Tia Lee Tull has been practicing the art of photography printing for ... well, judging by the fact that she has a print available with James Dean in it, considerably longer than this writer has been alive.

Improvisational comedy was a relatively obscure art form until the mid-nineties. While you can’t find the better-known training centers such as Second City or IO West in the Valley, there is certainly no shortage of venues offering anything to suit your improv fancy.

As a native of Phoenix, Luis Gutierrez has matured as an artist and painter alongside the developing Phoenix culture and arts scene. Luis first began exploring the arts in his high school art room and consuming works in the Phoenix galleries of the mid-80’s.

“What we choose to do creatively defines who we are.” These words, spoken from the perspective of Venus, a transgendered visual artist, filmmaker and musician from Minneapolis, soaked through my skin as I anxiously jotted each quote down onto my notes from the booth at Bikini Lounge in downtown Phoenix.

Art Edwards was the bassist for one of Tempe's favorite local bands of all time, The Refreshments. Here he discusses his involvement in Tempe at the height of a thriving musical community, and helps to answer some of those burning questions about Tempe's identity.

As we all know, Phoenix is lucky to have many brilliant talented musicians who play all different types of music. From our favorite rock stars to famed jazz greats and some of the most well-known classical musicians in the world, Catalin Rotaru is one gem that Phoenix is glad to have around.

One would hope that every remotely cool city in the world has someone like her. She's someone everybody knows, and someone everybody loves. Tempe wouldn't be what it is without her.

The man who writes the scripts for Big Brain Pictures also likes to flip them. According to Dominic Ross, Big Brain’s resident actor and writer, the time has come to break stereotypes about women in film.

In the world of film, young initiates are soon confronted with the contrast between promises of a land ripe with opportunity and warnings of an ocean of hard competition. A pool of filmmakers are rising out of that tension, sifted of the faint of heart, with a ready idealism tempered by challenge. Kane Black is one Phoenix-area actor and filmmaker to emerge from that pool, with the recent recognition of his horror-short, “No. 12.”