I have to admit that in general, I'm not so much an "art" guy. It's not that I don't enjoy visual or performance art when I experience it—I generally do—but so much of my cultural life has been dedicated to popular music, so when there's been a choice between a gallery opening and a show by a new band, I've generally picked the latter. However, this job has afforded me the opportunity to both hear about the best events and have a ready excuse to attend them, so I'm finding that I'm liking more of the higher culture arts stuff than I would have previously assumed, whether that's one of this city's well-acted-and-produced theater pieces or the incredible athleticism of one of Tucson's dance troupes.
Not that you should particularly care about my entertainment preferences, other than to say that Margaret Regan's fall arts preview this week is going to be a guide by which I plan a lot of the forthcoming season by, and you should as well, even if you're not generally a patron of local art. Few people know the art scene here in Tucson as well as Margaret and she's (again) done a spectacular job of sorting through a stack of listings and submissions to contextualize many of the great events, shows, exhibitions, etc. to choose from.
Part of what many of these works do is make sense of the lives we lead and considering how much darkness can seep into this world—the too early deaths of chronicler of the border Charles Bowden and local songwriter Cyril Barrett over the weekend, and of photojournalist Will Seberger a few weeks ago, for example—it's good to take some time to appreciate beauty and the process of creation. Thankfully, we have the spirit of making something out of nothing in abundance here in Tucson and that's definitely something worth celebrating.
