When buying a new sweater or jacket, I always think about how the color will fit in with a certain skirt or pair of slacks. In order to look good, a certain degree of color engineering is desirable in one’s attire. However, I must admit, I’ve never felt the need to coordinate my car with my house as this homeowner has done.
Near the entrance to The Construction Zone, featured yesterday, is this sculpture made from all kinds of construction tools. There are wrenches, saw blades, axes, cable, and hundreds of other things that I couldn’t begin to name, all welded together to form this fascinating sculpture. This piece is completely hidden from the street so I never would have seen it if I hadn’t been pulled in by the reflections that I featured yesterday and the day before.
This building stands out among the more traditional structures along Osborn Road. Its modern construction makes a striking contrast to the red brick office buildings that it is wedged between. I pass this building quite frequently and I have always admired it, but the image of those clouds reflected in the glass pulled me in to investigate more closely. It is the home of a General Contractor whose name is simply The Construction Zone. (Take a look at their site, they have another stunning picture of the building on their home page.)
Driving down a familiar street last Saturday, I was struck by the reflections of the clouds in this building. I was so taken with the site that I had to make a U-turn and go back. The entire office site is quite striking. Tomorrow, I’ll post a picture of the full building and tell you a little about the company who owns it.
It won’t be long now before the brand new Valley Metro light rail system will be launched. The opening celebration is scheduled for December 27th and 28th. In the spring I had an opportunity to tour the maintenance facility where the cars are being assembled. In the picture above you can see the workers and equipment and some of the cars in different stages of construction.
The Central Avenue Medallions is a Phoenix Public Art project designed to contribute to the unique character and identity of Central Avenue. Four artists, Juan and Patricia Navarrete of Taos New Mexico, Doug Weigel of Scottsdale, and Howard Sice of Tucson were asked to collaborate on the forms using Native American petroglyph images as the basis for their design but to elaborate on them through their own imaginations.
I found this beautiful mural on the side of the Thai Elephant café in downtown Phoenix and wondered why a Thai restaurant would have a mural of Cuba on their building. I asked a friend who is “in the know” and discovered that the premises once housed a Cuban restaurant. Then I thought about the Asia de Cuba restaurants in London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Scottsdale and thought maybe this isn’t such an odd combination after all. I’ve eaten at the San Francisco location and loved everything I tried. Maybe I’ll check out the new Scottsdale location soon.
I just thought this made a nice contrast between the modern glass building and the Spanish tiled church steeple. The splash of green from the palm trees are the exclamation points.
Over the next few days, I’m going to show you another part of Phoenix known as the Camelback Corridor. Phoenix has three main areas where business in concentrated, the downtown, mid-town or the Central Corridor and the Camelback Corridor centered around the corner of 24th Street and Camelback Road. This photo looks east along Camelback Road. Camelback Road gets its name from the mountain that you see in the distance. If you look at it with an artistic eye, you can see that it resembles the two humps and head of a camel. In the foreground below us is the south side of the Biltmore Fashion Park shopping center, an upscale shopping complex that houses the likes of Saks Fifth Avenue, Escada, Tommy Bahama, and Ralph Lauren. To the right, on the other side of Camelback Road, are the buildings of the Esplanade Office complex.
Today I am featuring another Frank Lloyd Wright design, the First Christian Church in north central Phoenix. This church was built in 1973 using plans created by Wright for the Southwest Christian Seminary, an organization that ceased operating before the plans could be used. Administrators of the First Christian Church knew of the plans and asked Wright’s widow for permission to use them. Permission was granted and this lovely church building was built to the accolades of the Church Architects Guild of America calling it one of the 10 best church buildings in America.
Many of our Eastern and Midwestern photo bloggers have been posting great photos and stories about their state fairs. While most states have their fairs during the late summer months, Arizonans have to wait a little while for the opportunity to pet a pot-bellied pig and eat a fried Twinkie. We don’t really mind. The triple digit heat of summer will be a thing of the past and we should be able to enjoy the food, rides, animals, concerts, and crafts without the fear of sunstroke.
Reaching for the sky, I seek adventure and excitement. While soaring on high, I seek the solid ground of home.
This photo is of one of the few remaining signs of a public art project that caused so much controversy that it has slowly disappeared from site. In the mid-80’s while building a new freeway in the heart of Phoenix, a public art project was envisioned as a way to diminish the bland ugliness of noise-abatement walls slicing through neighborhoods as the freeway snaked north. The firestorm that ensued was fueled by a local media woefully naive about the value of art, who pushed the public ire from civil dialogue to rant and tirade. Further stoking the fires were irritated local artists upset that the project was awarded to out of state artists. Interestingly, the project was lauded by the rest of the world and harvested awards and admirers. The original project was called Wall Cycle to Ocotillo and was to consist of a series of vessels made from concrete and steel, some attached to the wall like this one, some sitting on top of the wall, and some beside the wall at exit and entrance points. They soon became known, somewhat disparagingly as the Squaw Peak Pots taking the name from the former name of the highway. Over the years, most of the pots have been removed to make room for expansions to the freeway.
When I photographed this building, I foolishly thought it would be easy to locate information about its architect and why this design was chosen. After an exhausting search, I have not been able to find any information on this structure. I do know that the building is occupied by the Clancy Real Estate Group, that much is obvious from the sign outside. Since there is another inverted pyramid building located in Tempe Arizona I assumed (again foolishly) there might be several of these types of structures located around the world. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I found one housing Slovak Radio located in Bratislava Slovakia, one that forms the pier in St. Petersburg Florida, the familiar Tempe City Hall in Tempe Arizona and this one.
Yesterday I mentioned that I had an interesting lunch at the restaurant associated with Ranch Market. Today I’ll show you the inside of the grocery portion of the business. The produce is amazing. The bins are always piled way higher than my 5 foot 2 inches and seem to be overflowing with lemons, limes, avocados, tomatoes, and pineapples to name just a few. There is also an abundance of every type of chili you can imagine and not just a dozen as in most stores, but hundreds and hundreds. The bakery is huge and serves up everything from Tres Leches cakes to sweet Empanadas.
Saturday afternoon I was craving Mexican food, but wasn’t really in the mood for my regular venues. I hadn’t been to Tradiciones, the restaurant that is part of the Ranch Market chain in a while so I decided to go there. I was surprised to find they were filming a commercial inside the restaurant, but were welcoming guests in anyway. 
Only readers who are fans of Star Trek will understand the reference of my title. This sculpture is located inside the main entrance to the Burton Barr Central Library and I have to admit the first thing I thought of when I saw it was “The Borg”. This sculpture is actually by the very well know Italian artist Arnaldo Pomodoro and there is a reason it has a science fiction look. At the start of the age of space exploration, Pomodoro became preoccupied with the advance of technology. Of this sculpture and others like it he says “in these sculptures I sense the discovery and the drama of technological exploration and its powers. I interpret my surface erosions and irregularities as symbols of the destructive impulse.” His sculptures can be seen all over the world including the Vatican Museums, which somehow seems out of place to me.
Continuing with the tour of the Burton Barr Central Library, a center atrium of the building called The Crystal Canyon is open the full 5 floors and topped with nine skylights that track the sun and focusing it's light into the center where it moves throughout the interior during the day. Glass enclosed elevators transport readers to the various floors. In the forefront of this photo you can see a collection of Paolo Solari wind bells displayed against the Crystal Canyon glass wall in one of the reading rooms. Paulo Solari is an Italian born architect who came to the United States in 1947 where he spent a fellowship with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin West here in Arizona. He settled in Scottsdale in 1956. His famous Cosanti Bells have been sold all over the world.
