Park for a full day of fun. The festival starts with family-focused events and ends with an after-dark Carnival party. No need for a passport to Rio; we're bringing you Brazil in Scottsdale!

SMoCA Presents Retrospective of Architect Paolo Soleri’s Work

On Oct. 14, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art will unveil a groundbreaking and unprecedented retrospective of visionary seminal Italian-born American artist and architect Paolo Soleri.

Organized by SMoCA Curator of Contemporary Art Claire C. Carter, Repositioning Paolo Soleri: The City Is Nature, focuses on drawings, sculptures and models that Soleri produced during the richest years of his artistic evolution — from 1947 until the mid-1970s. The selected works represent Soleri’s most creative moments when he was making his artwork and constructing his home-studio, primarily with his own hands. The exhibition brings together elements from his built and unbuilt residences, bridges, dams, cities and transportation systems.

In addition to original drawings, models and sketchbooks, the exhibition surveys the artist’s earliest ceramic and bronze artisan crafts, as well as fabric designs and silkscreens. It also investigates Soleri’s personal engagement with the art and architecture of his time; the widespread recognition of his work by museums, scholars and curators; his relationship with Frank Lloyd Wright; and his influence on the American counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s.

Repositioning Paolo Soleri: The City Is Nature is SMoCA’s third and final exhibition exploring the trajectory of Soleri’s art, architecture and philosophy, initiated in 2010. The first was Bridges: Spanning the Ideas of Paolo Soleri (2011); the second was Paolo Soleri: Mesa City to Arcosanti (2013).

Scottsdale Public Art Welcomes Safe and Sound with Local Artist Christopher Jagmin

Scottsdale Public Art this month begins a new Creative Residency at Scottsdale Livery: Safe and Sound with local artist Christopher Jagmin. Jagmin will transform the Scottsdale Livery into a “safe community space” for social practice: an art medium that focuses on engagement through human interaction and social discourse. Visitors will be invited to open studio hours to participate in a series of social-practice projects that include shared walks in partnership with the Museum of Walking, using vintage typewriters and label makers to spell out fears and desires, sharing secrets with strangers and much more.

We bid farewell to our most successful summer exhibit to date, Bird Cloud Island by Koryn Woodward Wasson, which more than 37,000 people attended at the Gallery @ The Library, Scottsdale Civic Center.

The opening reception for the juried exhibition of 20 local artists inspired by the bicentennial anniversary of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus titled Frankenstein in the 21st Century: The Waking Dream, 200 Years Later is Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017, from 6–8 p.m. at the Gallery @ The Library. The exhibition runs through Dec. 30, 2017, and will feature free lectures, movie screenings and workshops throughout.

Also opening in September is a new exhibition at the Gallery @ Appaloosa Library, Our Stories Live On: Día de los Muertos Community Altars, Sept. 5 – Nov. 30, 2017. This exhibit was created through a partnership with the nonprofit Cultural Coalition group that received a Community Arts Grant from Scottsdale Arts to bring an altar-making workshop series to Scottsdale.

Visit ScottsdalePublicArt.org for more details about our free fall events and workshops.