City Week

METICULOUS ARCHIVES

Saturday, July 19

Center for Creative Photography

Speedway Boulevard and Park Avenue

Edward Weston pioneered a vision that revealed the stark essence of beauty in natural form.

He set aside the soft-focus lenses and ideologies used by pictorialist photographers in the early part of the 20th century to romanticize or create metaphor in their work. He began taking pictures of ordinary objects--vegetables, shells, the human body--and rendering them in sharply focused detail.

Weston was meticulous in his techniques. Some say it was his genius that transformed what he visualized in his camera through the alchemical transformation of platinum or silver salts into the final image. The absolute real became the ideal.

"The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time," offered Weston. "It's an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one. It all depends on the photographer's understanding of his subject and the mastery of his process."

Edward Weston: A Vision Conserved is not just an exhibit of Weston's photography, but a rare, behind-the-scenes glimpse into the care and preservation of his cultural treasures. The exhibit emphasizes the challenges faced in conserving fine prints and duplicating negatives. It's a step back in time. The project--the culmination of three years of collaboration between CCP Director of Rights and Reproductions Dianne Nilsen and conservator Laura Downey Staneff from the University of New Mexico Art Museum--sets the stage for future development in preservation at the CCP. With new digitization technologies, there's less handling of the collection and further preservation of negatives. Previously unknown gems by Weston, such as portraits of painter Frida Kahlo, sculptor William Edmondson, revolutionary Ernie O'Malley and the mystic Krishnamurti, can find new life through reproduction in publications.

The show continues through Oct. 12. Museum hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and weekends, noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free. Call for more information at 621-7968.

MUSICAL EXOTICA

Saturday, July 19

Tucson Museum of Art Courtyard

Alameda Street and Main Avenue

Mix gypsy, Middle Eastern influences, jazz, Cuban swing and tango with a dash of salsa and surf twang, and you get the strange, hypnotic blend of Willie and Lobo.

Willie Royal was born in El Paso, an Air Force brat who lived in exotic places like Turkey, Germany, France and Florida. He rebelled against his classical violin training when rock and roll--and the violin-fueled fusion of Jean-Luc Ponty and Stephane Grappelli--took him by the arm, and he started playing country-rock fiddle in a Florida-based band. Willie absorbed diverse musical styles--reggae, jazz, salsa--and set out on the road before settling in Mexico in the early '80s.

Wolfgang "Lobo" Fink was born in the tiny Bavarian village of Teisendorf. He picked up the guitar at the ripe age of 18 while in the German navy. He finally sought out the guitarist Manitas de Plata in a gypsy camp in Southern France, where he spent a year studying with the master, absorbing the romantic, rhythmic music.

How likely is it that these two musicians would meet? Willie and Lobo's first fateful encounter came in 1983, when both were playing at a restaurant in the colonial town of San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. Though they were still searching for their individual sound, they finally joined forces in 1990 in Puerto Vallarta, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Willie and Lobo have recorded numerous albums together, including their newest, Mañana. They've also scored a handful of independent films, including a documentary, Blazing Longboards. Their love of surfing is a long-lived one, and both musicians make their home near the ocean: Willie on the west coast of Florida, Lobo on the Mexican coast.

Hear these two rockin', surfin' gypsy dudes in concert--part of the sixth annual Courtyard Concert series at the museum, hosted by Rhythm and Roots. The music starts at 8 p.m. Tickets cost $22 in advance at Antigone Books, Brew and Vine, CD City, Enchanted Earthworks, the Tucson Museum of Art Gift Shop and online at

www.dotucson.com. Or get them at the door for $25. Call for more information at 297-9133.

ALL BETS ARE OFF

Sunday, July 20

The Loft Cinema

3233 E. Speedway Blvd.

Brian Mahowny was a man who earned a lot of trust in his job at a major bank in Toronto. Nerdy, dressed in cheap suits and driving a beat-up car, Mahowny was seen by his bosses, co-workers and clients as a hard-working, honest, trustworthy guy. But at home, his relationship with his girlfriend was increasingly strained by the fact that he was distracted.

What was it that owned him? An obsession for gambling.

Owning Mahowny is a film based on a true story. You see, our loser friend Brian is the man credited with the biggest bank fraud rip-off in Canadian history. So much for the unassuming nature of nerds.

The film is directed by Richard Kwietniowski (who came up with the 1997 flick, Love and Death in Long Island). It stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as Mahowny and Minnie Driver as Belinda, his girlfriend.

The shrinks just can't keep their hands off this one. A panel of folks from the Southwest Psychoanalytic Society will show up for a post-screening discussion about obsessions.

Brunch by Canyon Ranch starts at 11:30 a.m. The film screens at 12:30 p.m., and the panel and discussion follow. Tickets cost $10 for general admission and $7 for Tucson Film Society members. (You can join on the spot--they have a bunch of cool deals.)

Questions? Get the answers at 795-7777.

HERE'S A TRICK

Monday, July 21

The Gaslight Theatre

7010 E. Broadway Blvd.

What's a guy with a doctorate in education doing making people laugh?

Tom Potter is an award-winning comedy magician who's spent 27 years teaching, administrating, writing and traveling the motivational speaker circuit. He now devotes his time to making people laugh. He's a regular on the Las Vegas Strip, in comedy clubs and at corporate events where he proves that humor is good medicine.

Potter is joined by Matt Lemm and Emily. Despite her not having a last name, Matt and Emily are the reigning state Champions of Stage Magic (so says the press release). They perform an energetic show combining magic illusions and comedy plus dance and rock and roll. Acts include Houdini's fastest escape in the world and an original illusion called Kaleidoscope.

Doors open at 6 p.m. It's Magic kicks off at 7 p.m. Tickets are available by calling Williams Magic and Novelties at 790-4060.

DEATH BE NOT PROUD

Tuesday, July 22

Borders Books and Music

Park Place, 5870 E. Broadway Blvd.

Like a birth, attendant with all the familial happiness we ascribe to it, death also involves the whole family. But most view it as an all-encompassing sad event.

Betty Kovács has written a hopeful story based on an entire family's experiences surrounding death. The Miracle of Death reveals this clan's precognitive dreams, visions and synchronistic events that opened Kovács' family members to multiple levels of reality. They were able to connect all the dots, so to speak--evidence that all around us there's a shift in consciousness underway.

Kovács says these experiences, documented over a period of years, may convince us that consciousness survives physical death and that our dreams--both sleeping and waking--are valuable modes of natural communication with that consciousness.

Her story weaves personal, historical and mythic perspectives, showing that individual experiences along with cutting-edge scientific research support a radical change in the way we think about death and life. Kovács' book is touted by those beset with their own grief as well as counselors, clergy, scientists and leading thinkers.

Kovács comes to her work informed by a doctorate in comparative literature and theory of symbolic language. She's sat on the Board of Directors of the Jung Society of Claremont in California for many years; she's studied and taught in Europe and the United States.

Kovács' workshop and reading begins at 7 p.m. and is free.

For more information, call 584-0111.