Cactus Monday - DeGrazia

I recently visited a place that would delight any art, cactus or nature lover. DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun is nestled in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains, north of Tucson, Arizona, on Swan Road near Skyline Drive.

My family discovered the gallery shortly after we moved from Southern California to the area in 1994. For several months, we rented a house within walking distance of DeGrazia's place.

Ted DeGrazia (6/14/09 - 7/1/82) was an American impressionistic artist. He had a unique style and worked in many different media including oil paints, watercolors, lithographs, ceramics, and metals. He also designed his own gallery.

Construction of the gallery began with the open air Mission in the Sun in 1951. The Gallery in the Sun was completed in 1965.

The entrance to the gallery is through heavy iron mine-shaft doors, decorated with saguaro cacti and suns, embedded with colored glass marbles.

The inside of the gallery has a comfortable earthy feel to it. DeGrazia used natural materials from the surrounding desert for the adobe walls, cholla cactus floor tiles, rock floors, and saguaro cactus rib doors and trim.
DeGrazia said, "I wanted to build the museum so that my paintings would feel good inside it. "

Saguaro Dancers

The gallery has many rooms, each with a different theme. One can easily sense how nature and native people inspired and influenced him. He said, "As I paint I feel a magic goes into some paintings. I don't talk about it, because people may not understand. But I really feel the magic."

Some of the natural building materials:

Cholla cactus floor tiles, straw and adobe walls, adobe bricks, prickly pear cactus skeletons

The back courtyard is whimsically decorated with all sorts of cacti and surprises at every turn. Musical instruments, cookware, tools, and quirky pottery are among the treasures adorning the garden.

Pathways meander through cactus,

around the fountain, over little bridges,

revealing the playful spirit of the artist. Those are shovels sticking up out of the ground behind the aloes.
The entire property, inside and out, is embellished with cactus in many forms. Cacti and succulents are everywhere one looks.
Here, outside the gallery entrance, is a dried cholla cactus candelabrum. To the right, some of the two dozen potted purple prickly pears.
DeGrazia was a prolific artist. The gallery rotates his collection of over 15,000 pieces of artwork. Admission is free and the gift shop still sells notecards for only $1.

On this visit there was a surprise outside the gallery, on the ground next to the base of this saguaro cactus...something I don't see everyday. It doesn't show up in this picture because it's well camouflaged. Click here to see what we found.


To see more Cactus Monday posts, visit Teri's Painted Daisies.