(Lauren) Hello, and welcome to "State of the ArtZ."

I'm your host, Lauren Roth, and today we're bringing you a series of stories that celebrate and are inspired by the Sonoran Desert and the season which exemplifies it perhaps more than any other, the Monsoon.

So, fittingly, we're joining you from the Monsoon Chocolate Cafe and Market.

Stay tuned as we explore how artist Alex Jimenez spent a year in creating the Chubasco Channel, a multimedia soundscape and installation commissioned by Tucson Water to raise awareness of the vulnerability of Tucson's water supply.

Photographer Sean Parker takes photos of the wild soul of the desert by chasing its storms.

And Monsoon Chocolate is Southern Arizona's first bean-to-bar chocolate factory.

A committed group of artisans take on the labor-intensive process of turning cacao into chocolate bars, confections and visually striking bonbons.

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and American Indian Studies, Bojan Louis, recites "Poem Five."

If you've lived here a few summers, then you know that the monsoon can vary drastically.

When Alex Jimenez started her Chubasco Channel project in 2021, she had no idea what to expect, and it ended up being one of the wettest monsoons on record.

(Alex) My great grandmother grew up right near railroad and the Santa Cruz River and Speedway, hearing stories about the Santa Cruz River and when it would flow seasonally and how family would interact with that always was in the back of my mind because I grew up with a dry river my whole life.

I was really excited to be working with water because it's such a huge issue here.

And so I began this project with Tucson Water, and part of what we identified was important was that we do some listening.

I put together quickly a call out asking people to record rain for 3 minutes and then submit audio to me.

I tried to make clear that this is an archive of 2021 monsoon season.

We just had so much rain and like an abundance of rain that by August I was like, I have enough rain and recorded so much rain.

[heavy rain] I really like the idea of trying to get a network of people out there listening at the same time.

And so I wanted to activate the Santa Cruz River with this audio archive.

And I knew right away that I was going to have to find someone who had the talent and the interest who would want to work with me on shaping this idea.

And I found that in Logan.

And it's been really exciting to like, bring our different creative ideas about how things look and sound.

Because I've been doing animations for the project and Logan got looped into animating with me.

[monsoon sounds over music bed] (Logan) My work has been over the past year kind of organizing and listening through what everyone submitted and then composing that into a soundscape.

[monsoon sounds over music bed] This is something I've dreamed of for a long time.

That array of ten speakers in total, each speaker will be playing a different sample.

[monsoon sounds over music bed] I'm very cognizant of the urban setting.

We hear the sirens of first responders, cars through the puddles, dogs barking, folks having parties.

That is also part of our sonic environment.

And so I've learned to think about distance a lot with sound.

And it's up to the user to walk through and feel the different blends of the different channels.

(Kevin) Sounds crazy.

(Alex) I had had this idea of what if we, like, give these sounds to more musicians and create like a little mixtape with just a little bit of guidelines.

And our guideline was use the samples and celebrate a monsoon.

[monsoon sounds over music bed] (Kevin) There is every kind of sound related to the monsoon.

So there was distant thunder, just the cicadas, pre-rains, the grasses blowing in the wind, the downpour, massive thunderstorms.

Animals like the crickets and the spadefoot.

I was thinking it was like a tension and release, kind of like the heat build, the release of the rains coming.

And then that euphoric feeling was kind of what I was going for.

[electronic music] The monsoon.

I mean it's the whole natural world comes out to party.

So.

(Alex) I knew that Dia de San Juan would be a really important event to bring together all that I'd been working on because it is a local celebration of the coming of the Monsoon Seasons.

I and other Tucsonans who've been here for generations, we can tell the difference.

Monsoons have changed a lot.

You could count on like clockwork in the afternoon the clouds would roll in.

You'd see them start building and then they'd roll over the city.

And some people will get rain and some people wouldn't.

So climate change has really messed with our monsoon cycle.

(Logan) I never want my children or my children's children's experience of rain only to be in an art installation.

And so I think there's a real time for action that something each of us can do in our own way, and thinking about the fact that more water falls in rain on the Tucson metro area than we use as a municipality in a year.

And so thinking about how we can change our built environment is going to be something that is a necessity in the time to come.

[monsoon sounds from speakers] (Alex) Tucson Water has given me so much freedom to do whatever idea I kind of came up with.

You're working with the government agency.

It can be a tense relationship, and so I didn't know what to expect, but they all really care about water.

(Kelly) I feel really fortunate that we were able to work with Alex specifically because she has a history here and she gets this community and we've had an opportunity here to maybe set a precedent that Tucson Water and then as part of our like sort of peer family in the city can explore across the board.

There's a lot of goodwill and a desire to continue the conversation.

[cumbia music] (Alex) The Chubasco Channel and Mixtape will live on YouTube on Tucson Water's website to be listened to whenever you're missing the rain.

And my idea in the beginning was in times of drought, when you're yearning for that rain, you know, you can just listen to a collection of Tucson specific rain.

That in itself is also sad that maybe someday we might only be able to experience monsoons digitally, but at least we have that.

(Lauren) Tucson is often considered the lightning photography capital of the world.

It's not because we have the most lightning strikes, but rather our massive thunderheads, open skies and desert backdrops make for some epic photos.

And local phenom Sean Parker is one of the very best at capturing them.

- [Sean Parker] What you want to look for is the clouds building a tower, kind of just building themselves up and going up.

You see it here.

It's kind of building up.

You can look at radar, but what you really want to do is visually look at what's going on.

Your eyes can see a lot more than the radar can.

Yeah, let's do that drive, head down to Green Valley.

The cumulus towers are going up over here which should produce some good stuff.

I started photography as a hobby seven years ago.

I was 24.

I didn't really take it seriously until four years ago.

I started coming into work late because I was up all night taking photos, and once I was working, I was just like, "I don't want to do this anymore" (thunder) (Shipherd) It's great to see such a crowd coming out for Sean Parker's Universe.

We're really excited to explore Sean's journey to becoming a world-renowned astrophotographer and time lapse cinematographer.

Let's give a warm welcome.

We're thrilled to have him here tonight, Sean Parker.

(applause) (Sean) Thank you guys, thank you.

Gotta get to this thing before it fizzles out.

Ah man, that's beautiful.

Look at that rain shaft.

(Shipherd) Lots of other people around the country and the world have recognized his talent.

His images have been featured in Smithsonian Magazine, Arizona Highways, the New York Times.

(Sean) Oh, dude.

(Shipherd) He has been called upon to work for major companies like The Discovery Channel, the BBC, LG Electronics, and Samsung.

He is a Arizona native, and we're really pleased that he got his start here in Tucson, Arizona.

(ethereal music) (Sean) I think Tucson plays a huge role in my creative outlet.

I don't think I would've found the tie between the art side of it and the astronomy.

I was at a bar down the street from my house called Sky Bar.

At night they bring out a telescope.

So I stumbled over there and took a picture of the moon with my iPhone and was blown away because I thought only Hubble could take the images I was seeing.

So I borrowed a friend's camera for almost a year, I think, and that's when it hit me.

That's when I was like, "Okay, I like photography."

(meowing) It kind of dawned on me (laughs) did you get that?

This is my assistant, my furry assistant, Izzy.

(laughs) I realized that taking pictures was my new passion.

Dude, this will be insane.

Oh!

Did it hit over the mountain?

(thunder) Oh, dude!

Oh my God!

Whooo!

That was right over it!

Oh my God!

(thunder) (Shipherd) At a certain point, you were posting online, and you started getting more and more followers.

(Sean) Yeah.

(Shipherd) And you realized something's happening here.

Can you talk about how that took place?

(Sean) Yeah.

I think I started posting in 2012.

So I would post to every Facebook page, every Facebook group.

I would email editors just to share my work on social media.

Once I turned my photography into a business, I really had to study how to market it.

I would see what other people were doing and do that, but add my own twist to it and experiment with it.

Back in the Facebook pages' day, they were still kind of developing the likes and all that.

There was this one image where it said, it showed 150,000 people liked this.

And I'm like, "What, there's only 2000 followers on here, "how's this possible."

And then I commented on it and said, "One day."

And I think it was three years later, 100,000 and I think I'm at 550,000.

Yeah.

This shot's gonna be sweet, if I get it.

(rain) Dude, we're catching some epic lightning over San Xavier.

(Man) You get genuinely excited about this (Sean) Oh yeah, I'm like a kid in a candy store of lightning.

(laughs) I'll probably go home and edit until like two or three in the morning getting new stuff and look at the models for tomorrow.

Oh, that was a good one.

(Man) Good night?

(Sean) Good night, yeah.

Awesome night.

Taking the photo is half the battle.

You really gotta get it into Lightroom and Photoshop to really put the final touches on it.

My photography is a whole new world.

The camera is picking up a lot more than what your eyes can see.

This is the image straight out of camera, and to me, it still looks pretty good.

But when you start editing like saturation and color and contrast, your photo really comes to life.

- [UPS Man] I don't know, but it's signature required.

- Yep - All right, thanks a lot.

- Thank you.

Oh yeah, this is all my Sony gear.

Part of my brand or my business is working with companies for social media marketing.

Working with a lens rental company, and they sent me a bunch of equipment in exchange for some photos and some marketing on Instagram.

So you got the Sony a7R III.

This is the Sigma 14 1.8.

So yeah, I'm gonna be testing this in Iceland next week.

Sometimes companies will just send me stuff saying, "Thanks for doing good work.

"We don't expect anything in return," and I love that.

I love free gear, yeah, over-nighted to me.

Why not?

(laugh) All right, guys, just follow me.

Oh, let's get our headlamps on.

So tonight we're going to be going over a lot of technical ways to shoot the night sky.

(Shipherd) You've been really successful at giving workshops.

- So once I started mastering these techniques, I started teaching them.

And that's kind of how I transitioned from learning to teaching.

I want to be teaching you seven years' worth of information in a single night.

(laughs) Wow, that's a good 'un.

You know, my mom really played a big part in my inspiration.

She was like, "I'm gonna see you on the big screen one day.

"I know it, Sean, I know it.

Just keep pushing."

And when I got those licensed images for that Hollywood film, The Bad Batch, I was like, "Mom, you're gonna see it!

You're gonna see it!"

But, unfortunately, she wasn't able to.

I know that she's there in spirit, and I know that I want to continue to make her happy by creating all these images.

I actually have this little travel urn that I carry with me and I go to all these places, and I spread a little bit of her out wherever I go.

I push myself because there's a lot I want to do.

And with how crazy life is, I want to make sure that I get to experience the best things in life before I can't.

Being out, surrounded by beauty, just kind of brings some life back into your soul.

(Lauren) The desert can be barren, but even with a little water, it can also be a place of abundance, which is certainly on display here.

Monsoon chocolate is Southern Arizona's very first bean-to-bar chocolate factory.

This committed group of artisans take on the labor-intensive process of turning cacao into chocolate bars, confections, and visually striking bonbons inspired by life in the Sonoran Desert.

(machine buzzing) - [Adam Krantz] One of the things that has drawn me to chocolate is the fact that it is just so complex.

(upbeat, lighthearted music) It's really one of the most complex flavor substances known to man.

It's got between 600 and 800 volatile compounds.

That puts it off the chart, that's higher than wine, cheese, beer, coffee, and those are all things that are very complex.

(beans rattling) Once we receive cocoa beans the first step is to sort them.

We're looking for properly fermented beans that have not germinated.

We work with cocoa producers in Ecuador, Peru, Madagascar, Tanzania, Uganda, Mexico, Vietnam, India.

This is the cornerstone to everything that we do.

(machine whirring) - [Laura Guerry] So we're grinding up the cocoa nibs, which is getting the nibs that have already been roasted and winnowed, and putting them in this molino which was used to grind corn.

The two stones pretty much just get caught in through here, grind 'em down, and then they get spat out over here and turned into cocoa liquor.

The content of cocoa butter is all different in the beans, so this one is flowing pretty freely, this is from Tanzania, but other origins don't have as much cocoa butter in the bean and they'll come out very sludgy, (Adam) My interest in chocolate really just came out of my interest in food.

I worked in restaurants for years and years and then I moved from the restaurant industry into specialty grocery, so I was the grocery manager at Time Market, and when I started there they had chocolate bars from Dandelion Chocolate, this was back in 2013.

That was the first single origin bean-to-bar chocolate I ever tried, and it was revelatory, and when I tasted it, I just, you know it's like, whoa, wait a second, chocolate is so much more complex than I ever thought it was.

All chocolate is made from cocoa beans, so all chocolate is bean-to-bar chocolate, but really that phrase is being used to describe this movement of mostly small batch makers that have some sort of direct connection to the source of the cocoa.

It's the phrase that our industry uses for this renaissance of new chocolate making.

I really just wanted to understand the process more, I didn't intend on starting a company, but I just fell in love with the process.

(calming horn music) (stirring) (whisking) - [Athene Kline] One of my favorite bonbon flavors is the Black Pepper Caramel with White Chocolate Rose Petal Ganache.

I make just a traditional caramel but then I add black pepper extract and then I also add a little bit of finely ground black pepper, so that it's caramelly but a little bit spicy, but it's still balanced.

Think I draw inspiration from my ethnic background, too, 'cause I'm half Korean and half German, which is kind of a weird combination.

Before I worked here I basically knew nothing about chocolate.

I grew up in Germany, pastry and baking there is just really traditional, so when I moved to the States, I wanted to learn how to make pastry myself.

I started at The B Line under Terri LaChance , and she taught me a lot, and then I was the head baker at Five Points, and then here.

Instead of building a multilayered cake, you're kind of doing that all in one bite.

Sometimes they'll all come out at the same time.

It's very rare, and it's really exciting.

(tray tapping) Ah, perfect crack out!

(laughing) - Visual is always the first thing that attracts someone, or intrigues them at least.

So this is our Prickly Pear Caramel bonbon.

There're three different colored cocoa butter colors, so there's the white splatter, which, it's just Jackson Pollock, you know, you just stand there and you just kind of fling the cocoa butter on the mold and it does its own thing.

After that, there is this light, shimmery purple that we just use our finger, and we just swipe in the mold so it gives it a little bit of depth and texture, and then behind that is the dark purple, which just then really helps the rest of it pop.

(soft guitar music) These are some of the variety of bonbons that we have to offer.

Typically it starts with the flavor, Adam and Athene think of a fun flavor to do, and from there we just kinda think, well, what kinda colors, what kinda decor would make sense for that flavor?

(soft guitar music) It took me a good amount of time to be able to get this kind of motion to work for me.

I was really clumsy at first.

I've been an artist most of my life.

I went from painting and drawing into ceramics, and just king of stumbled into this.

Using colored cocoa butter as a medium wasn't anything I had thought of but once I started doing it, it was fun.

(cocoa spraying, hissing) Okay.

So the Chili Mango is also three different colors but this technique is all spraying.

Originally we had a green that just didn't quite seem like the right mango green, you know?

And so we ordered a different one, and then it just all came together.

We really love how it turned out.

And it's a delightful taste, as well, (laughing) you know, mango with a hint of spice.

I really love when art can become intimate with someone.

So in my ceramics, I love making mugs.

They are very intimate objects, so it's not that far to go to the bonbons.

Most people often are like, "They're too pretty to eat!"

but then I'm like, "But then you eat them, "and you realize they're just as tasty, "so you do eat them!"

(laughing) (upbeat guitar music) - [Customer] Ah, what is this?

- [Seller] Chiltepin, so chiltepin is a chili.

- And the whiskey one.

- The Whiskey del Bac, alrighty my friend, and I can ring you up right at the register.

- [Adam Krantz] We view this as an opportunity to really connect our foodshed here in the Sonoran Desert to the chocolate movement, things like Mesquite pod, chiltepin peppers, blue corn, so we get to share those ingredients with the greater chocolate community, and then simultaneously we get to share bean-to-bar chocolate with Tucson.

- [Customer] What is this?

- [Seller] Those are homemade marshmallows, you have to try one.

Do you wanna take a sample of our hot chocolate?

- Yeah sure!

- [Jamie Woodard] It's been pretty incredible to watch this grow.

I'm really proud of everyone, and even including myself to have got to this point.

- And would you like those bonbons for here or to go?

- [Adam Krantz] It's been a whole bunch of things.

I mean, it's been really exhilarating and really stressful.

- We've only been open for a little over a year but then we just won 14 International Chocolate Awards.

I mean it's kind of a big deal!

(laughing) (upbeat guitar music) - [Adam Krantz] We feel really fortunate to be in this community, really fortunate to be in this location.

We set out to offer a really high quality product, and I think really that's where we're focused.

(Lauren) Poem Five by Bojan Louis, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona, speaks of the ancient relationship between Native American culture and the desert environment in which we live.

(Bojan) Each year, cool monsoons show up, hot with tension and startles the desert.

Many of my friends, addicts and recovering are soundless deserts.

A lightning struck tree beware of its falling ash.

The bright, ochre sun.

The O'odham knew an ancient sea receded, leaving the desert.

Shima saní says, "Listen presses a buck knife into my young hand.

Cut a yucca spike the bayonet end won't hurt like summer deserts.

[wind blowing] After years away, I came back to a ravine filled with dead pine needles, white skunk skeletons under the crisp winter moon, the high dry desert.

I love this odd man whose hometown burned to the ground.

Ash, Capitalism.

Where suffering is, accelerants devour a pine-coned desert.

[falling sand] "Why grow so high son?

'Ama Saní asks Do not forget your loved ones.

Their dried veins or scars tended livestock or blind debt loquacious deserts.

[desert wind] (Lauren) Thanks so much for joining us here on State of the ArtZ.

I'm Lauren Roth.

Enjoy the rest of the monsoon and please stay safe out there.