Consigned Art and Jewelry For Sale

#1 Jack Petty oil painting, circa 1965 at $800.00

#2 Alberto Contreras concho belt, circa 1970 at $2,000.00

 

Artist, Jack Petty, Tucson, Arizona

The following excerp is from the Zocalo Magazine, June 11, 2013

"Where there is community conversation there are artists, and in Tucson’s first and most colorful arts enclave, Ash Alley, there were many studios with back courtyards that set the scene for shows and artist gathering. The Contreras family silversmithing business, one of the original Ash Alley studios, identifies the Ash Alley heyday from the 1950s through the 1970s, when parties were hosted with live entertainment on these patios to entice prospective customers. A 1965 Arizona Daily Star article quotes one circa 1950s Ash Alley artist, Jack Petty, as saying, “We used to show paintings at those parties. We’d bring up Mexican gin from Nogales to try to lower visitors’ sales resistance.”

 

"Ash Alley, by Jack Petty, circa 1965, $800.00

 

The following article and images can be viewed at the link address below.

https://tucsonmurals.blogspot.com/2014/11/ash-alley-tucsons-greenwich-village.html

Ash Alley (Tucson's Greenwich Village) close-ups
Mark Fleming just pointed out an article on page 47 of the November Zócalo magazine titled Ash Alley: Tucson's Greenwich Village by Steve Renzi.

After World War II, the article says, Tucson grew. New artists and craftspeople needed a place. The area around one-block Ash Alley came to include studios and an outdoor gallery. It even had its own newspaper, the Ash Alley Bugle. Two of the first newcomers to Ash Alley — and the last to leave, in 1977 — were Jack and Sally Petty. Outside Petty's Studio Gallery was a mural that included three smiling frogs.

This concho belt was made around 1970, by Alberto Contreras Sr., in sterling silver with Persian turquoise. 10 conchos, $2,000.00

 

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