We’re sprucing things up at CCA

New staff photo by Flagstaff Camera

We’re taking some time to make things shine!

The gallery will be CLOSED Nov 21-Dec 2 for facility improvements, including new wall-to-wall carpeting and contemporary seating in the theater. Stay tuned for updates! ⁠ ⁠

Please consider sponsoring a CCA Theater Seat, see details below.

Thin Air: NAU Literary Magazine Poetry Workshop

Date/Time: Thursday, November 19, 5:30pm

Location: Coconino Center for the Arts Main Gallery

Thin Air Magazine proudly cultivates a Flagstaff-based, MFA student-led literary community with global reach to publish emerging authors with intriguing ideas. On November 19, Thin Air will host a poetry workshop led by poet and writer, Sherwin Bitsui. Participants will explore poetic forms that are in conversation with the works displayed in the “Shifting Topographies: Extracting the Landscape” exhibition.

Sherwin Bitsui is the author of three collections of poetry, Dissolve, Flood Song, and Shapeshift. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award, an American Book Award, and the PEN Book Award. His poems have appeared in Narrative, Black Renaissance Noir, American Poet, The Iowa Review, LIT, and elsewhere. He is Diné of the Todích’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tlizílaaní (Many Goats Clan), and has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and the Native Arts & Culture Foundation.

Free event, registration required.

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Neal Galloway:

Tin Can Conversations

Artist Talk

Neal Galloway, Splintered Symbiosis, Tin cans, wood, brass, steel, string, 2025

Date/Time: Thursday, November 20, 6pm

Location: Coconino Center for the Arts Project Gallery

Neal Galloway’s Tin Can Conversations uses the core motif of a tin can telephone to explore the fragility, complexity, and profound value of interpersonal communication. A series of sculptures and time-based artworks explore physical and psychological distance, miscommunication, disagreement, sensitivity, power dynamics, love, and connection. Inspired by a difficult cross-country displacement, and by the challenge of maintaining healthy relationships during the COVID pandemic, Galloway uses unconventional materials in his artworks to connect with audiences, while pushing those materials to overcome their humble origins.

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SHIFTING TOPOGRAPHIES

Extracting the Landscape

Carol Hartman, Into The Light, mixed media, 62”x90”

Jeff Schmuki, Extractors #1, 2024, mixed ceramics with glazes containing mine tailings and lithium oxide, 24” x 16” x 14”

Klee Benally, The Dark Mark of Manifest Destiny, 2021, digital gif

Exhibition Dates: October 18 – December 20, 2025

SHIFTING TOPOGRAPHIES: Extracting the Landscape features projects by Carol Hartman (Red Lodge, MT), Jeff Schmuki (Stateboro, GA), and Klee Benally in memoriam (Diné, Black Mesa, Navajo Nation; Flagstaff, AZ). In a rapidly changing climate, we are witness to and complicit in irreversible scarring of the land. There are eight National Parks and Monuments within a 2-hour drive of Flagstaff that face potential threats to their preservation, due to the proposed federal reopening of protected sacred lands to mining. This timely and relevant exhibition theme—extraction—takes on a markedly different approach depending on the geographical and cultural perspectives of the represented artists.

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Upcoming Exhibition Programming

December 11th: Stop the Mines! A Conversation with Berta Benally 6pm, Sihasin concert 7:30pm.

December 20th: Shifting Topographies: Extracting the Landscape closing reception & discussion with Tonizhoniani, 6-7pm.

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Exhibition Sponsors

PARCHED: The Art of Water in the Soutwest

We’re excited to reconvene PARCHED: The Art of Water in the Southwest—originally produced by the Coconino Center for the Arts in 2020—for a year-long exhibition at the S’edav Va’aki Museum in Phoenix. This expanded presentation offers visitors a renewed opportunity to explore the profound relationships between water, place, and culture in the Southwest. CCA members will also receive discounted admission for the full duration of the exhibition. CCA members with Art Pass+ receive free admission with the North American Reciprocal Museum pass.

https://www.phoenix.gov/administration/departments/sedav-vaaki.html

Sponsor a Theater Seat

There’s still time to be part of the Coconino Center for the Arts’ Theater Seating Fundraiser! Each seat sponsorship includes a personalized plaque on the seat of your choice — a meaningful way to honor a loved one, celebrate a milestone, or show your love for the arts in Flagstaff.

Your gift goes further right now: thanks to a generous matching donation from a former Creative Flagstaff board member and their spouse, every contribution is doubled to help us reach our goal!

Special thank you to All Awards, Flagstaff’s local awards shop, for generously donating the plaques in-kind.

Sponsor your seat today and help us create a more comfortable, modern theater experience for the community.

Seat plaques allow up to three lines of text!

Examples:
Line 1: In Honor of [Your Name or Tribute]
Line 2: A Friend of the Arts
Line 3: 2025 – Forever

Your support will help us create a more welcoming and comfortable space for performances, screenings, and community events. Let’s finish strong—join us today!