“From Suburbia…Searching for Culture“

Matti Baine is a visual as well as performing artist expressing through varied media. Her background comprises forays into many aspects of staged events, including set design, theme and decor; artistic and technical production, vendor and crew level technical support covering lighting, video, and rigging.

Matti has been a performing aerialist since 2001, having been inspired while touring with Circus Flora, by the privilege of working with much of the long descended nobility of Circus Aerialists. It is her admiration of the awe-inspiring feats of these performers, and recognition of the need to preserve the deep cultural heritage underlying their artistry, that compels her presentation. Matti’s desire is to communicate the significance of this heritage to the lay audience with the hope of instilling the appreciation for this culturally rich art form, and the intrinsic beauty of its performance.

Matti has been dedicated to the revitalization of the downtown Phoenix community through artistic expressions within that community since 2001. Producing many events at Urbana Events showroom, Anti-Space galleries, The Ice House, Street performance for First Fridays and Art Detour, and 2 years of running events and exhibits at The Red Door Gallery.

Developing a unique style of painting over the years, Matti has been studying and refining her skills over the last 3 years while living in Spain, exhibiting at Arte de Navaress as well as completing a commission for Daniel Cesario of his various impressive circus performances.

Listen to Matti and other amazing presenters this Friday, Feb 25th at Bragg’s Pie Factory. Get your tickets today! No door sales.

“Public Art Project from A to Y”

Mary Lucking creates artworks for people to share. Her work ranges from large-scale, permanent artworks to temporary interactive installations. Her projects include art incorporated into urban and rural walking and biking trails, public transit stations, college campuses, and neighborhood parks.

Mary holds a Bachelor of Arts degree, Magna Cum Laude, in Architecture from Wellesley College and a Master of Fine Arts in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Mary currently lives and works in Phoenix, AZ.

Her commissions include pieces for the cities of Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Tucson, Glendale, Nashville, and Houston, and she has shown work at Chicago MCA, SIGGRAPH, MoCA Tucson, Sony Berlin, Cheekwood Musuem, the Boston Cyberarts Festival, Arizona State University, and Vanderbilt University.

In addition to public art, she also creates electronic interactive installations, often with collaborators Andrew Sempere and Pete Goldlust.

Listen to Mary and other amazing presenters this Friday, Feb 25th at Bragg’s Pie Factory. Get your tickets today! No door sales.

“Drawings are Dead? BIM and the Ego of Architects”

Elizabeth (Liz) Chodosh, LEED AP, is a firm-wide BIM Specialist with Cannon Design, and admits to being a recovering design architect.  An experienced A/E/C practice technology coordinator, she joined Cannon Design in Fall of 2008 after relocating to Phoenix.

She currently specializes in BIM with an emphasis on Revit and related technologies, including development of and supporting Revit projects, libraries, external utilities, best practices and standards. Liz is actively involved in promoting the expanding knowledge base of BIM and virtual design technologies, leads staff training in Revit and related technologies, and is a contributing team member establishing integrated modeling and collaborative BIM practices.  She is a member of the buildingSMART Alliance and participates as part of the National Practice Committee toward development of the National BIM Standards.

In 2008, Liz had the honor of participating in Autodesk University as a lecturer on large projects and collaboration and a panelist/presenter at the Spring 2009 BIMForum in Dallas on ROI and model management in BIM.  Today she contributes to Revit Phoenix (Phoenix Metro Area Revit/BIM Users Group) and has previously served as an Advisory Board Member and frequent presenter at RevitDC, the Washington, DC Metro Revit user group.  She is also an active member of the Designer’s SubForum at the BIMForum.

Listen to Liz and other amazing presenters this Friday, Feb 25th at Bragg’s Pie Factory. Get your tickets today! No door sales.

“Life from the Ground Up”

Bret Sassenberg is a former architecture student who left when he realized the academic environment wasn’t the best use of his hard earned money. He is also an entrepreneur, arts advocate, and property development manager who navigated one of the most challenging development projects in Scottsdale’s history, creating the Valley’s first mixed-use canal waterfront property.

Bret is known for his innovative problem solving. For fifteen years Bret, principal at Ground Up Development, has been successfully managing construction and development projects over a wide range of real estate uses. Bret has also been an active member of Scottsdale Public Art (SPA) Advisory Board since 2009. Bret championed SPA’s first, newly formed fundraising committee. His vision for the committee is to help sustain international caliber arts/cultural offerings for Scottsdale and the Valley through community and corporate support.

Scottsdale Waterfront

Since 2004, Ground Up Development Services has managed the day to day development needs for the Scottsdale Waterfront mixed-used project. Ground Up also was instrumental in the creation and subsequent bonding of a Community Facilities District to enhance the development process. The result is a vital and innovative leading project in the heart of Scottsdale; the first successfully implemented canal waterfront development in the 20+ years of previous proposals and master planned projects.

Through the lens of his episodic and fluid personal-professional life, Bret looks at the structures of a creative existence—his experiments, distractions, wake up calls, successes, and pivotal moments.

Listen to Bret and other amazing presenters this Friday, Feb 25th at Bragg’s Pie Factory. Get your tickets today! No door sales.

“Suburban Development is Conflicted”

Daniel Dillow

Daniel was born in rural Texas, and watched his hometown transform from a farming community into a suburb. Now, in architecture school, Daniel seeks to bring urban solutions to the suburban market. He also seeks better ways to integrate the built environment with the natural environment.

In 2009, Daniel Dillow graduated from Taliesin (The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture) with a B. A. S in Architectural. He is also currently pursuing a Masters of Architecture degree from Taliesin.

Daniel states that, “The contemporary model for suburaban development is outdated, unsafe, and dysfunctional, but its critics rarely produce distinctive and competitive alternatives.”

Daniel has participated as a set designer in collaborations between Taliesin
and the schools of theater and dance at ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design
and the Arts and the Arizona Woman’s Theater.

Listen to Daniel and other amazing presenters this Friday, Feb 25th at Bragg’s Pie Factory. Get your tickets today! No door sales.

The third Pecha Kucha Night Phoenix is getting closer and in this time we will be giving you quick insight into some of the presenters background and ambitions. Today we feature: Ann Morton.

“13 Fridays”

A native Phoenician, a mother, and grandmother, Ann Morton describes herself as an emerging artist, recovering from a long professional career as a graphic designer. She is currently in the Fibers MFA program in the School of Art at ASU.

Ann Morton - "Nagging" Public Performance

“I believe that my work must offer a perspective of thought about our American culture, and I find that exploiting traditional fiber-based techniques lends particularly appropriate voice to my own experience as an American female raised during the ‘baby boomer’ generation.”

From 1983-1990, Anne Morton was the principal and creative director for Hubbard and Hubbard Design, a Phoenix print graphic design firm. Subsequently, she founded Thinking Caps, a Phoenix environmental graphic design studio and served as one of 2 principals in the firm from 1994 – 2006.

With a total of nearly 30 years in a professional practice of graphic and environmental graphic design, Ann relinquished the reigns at Thinking Caps in December of 2006 to pursue her individual voice as an artist.

Listen to Ann and other amazing presenters this Friday, Feb 25th at Bragg’s Pie Factory. Get your tickets today! No door sales.

“Reflections on Transformative Design”

Professor Jose Bernardi

Jose Bernardi is an Associate Professor of Design at SALA, at the Herberger Institute for the Design and the Arts.

Originally from Argentina, he received a degree in Architecture from the School of Architecture and Urbanism at the National University of Córdoba. He was awarded a Master of Science in Architecture from the University of Cincinnati in 1988.

Noted for his interest in the poetic capacities of materials, community engagement and the transformative role of design thinking. He has published several essays on the relationship between design and ideas in cultural settings.  Among them, Luis Barragan: Architecture as Revelation.

In February 2010, he brought together leading architects and designers from Phoenix, Arizona and Barcelona, Spain to focus on urban design problems and solutions. The symposium and month-long exhibition was entitled Phoenix-Barcelona: Cities in Transformation. Bernardi feels the symposium allowed students to engage with local and international professional practitioners and discuss topics that are central to the curriculum of every design discipline.

Listen to Jose and other amazing presenters this Friday, Feb 25th at Bragg’s Pie Factory. Get your tickets today! No door sales.

Jose Bernardi
“Reflections on Transformative Design”

Ann Morton
“13 Fridays”

Liz Chodosh
“Drawings are Dead? BIM and the Ego of Architects”

Ryan Peter Miller
“Paint is an Idea”

Daniel Dillow
“Suburban Development is Conflicted”

Mary Lucking
“Public Art Project from A to Y”

Austin Baker
“Designing a Creative Strategy”

Matti Baine
“From Suburbia…Searching for Culture”

Carol Panaro-Smith
“Art Intersection”

Bret Sassenberg
“Life from the Ground Up”

Doors open at 5:30 pm and presentations start at 7:00pm. Get your tickets today! Includes food and drink.

Designed by Claudia Miranda (@ghostmeat)

Beautiful Light

Photograph by Randolph Croft (RC_Fotos) on Flickr

Margaret Bruning is the Associate Director for the Scottsdale Public Art Program at the Scottsdale Cultural Council.

Margaret will be discussing the large-scale signature spectacle performance piece Beautiful Light, which originated in 2009 in Scottsdale and was recruited as the keynote for Toronto Nuit Blanche (Oct 2009).

Her presentation will touch on:

• art and audience
• space and place
• expanding and contracting
• getting moving and moving on
• illuminating and elevating

To see Margaret and our other great presenters, be sure to buy your ticket today! They won’t be sold at the door.