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!

Lazy day in Tucson

Wednesday morning we started out after breakfast in our "cabin" (photo taken from our patio) with some sightseeing at Tohono Chul, a mix of nature, art, and culture. It's themed botanical gardens and it's galleries at the same time, located spectacularly at the foothills of the Santa Catalina mountains (photos below). 

 

Blue skies and warming up in the afternoon,,, and, on we went to more "trivial explorations": first, two nurseries/garden shops. Especially worth the visit was "Green Things", a huge complex with greenhouses, cacti, tropical plants, citrus, palms, and,,, fantastic pottery of all kinds.

 

We really liked the colorful Talavera pottery from Mexico, a tin-enameled earthenware, Majolica-style, painted with bright colors and detailed patterns in traditional Mexican designs. Couldn't forgo to buy at least two small pots at another Mexican pottery store we checked out.

Bookmans' Entertainment Exchange was another fabulous discovery: a warehouse for books, music, movies, games, instruments, but also vintage household items, jewelry and other stuff, stocked by the community. They buy used things of all kinds and sell them in this store. Guess what we bought there? Books! Wondering already how we bring it all home,,,

Well, didn't accomplish that much today. Drove around a lot in the car - Tucson is all about driving, there is nor real public transportation in the outskirts and walking wouldn't be highly effective. We enjoyed to check out these mundane places. 

In the evening we cooked posole (left) from scratch in our kitchen and, for the first time, felt relaxed to some degree.

Desert and cacti

Tucson - is a spread-out city of about 550,000 population. It for sure has "Mexican flair", traffic is different (more European), food is different, landscape is different. The city is home to the nation's largest cacti: the giant saguaro, protected by Saguaro National Park (panorama above). There are two park units, to the east and west, plus, the Tucson Mountain Park.

In the morning we departed for the Saguaro National Park West - a 30 min. drive - got an introduction in the Visitor Center and went on hikes.  

Main symbol of this part of the desert is the saguaro, also known as the giant cactus, Carnegiea gigantea. It only grows in the Sonoran Desert and has been an iconic symbol of the American southwest for ages. Some of them reach a height of 50 feet and roots spread out about the same in length around the cactus.  At 35 years of age, it begins to produce flowers, branches normally begin to appear when a saguaro reaches 60 to 75 years of age. The average life span of a saguaro is probably 150 - 175 years, but even "dead" the wooden ribs (right photo below) were still of use (and probably still are?).

 

 

On a hike through a wash

Hike with a view

Saguaro National Park is located within a desert, plants here are adapted to drought, they conserve the little water they get. The varied elevation within the park allows for a great variety of different species. Unfortunately, it was too early in the season and none of the cacti were blooming yet, but, definitively, the rain last week had done them good. There are plenty of other cacti and plants,  e.g. Fishhook barrel cactus (Ferocactus wislizenii), Staghorn cholla cactus (Opuntia versicolor), hedgehog cactus (Echinocereus fendleri), Engelman's pricklypear cactus (Opuntia engelmannii), Teddybear cholla cactus (Opuntia bigelovii), Chainfruit cholla cactus (Opuntia fulgida), and many, many more.

 

At least, we found some plants in bloom already: a Scarlet Hedge Nettle/Stachys coccinea (left) and a Fairy Duster/Calliandra eriophylla (right):

 

Fishhook Barrel Cactus with fruit

 

Teddybear Cholla

Ocotillo / Fouquieria (in front)

Corkyseed Fishhook Cactus (above)

 

 

Missions around Tucson

After breakfast in our hotel in Sierra Vista we started with blue skies, but, close to frost, towards the Mexican border, to Nogales, on Hwy. 82. We encountered only one control station, and weren't stopped but had to drive slowly through heavily armed posts, patrolling with drug dogs.

 

 

On I-19 we continued on to Tumacácori, one of Arizona's church missions. While most people know about the California missions - 21 of them, established by Franciscans between 1769-1833 - the close to a dozen Arizona missions are not so well known and many of them not in such good condition. 

The Tumacácori National Historical Park, a mission established in 1691 by Jesuit padre Eusebio Kino,  sits in the Santa Cruz River valley, where O’odham, Yaqui, and Apache people originally lived. In 1691, two missions were built, Mission San Cayetano de Tumacácori and another one nearby, only a ruin nowadays. Lateron the mission was moved and under the Franciscan order a new church was built in the 1750s. 

 

The church's interior is mostly destroyed, but there are some outbuildings and a museum, which give a good idea about this mission. It was nice and quiet there, not many visitors around. A Mexican lady on the grounds was demonstrating how corn tortillas are being prepared (left). 

Tubac, our next stop (left), is a small colorful community, established in 1752 as a Spanish Presidio. Nowadays it's a popular "place for culture, history, and art", with many galleries and shops, and, a bit touristic, too. 

The historic Presidio State Park was unfortunately closed on this Monday, but the Mission Xavier del Bac (below), was open and packed with people, mostly "snowbirds" from Canada and other cold U.S. regions.

 

Xavier del Bac (photo above) is located only 9 mi. south of downtown Tucson. It was founded as a Catholic mission by Father Eusebio Kino in 1692. Construction of the current church began in 1783 and was completed in 1797. This church is in good condition and filled with statuary (below, right) and paintings. Following Mexican independence in 1821, San Xavier became part of Mexico - until 1854. 

 

In the afternoon we arrived in Tucson and moved in our small, but nice Airbnb. Got us some basic provisions in a nearby Mexican supermarket before we drove out again to visit an old friend of us. She had invited us over to dinner in her beautiful house at the Santa Catalina Foothills. It was a long drive (partly in the pitchdark night) to get "home" again, but it was well worth the trip.

Arizona's Wine Country

We had to leave beautiful Scottsdale and our friends this morning - first real sunny morning! - and departed for the south, towards Tucson. 

Our purpose this Sunday was to explore the Arizona Wine Country, or, to be correct: the Sonoita/Elgin AVA – one of three wine regions in Arizona (Willcox and Verde Valley are the other ones). 

 

The 2-hour-drive to Tucson was beautiful, but the landscape then completely unanticipatedy: grasslands surrounded by high snow-covered mountain ranges. Loosely spread out ranches and wineries, completely different from the idyllic, touristic wine routes in California or Oregon.

Located an hour south of Tucson, and just north of the Mexican border, Sonoita sits at 4,500 – 5,200 ft. elevation and was the first designated AVA (wine growing region) in Arizona. Brownish barren grasslands and (snow-covered) rolling hills, a valley surrounded by mountains as the Santa Rita Mountains – it didn't look like the land would be able to nurture vines on first glance. 

But, though the vineyards appear small and the wineries pretty rustic/rural (photos below), Arizona’s southern high deserts became the most prolific Arizona wine regions, with mostly Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec and Merlot varietals being produced.

It's been certainly a different experience compared to other wine regions! We are staying in Sierra Vista, one of the larger communities in the area, and, most importantly, seat of Fort Huachuca, constructed in 1877 as one of a chain of forts established to guard southern Arizona against the Chiricahua Apaches, led by Geronimo. The fort was also the headquarters of the famed 10th Cavalry, the “Buffalo Soldiers,” one of the Army’s elite black cavalry corps, formed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in  1866. Today it's still an active Army post. 

Superbowl 2024 - KC:49ers. We went to Tombstone Brewing Company to watch part of the game, having good IPAs and a burger before we headed back to our hotel. 

First fully sunny day today, but still cold, currently (evening) 5 deg C/40 deg F.