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THE SUNDAY SANTAN SUN NEWS | FEBRUARY 27, 2022
For more community news visit SanTanSun.com
Phoenix Scottish Games a feast for the senses BY PAUL MARYNIAK Executive Editor
For 56 years, thousands of people each March have gathered at Steele Indian School Park in Phoenix to celebrate their Scottish Heritage. But starting Friday afternoon, March 4, men in kilts, men and women tossing boulders and stirring marching bands will dominate the landscape of Gilbert Regional Park as the Phoenix Scottish Games come to town for the weekend. Guys like Ian Lundy and Kevin Conquest can’t wait. Lundy spent the first 60 years of his life in Scotland before moving to Chandler, where he set up a business called Scottish Genealogy that works primarily with Americans eager to trace their Scottish roots. Kevin Conquest of Mesa was born and raised in America with Scottish roots on his mother’s side – confessing, “I’m mostly English, but as I like to tell people in the Scottish circles, nobody’s perfect.” Both men have big roles in the games. Lundy will be holed up in the genealogy tent with other professionals
Kevin Conquest, pipe major for the Mesa Caledonian Band, will be leading the Twilight Tattoo that will open the Phoenix Scottish Games. (YouTube)
helping visitors trace their Scottish roots. Conquest will be gloriously attired in his black-feather bonnet, tartan kilt, ornate waistcoat with assorted buckles and badges as he leads bands in a heart-stopping march to the tune of bagpipes and drums. The games standmay be the largest non-town sponsored event yet at the 272-acre park.
And they will use a good chunk of that real estate as Lundy and Conquest promise a bigger, bolder and more engaging simultaneous series of competitions, entertainment acts and other activities that will more than make up for the loss of the 2021 games to COVID “I do like the park,” said Conquest, the drum major of the Mesa Caledonia Pipe Band. “The layout is more agree-
able to Scottish Highland Games. So, the format that you’re going to see on the field would look very similar to how the Scottish Highland Games will be laid out in Scotland that take place on track-and-field-type arenas, indoor-outdoor tracks and outdoor field. We’re able to lay it out very similar to that. “Another big draw to Gilbert this year was the amphitheater stage that they have at the park, which was a huge win for the entertainment. The sound on that stage is so impressive, having already done a couple of test runs. It’s just amazing. It was an absolute win for us. It’s also a different part of town, so we stand to open up to a new demographic.” Not Scottish? No worries, they stressed. Most everyone and anyone will find something to enjoy. “It’s almost like you’re being immersed in all things Scottish,” Lundy said. “People everywhere are wearing kilts. People are playing the bagpipes. People are dancing. People are competing in various different events. Scottish music is blaring from different clans.” Added Conquest: “A fantastic show See
SCOTTISH on page 48
Longtime Chandler benefactor’s photos on display BY SRIANTHI PERERA Contributor
Chandler resident Robert J.C. Rice, whose name is on the city’s latest elementary school, is known for his volunteerism but not so much for his photography. Until now. Rice exhibits his work in a show titled “Essence of a Photographer— Fifty Years of Images by Robert Rice” through March 19 at Art Intersection, 207 N. Gilbert Road, Gilbert. Six bodies of work are shown, comprising more than 100 pieces, mostly monochrome. “This represents 50 years of taking pictures and trying to find something that is meaningful and that meant something to me and hopefully meant something to someone else,” Rice said. His creativity can be seen in the diverse range of images – from simple daily life to beautiful, striking landscapes as well as portraits commemorating personal events and relationships. “Roberts’ photography shows us not only his imagination and heart, but the successful transition between the abstract and reality,” said Alan Fitzgerald, owner of Art Intersection. Rice expresses his life’s journey with his work on show. “From the memorialized images
Robert J.C. Rice of Chandler presents 50-years of his photography at Art Intersection in Gilbert. (Srianthi Perera/SanTan Sun News Contributor)
of Roz, his close college friend, to his heartfelt poetry from Alone After Midnight, then his majestic portfolio, The Field, about the cycle of life, and enticing collections of travel and landscape photographs, and finally, his Opus 99 portfolio of still life, architecture, and landscape images, we feel Robert in every stage and chapter” wrote Fitzgerald. Rice, who has lived in Chandler since 1980, was a U.S. Air Force officer and
a senior manager of manufacturing at Intel. He has been an active volunteer: at the board of the Chandler Unified School District and the Valley of the Sun YMCA, at the Rotary Club and Read on Chandler, among others. In 2020, Chandler Unified School District’s Robert J. C. Rice Elementary was named for him – an honor he called “very humbling.” He also served on the school board for 16 years and devel-
oped long-range plans and goals that helped transform the district. Rice grew up in Jackson, Ohio and has dabbled in photography since high school. He used a Polaroid Swinger camera at first and bought a more sophisticated one when in college. In the mid-1970s, he moved to Arizona and set up a dark room in his walk-in closet at home. He moved to Chandler to work for Intel, which he did for 23 years. There wasn’t too much time for photography during that period, but after retirement in 2001, he took it up again extensively. He also traveled, and the color photographs in the show were taken during trips in Iceland, Morocco, Italy and Ireland, among other countries. “Mainly, I like to photograph the things that are of interesting design, still life that has a nice kind of elegant design or flow to it,” he said. One particular horizontal image of a piazza in Venice catches the eye because he captured it in five separate images together. A software program helped stitch them together, align digitally and balance the final version. “It is a 180-degree picture. Optically, it does not look quite like that, but that’s what it is,” he said, adding “A few pictures come out of the camera that See
RICE on page 50
