Ted DeGrazia's Garden

There is something I love about the "back-to-nature" vibe in Ted DeGrazia's garden.

 

It is not easy in the desert to landscape, or to grow anything at all.  Without sufficient rainfall, without a plentiful water source and, for 6 months of the year too much sun, it requires a different and persistent personality to create a restful garden.



 His is not the best I have seen, but it is very good and I can just imagine life here before paved roads and nearby shopping centers.



There are only rocks and native plants with touches of discarded whimsey.

These metal flowers are all from aluminum cans.



My friends that knew him said he loved to entertain and often had barbecues here.

This old stove was fitted to connect a propane tank--perfect for a pot of beans.  

These loose-hanging limbs of dried cactus are actually a wind chime.  A slight breeze sets up a pleasant, natural, non-intrusive harmony.



These sun protected areas are called 'Ramadas'. (Now you know where the hotel chain got its name)

 

The little courtyard was perfect to eat my sandwich.  The only thing missing was a hammock.

"The Corn Dancer"



He often had visiting artists that would stay for a while and he built small studios for them to work.



This is a "Sahuaro Shoe".  It is caused by a hole or injury being formed in the side of a sahuaro cactus.  The cactus repairs the breach by surrounding it with a hard coating (like a scab) and as the hole enlarges (caused often by birds or insects) it creates this shoe-shape.  Cactus wrens love to build nests in the shoes.  Then, when the cactus falls over, dies, and disintegrates, all that is left will be the skeleton ribs and a shoe.





There are many discarded instruments in the garden and I remembered that he had been a musician; music often accompanied his barbecues.



DeGrazia was born in 1907 and died in 1982.  His parents were Italian immigrants who settled in Morenci, Arizona where he was born.



During the height of his popularity he was known as, "The world's most reproduced artist."  Today I suspect that title goes  to Thomas Kincaid.









Uh Oh, I take back what I said.  I don't think nasturtiums are native plants.

photo by Sonoflightning
I found this photo on Wikipedia and it was much better than any I had taken of the chapel.



And this was his home.



His first wife divorced him and I would bet it had to do with this house.



Back-to-nature is fine…


Until you start having large dinner parties ….



And someone has to do the dishes.



I think my little RV might have been easier than entertaining here.




The bedrooms were okay...



but there were lots of gaps under the doors that led me to believe the desert critters might have been a problem.  And there was a vast expanse of desert right out the back door.

A friend recently asked me to describe what I thought  was "good art".  To me it has to be something that invokes an emotion, a mood, a memory.  And it has to continue to do so for the length of its life.  Gardens should do the same.  Mr. DeGrazia's garden did that for me.



Between the house and the gallery is this cairn….



and people have left money all over it.



Right beside it is his grave.

(Once again I am struggling with this blog.  The pictures are smaller than I would like them to be.  They can be enlarged by just clicking on them.)

Gallery In the Sun

"His hand trembled as he struck the match.  But he didn't hesitate.  He reached down and touched off a bonfire that consumed 100 of his oil paintings, watercolors and sketches valued at an estimated $250,000.
Ted DeGrazia, the Tucson, Arizona artist, shocked the art world on the night of May 12, 1976 with his blazing protest against the Internal Revenue Service. " (from a newspaper article of the day)

Even though I had been there four times before I passed up the entrance twice before I saw the sign...



I was still not feeling the best after my bout of stomach upset but I had been cooped up for several  days in the house; the paint and glue smells from the work being done, and the need to visit the Apple store all forced me out of the house.  So I took advantage of a spectacularly sunny day and packed a sandwich for lunch with the idea of visiting this gallery that is very near the Apple store in Northwest Tucson.



If you were around in the 50s or 60s then you will surely recognize his art.  It was (according to the critics) the kitsch-of-the-day and, I confess,  one of his prints hung on the kitchen wall of our home when Roger and I were first married.



Look familiar?

Ted DeGrazia built his gallery out of 'found materials'  high up in the Catalina foothills. The door to the building is reminiscent of a mine entrance and was inspired by his birthplace, a small mining town in southern Arizona.



He was an artist, sculptor, musician, builder, craftsman, and back-to-nature hippy (according to several of my friends who knew him.)

 

The inside of the gallery is part and parcel of the desert….  

 

Walls of adobe and native grasses,



and the floor is composed of sections of LaCholla cactus, cut into 4" slices and imbedded into cement, then varnished.





Here and there are patterns, and occasionally a lovely chunk of turquoise.

There are lots of nooks for displays of his works...



But no windows.  Light came in through little holes around to tops of the rooms.

 

 And there were many, many rooms; 15 or more. 

Of all his work, and there is a lot of it on display, I like his horses the best.

But he did pottery and jewelry and ironwork and sculpting.



This is a wall hanging in cloth.



  

He clearly had an affinity for the natives of the area--the Indians and the Hispanics.

He built a small chapel on the property and Indian weddings were often held here. 

  

The critics may have frowned upon his work but people drove from hundreds, even thousands of miles away to find his gallery and buy his work.  And at that time it was miles outside of the city along a steep and unmaintained dirt road.

Ted DeGrazia burned his paintings because his heirs could not have them without paying taxes on their market value.
He explained it this way, "I thought about this for a long time before I did it.  I tried to give my paintings to the University of Arizona but they didn't have any room to hang them, they told me."

"If an artist wants to take a tax deduction for his paintings, he is allowed only the few dollars it costs him for paint, canvas and other materials.  Yet when the artist dies, the government wants to collect taxes from his heirs on the market value of the paintings.  That's when I decided to burn them."
The angry artist had been hurt by the refusal of his alma mater to accept his paintings, so he tossed them into a Jeep and headed for the Superstition Mountains.   When he reached Apache Junction some of his friends met him.  "Nobody tried to stop me," he said.  "Once I had made up my mind, that was it." 

Later DeGrazia sat in a chair on his patio behind his studio and told the reporter how he felt when he saw his art work going up in flames.  "For a long time I sat and looked at the paintings…" and then he described the subjects, the settings, the incidents that each brought to mind.
He was accused of creating a publicity stunt, of burning only prints. But they were truly all originals-- and he never painted again.

(Next:  The house and gardens)

Am I Blue?

This has been a No Good, Very Bad Week….

It started with Precious (the IPad).  No Sound.  How do you talk to Siri without sound, much less listen to "This American Life" or Jon Stewart?
I had an appointment at the Apple Store on Tuesday but I started to feel really bad on Monday.  A Bug?  Something I ate? I showed up at the Apple Store anyway but boy did I feel rotten.  They said her speakers were gone and to come back Thurs. and they would give me a new Precious. I left clutching my beloved Precious to my chest.  A new Precious?  I felt discombobulated. (Hmm, do I have a fever?)
Tuesday night and Wednesday were very uncomfortable, especially since I had workers in the house all week replacing some sheetrock, repairing some walls, plus painting my bedroom.  The fumes were ghastly.
I was nauseated with flu or food poisoning, plus smelling paint and primer and glue,  and who knows what else.
And then the Coups de Gras, I could not post pictures to the blog!  All Week!  I am hoping it is something minor--but now I am waiting for Ron to work his magic.

Eureka! The sun came out.  By Thursday I felt much better and kept my appointment at Apple.  They discovered the glitch that had shut down the iPad's speaker, so I didn't have to adopt a new Precious. Ron says I need to stop playing the Heavy Metal and Acid Rock at full volume.
The workers were done by Friday evening and I have my bedroom back without plastic all over everything.  Food tasted good again. Sigh Me came out of hiding and curled up in my lap to purr.

And maybe I will be able to post something this weekend….Stand by.

It's a New Year!

 It was a great party at Phillip's house.  He lives high up in the Catalina foothills overlooking Tucson, and he collects all manner of creepy, crawly desert critters.

For some, his hobby manifested in the form of hors d oeuvres.

I managed to stay out of the room with all the mysterious tanks and cages. I tend to have nightmares and I was sleeping in the RV that night without the protection of Sigh Me.



I wanted a picture of the city from high on the hill but failed to get a good one before dark settled in.  Take my word for it, the view was pretty fantastic, and in every direction.  And the stars were brilliant.  We even espied a few comets--or UFOs.

All ages were present, while marshmallows and sparklers proved the hit of the party.

Other than being a collector of tarantulas, Phillip is also a firebug and a chemist so the fire came in many colors.   

I tried to get some photos of the blue and green flames but alas, no luck.



It's interesting how the photos come out when the lens stays open too long.  (My New Year's resolution, To get into a photography class.)

 

 I was parked at the side of the road and this was my view in the morning.  It was, for sure, a beautiful day.  The night had been pretty cold without Sign Me to snuggle with but I thought it best not to bring her along--fireworks and such. 

2014 is a new year and it looks as though it will be very interesting… So much is changing.

New Colorado Motto (as seen on Twitter):   "Have you looked at your hand?  Have you really looked at your hand?