TUCSON ARTS HERO PROGRAM 2022-2023 SEASON

TUCSON 2022-2023 SEASON

ARTS HERO

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Empathy Through the Arts

For 26 years as the drama teacher and director at Tucson High Magnet School, Art Almquist has made sure teens are seen and heard. It’s a legacy that goes far beyond presenting some of the best shows in his hometown.

Almquist believes theater for teens is a tool for understanding themselves and the world around them. Delving into characters through traditional theater roles or expressing thoughts and feelings through improvisation or storytelling can be transformational, he says.

“What I want my students to come out of the class with is the idea that they have a voice, they are powerful, their story matters and their journey matters,” says Almquist, who has earned national attention for his work.

“The stuff they tell — it is glorious. It is amazing,” Almquist says.

What Almquist sees and hears from current and former students about the impact of his drama classes on their lives, validates his mission to help young people through theater.

“To me, the honor (of teaching drama) is in producing better human beings,” he says.

That’s his focus. It’s not about creating artists, although some students have become theater professionals.

ART ALMQUIST hero arts

“At the heart of acting is empathy,” Almquist says. “You’re telling stories that people sometimes may not want to hear, but need to hear. Just learning about empathy is so important, particularly now.

I think rather than creating artists we’re creating people with artistic sensibilities.”

Ensuring Healthy Eyes for the Arts Throughout Southern Arizona

Live performances at Tucson High return this school year after a pandemic-related hiatus. That doesn’t mean students’ voices have been silent. Almquist and his team found other ways for students to express themselves. For example, students in a storytelling class recorded a podcast last spring that should be available soon.

Do you know an Arts Hero? Someone who works tirelessly to strengthen, improve and enhance the arts in our community?

Nominations at onmediaaz.com

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Beautiful Beads

Jean Gribbon is the visionary behind an inspiring effort to see courage for what it is about 14 million times a year. There’s an art to it.

Tucson-based Beads of Courage is what happens when a pediatric oncology nurse establishes through research and experience the importance of tending to the emotional and mental needs of young patients in the fight of their lives.

For every challenge met — a round of chemo, a blood transfusion, a surgery — children are awarded a representative bead. There are 18 different ones. Artists volunteer to make special beads for treatment milestones that are integrated into the strand.

JEAN GRIBBON hero arts

It’s not unusual for seriously ill children to collect hundreds of beads that become striking, visual stories of their medical journey. Works of art, to be sure.

“It takes people’s breath away when they know that every bead on that child’s strand represents a courageous moment,” Gribbon says.

Ensuring Healthy Eyes for the Arts Throughout Southern Arizona

Beads of Courage’s mission-focused program was first piloted at Phoenix

Children’s Hospital nearly 20 years ago. Today, it is active in 400 children’s hospitals in nine countries. On any given day, an estimated 60,000 children are receiving beads. The nonprofit distributes about 14 million beads annually that are tangible, visual representations of courage.

“For me our growth is really evidence of the need to bring more art-based interventions into the hospital setting,” Gribbon says. “When you think about the arts, most people make a choice to have an arts experience. They may go to a ballet or they may go to a concert; they may appreciate art in a museum. But what we do is transform that treatmentrelated experience in that every bead that is given to a child becomes this metaphorical expression of their courage and a community that cares.”

It’s a beautiful thing.

Do you know an Arts Hero? Someone who works tirelessly to strengthen, improve and enhance the arts in our community?

Nominate him or her at onmediaaz.com

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Tapestry of Talent

Emily Pratt has a knack for connecting things — place to people, people to ideas, ideas to art, art to place — in a long, continuous cultural tapestry that reveals community. It’s all about community for her.

And when it’s all about community, being the Director of Audience Services at the Fox Tucson Theatre is sublime.

“I think we’re a beacon,” says Pratt, who took charge of patron experience at the historic theater in May 2021, after five years as Box Office Manager.

“Just the building itself,” she says, “is a reflection of our cultural landscape, and then we make it possible for our cultural community to showcase and bring their work to life.”

EMILY PRATT hero arts

Pratt was fresh out of college where she studied theater when she acted on a friend’s suggestion to move to Tucson sight unseen. A part in Borderlands Theater’s 2004 production of “A Tucson Pastorela” led to an administrative assistant job. Soon after, she became Box Office Manager at the theater, and then head of community outreach.

She has worked rewarding jobs outside arts and culture, but there was no leaving behind her creative interests. In fact, those interests grow wider and deeper. She has taken up photography, and in December, she’ll appear in “Pastorela del Pueblo,” a Blacktop Gunn Theatrics production. She is also the Tucson Co-host of CreativeMornings, a monthly breakfast lecture series in which creative types in 200 cities worldwide discuss the same topic.

Tucson’s people and its traditions, like the All Souls Procession and its special outdoor spaces like Tumamoc Hill, create a community like no other she says.

“Tucson,” Pratt says, “is a really special place that revolves and sort of thrives as a result of community. … I want to contribute to it, and I hope that I can see and share more.”

Do you know an Arts Hero? Someone who works tirelessly to strengthen, improve and enhance the arts in our community?

Nominate him or her at onmediaaz.com Ensuring Healthy Eyes for the Arts Throughout Southern Arizona

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The Power of the Doodle

Adriana Gallego was doodling during a college psychology class when she was struck by the artist bug. It was, as the Executive Director of the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona describes it, a Peter Parker moment.

“Instead of analyzing an ad,” Gallego says, “I decided to draw it, and all of a sudden … . I felt like Spiderman who just got bitten by an atomic spider. It was really unexpected. It was a huge surprise. I felt like I discovered a superpower.”

Gallego, who had dreamed of being a lawyer, became a painter. But the shift in focus didn’t change her sense of purpose or a lifelong commitment to social justice.

ADRIANA GALLEGO hero arts

Art is her instrument for positive change wherever she is — Los Angeles, where she taught in education and corrections systems; Phoenix, where she was Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Arizona Commission on the Arts; San Antonio, where she was Chief Operating Officer at the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture.

Now the self-described “border girl” is back where her career began. AFTSA, formerly the Tucson Pima Arts Council,

was an early supporter of her work as a painter, and it provided her first job teaching in rural communities.

Gallego is approaching her third anniversary leading an organization that centers its mission on strengthening the regional creative sector on a vision of diversity, equity and inclusion. That work includes two new initiatives that connect public- and private-sector entities to the creativity and brain power of artists.

“By creating this proof of concept, we want folks to see artists as the improvisational thinkers that they are, but also as solutions generators for society’s most pressing issues,” she says.

It could be like Spiderman amassing a legion of collaborators with superpowers working to do what’s best for Tucson and Southern Arizona.

Do you know an Arts Hero? Someone who works tirelessly to strengthen, improve and enhance the arts in our community?

Nominate him or her at onmediaaz.com

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The Arts Nourish Us All

The story behind Mario Di Vetta leading Broadway in Tucson to historic success is a lot about making peace with reality a long time ago. Truth is, Di Vetta says, he just wasn’t very good in other roles for the very thing he believes is essential to life.

“I tried to be an actor,” he says. “I was terrible. I auditioned for “Grease” in high school and remember not getting a call back. … They were like just, ‘Go in the box office. You’ll be fine in there.’ ”

Turns out he really does do fine there.

MARIO DI VETTA hero arts

“When I talk performance,” he says, “I talk from beginning to end in terms of purchasing their ticket, getting to the venue, going through security, getting into the lobby, finding their seat, sitting for the performance, and then exiting. It’s not just what’s on stage.”

Di Vetta believes the work of Broadway in Tucson is essential.

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From 2005 to 2010, Di Vetta held various marketing roles at UA Presents at Centennial Hall. In 2010, he became Marketing Manager at Broadway in Tucson. By 2015 he was Director of Marketing for both UA Presents and Broadway in Tucson.

In 2020, Di Vetta was named General Manager where he acts on a goal to deliver memorable experiences. The 2021-22 season was the biggest season in Broadway in Tucson history with 95 performances.

“There are things that are necessary to live – food, water, shelter, clothing,” he says. “I think the arts are part of that as well. I think you need to experience being in a theater with 2,500 strangers, and you’re all watching the same thing that will be different the next day, that was different the night before. You have that shared common experience that no one else will ever have. And I think you need that.”

Do you know an Arts Hero? Someone who works tirelessly to strengthen, improve and enhance the arts in our community?

Nominate him or her at onmediaaz.com

The Vibe of Tubac

At nearly 5,000 square feet of building space on two acres of land in Tubac, K. Newby Gallery and Sculpture Garden is effectively one of the largest welcome signs you’ll ever see. For owner Kim Roseman, it’s also a public display of affection.

Roseman has owned the gallery that is a mainstay in the historic arts community for 20 of its 35 years. Consistency is a hallmark of the gallery that specializes in what she categorizes as “Southwest representational with a twist.” The gallery wouldn’t have it any other way, she says.

“The energy, the vibe, of the gallery wants what the vibe of the gallery wants,” Roseman said of ensuring collectors and the artists the gallery represents connect. “The main things that people are looking for and why they gravitate here, that hasn’t changed.”

But that doesn’t mean there’s no evolution. Expansion in 2011 ushered in opportunities for the civic-minded Roseman to do more to increase accessibility to the arts and to champion local artists through the Indigo Desert Ranch art collective.

A garden of large and outdoor works

situated in a xeriscape includes about 30 kinectic sculptures in near-constant motion. It’s for everyone.

“People love it,” Roseman says. “I think it adds to the charm and character of town.”

For Roseman, a former Visual Merchandiser who moved to Arizona in 1995, Newby Gallery embodies everything she loves about the state, the scenery and the people she first encountered on vacation. In buying it, she found a way to work while doing what she loves — spending time in art spaces.

There’s more work to do.

KIM ROSEMAN hero arts

“Tubac and Arizona have inspired me to promote the arts,” Roseman says. “There is something that I hope to do — something on my to-do list for 20 years. I’m just dying to write the book about the art history of Tubac.”

Do you know an Arts Hero? Someone who works tirelessly to strengthen, improve and enhance the arts in our community?

Nominate him or her at onmediaaz.com

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Heart and Soul

As a teenager, Karen Wiese had a choice…..a career in the arts, or one in hospital administration. Little did she know then that she could do both.

Initially, Karen chose the path of hospital CEO and had a successful 24-year career. She was assigned to a Tucson hospital in 1986 where she fell in love with the desert, and where her two children connected to Arts Express Theatre (AET). Karen served on their board before her career went full circle back to the arts as the company’s executive director and producer in 2008.

As a hospital administrator, Karen analyzed communities to determine what programs to develop. Karen applied those skills to AET and has focused and grown its programming to be a leader of musical theatre in Southern Arizona.

KAREN WIESE hero arts

“Musical theater combines the intellectual, emotional and the physical together into an art form, and that is an amazing expression of humanity,” Wiese says. “It’s prevention on a communitywide and individual level. Wellness and healing are what theatre can bring.”

After 38 years of “schlepping” things from one theatre to another, AET found its home at Park Place. “We came to Park Place out of our passion to persevere during the pandemic and we’re staying out of love for the community that embraced us during these difficult times,” Wiese explains.

Now as AET faces its 40th anniversary, it celebrates its service to over 25,000 people annually through Broadway musical theatre productions and education. Next season, the company will present 11 productions, and a capital campaign continues for renovations that turn its home in a former Park Place retail space into a state-of-the-art theater.

“The AET team is exceptional,” Wiese said. “I’m thrilled to be here and have a grateful heart.”

Do you know an Arts Hero? Someone who works tirelessly to strengthen, improve and enhance the arts in our community?

Nominate him or her at onmediaaz.com

Ensuring Healthy Eyes for the Arts Throughout Southern Arizona

Mariachi Magic

If you diagrammed the chapters of John Contreras’ lifelong commitment to mariachi music, you would only need circles — some concentric, many overlapping, all full.

The mariachi instruction and performances he oversees and the cultural awareness he nurtures through music is what he experienced growing up in Tucson.

“Everything that I’m doing is a modification based on what I did as a youth mariachi musician,” Contreras says.

As the 20-year Director of Mariachi Aztlán de Pueblo High School, he leads one of the nation’s premier youth groups performing the music that has origins in Guadalajara. Contreras, who was selected in 2022 for the Southwest Folklife Alliance Master-Apprentice Artist Program, also sits on the board of directors of the Tucson International Mariachi Conference.

Contreras has played guitar since he was 3. His father, a self-taught musician, was his first instructor. By age 6, he was singing and playing well enough to bring his grandmother to tears.

After school music programs and the tutelage of Simon Carranza and his

sons, founders of the Mariachi Nuevo de Tucson youth group, propelled Contreras to a career of performance, instruction and eventually a job offer from Richard Carranza, a son of Simon and founder of the award-winning Mariachi Aztlán.

JOHN CONTRERAS hero arts

Mariachi Aztlán’s legacy of excellence continues under Contreras’ leadership. In July, it will represent Arizona in America’s National Independence Day Parade in Washington, D.C., a highlight in its calendar with bookings confirmed well into 2024.

Singing in Spanish helped Contreras, who received the Governor’s Arts Award in Arts in Education in 2021, learn the language and make a stronger connection to Mexican culture. That is what’s now happening in his classes and rehearsals.

“I know what this music and this kind of program will do for a student because it happened to me,” Contreras says.

Do you know an Arts Hero? Someone who works tirelessly to strengthen, improve and enhance the arts in our community?

Nominate him or her at onmediaaz.com

sponsored by Ensuring Healthy Eyes for the Arts Throughout Southern Arizona

STEVEN MECKLER PHOTOGRAPHY

COVER ART | IGNACIO GARCIA | @IGNACIO_GARCIA_ART DO YOU KNOW AN ARTS HERO ? IS ON THE LOOKOUT FOR ARTS HEROES! NOMINATE YOUR ARTS HERO AT: onmediaaz.com/artsheroes

Dr. Lynn Polonski Dr. Leslie Weintraub Dr. Ovette Villavicencio

WELCOME WELCOME

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2022-2023 ARTS HEROES! Thank you for all your efforts in creating a thriving arts community in Tucson.

Dr. Luis Antillon Dr. Salwa Aziz

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