Lynn Trimble
Verified
Arts Writer artmusingsaz@gmail.com
Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Lynn Trimble
See Arizona natural wonders on Free National Park Day Sept. 17
Saguaro National Park in southern Arizona. Oh, America, the beautiful. When President Woodrow Wilson signed the bill that created the National Park Service on Aug. 25, 1916, it read in part, “and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” More than a century later, national parks and monuments continue to do just that, boasting everything from impressive natural wonders to the ruins of past inhabitants Maybe it’s been a while since you explored them.
Celebrating Donald Trump’s 79th birthday with Arizona art
Audio By Carbonatix [ { "name": "GPT - Billboard - Slot Inline - Content - Labeled - No Desktop", "component": "21251496", "insertPoint": "2", "requiredCountToDisplay": "2" },{ "name": "STN Player - Float - Mobile Only ", "component": "21327862", "insertPoint": "2", "requiredCountToDisplay": "2" },{ "name": "Editor Picks", "component": "16759093", "insertPoint": "4", "requiredCountToDisplay": "1" },{ "name": "Inline Links", "component": "17980324", "insertPoint": "8th", "startingPoint": 8,...
See Arizona natural wonders on Free National Park Day this weekend
When President Woodrow Wilson signed the bill that created the National Park Service, it read in part, "and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." More than a century later, national parks and monuments continue to do just that, boasting everything from impressive natural wonders to the ruins of past inhabitants Maybe it's been a while since you explored them.
Scottsdale Ferrari Art Week Just Launched-Is It a Hit or a Miss?
Local artists and gallerists weigh in on Scottsdale Ferrari Art Week’s debut—and its efforts to bust regional stereotypes and elevate the Southwest on a global stage. SCOTTSDALE—There’s a new art fair in the Southwest, where key players hope to expand the visibility of the region’s vibrant contemporary art offerings. “People assume all the art here is cowboys and Indians standing around cactus,” quips art dealer Trey Brennen, who co-founded the event.
Work in Progress with Farraday Newsome
Arizona-based artist Farraday Newsome’s studio extends into her high-desert garden, sprouting ideas for intricate ceramics about nature’s self-perpetuating systems. A ceramic lamppost surrounded by desert plants beckons those who wander down Indigo Street, an off-the-beaten-path road in Mesa, Arizona, where artist Farraday Newsome creates ceramic forms and paintings that reflect her deep connections to the natural world.
Are Arizona Museum's Changes to Transfeminisms Exhibition "Violent" or Pragmatic?
The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art made last-minute revisions to a traveling show of women, queer, and trans artists. Museum leadership and a co-curator differ on what happened.
Field Report: Eclectic Metro Phoenix
Some of the best off-the-beaten-path art offerings in metro Phoenix happen beyond First Friday art walks and annual Art Detour happenings. Here’s our eclectic Phoenix art guide. Field Report: Eclectic Metro Phoenix Elevation: 1,086 feet Population: 4.8 million (including 1.6 million in Phoenix proper) Town Etymology: Phoenix might have been named for Confederate general Stonewall Jackson had one of its early settlers gotten his way.
Tempe Artists Seek Answers Amid Alternative Art Space Redevelopment
The City of Tempe says there are no plans to demolish DIY arts hub Danelle Plaza, but the mayor is sending different signals. Local artists are demanding clarity. TEMPE—Arizona artists are rallying around a grassroots ecosystem that makes the Danelle Plaza strip mall a beloved alternative arts space in Tempe, even as city officials and developers work towards redeveloping the site.
Keith Haring's City-Spanning Phoenix Takeover Almost Didn't Happen
Keith Haring was a Phoenix teacher’s second choice for a 1986 art workshop, but the invite made a major mark on the city. PHOENIX—Today the streets of Phoenix are dotted with murals painted by local and international artists exploring a broad range of themes from Indigenous histories to climate futures.
Ditch Amazon and Support Local Artists with Our Southwest Holiday Gift Guide
E-commerce has nothing on these holiday shopping experiences at galleries, museums, and community art spaces in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah. Across the Southwest, artists are taking part in a rich array of holiday-themed events, sharing their work through festivals, markets, pop-ups, exhibitions of small works, and more. They’re happening at galleries, museums, retail shops, universities, and myriad community settings—from a scenic river walk to a botanical garden.
Former Curator of Mesa Art Museum Files Federal Lawsuit Alleging Censorship and Discrimination
Tiffany Fairall, former chief curator of Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in Arizona, sues the City of Mesa in the aftermath of censorship allegations involving artwork by Shepard Fairey. PHOENIX—Tiffany Fairall, former chief curator for the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in Arizona, has filed a lawsuit against the City of Mesa in the aftermath of 2023 censorship allegations related to artwork by street artist, graphic designer, and activist Shepard Fairey.
"This is our power": Afrofuturists Imagine Radical Futures in Reclaiming Hope: Afrofuturist Visions
Black artists imagine radical futures through hope, healing, and history in Reclaiming Hope: Afrofuturist Visions at Tempe Center for the Arts. This article is part of our Radical Futures series, a continuation of the ideas explored in Southwest Contemporary Vol. 10.
Scientists Are "Speaking to the Masses" with Help from Artists in Two Contrasting Phoenix Exhibitions
The traveling exhibition ARX3 pairs artists and scientists, while Brains and Beauty at SMoCA draws on neuroaesthetics, to visualize transformative research. PHOENIX, AZ—Arizona-based textile artist and biodesigner Shah Noor Shafqat recently used spores to cultivate fungi resembling threads to create garment-like structures, working with genomics researcher Angel Algarin to symbolize the invasive nature of stigma experienced by people living with mental illness.
“Exploding Native Inevitable” / Lynn Trimble
“Exploding Native Inevitable” by Lynn Trimble SMoCA, Scottsdale, Arizona Exhibition continues through January 5, 2025 October 5, 2024 Norman Akers, “Watchful Eye,” 2023, oil on canvas, 78 x 68”. Courtesy of the artist and Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, Maine.
Tra Bouscaren: Radical Futures
Tra Bouscaren blends critiques of waste culture with “dark beauty” in maximalist installations that speak to 21st-century paranoia. Phoenix, Arizona | tra-bouscaren.com | @tra_bouscaren Grounded in intersections of philosophy and art, Arizona-based artist Tra Bouscaren creates suspended installations that combine consumer waste—such as demolition debris, e-waste, and billboards—with technology, prompting reflection on radical futures scarred by human actions.
Feminist Theory and a Family Trucking Business Inform Fay Ray's New Visions of the Borderlands in PORTALS
PORTALS at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson in Arizona features new works by California-based artist Fay Ray, who imagines radical futures in the Sonoran Desert and Southwest borderlands. Fay Ray: PORTALS March 8–September 22, 2024 Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson Bold geometrics balanced with natural forms float in the expansive brutalist concrete space inside the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson in Arizona.
Bonny Leibowitz: Radical Futures
Texas-based artist Bonny Leibowitz creates hybridized installations of natural and manufactured materials that reflect the impacts of isolation, environmental degradation, and human conflict. Dallas, Texas | bonnyleibowitz.com | @bonnyleibowitz On any given day, you might find Texas-based artist Bonny Leibowitz picking up a tree branch spotted by the side of the road, sourcing metal from a salvage yard, or painting on a piece of Tyvek.
At SMoCA, Carolina Aranibar-Fernández Uses Soil, Sequins, and Blood to Explore the Impacts of Global Trade
California-based artist Carolina Aranibar-Fernández explores colonization, extraction, and exploitation in the Southwest in her exhibition Oleaje at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona.
How International Arts Collective The Place Where Clouds Are Formed is Shifting Borderland Narratives
Artists and poets from Tohono O’odham Nation, a tribe divided by the U.S.-Mexico border, join with myriad voices to counter borderland crisis narratives at University of Arizona.
How—and Why—a Contemporary Art Museum in Arizona is Amplifying Mormon History and Theology
New Materializing Mormonism exhibition at Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum has ties to the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. MESA, AZ—Imagine Robert Smithson’s monumental Spiral Jetty (1970) earthwork rendered as a spiral of saltwater taffy or 19th century Mormon leader Brigham Young seated atop a dinosaur.
Arizona Commission on the Arts Gets a New Director—and a Major Blow to its Budget
Artist Christina You-sun Park becomes executive director of Arizona Commission on the Arts, just as Arizona approves a state budget that slashes funding for the NEA affiliate by sixty percent. PHOENIX, AZ—Christina You-sun Park has been named the new executive director for Arizona Commission on the Arts.
Work in Progress with Annie Lopez
Phoenix-based artist Annie Lopez’s brilliant blue dress forms—tailored from cyanotypes on tamale paper—embody personal, familial, and cultural histories. Approaching the small home that Annie Lopez shares with her husband and fellow artist Jeff Falk, their aesthetic is apparent in potted plants placed beneath a string of colorful papel picado, a small altar built next to the lime green bench on their front porch, and the skeletal form clad in a cat-themed t-shirt that sits in a large tree.
How a Creative Couple in Arizona is Exploring South Phoenix History Through Photography and Poetry
Photographer Maria Nancy Thomas and poet Rashaad Thomas, a creative couple based in South Phoenix, are using their work to explore a region brimming with the histories of marginalized communities. This article is part of our Living Histories series, a continuation of the ideas explored in Southwest Contemporary Vol. 9. Maria Nancy Thomas has taken hundreds of photographs of South Phoenix in recent years, eager to document life in the city she and her husband, poet Rashaad Thomas, call home.
How Can Mural Artists Take Steps to Protect Their Legal Rights?
Do muralists have a legal right to keep their work from being altered or whitewashed? Experts and artists in the Southwest discuss artist contracts and the Visual Artists Rights Act. PHOENIX—Artist Lucretia Torva recalls painting the humanoid image of an alien from outer space holding a trio of balloons referencing local landmarks in 2022, using the front of a bungalow that housed a bar and music venue as her canvas.
Phoenix Artist and Curator Clottee Hammons Highlights Black History, Art, and Culture
Clottee Hammons, the Phoenix artist, curator, and knowledge-keeper who leads Emancipation Arts, has spent decades elevating Black culture while combatting racism in Arizona. This article is part of our Living Histories series, a continuation of the ideas explored in Southwest Contemporary Vol. 9. “I still remember my first solo exhibition,” says Clottee Hammons, a Phoenix-based artist and curator who credits her kindergarten teacher at the Monroe School with making it happen.
How Phoenix Artist and Curator Clottee Hammons Highlights Black History, Art, and Culture
Clottee Hammons, the Phoenix artist, curator, and knowledge-keeper who leads Emancipation Arts, has spent decades elevating Black history, arts, and culture while combatting historical and contemporary racism in Arizona. This article is part of our Living Histories series, a continuation of the ideas explored in Southwest Contemporary Vol. 9.
Jacey Coca: Living Histories
Jacey Coca uses photography and beadwork to explore her Mexican and Korean heritage as part of an evolving creative practice examining identity, memory, and nostalgia. Phoenix, Arizona| jaceycoca.com | @jaceysphotodiary For as long as she can remember, artist Jacey Coca has been surrounded by photographs. “I was three or four when I started using a Polaroid camera,” she recalls.
Amalia Mesa-Bains's Retrospective Mines an Archeology of Memory in Phoenix
Amalia Mesa-Bains, whose work helped bring Chicana art into the mainstream, had a retrospective exhibition, Archeology of Memory, at the Phoenix Art Museum.
Marlowe Katoney: Living Histories
Marlowe Katoney (Diné) draws on personal experience and Navajo, street, and popular culture to create weavings and paintings that defy conventional notions of beauty and Indigenous art.
Landscape, Body, Identity: Laura Aguilar at Phoenix Art Museum
Landscapes and large bodies featured in the Laura Aguilar: Nudes in Nature exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona illuminate the artist’s explorations of gender, race, identity, and community. Laura Aguilar: Nudes in Nature December 16, 2023–November 27, 2024 Phoenix Art Museum What can photographs of large female bodies posing nude in the desert Southwest reveal about the complexities of identity, isolation, and community?
MOCA Tucson is an Incubation Space and “Not Just Arbitrators of Archives”
Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, known as MOCA Tucson, supports regional and local artists through grants, community events, peer connections, and more. Here’s why artists and curators say that matters. TUCSON—Born and raised in Tucson, artist Elizabeth “Lizz” Denneau has a deep understanding of both the city’s arts ecosystem and the wider community that informs her creative practice.
How George Floyd Protests Led to a Community-Created Exhibition in Arizona
Twin Flames: The George Floyd Uprising from Minneapolis to Phoenix exhibition at ASU Art Museum displays signs, artworks, and other community offerings from George Floyd Square. TEMPE, AZ—Justice for George. He couldn’t breathe. Let’s change the fucking world. Trans Black Lives Matter. Stop the genocide. You don’t need tear gas, we’re already crying. My daddy changed the world.
Shepard Fairey’s Subversive Civic Discourse
MESA, Arizona — Protest and propaganda take a beautiful turn with Facing the Giant: 3 Decades of Dissent at Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, a retrospective of work by Shepard Fairey centering the artist’s activism, street art, and graphic design.
Antoinette Cauley: I Do It for The Hood, Pt. 2 at Modified Arts
Antoinette Cauley creates expressive portraiture to bridge hyperlocal and global concerns in her exhibition I Do It For The Hood, Pt. 2 at Modified Arts in Phoenix. Antoinette Cauley: I Do It for The Hood, Pt. 2 December 15, 2023—February 10, 2024 Modified Arts, Phoenix Born and raised in South Phoenix, artist Antoinette Cauley recently returned to the city after spending three years in Germany.
The Emotional Architecture of Swoon’s Intimate Block Prints
MESA, Ariz. — Behind a saturated blue gallery wall, eight portraits by Brooklyn-based artist Caledonia Curry, also known as Swoon, transform the stark white walls of a small exhibition space inside Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in Arizona, creating an intimate encounter with pieces that signal the expansive history and reach of the artist’s creative practice.
Lloyd Kiva New Documentary Highlights the Late Designer’s Influence on Indigenous Fashion and Southwest Culture
The story of artist, fashion designer, and Institute of American Indian Arts co-founder Lloyd Kiva New is brought to life in a new documentary by Indigenous filmmaker Nathaniel Fuentes. PHOENIX—Although Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee) had a significant influence on arts and culture in the Southwest during the mid-20th century—his work ranged from fashion design to arts education—his name isn’t widely known in mainstream culture.
Southwest Cities Win Millions of Dollars from 2023 Bloomberg Public Art Challenge Awards
Bloomberg Public Art Challenge funding will help Phoenix and Salt Lake City address climate change, and Houston examine homelessness, through temporary public art that engages artists and community members.
The Many Voices of Raven Chacon’s While Hissing
TUCSON, Arizona — What does resistance look and sound like in the 21st century? It’s a question posed by Raven Chacon’s While hissing. The exhibition amplifies the voices of Indigenous women and issues a collective call to resistance through visual art, musical composition and performance, and community.
Recent Allegations at Regional Art Spaces Beg the Question: Can Best Practices Prevent Censorship?
As Southwest art spaces such as Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum deal with art censorship allegations, national art censorship and art law experts weigh in on the broader issue. PHOENIX—Book bans and curriculum censorship, which continue making national headlines, aren’t the only tools for divisive rhetoric and cultural erasure. Allegations of art censorship, whether it’s removing work depicting police brutality or gender identity from public-facing exhibitions, are flourishing as well.
Southwest Printmakers Look to the Borderlands
TUCSON — Mainstream headlines tend to sensationalize and oversimplify the borderlands, defining those who traverse its vast expanse by barriers, built by small-minded politicians as attempts to separate and silence the vibrant cultures of the Americas.
Books + Literary Archives
I still feel like a New Mexico writer in part, an important part, and my plans are to secure a little place there to live at least part of the time...New Mexico inspires me as no other place. I consider it the birthplace of my poetry, though of course, my poetry was set in place for generations, through all the speakers, singers, and artists in my ancestral lines. By Jenn Shapland
A Profound Sense of Place at the Arizona Biennial
TUCSON, Arizona — Three long panels of Habotai silk hang from the ceiling inside Tucson Museum of Art, site of the 2023 Arizona Biennial. Text, printed onto the silk in archival pigment, documents migrant deaths in the desert. Photographer Elizabeth Z. Pineda sourced the information from the archives of the medical examiner for Pima County, where the museum resides, and the Tucson-based nonprofit Humane Borders.
How Four 2023 Latinx Artist Fellows Are Working in the Southwest–And Where You Can See Their Artwork
The four Southwest-based winners of a 2023 Latinx Artist Fellowship—who each received $50,000 in unrestricted funds—include Margarita Cabrera, Verónica Gaona, Postcommodity, and Daisy Quezada Ureña.
Reynier Leyva Novo: The Flowers of My Exile
The Flowers of My Exile at Lisa Sette Gallery in Phoenix features work by conceptual artist and Cuban dissident Reynier Leyva Novo, now an artist in exile in Houston, Texas.
Estrella Esquilín: Terraforming Identity in the Sonoran Desert
Phoenix-based artist Estrella Esquilín talks about her evolving studio practice, in which community is as important as the construction materials and experimental animation she uses to address identity and place. Inside the Phoenix home that artist Estrella Esquilín shares with her partner and their pets, there’s a small room that serves as her art studio. The space is clearly organized for efficiency yet exudes an aura of warmth.
Artists Allege Censorship After Exhibitions Postponed at Mesa Contemporary Arts
The City of Mesa brusquely postponed every exhibition in the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum’s fall 2023 calendar. A major free speech organization, a civil rights group, and artists allege censorship. PHOENIX—The City of Mesa, Arizona, is facing accusations of art censorship after four solo exhibitions and one group show were abruptly pulled last week from the fall 2023 lineup at the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, which is located at the city-owned and -operated Mesa Arts Center.
Artists Allege Censorship After Exhibitions Postponed at Mesa Contemporary Arts
The City of Mesa brusquely postponed every exhibition in the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum’s fall 2023 calendar. A major free speech organization, a civil rights group, and artists allege censorship. PHOENIX—The City of Mesa, Arizona, is facing accusations of art censorship after four solo exhibitions and one group show were abruptly pulled last week from the fall 2023 lineup at the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, which is located at the city-owned and -operated Mesa Arts Center.
How a Phoenix Mural Project Could Bring Local Latino History to Life
The La Flor Del Pueblo mural project in Phoenix will transform an Arizona Public Service utility substation into a canvas for telling diverse stories of the Grant Park neighborhood. PHOENIX—A massive mural project is underway in Phoenix, where one of Arizona’s major utility companies is building an electric substation that will serve as the canvas for artwork illustrating local history, arts, and culture.
Arizona Received Another $5 Million for the Arts. How Will it Get Spent? And When?
Leadership changes at the Arizona Commission on the Arts could impact how the state agency spends the $5 million allocated for arts and culture in Arizona’s 2024 budget. PHOENIX—When governor Katie Hobbs signed Arizona’s fiscal year 2024 budget in mid-May 2023, the spending plan included a $5 million allocation for Arizona Commission on the Arts rather than the $20 million she had proposed before legislative negotiations took shape.
Arizona Received Another $5 Million for the Arts. How Will it Get Spent? And When?
Leadership changes at Arizona Commission on the Arts could impact how the state agency spends $5 million allocated for arts and culture in Arizona’s 2024 budget. PHOENIX—When governor Katie Hobbs signed Arizona’s fiscal year 2024 budget in mid-May 2023, the spending plan included a $5 million allocation for Arizona Commission on the Arts rather than the $20 million she had proposed before legislative negotiations took shape.
Show More
loading
Actions
Get in touch with Lynn
Contact Lynn, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack