The Time Is Now!
Help by serving others in the Valley this season

Most of us are overloaded these days with work and family obligations, but Valley organizations depend on us to keep our communities strong. Hopefully you, your family or co-workers can invest a little time to lend an extra hand or help out with a donation this season. 

Each holiday season, The Salvation Army provides thousands of meals for needy families across the Valley of the Sun. Volunteers are always needed to help serve, traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners and are also home-delivered to home-bound individuals.  For thousands of generous Arizonans, The Salvation Army’s Adopt-A-Family program has become a yearly tradition.  Adopted families are carefully selected based upon critical needs.  And the Valley tradition of being a Christmas Angel is still another opportunity to help. The program needs people who want to spread the joy of Christmas by providing toys to children in need in the community.

For information on how to volunteer with the Salvation Army, call 602.267.4100 or visit www.phoenixsalvationarmy.org. To assist other Valley charities, visit http://phoenixsa.volunteerfirst.org.

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Appaloosa Library, City of Scottsdale

Architectural Tour Promotes Scottsdale Design

Artists, architects and visionaries have been attracted to Scottsdale's Sonoran Desert environment since the early 1900s. The Scottsdale Convention & Visitors Bureau now offers Scottsdale’s guide to 30 places of notable architecture. From the walls of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West to the rammed-earth walls of the McDowell Sonoran Gateway, architects in this community have explored amazing ways to live, work, play and build in harmony. The downloadable self-guided Scottsdale Architecture Tour brochure is a valuable tool in navigating your way to significant landmarks in the area.

The guide can be downloaded at www.architectureinscottsdale.com. Visit the website to also get a chance to win a four-night Scottsdale architectural vacation package.

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Heard Museum Harvest Feast

The Heard Museum is teaming up with celebrated chef Freddie J. Bitsoie for the second annual Harvest Feast on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, from 11am-4pm. Praised by Rand McNally as one of the top five Thanksgiving experiences in the country, the feast will be a cross-cultural celebration bringing community together. For information, call 602.252.8840, ext. 2271.

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Hidden In The Hills Expected
To Draw Crowd Of 10,000

By Curtis Riggs

For 15 years now, one of the main attractions for visitors to the Sonoran Arts League’s Hidden In The Hills art studio tour is the chance to see artists creating their art in a studio setting.

This year’s 15th annual studio tour, which will be held the weekends of November 18 through 20 and November 25 through 27, will provide ample opportunity for an expected 10,000 visitors to get up-close-and-personal with 150 artists creating and demonstrating their art in 46 studios in Cave Creek, Carefree and North Scottsdale.

“It’s a fine opportunity to engage the artists and create a conversation with them as they are painting or hammering,” League Manager Kristi Jacobs says.

“It’s the perfect opportunity to develop relationships with the artists and to purchase art from them directly,” Hidden In The Hills chair-person Karen Friend agrees the chance to see artists working in a studio setting keeps attendance high for the annual studio tour.

“They feel they are on the cutting edge of art,” she adds about how visitors enjoy witnessing the art process.

She points out large contingents of art lovers come down from the Pacific Northwest every year to participate in the tour. Many also come up from Southeast Valley cities like Gilbert and Chandler as well as Sun City, she says.

The League helped to get local art students familiar with the artists last year by providing a bus to take them to the studios. She says several of the students returned to the studios later in the tour with their parents.
Providing a bus for the students fits into the League’s mission of mentoring young artists and furthering art opportunities for everyone in the Desert Foothills as far as Friend, a gourd artist with a studio in New River, is concerned.

She expects around 10,000 visitors to be on the tour this year based on past year’s attendance and how many people were on the tour last year.
“It was an interesting economy,” she says about the 2010 tour. “We thought attendance would be down, but actually it was better.”

For information and maps, visit www.hiddeninthehills.org.

Above photo: Artist Karen Budan