A painted interpretation of a digital portrait.
Chris spent five decades behind the camera, from national campaigns for Target, Lexus, and the Milk Mustache ads to 15 photography books and workshops in Italy, Spain, and London. He and his wife, Sue, retired here four years ago, and he says what keeps him here is the light. The desert shifts every twenty minutes, and his prints catch it the way a painter would. Readers may remember him as our June Featured Citizen. If you’re looking for a holiday gift that nobody else will think of, start here.
Sonoran Art is a Featured Business Partner of ILoveOV.com.
See more of Chris’s work at christophergreyfineart.com.
View the Chris Grey CollectionElection Day Is Tuesday, November 3
If you haven’t voted yet, Election Day polls are open 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Proposition 431, the vote on OV’s Path Forward, is on the ballot. Early ballots can no longer be mailed, so drop yours at a secure ballot drop box or any voting location. Find locations and hours at Pima Vote.
Fall Back? Not Here.
Daylight saving time ends Sunday, November 1, and most of the country sets its clocks back an hour. Arizona doesn’t. Our clocks stay put, but the time difference with friends and family back east shrinks by an hour. Read more.
Freebird Shoppe Opens at Westward Look
Freebird Shoppe celebrates its grand opening Sunday, November 1, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., in its new home at the Westward Look Wyndham Resort & Spa, 245 E. Ina Road. Expect local artistry, unique gifts, and desert-inspired finds, just in time for holiday shopping. Event details
Eighty and Still Showing Up
Your publisher here. I turned 80 on October 25, and I’m not winding down. My days still start with tea and a mile-and-a-half walk with my dog, Donovan, then work across four local businesses. In this essay, I write about how much business has changed since I started, why meeting Oro Valley’s business owners is still my favorite part of the job, and why retirement was never really a goal for me. Staying useful was. Read the essay
Restaurant Review
A review by the D&D Diners: Grain River
The view out the window is beautiful, and the plates are even better. New owners have made a real difference at Grain River, with a big pan-Asian menu built on locally sourced ingredients, so the flavors come out fresh and bright.
Highlights: The combo plates, especially the pineapple fried rice with chicken, shrimp, and barbecue pork, served in half a pineapple. Grain River is also one of the few spots in the area serving authentic Vietnamese food, from comforting beef pho to banh mi and specialty noodle soups. Vegetables aren’t an afterthought here, so vegetarians get plenty of choices, and everyone picks their own heat level.
Bottom line: Friendly, professional service, hot food that arrives quickly, and a quiet room where you can actually talk. Food, service, and atmosphere each earned 5 out of 5, at about $10 to $20 per person.
Quick bite: 12985 N. Oracle Rd., Rancho Vistoso Center. Open daily, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Ongoing
Oro Valley Farmers Market at Steam Pump Ranch, Saturday mornings. Second Saturday returns November 14 with Pusch House Museum tours, historic demonstrations, local arts and crafts, live music, and activities for the kids. Jazz Under the Stars continues Fridays and Saturdays at Tohono Chul through November 28, and Sundays in the Garden brings live music to Tohono Chul’s Performance Garden every Sunday through November 29.
Chet Kostrzewa Sees What the Rest of Us Drive Past
Most of us pass the small roadside memorials along Oro Valley’s roads without a second look. Chet Kostrzewa stopped, and kept stopping, for years and across four states. The result is In the Footsteps of Angels, a book of more than 100 photographs that grew out of a simple question: where does this tradition come from? Chet retired with a plan, after reading that retirees without meaningful work often don’t last long. Since then he’s written a family biography, published two other photo books, and kept a photo blog going for seven years. Along the way he worked in aerospace in England, Scotland, and China, and built wooden minesweepers in Michigan. He wants his work to do one thing: help us slow down and look.
Read More →Judi Rodman Built a Theater Company From a Phone Call. Ten Years Later, Oro Valley Can’t Get Enough.
Curtain’s almost up. The Oro Valley Theatre Company opens its 10th anniversary season Thursday, November 12 at Gaslight Music Hall with the female version of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple,” the same show OVTC staged in its first season. Judi Rodman, who started the company with a phone call to then-Mayor Satish Hiremath from the car, is back in the director’s chair. Olive is easygoing, Florence is obsessively neat, and the dinner party scene alone is worth the ticket. The run goes through Sunday, November 15, with two shows on both Saturday and Sunday. OVTC sells out so reliably that it added a sixth performance. Call the Gaslight box office at 520-529-1000 for the best seats. Groups of ten or more get a discount.
Read More →Conversations Across Centuries: Founding Citizen #11, John Jay
He ran the country’s first counterintelligence committee, helped negotiate the peace that ended the Revolution, wrote five of the Federalist essays, and served as the first Chief Justice. Most Americans still can’t place him. “Nobody writes songs about the man who reads the treaty twice,” he says. Jay talks about the people who serve out of sight, why he went around his own Congress in Paris, and his advice for election week: read the measure, not the slogan. He’s also frank about his hardest question. He led New York’s fight to end slavery while owning enslaved people himself, and he doesn’t let himself off the hook. For Thanksgiving, he has one request: set an extra chair.
Read More →Mythical Figure: Look Up, Look Down, Look Around with Lady Liberty
She just turned 140, she showed up ten years late to America’s 100th birthday, and she came to Oro Valley partly to visit the Copper State. Sitting on a bench beside Pusch Ridge (and admiring a saguaro’s posture), Lady Liberty explains why a voter needs both the torch and the tablet, how soldiers kept watch over her for decades, and why the broken chains at her feet are the part most people miss. Her Thanksgiving assignment is simple: write one thank-you note by hand before the 26th and mail it. Watch for a cameo from a certain serious gentleman in a dark coat.
Read More →November brings jazz in the gardens, a new season at the Gaslight, a Veterans Day salute, and plenty of reasons to say thanks.
Recurring Events
If you’ve lived here more than a week, you’ve met one. A roadrunner darts across the path, stops dead, cocks its head at you like you’re the strange one, and is gone before you reach for your phone. Sonoran Sprinter, a friend of Sonoran Art, has done what most of us never manage: caught them standing still. The collection follows the desert’s fastest storyteller through every season, from first light on a summer trail to a rare dusting of snow on the Catalinas. Each piece is one of a kind, and a roadrunner print makes a fine holiday gift for anyone who loves this desert, or anyone back home who doesn’t believe how fast these birds really are.
View the Collection
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