Tracy Dove paints in Phoenix. Not just canvases, not just mailboxes, not just all over her Volkswagen, the walls of her house and the fences of her organic garden, although she does all of these. Her home-printed hippie coloring books and greeting cards are popular all over town. She has plans to restore a vintage trailer and cruise America with Sisters on the Fly, an association of women who go on fly-fishing expeditions in their vintage trailers and smoke cigars. She has plans to throw a wedding for her artist daughter Sarah Coppen to musician Chris Warmuth at the visionary village Arcosanti. With Kathy Cano-Murillo, she started a women’s art cooperative called the Phoenix Fridas that have group art shows. Last spring, when I lived at her house for a few months, we tromped around downtown Phoenix each first Friday night, when all the galleries were open, with live music played in doorways and off the back of trucks, and bellydancers and fire knife dancers performing in a torchlit parking lot. A party not to be missed! We painted ourselves silly in between.
Alicia Bay Laurel 