Maricopa Arts Council brings juried exhibit to Bead & Berry

Art on the walls of a coffeehouse is nothing new, but the scope of a new exhibit coming to Bead & Berry is beyond anything yet seen in Maricopa.

The Maricopa Arts Council presents a juried gallery show that will hang for two months. The “Spotlight Showcase” features 20 pieces by 16 Maricopa artists.

The opening reception is Feb. 6 at 5:30 p.m. A quartet of musicians from the Maricopa Music Circle will perform, and there will be hors d’oeuvres.

“It will be a good kickoff,” Bead & Berry co-owner Gareth Kerlin said.

The show runs through March.

Kerlin was one of the five jurists for the show.

“We’ve got photography, pencil, still life, oil, modern art, macro photography. I feel like we’ve got all the skill levels,” Kerlin said. “All the artists got to submit two pieces, and then we as the jury selected the pieces for the show.”

Kerlin, an art major in college, said he was looking for “expertly done pieces,” strong genre pieces, passion and color. Even how a piece would pop against the café’s walls was a factor.

His main criteria, though, were “Whatever is excellent and whatever is beautiful,” he said.

That could mean different things to different jurists. Kerlin said part of the fun of the responsibility was talking out those ideas of art with the other jurists to find how and why they chose their favorites.

Judith Zaimont, co-director of the Maricopa Arts Council and founder of the Maricopa Music Circle, approached Kerlin about hosting the show.

She called the exhibit “very heavily discussed” in the manner it is being run. The entries were marked anonymously. “It was the quality of the work alone that led to acceptance,” she said.

Twenty-two artists applied to be in the show. JPGs of the works were sent to the jurors, who deliberated privately before coming together for a two-hour winnowing.

“They had with them three lists,” Zaimont said. “They had a list of their top eight, then they had a list of their next eight works, and then they had a list of their bottom four works.”

The show was populated with works from everybody’s top 12 picks, and the discussion went deep.

Zaimont said some favored a certain medium because it required a skill set different from the others while other favored a different medium with a different skill set altogether.

“The result is a very fine sieve through which the works had to pass,” she said. “They had to move through a multiplicity of viewpoints, and that was very good.”

Zaimont said Kerlin has high standards for live performance and art going on his walls. While selected artists will be part of the “permanent” exhibit, the showcase also includes the much more transient “Art Now” experience.

Throughout the showcase, 25-30 artists will create new works onsite. They will use chalk markers on black glass panels on the back wall. But they will only hang for only a couple of days before they are erased and more artists show what they can do.

“It’s art on the fly,” Zaimont said. “You have to catch it when it’s here.”

The “Art Now” works must be nature-themed in line with Bead & Berry’s tree logo.  Zaimont said they will be “food for thought and nuggets for conversation.”

On the opening weekend of the Spotlight Showcase, a few suites down, is Maricopa’s first pop-up gallery.

Maricopa Arts Council in partnership with the Maricopa Center for Entrepreneurship (MCE) has brought in a variety of local artists for the weekend. Unlike the showcase, it is a first-come, first-show exhibit with space for sculpture as well. Other featured media include photography, paintings, drawings, bead work and more.

The pop-up gallery continues Thursday and Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. in Suite 104 of 20800 N. John Wayne Parkway, just a few doors down from Bead & Berry in Suite 112.

Together, the two shows “amplify in their totality Maricopa at large,” Zaimont said. “It’s an exciting spectrum of art.”

MCE had been working on the pop-up concept for weeks, and the timing for approval could not have been better as far as Zaimont was concerned.

“A lot of things fell into place with great serendipity,” she said. “It is the most exciting thing for the city.”

Maricopa Arts Council: http://maricopaartscouncil.wix.com/maricopaartscouncil
Bead & Berry Coffeehouse: http://www.beadandberry.com/ 520-252-5626