When you think of sculpture, your mind may conjure up an image of a chiseled marble figure, a stone bust, maybe a bronze statue.
But if you go to the Tucson Sculpture Festival, starting on Saturday, you will see art that defies your expectations.
The Parasol Project, a Tucson arts organization, is teaming up with the Sculpture Resource Center to showcase Tucson talent to visitors here for the gem show.
The festival will take place in several spaces in the arts warehouse district, says Danny Wolverton, Tucson Sculpture Festival project director.
"I've been wanting to do a block-party kind of showcase of different people's work, and to bring people together to celebrate the art of Tucson," he says.
Andy Thurlow is one of the 29 artists who together will exhibit more than 100 sculptures at the new festival.
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Thurlow's collection of about 20 steel instruments, called "Anarchestra," is made of things that used to be propane tanks or plumbing pipes and fixtures.
"I was a welder for my job, and I was a musician (jazz, punk). And then they sort of became the same thing," says the 55-year-old artist, who has been developing this concept for about 10 years.
His house, which also is a workshop and recording studio, is in Tucson's Warehouse District and is full of finished and unfinished instruments.
"I always wished I owned a lot of instruments and couldn't afford them, so I figured I should just make my own," Thurlow says.
Thurlow's band, Anarchestra, will perform at the opening-night celebration Saturday and will lead a free open jam from 6 to 9:30 p.m. Sunday.
Charles Mingus plays in the background as Thurlow explains his different instruments.
"Because they are not regular, people don't feel like they can't play them. For instance, nobody knows how to play one of these because they don't exist," he says, pointing to what he calls a prout, named after one of his musician friends.
You play it similarly to a piano, but each key plays a three-note chord. The prout sits on a stand made of rebar. The neck of the instrument is made of channel iron, and the keys are made of rod and shaft collars.
Most of the instruments are hooked up to amplifiers, and he's recorded himself playing more than 100 songs.
You might have already heard him play at the finale of the All Souls Procession downtown, for example.
The Sculpture Festival also will feature work by Ned Schaper, aka Mat Bevel.
Schaper's art is kinetic, which means that it moves. Even thought he majored in entomology, the 55-year-old also studied physics.
"I'm very good with machines and mechanical things," he says.
For 30 years, he has been making sculptures move electrically and manually - some are even wind-powered.
He is the founder of the Mat Bevel Institute, on North Stone Avenue just north of the downtown underpass, where he lives and exhibits everything.
He refers to what he does as Available Resource Technology, or ART, because he makes the sculptures out of found objects that people bring to him.
"I wait for things to fit together, I wait for holes to line up," he says over the hum of one of the machines. "So in a way it's almost like people bring me junk, and I sit there and look at it, and certain things look like they fit together."
His 120 sculptures include butterflies, chickens, a shark and a 7-foot mosquito. And all of them are props for his performance art, too.
"I wanted to show the sculptures off in a way that was more theatrical," he says.
His one-man shows include music, poetry and a variety of characters.
During the festival, kids will be able to tap into their creative side with some activities at Schaper's institute.
Other more traditional sculptures will also be exhibited, adds Danny Wolverton. And if the event goes well, organizers hope to hold the festival every year.
If you go
• What: The Tucson Sculpture Festival's opening celebration. Performances, food, mask-making, sounds by Anarchestra and gypsy jazz by Missing Parts.
• When: Saturday.
• Where: The Sculpture Resource Center, 640 N. Stone Ave., 4 p.m. to midnight; and Mat Bevel Institute of Kinetic Sculpture, 530 N. Stone Ave., 6 to 9:30.
• Cost: $5 donation.
• More info: www.parasol project.com
• Art will be on display and for sale: Sunday through Feb. 13 at Mat Bevel Institute, the Sculpture Resource Center, and BICAS (44 W. Sixth St.). • Listen to Anarchestra at azstarnet.com/entertainment
