Tucson Weekly: Cheap Thrills (November 6

Cheap Thrills CRUZ Y CASTRO: Fresh from a stint on Bill Moyer's PBS series Language of Life, poets Victor Hernandez Cruz and Adrian Castro now light up local ears with Verbal Fireworks, a joint appearance sponsored by the UA Extended University.
As a Puerto Rican native raised in New York, Cruz focuses on the mixing of cultures from Latin America and the Caribbean to Los Angeles and the Lower East Side. He brings this perspective powerfully home in a number of books, including Red Beans, Mainland, Tropicalization and, most recently, Panoramas.
Castro's writing is also powered in part by Caribbean influences, and articulates the search for a cohesive Afro-Caribbean-American identity. As a performance poet, he creates a circular motion of theme, tone, subject matter, style and history. Most recently, he tackled such complexity in Cantos to Blood and Honey, his debut collection of poems.
Free event runs from 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday, November 8, in the Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St. Local writers are also invited to join Cruz and Castro for a workshop from 12:30 to 3 p.m. Saturday in the José Galvez Gallery, 743 N. Fourth Ave. Fee is $15. For registration and other information, call 626-4444.
CHECKERBOARD SOUL: Emmi Whitehorse was born in a flat, arid, remote stretch of New Mexico called the "checkerboard area," divided between the Navajo Reservation, the Bureau of Land Management and private owners. That dissected land eventually gave rise to a unified vision evoking what the New Art Examiner calls "a range of Native American iconography through semi-pictographic symbols. Whether these forms were indeed derived from Native American symbology is irrelevant in the face of their power to suggest such meanings; their pictographic implications are all that is required to provoke further considerations of their relationship to Native American art and culture."
Whitehorse's pieces begin with chalk doodles. The paper is then brushed with a matte medium and, while still wet, scored with a needle. When the paper is dry it's treated with turpentine and colored with oil bars.
"Whatever I grab out of the box becomes the base color," she says, "and then the work itself directs me to where it wants to go. So most of the work is spontaneous and intuitive."
Exhibit is on display through January 4 in the Tucson Museum of Art, 140 N. Main Ave. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $2, $1 for students and seniors, free for children under age 12. For details, call 624-2333.
JADE JIG: Timeless Irish jigs and Celtic tunes color the day at the Harp and Shamrock's "Green Gig." Headliners include Irish guitarist/vocalist Mark Luther, and Celtic harpist David Shaul, with proceeds earmarked for the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade and Festival on March 17, and for creation of a Celtic cultural center in Tucson.
Kick up your heels at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, November 8, in the Harp and Shamrock, 7002 E. Golf Links Road. Call 797-9431 for information.

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