Art - human and natural

Another beautiful, but cool morning, and, something new to experience: the DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun. It's the lifework of Arizona artist Ettore “Ted” DeGrazia - a truly unique place. It's not just a gallery in one building (photo on the left shows the entrance with an old door from a historic prison), it's a complex of buildings with beautiful gardens, sculptures (photos below) and side buildings like the Mission in the Sun (far below). Everything was planned and built by Ted DeGraiza himself, who was not only an artist and musician, but a trained architect as well. 

 

 

The son of Italian immigrants, Ettore DeGrazia (1909-1982) was born in a mining camp in Southern Arizona. He became an  accomplished trumpeter before he enrolled at the University of Arizona in 1933 where he founded a Big Band. At the same time he started to paint, got in contact with muralist Diego Rivera and opened his first studio in 1944 in Tucson. Briefly afterwards he and his wife bought the 10-acre foothills site to build what was to become DeGrazia’s Gallery in the Sun.

DeGrazia's paintings trace historical events and native cultures of the Southwest, often in series e.g. "Art and its Relation to Music in Music Education", "Rodeo" or "Los Niños". He also created ceramics (right pic) and other artwork, was good friends with the local Indian tribes, and, a humerous, unconventional, hands-on man. He became really successful from 1960 on. To protest inheritance taxes on works of art, DeGrazia hauled about 100 of his paintings on horseback to a mountain and burned them in 1976. 

We had an instructive tour, met with the "artist-in-residence", a potter who spoke German, and didn't expect to stay two hours in this gallery, but thoroughly enjoyed it. DeGrazia was certainly an interesting person and quite a charakter.

 

 

Next point: a Botanical Garden/Zoo: the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. It is a fusion experience: a zoo, botanical garden, an art gallery, a natural history museum, and an aquarium. It showcases the ecosystem of the Sonoran Desert region –  known as the lushest desert on earth.

 

Two particular plant forms dominate the landscape: legume trees and columnar cacti, first of all Palo Verde trees and Saguaro cacti, Mesquite and Chollas, Creosot and barrel cacti. The park consists of different sections: e.g. Mountain Woodland, Desert Grasland, Agave Field or Riparian Corridor. 

Organpipe Cactus

Joshua Tree

Barrel cactus

Ocotillo and Teddybear Cholla

Jojoba

 

Dead Saguaro

Another barrel cactus with extra-long spines

There are sections for typical desert animals: e.g.  Javelinas (Halsbandpeccari), wolves, coyote, bobcats, hummingbirds. Some trails go out into the desert and show different species of cacti (see pics) and other typical desert plants. This garden is a wonderful learning tool for students and adults, visitors and locals, and, it was interesting to see how many people were visiting the gardens, even though no cacti were blooming yet but one barrel cactus (left photo).

Mexican Gray Wolve

Javelina

Hummingbird

Back to our "cabin" at 5 pm to catch up with emails/photos/notes before we headed out again to Seis Kitchen (modern Mexican cuisine) to meet with a tourism friend. It's a lot of driving in Tucson, it's really spread out and traffic can be slow ,,, and ,,, different. Haven't seen so many "muscle cars", esp. Challengers, in a long time!