"The Celestial Body".  Ruben Urrea Moreno

Part I--Saturday, November 7: Art Walk.

First Saturdays, galleries stay open after dark--many with exhibits up every month.  Due to the limited space this webpage affords, for tonight's article only three galleries will be covered. This month's choice is the Contreras, the 5th on 6th, and Lulubell Toy Bodega.

Run by the gallery's talented couple, Neda and E.M. Contreras, the Contreras exhibits works by local artists, many of them of Latino or Chicano origin.  This month's guest artist is Ruben Urrea Moreno, whose aesthetically-appealing style exhibited in his So They Say is as eye-catching in its commercially vivid coloring and pop-art design as it is unique in its rendering of mysticism and deeper ideologies.  An example is "The Celestial Body" with the surrounding Zodiac signs, initially Latin (possibly Medieval) in origin, are instead given a traditionally Mexican (actually Aztec) slant to the style in composition.  The celestial being, with the statuesque physique almost Eastern goddess in appearance, stands in a majestic, self-possessed manner exuding a verdant sexuality that is simultaneously far removed from mortal contact.  Instead of a circle she floats inside a mandorla, the symbol of the Virgin Mary.  Other paintings are decorated with English, Mexican or Latin proverbs in Gothic script on fluttering ribbons or unraveling scrolls that sometimes seem to entangle with as well as obscure parts of imagery, while symmetrically enhancing the composition.  The main medium used is oils, with some mixed media on some of the installation pieces.

Psychedelic "Lucidity".  Installation piece by Rachel Martin

The 5th on 6th Art Studio and Gallery at first seems a little more difficult to locate, since it is actually a space inside the same building shared by the Platform and Bjorklund galleries.  It also has its entrance down the alleyway marked by a conspicuous "Parking" arrow on the wall, between the latter building and the Davis Dominguez Gallery.  Tonight was the reception for a student-based exhibit from the University of Arizona School of Art.  The main gallery space featured Progress and “The Great Productive Machine” the title of the exhibit by Chris L. McGinnis. Its namesake was inspired by Horace L. Arnold's article in 1913 about Henry Ford's Highland Park assembly plant in Detroit, Michigan.  McGinnis's paintings remark upon the terrible discrepancy between the overwhelming optimism felt by the general population during the new industrial era of the early twentieth century, and the polluted reality of what industry and the "Great Productive Machine" has actually brought us to in the present.                                                                                                                        The Flow Gallery located in the next room displayed a weekend-long  installation exhibit from one of the University's advanced sculpture classes--the theme being about human interconnections with our surrounding space and each other, and how everything has an impact on everything else.  The exhibit's unique setting ran the gamut of photographs with recorded voices, lit-up wax planets floating inside a box, an empty table setting accompanied by the intermittent sound of water dripping, to an old refrigerator door covered with--you guessed it--"refrigerator art."  Overseen by sculptor and creator of the wood and glass installation "The Middle Path" Tina Notaro, the Flow's space consists of approximately 14' - 4' X  30' - 4' floor plan (see floor plan on gallery webpage) with an attic-like upstairs area huddled under part of the gallery's wood-beamed arch-lined roof.  A curtained-off section in this area housed Rachel Martin's unusual creation "Lucidity,"  a piece about dreaming and the cosmic awareness of the unconscious.  A light fixture of rotating colors shimmered across the undulating surfaces of billowy clouds constructed of gauze material wrapped around wire frames suspended from the ceiling.  Directly beneath, mats and pillows were set up so visitors could experience the full phantasmagoria of the manmade aurora borealis above.

Items from Lulubel Toy Bodega. Media: flocked vinyl, vinyl, and cotton

A few feet down the sidewalk is Lulubell Toy Bodega, which to the untrained eye at first appears to be nothing more than a quirky toy store specializing mainly in stylized vinyl critters sporting all sorts of weird day-glow colored, night-glow non-colored and translucent glittery exteriors. Actually, it is a gallery / designer toy store / bodega.  The "gallery" part has been, according to the founder Luke Rook, the most challenging convince the general public to take seriously.  But these "toys," creepy-cute, whimsical and vinyl (or resin) though they may be, are not only art pieces, but to ardent fans of Japanese folk art, collectibles worthy of investment. Lulubell is also a gallery in a more traditional sense in that it displays line-drawn and painted artwork--of a somewhat varied subject matter. There are naturalistic sketches of animals on paper pieces little bigger than post-it notes juxtaposed with 8 X 10 -inch paintings of ghoulish heads.  The store is aptly called a bodega because of its large selection of designer toys--Japanese and American--and sideshow T-shirt art.  There are also tote bags and tiny "surprise" keychains for sale.  For those who desire something of a more cuddly nature, there are baskets of designer plush toys by the same manufacturers of the vinyls.