NEW LEADERSHIP The nonprofit, which Maney said has been communicating with the artists who have been involved with Danelle Plaza, plans to move much of the art in the plaza to the building that also houses Yucca Tap Room, which also needs cosmetic work done. TAMC will also continue programming events and exhibitions at the Rocket Space Gallery, another creative space in the plaza, about which Maney said there will be announcements soon. But the plaza’s long-term fate — and how cool it will remain — is still up in the air. There’s skepticism that the developers and the city will have the artists’ and community’s interest at heart. “It’s complicated, because there still doesn’t seem to be a clear plan for how long the center building will be there with their intentions for demolition,” Moore said in an interview after the event. It’s now up, in large part, to the nonprofit. Swan didn’t explain how that happened in the interview with New Times, but an Instagram post made by TAMC shed more light on that. “A sudden notice for art deinstall was planned for April 21st,” the group wrote. “After our negotiation with the City of Tempe, we made sure the art can stay and began.” At the April 25 show, Hunt told New Times he has no plans to continue working in the plaza after the developers roll in. He referenced the fact that Desert Viking Development had changed Roosevelt Row in Phoenix from a DIY grungy art spot to more a collection of patio bars that aligns with a less eccentric, more commercial bourgeois aesthetic. “Like all rad things, somebody comes along and ruins it,” Hunt said. Baxter-Ging told New Times that once a plan for development takes place, it has to go through the city public involvement process — which includes neighborhood meetings, meetings when it’s discussed by the city’s Development Review Commission and a minimum of two Tempe City Council meetings (the public type, that is). LEGACY OF COOL In 2016, Moore was seeing a show at Yucca Tap Room, a legendary bar and music venue that’s been a mainstay in the plaza since the early 1970s. He noticed that despite its numerous empty retail spaces, the plaza was a center of activity. The observation sparked an idea to fill the empty space, and his position on Tempe’s arts commission helped make his vision a reality: The city allowed him to operate in an abandoned building in the plaza for free. “We spent nine years exploring how to respect artists and how to understand art scenes,” Moore said. That scene has been host to a cast of characters making the plaza an unrepli- cable grassroots space: Maney, a muralist and one of Moore’s early accomplices who helped start art programming at the project; Such Styles, a legendary graffiti artist and driving force in Tempe’s street art culture and arts community in Tempe who has been covering the Valley with his work since the 1980s; Champ Styles, Such’s son whose first mural is at the plaza; Purdy Lites, a talented multimedia artist whose zany, dystopian television installations feature original digital content; Evan Liggins, creator of music and art show Tempe Art a Gogh-Gogh; SlushiePunk, whose “Lady with Rabbit” mural on the southside of Danelle Plaza was her first large-scale mural; JJ Horner, who created the blue mountain installation that honored his late brother; ETUS (Alex Careaga), an artist, musician and film documentarian; and Melissa Waddell, who created the large green arms and legs installation inside one of the plaza’s build- ings and has long been part of the Yucca Tap music and arts scene. That group also includes Taylor “Baconcat” Jensen, a Tempe-raised painter and curator of shows at the plaza. His nick- name stems from his habit of telling people the two potbelly pigs he took on leashed walks were his cats, all while pretending to be blind. (Yeah, you read that correctly.) “It’s supposed to be a little dirty,” Jensen told New Times. “Everyone there is super open. If you just show up and ask, you can be a part of stuff. For my last show, everyone who asked to be a part of it, I was like, ‘yep.’” Hunt, a veteran of the local arts scene, said that Danelle Plaza has brought artists together in a way that museums and galleries can’t, allowing them to hone their craft and make connections in a welcoming, pressure-free and artistically liberating environment. Frequently spotted at the plaza working on a project, Hunt said passers-by are sometimes drawn in the community just by seeing what he’s creating. “You start talking to them about art or whatever, and like two weeks later they’re participating in a show and two months later they’ve got an installation of their own or a show somewhere,” he said. “It’s always about the next group of people coming in.” Dickson, who has curated Red Floor Gallery for the past year, agreed that Danelle Plaza is a creative incubator. “There’s a huge creative community here and it’s just not funded or there hasn’t been a space for it, and doing the show year goes to prove that there’s this huge want, desire and outcry for it,” he said. “We got to engage the community and since then, I’ve seen more people become active again >> p 13 “Defender” byYukue & Dwayne the Destroyer (Photo by Neil Schwartz ) “Dreams on Pause” by Clyde (Photo by Neil Schwartz ) “Futureland, Arizona” by Daniel Funkhouser and Sarah Hurwitz (Photo by Neil Schwartz )
