"TED' DEGRAZIA

GALLERY IN THE SUN.......................................

The entrance to the gallery

I just got home from a week long vacation spent in and around the Phoenix, Arizona area.  Lots of junking around, finding new shops to explore (thanks Dawn) spring training, golf for my husband , bead shops for me....with visits to family mixed in. (Hi Dad)  One of the more interesting places we went was..........DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun . Located in Tucson on about 10 acres......it features a gallery of the artist  Ettore "Ted" DeGrazias work, with both originals and prints available for purchase. The gallery space itself is a piece of art.  There is a room  where his easel is set up with his paintbox, boots, and other personal items that help give you a sense of the man behind the art. The  room where his paintings depicting Christ and The stations of The Cross hang, with a recording made by DeGrazia playing, explaining each painting is very powerful. Aside from that, the most interesting feature to me is his original house, a chapel, and the surrounding grounds. I couldn't take photos in the gallery ,   but took some outside photos that I think will show you what an amazing place this is, and why it has been placed  on the national Register of Historic Places.

Entrance to the chapel, painted metal flowers that to me looked like cactus blooms 

The chapel has an open roof

The altar up front....where people  light candles and leave tokens in memory of loved ones

( we did as well ) 

Murals on all the walls painted by DeGrazia, rows of wooden benches, and another smaller side altar. 

Smaller side altar area just inside the chapel entrance.

Exterior of original house

Original stovetop and oven in house......Great tile......

                                       

This photo is on the wall (sorry about the glare) and shows Ted with his car out on the desert loading wood.

 

How would you like to cook on this? There was a photo  that showed several people gathered around this (or one exactly like it) for a meal. Under the ashes is a sheet of corrugated metal sitting on wood. 

Eye candy.................................

I love old repairs on things, and this wonderful old pot has been glued, and wired together, and finally hung up in a tree as art. 

OK, I seriously love this, and probably have to crib the idea...just horseshoes hung on chain.

A "stack" of stones, next to DeGrazias' gravesite.........there were pennies and other tokens left on it.

Ettore "Ted" DeGrazia

June 14,1909--September 17,1982

In 1976 DeGrazia engaged in a protest against inheritance taxes based on assessed market values of his work. He claimed the IRS ruling made him "a millionaire on paper and my heirs will have to pay taxes for which there is no money." In his well publicized protest, DeGrazia rode horseback into the Superstition Mountains and burned 100 of his paintings.

If you visit DeGrazia Gallery In The Sun I think you come away with a real sense of who this man was and what was important to him. The fact that he designed and built the place probably contributes to that feeling. Although I can appreciate his art, and his talent ( music, ceramics, sculpture ) , I think I myself would have appreciated his interesting personality just as much if not more. 

If you can go............................do it!!!!!   You won't be sorry!!