What does illustrator and graphic designer Stormy Nesbit do in her free time? She puts brush or pen – or, in some cases, scissors – to paper and she creates. “Art, when there are no clients involved, is where I can express myself freely,” says the Minnesota native, who earned her master’s degree in visual communication design from Arizona State University and has lived in the Valley for seven years. “No one is requesting anything...
When the pandemic first shuttered Phoenix, Aileen Martinez began painting places she missed. An ongoing series was born, in which Martinez portrays buildings around town, giving them character, ebullient color and a deep sense of longing. Her Crescent Ballroom has airy brown bricks and pastel accents, fringed by palm trees so loose the green spills from their leaf outlines, tops almost seeming to waver. Her Pizzeria Bianco stands wistfully empty under a pink sky, structural...
After losing strength in her arms and legs in her early 30s from a neuromuscular disease, Kathy Q. Parks fell into a depression. “I couldn’t lift my legs to go upstairs. How was I going to take care of my children?” The normally physically active Arizona native, who studied physical education and health at the University of Arizona, remembered how art mesmerized her in high school, so she turned to that. Over time, the use...
Following an administrative career with the U.S. Tennis Association, Jane Boggs was exploring her creative side when a friend invited her to visit a gourd farm. “I filled my Expedition with 100 dirty, yucky, awful gourds and my husband asked, ‘Are you out of your gourd? What are you going to do with them?’ I told him I had no clue, they just called to me.” Boggs purchased a book on gourd art and has...
A Phoenix artist embarks on a journey of transition – and discovery.
Peek inside Phoenix-based painter Elizabeth Butler’s colorful studio.
The downy texture of a teddy bear and bright colors bring painter Michael Lambard’s art to life. He also has a taste for retro cartoons like Speed Racer and Felix the Cat, which pop off the canvas with pristine outlines to bring it home. “I’ve always been fond of really bright colors,” Lambard says. “Cartoons always seem to bring people back to their childhoods.” In his teens, Lambard and his brother would wander around South...
See inside ceramicist Nicholas Bernard’s studio.
Timothy Chapman paints wild, imaginative renderings of animals. He favors zebras that fly or giraffes with leathercraft designs rather than spot patterns. Lately, he’s been into birds (ravens and magpies, in particular), painting them like illustrations in an abstract biology textbook. He adds mountains he grew up near, like Camelback Mountain, on the canvas. The second-generation Arizonan, a Scottsdale-based artist who works out of the Cattletrack Arts Compound, calls his work “invented natural history.” Chapman’s...
Artists and entrepreneurs. Athletes and activists. Legends and legends in the making.
“Growing up in a traditional Mexican household, being the oldest of 10 kids and all the restrictions that came with it, art became a form of freedom and expression for me,” says Phoenix painter Denise Dominguez.
Frank Ybarra’s “Chicano cubism” brings the Valley vibrantly to life.
Mindy Timm’s art is all over the place. But that’s how the Phoenix artist likes it.
