Sedona Arts Center big cheese Eric Holowacz insists it’s all baloney — he says it’s just business as usual, ladies and gents — but the NEWS has it that Holowacz and his lackey, School of Arts Director Vince Fazio, are planning something big during this year’s Plein Air Festival.
Our investigation indicates that they’re trying to cover it up with a lot of spiffy terms — “Plein Air,” “Impressionism” — and even fancier names — Degas, Monet and that old live wire Toulouse-Lautrec — yet only a flat tire wouldn’t see this for what it is: A flimsy cover for a juice joint.
“It’s all Vince’s baby …. Vince has an entire rationale,” Holowacz said when the NEWS backed him into a corner.
The executive director stuttered for words like he was already half-tanked, flapping his gums about getting artists inside with the common people and away from academy spaces until NEWS photographer Jordan Reece told him to pipe down.
Likewise, Fazio was full of excuses, but the media hereabouts is no pushover. We won’t be given the bum’s rush anytime soon.
“One of the subject matters for artists was the underground,” Fazio said nervously, in one sentence implicating himself — for what is the “underground” if not the speakeasy?
Talking himself further into a hole, Fazio offered flimsy justifications for his back-alley plan to turn a long-standing arts institution into a gin mill: “This all came out of last year’s festival …. When I started working with these themes I began exploring possibilities …. Once the artists show up, everything will be OK.”
To read the full story, see the Wednesday, Oct. 14, edition of the Sedona Red Rock News.
