BYOB - Blow Your Own Ball! In this fun event you make your own blown glass ornament under the expert guidance of artist George Averbeck! Sessions will take place on four days this year: October 29, October 30, November 5, and November 12.
UPDATE: ALL BYOB SESSIONS ARE FULL.
Thank you to everyone who signed up!
How does it work?
Call the gallery at 928-779-3790 or come in to sign up!

• You'll be scheduled for a 15-minute slot to blow your own ornament.
• It costs $37 per ornament and you can pay over the phone or in-person at the gallery. You must pay when you sign up.
• On the day of your appointment, you'll go to Fire on the Mountain studio located at 324 W. Birch Avenue (on the corner of Birch and Sitgreaves across from the public library) to blow your own ball!

September 2nd ArtWalk
As part of the Colorado River Days event across Flagstaff, we'll be showing the River through artists' eyes with artwork from Serena Supplee, Dawn Sutherland, John Bond, Cathy Jolma, and many others.
The show will open during ArtWalk with Jim DeBusk of Streetwise playing music starting at 6:00 pm!

Colorado River Days Flagstaff returns LIVE with more than a dozen free events between September 2-12. This year, as the Colorado River Compact turns 100 years old, the water delivery and hydropower systems face unprecedented shortages. Events will look at the Colorado River through the lens of artists, writers, teachers, musicians, scientists, water managers, historians, and more. Learn what the river was like tens of millions of years ago, ponder the last century, and think about the future.

Check out the entire event listing at:
www.ColoradoRiverDaysFlagstaff.org

Plan for the October 7th ArtWalk
Featuring Flagstaff photographer, Doug Koepsel! Doug's work has been highlighted in Arizona Highways and he is known in the gallery for his vibrant and colorful photography. His autumn photos are magical. Put it on your calendar to come downtown on October 7th to meet Doug and listen to the tunes of Paul Webber!

ArtWalk is the First Friday of every month, and you can always find out what galleries, businesses, and artists across downtown are doing at the ArtWalk website.

​And don't forget that Art in the Park is happening this weekend at Wheeler Park!
Saturday, September 3 & Sunday, September 4 - 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
Monday, September 5 - 10:00 am to 4:00 pm

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AZ Handmade Gallery is highlighting the paintings of Flagstaff artist, Dawn Sutherland, in a show that will be up throughout the month of August. Featuring a stunning 22" x 28" painting of Grand Canyon and new work created this spring and summer, the show has paintings depicting landscapes across the state. Dawn always has fun stories and memories to share about the views she paints. You can talk with the artist about her work and inspiration during ArtWalk on Friday, August 5th starting at 6:00pm, and enjoy a classical guitar performance by Craig Yarbrough of the Grand Canyon Guitar Society!

If you're not able to attend ArtWalk or live out of town, a selection of Dawn's new paintings is on our website to view and purchase.

Dawn will be Plein Air painting in two different public events in the coming months (where artists paint outdoors in front of the land they're capturing with their brush, and visitors can watch and engage with them). This will be her 9th year participating in the Grand Canyon Celebration of Art! The Celebration includes an Artist Group Paint-Out, days of Plein Air painting along the South Rim, as well as an exhibition and sale in the Kolb Studio and online. It's a wonderful way to learn more about art, the Canyon, and meet some fascinating people! You can view the schedule of events and all the participating artists here. 

For the 3rd year, Dawn will also take part in the Prescott Plein Air Festival. The main event will be held October 13-15, but art education events and exhibits are being hosted on other days as well. More information is available on the Festival website!

We know, it's only August, who is thinking about the holidays? Well, George is because lots of folks have been ordering his glass! Which he LOVES, but he wants to make sure he can get it all made! With orders already coming in for the holiday season, we are asking customers to plan ahead. Orders for Christmas will not be accepted after November 1st. If you would like George to make a special blown glass piece for you, or have any questions, you can contact the gallery staff at info@azhandmade.com or stop in to talk with us. You can also place an order through our webstore!

BYOB
Is BYOB (Blow Your Own Ball) happening this year? YES! Once the dates have been confirmed we'll send an email out with sign up details, so keep an eye out.
We're so excited to get back to this fun event and are grateful for everyone who has expressed interest in participating!

Beautification in Action Grant with the City
Artists are invited to apply for up to $4,500 to complete a beautification, public garden and/or public art project with the city of Flagstaff. Submissions are reviewed bi-annually, and the next deadline is September 15th. You can learn more here. Examples of past Beautification in Action grants include murals, vinyl wraps, sculptures, and large installations.

Theatrikos Call to Artists
Theatrikos is looking for artists to exhibit their work in the playhouse lobby! Art remains on display for 2-month sessions. Contact Lottie Herkenhoff, the Gallery Coordinator, at theatre@theatrikos.com for details. 

ArtWalk Opportunities
There are more ways for artists to participate in ArtWalk than showing in a gallery! Downtown businesses are often looking for artists to partner with for First Friday ArtWalk shows, and Culture Connection AZ (in the Historic Ice House building) is a supportive organization for emerging artists to share their work. If you know an artist who is looking for a place to put their art (or if you are one!) you can contact Liz Hewat at the Downtown Business Alliance (liz@downtownflagstaff.org) to be put in touch with an interested location or Audra Travelbee (audra@cultureconnectionaz.org) for information about showing at the Ice House.

Do you have an art opportunity or event you'd like to spread the word about? Let us know!

Want to get updates like this straight to your inbox? Sign up for our newsletter! AZ Handmade and Fire on the Mountain Galleries' hours are 10am-5pm everyday of the week, and our online store is always open right here on this website.
​Wishing everyone a wonderful rest of the summer!

You may know Rayonna for her highly detailed, yet surreal still lives or her portraiture. This show, focusing on her landscape paintings, displays a different but no less thoughtful side of her artistic skill.
 
“My oil paintings of Southwest forests and deserts are portraits of the places that nurture what is wholesome and true in my heart. In a time when we are saturated with images and information, we spread ourselves thin, but art, like the land itself, asks us to risk leaving these shallows. I paint places that are home to me. They are local, close, and cherished; they are deeply felt spaces. And yet, the power of nature, which is unapproachable, sublime, and doesn’t cherish us back, collides with our mortality and fragility. We love the unknowable, and it loves us back only as we take our place in its flow. We can’t help but return to these wild, uncharted spaces to see our own face, to hear our own voice."
- Rayonna Lash

​David is well-known for his true-to-life wildlife art, as well as his evocative pieces that ask the viewer to think more deeply about the interaction between human civilization and the wild world. His work's simplicity often shrouds its subtlety. Don't skim David's paintings or you might miss the details that tell a story - the mouse hiding underneath the owl, or the rocks that form a hand gripping a chain that once was gold and has since turned to rusted wire. 

Both David and Rayonna will be at ArtWalk for the opening of their Father/Daughter show this Friday, June 3rd at 6:00pm. Paul Webber will be playing live music in the gallery and businesses across downtown will be showing art. For information about ArtWalk events, go to artwalkflg.org.

The Father/Daughter show will be up the entire month of June. If you live far away, you can also view and purchase a selection of David and Rayonna's work via our webstore.

George Averbeck is seeking a motivated assistant to work in his glass studio. Ability to follow directions, work in a high-intensity (and high heat!) environment, and an interest in glass art are a must! Applicants are expected to have consistent weekday availability and the intent to remain in Flagstaff for the foreseeable future (the training time and needs of the glass studio are not compatible with assistants who will be absent due to summer or seasonal jobs). 

Anyone interested please send an email to info@azhandmade.com with a resume and a cover letter that answers the following questions:
Why would you like to work in George's glass studio? 
How would this job fit with your personal and professional goals?

Please pass along this information to anyone you think might be a good fit or would enjoy working at Fire on the Mountain!

​We're excited to introduce our newest painter at AZ Handmade Gallery! A well-known Navajo mural artist from Shonto, Arizona, Daniel Josley has painted over 50 murals across Northern Arizona. Inspired by stories his grandfather told, his vibrant, bold paintings often depict Horned Toads (Chei). An honest blend of tradition and modern life on the reservation, the Chei in Josley’s paintings might be reading a paper, driving a truck, or sharing tales around a campfire. “There have been stories told of Horned Toad time and time and again, the ones I tell are the ones of my childhood memories and new experiences.”

Keep an eye out on our social media for new originals from Daniel Josley as they come our way!

ArtWalk on July 1st will feature Alan Potter! Alan’s whimsical, raku-fired animals made near Bisbee, AZ are a long-time gallery favorite drawing in return collectors and new admirers alike. We never know what animals Alan will bring in! He will be at the gallery in-person along with new ceramic sculptures for the July ArtWalk, and Jimmy DeBlois will be playing live music. Be sure to put ArtWalk on your calendar all season long!

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​We're looking forward to seeing you over the summer at AZ Handmade and Fire on the Mountain Galleries!

Fire on the Mountain will not be holding BYOB (Blow Your Own Ball) workshops this year. We know many people were looking forward to this experience, so when workshops to blow your own ornament with George start again, we will send out a notification to our mailing list and post the information on our Facebook and Instagram pages as well.

There will still be lots of ornaments hand-blown by George at the gallery to make your holiday decorations sparkle and to give as festive gifts, including his seasonal Snowballs!

​Steve Biser's daughter, Misha, has partnered with AZ Handmade Gallery to continue offering work by some of the artists who showed in Puchteca - including paintings by Al Bahe, Kevin Quannie, and Richard Gorman. A portion of the proceeds from each of these sales will go towards Puchteca Solutions, a non-profit building support & collaboration between organizations devoted to clean water & technology solutions for remote Native American communities. We're so excited to have work by these talented artists on display!

We love when our handmade art is given as a gift, and sometimes our artists are asked to make special pieces. Most of our artists are happy to make custom work! But it does take extra time, which can be in short supply around the holidays. If you have been thinking about requesting a specially made gift from one of our artists, please contact us soon so we can pass along your request and see if they can complete it.  

The gallery's online store makes it easy to order art from out of town! Some of it is readily available, and some pieces an artist may need to create, so please keep shipping and preparation times in mind when you order. And if you live far away but don't see something you were looking for in the online store - give us a call! We'll be happy to send pictures of additional art available, process your order over the phone, and mail it to you or a loved one!

​We are so excited to share the great news - ArtWalk is back!

​The first ArtWalk of the year will be held on June 4th and local wildlife painter, David Lash, will be doing live painting in the window starting at 6pm! We will be limiting the number of visitors in the gallery at a time, but we're looking forward to easing back into First Friday festivities and seeing lots of familiar faces.

If you haven't seen the new ArtWalk website, be sure to check it out for all the information about participating businesses and events: FLG ArtWalk.

The Lash family is full of talent and we are pleased to now also be showing the work of David's daughter, Rayonna Lash! Rayonna portrays a wide variety of subjects from floral paintings to still life studies to portraits, often with subtle, surreal twists that make the viewer think twice about the complexity behind the painting in front of them. Be sure to check out her ten paintings in the gallery when you're in for ArtWalk!

Foretelling Spring and Sweet Discord

​Showing off some new work in the gallery!

We continue to remain open during our normal business hours of 10am-5pm everyday of the week. We are constantly adding to our online store and are always happy to ship and do curbside pickup!

Best wishes from all of us at AZ Handmade and Fire on the Mountain Galleries!

Congratulations to one of our long-time artists at Arizona Handmade Gallery - Julie Williams!  Julie's work is currently being shown in Impressions: The Art of the Print, a statewide juried exhibit at Tubac Center of the Arts celebrating the diverse medium of printmaking.

Having studied printmaking for seventeen years, Julie specializes in color reduction woodcuts - a time-intensive art requiring an intuitive understanding of positive and negative space. To create a reduction woodcut, Julie begins with a flat piece of shina wood and begins carving an image into it. When she feels it is ready for the first layer of color (usually the lightest), she rolls the block with inks she has mixed herself and and runs it through a press on as many pieces of paper as she wishes to print in an edition - most commonly between 10 and 25. Those pieces of paper are set out to dry while Julie goes back to that original block of wood and begins carving it again until it's ready for the next color. The printing process is repeated on those same pages so that an image is created by adding layers of color on top of each other. Reduction woodcuts are often recognized for the 3-D quality formed from those layers, depth being found through careful consideration of where to place highlights as more material is removed from the block of wood.

Julie's woodcut, Reverence, was awarded Honorable Mention at the Impressions exhibit. It portrays a Bristlecone Pine - a tree many southwest hikers will recognize and appreciate. Famous for their longevity and resilience, some Bristlecones have been alive for over 5,000 years, thriving in  the harshest conditions of the American west where most other trees can't survive. The tree Julie depicted  in Reverence is almost 1,700 years old, watching over the quiet of Spectra Point in Cedar Breaks National Monument. Also on display in Impressions are Julie's prints These Days and Cinder Cone - two woodcuts which portray landscapes close to Flagstaff that will strike a nostalgic chord in anyone who has explored the area northeast of town around Sunset Crater or Wupatki National Monuments. 

Julie's woodcuts have been included in many juried national print exhibitions, including Boston Printmakers and Los Angeles Printmakers. Most recently before the Impressions exhibit, she participated in The Arizona Print Invitational in Tucson held at Davis Dominguez Gallery and the Night Visions exhibit at the Coconino Center for the Arts. The Impressions exhibit is open to the public in Tubac through April 4, 2021; a digital tour as well as more information can be found at the Tubac Center of the Arts website. Julie's three prints in the show can be purchased at our online store or in the gallery at 20 N San Francisco St in Flagstaff.

Hello friends!
We hope you've had a good start to the new year so far and that this finds you healthy and well. We've been busy creating and working on things which will continue to make local art accessible. In light of that, we're excited to announce that we have a fun event scheduled for March!  

Many of you have met Kay Yoo on the other side of the counter at AZ Handmade Gallery, but she's also a photographer! Kay photographs pets and makes adorable twists on classic art with a touch of puppy charm (such as The Pup with the Pearl Earring above). Her cards are among the most popular in the gallery and many people have asked if their own pet can be the subject of such a masterpiece - and now they can!

On March 20th, Kay will be in the gallery with a photo booth where you can bring your dog to be photographed. Then, she will add their likeness to the art piece of your choice, immortalizing your furry friend in baroque glamor forever! Digital images of the photoshoot and your dog in the painting, as well as a four-pack of cards, will be included in the package, and prints and additional cards can be purchased through Kay as well. Price per dog is $75. Sign up for a session at our online store. Just like any other time you would come in, masks will be required (for you, not your dog).

We look forward to seeing you and meeting some of your pets in the gallery!

​We're excited to add the work of Leo Feeney to the gallery. Leo has been making fine jewelry for decades, has shown in renowned galleries throughout the Southwest, and has even had his work sold in Sundance magazine! Reflecting regional motifs, his signature cluster style sets colorful stones in sterling silver with symmetry and precision. Leo lives with his family right here in Flagstaff. Come by the gallery to see (and try on) his work! A selection of his jewelry is available through our online store as well.  

Showing off some new work in the gallery!

​We continue to remain open during our normal business hours of 10am-5pm everyday of the week (masks required). We are constantly adding to our online store and are always happy to ship and do curbside pickup!

Stay safe, well, and positive as we move forward into the year ahead!

Back in November 2019, when things were more normal than we appreciated at the time, George Averbeck got a special visit from Canadian filmmaker, Brandy Yanchyk. Brandy was making a travel documentary series which not only explored unique experiences across the United States, but also highlighted local crafts and artists. George welcomed Brandy into his studio to help him make one of his signature glass "moon balls" celebrating the 50 year anniversary of the Apollo moon landing - an iconic part of Flagstaff's history. 

The series Seeing the USA with Brandy Yanchyk, is out now and we're happy to share her experience blowing glass with George! See how a moon ball is created and what it takes to work molten glass into a beautiful piece of art. And if you enjoy this section, check out the whole Seeing the USA series on Amazon Prime or on your local PBS station!

Arizona Handmade Gallery and Fire on the Mountain now occupy the space formerly taken by Puchteca Indian Goods for more than 40 years.
-MacKenzie Chase

Irma David's work is on display at Arizona Handmade. David is a Hopi Pottery artist of the Parrot Clan from Polacca, Arizona, which sits atop First Mesa.
-MacKenzie Chase

After almost two months of renovations, Holly Averbeck proudly welcomed the community into Arizona Handmade Gallery/Fire on the Mountain’s new location for a soft opening during this month’s First Friday ArtWalk on Feb. 7. Almost 600 friends, supporters and community members stopped in to celebrate the large space previously occupied by Puchteca Indian Goods for more than 40 years.
Large west-facing windows bring in an abundance of natural light that shines through glass artwork, inviting passersby to step in and see what’s being offered in the newly renovated space.
“It was a lot of do it yourself, but I believe that creating something beautiful for downtown Flagstaff is worth it,” Averbeck said. “The town is worth it, and I’m not giving up yet.”
Arizona Handmade Gallery has been a mainstay of the community along San Francisco Street for almost 30 years. When Averbeck and her husband George, a glass blower, bought the place in 2010, they kept the name and added on George’s gallery, Fire on the Mountain. The face of downtown Flagstaff has steadily been changing, though, with local shops closing their doors and skylines rising. When Puchteca owner Steve Beiser announced his retirement last year, Averbeck began considering expanding her business to take over the historic space.
“Over time, as I talked to him about who was approaching him [as buyers], which were bars and a Chinese restaurant, I began to think, that should be a gallery,” Averbeck said.
She is hoping to carry on Beiser’s legacy—one of fostering lifelong connections—by continuing to host the artists who sold their work there.  
“The diversity in Flagstaff is wonderful, and it’s something to celebrate, not to close the doors against,” Averbeck said. “I have had some of his artists approach me and there are others I’m calling, so we’ll see.”
Now Hand and Fire Gallery (as Averbeck and her husband have fondly combined their two gallery names) is located on the other side of San Francisco Street facing several other women-owned businesses, and its proprietors are finding it still has some life to give.
“Every couple of years I try to go somewhere I’ve never been, just look at art in a different place, and last year I was in Peru,” Averbeck said. “I saw so much that inspired me as a gallery owner, just keeping alive an ancient tradition of fine arts and craft.”
Averbeck gets by with help from employees like Stephanie Stinski, who has been with the business for the past five years. As a writer and occasional metalworking artist, Stinski said she appreciates being able to share ideas with the artists who supply the gallery with its wide variety of wares, from jewelry and pottery to dyed silk and vibrant canvases.
“There are people who are retired and this is what they’ve wanted to do for a really long time, and then there are people who are younger and starting out, and then there are those who have made it their career,” she said. “It’s really fun to see what they bring to the table.”
Stinski also enjoys meeting travelers on their way to or from the Grand Canyon who take the time to explore what downtown has to offer. Visitors from France, China and Latvia provide her with new ways to view art, the world and its people.
“I think that an art space is just a really open and welcoming space where people from other parts of the world can feel like they can have a conversation,” Stinski said. “Holly has put so much work into this place. She really does care. She could have retired, and this is what she chose to do.”