ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
SCOTTSDALE PROGRESS | WWW.SCOTTSDALE.ORG | MAY 8, 2022
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Student art on display at Visions ‘22 exhibition BY ALEX GALLAGHER Progress Staff Writer
N
ear the turn of the millennium, Scottsdale Arts Learning and Innovation had a vision: display the works of students from high schools across the Valley in one of its facilities. This had been an ongoing tradition for two decades when Brittany Arnold, the teen and family coordinator for Scottsdale Arts Learning and Innovation, took over the event. She entered the event ecstatic to show off the work that students had spent almost an entire school year to create. Then, just as the last piece was installed and the exhibit was about to open, the world shut down. Undeterred by having her first exhibition shut down, Arnold brought the vision to computer screens and held a small gallery opening event. But she admits it did not have the
Visions ’22 will mark the first in-person Visions exhibition in three years after the 2020 gallery was canceled and last year’s gallery was held almost entirely virtually. (Special to the Progress)
same luster as the event she had hoped to hold.
“It was such a great program that worked well virtually but you just don’t
get the same experience when it’s not in person,” she said. “The one-on-one interaction with an artist is really special and the kids of relationships that (the guests) build with the artists is hard to replicate over a computer screen.” This year is a different story. As Scottsdale Arts relaxed most of its COVID-19 safety measures, Arnold is over the moon to have the opportunity to open the exhibition to the masses. This year’s exhibition features 42 students who attend six different schools across the Valley. Each submitted one work of art that is either a painting or a drawing, a sculpture or a piece of multimedia to be displayed. Each piece was inspired by the prompt of choosing the works of one or two artists who interested the students and creating a piece of art that would be loosely inspired by them.
see VISIONS page 28
Fashion Week to strut back into Scottsdale BY ALEX GALLAGHER Progress Staff Writer
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fter three years of heartbreak and managing through a worldwide pandemic, Scottsdale Fashion Week is set to strut its way around Scottsdale with events scattered across the city. This is good news for hotels, shopping centers and Sheree Hartwell, who is the owner and director of FORD/ Robert Black Modeling Agency, which co-produces the event alongside Steve LeVine Entertainment & Public Relations: she remembers the headaches of shutting down her event with no sign of when it would return.
After a three-year pandemic-driven hiatus, Scottsdale Fashion Week is strutting back into town when it takes the runway beginning Thursday May 12. (Special to the Progress)
“We were set in 2020 to produce Scottsdale Fashion Week and a week before we were set to take the stages again, everything got shut down,” Hartwell said. Although the better part of the last three years has been spent working with venues and adhering to health and safety protocols while traveling, Hartwell originally aimed to bring Fashion Week back to Scottsdale during the busiest time of year in March but that time of year brought another wave of uncertainty. “We were originally scheduled in March but because of what was hap-
see FASHION page 28
