• Jade Beall
• A Beautiful Body Project

Jade Beall, co-founder of Fed By Threads latest project celebrates the changes made to a mother's body after pregnancy. More than 50 mothers were photographed for the project. The book will also include written experiences of the photography subjects regarding their changing bodies.

Beall's project is already receiving a lot of well-deserved attention, having been featured on Huffington Post Live as well as on the Today Show.

To learn more about her project, or to contribute, head to A Beautiful Body Project — though be warned, the images there are not safe for work.

• Jim Nintzel
• Lake Patagonia State Park might get a little repair work done with new state dollars

In all the excitement over the Medicaid expansion, there are a whole bunch of overlooked tidbits from the recently completed legislative session that The Range will be gathering in the next few days.

For starters, there's new funding for state parks and arts organizations. Both had been cut to the bone in recent years (a deep dive into parks funding here and a look at cuts for the arts here), so supporters see this as a positive direction, even if it's not the kind of support they've had in the past.

State Sen. Steve Farley, a Democrat who represents midtown Tucson, says he dreamed up the idea in the middle of the night in January and shopped the idea around to Republicans during the session.

Both the State Parks Department and the Arizona Commission on the Arts will be getting $1 million each, which was whittled down from an earlier proposal that would been about twice that amount. The money comes from interest from the hundreds of millions of dollars stashed in the state's rainy-day fund.

"A million dollars is not a lot to some agencies, but to the arts commission, which has been zeroed out in the general fund for the last three years, it's huge," Farley told The Range.

Farley sees a developing coalition of supporters of the parks and arts.

"There are different people who support both, but they understand the power of each other," Farley says. "There are real opportunities for collaboration in the future there."

During a morning-time conversation that meandered from broken equipment to celebrity tournaments to ultimate frisbee, Dan Gibson and I discovered something magical, by way of Oregon's Willamette Week: the existence of Evil Dead: the Musical.

The show, based off of the campy horror classic Evil Dead series (and not the incredibly serious 2012 remake), includes such spirited songs as "Look Who's Evil Now," "All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons" and the classic "What the Fuck Was That?," which you can listen to below:

The musical, which has Canadian origins, seems very much like Rocky Horror Picture Show, with a campy take on campy horror films — only this one features demons, rather than aliens, and has 100% less Meatloaf.

Still, by virtue of the songs alone (which you can hear on Spotify, if you have an account), there is absolutely no way that this thing doesn't make bank in this city.

Someone, anyone — produce this play. I will be first in line for tickets. I promise.

Remember our friend/T Q&A subject/spirit animal Jes Baker, keeper of the Militant Baker blog?

We already mentioned that Jes has lashed back at Abercombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jefferies with her photo series, "Attractive & Fat," but her campaign has blown up, sending her all the way to New York and NBC's Today.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

From today.com:

"I wanted to not replicate but kind of show what it would look like to have a plus-size model in that scenario," [Baker] told TODAY's Savannah Guthrie on Wednesday. "I think that fashion is incredibly political when you're fat. And to take the sensuality that's found in Abercrombie ads and apply that to a fat person as well is just taking it one step further."

...

"I would love to see so many images like the ones that we put out, that people are no longer outraged by it, that people are not shocked, that people don't take a second look," she said. "Then and only then will you start to see extra-large shirts everywhere, and by then, people probably won't care."

Keep on kicking ass, Jes. We're behind you.

• Stefan Falke
• Documentary filmmaker Tino Varela of Heroica Nogales.

If you haven't had a chance to see Brooklyn photographer Stefan Falke's photographs of the Mexico border region curated online on Forward Thinking Museum, please go to the website to see Falke's interpretation:

This long term project documents cultural activities in what used to be some of the worlds most dangerous cities along the US/Mexican border. I photographed artists along the entire 2000 miles long divide to show the vibrant cultural side of a region that is usually portrayed by the international media with the sole focus on violent crime. The high security steel fence erected by the US over most of the 2000 miles long border did its part to create a physiological and physical barrier. This had particular significance to me ever since I moved to New York — probably because I am German and because I have lived with a wall dividing Berlin and my country until 1989.

What I particularly liked about his project are the people he captured in Nogales, Sonora — some wonderful artists we met and wrote about in a story in December 2011 on a new arts collective and the work they are doing — documentaries, murals and paintings.

However, while our heart is partial to Nogales and the images and people he captured there, Falke's photos show images that defy Brewer-manipulated stereotypes from one side of the border to the other.

Sometimes when you find or rediscover something in the city that makes you happy to call the Moldy Pueblo home despite the crap we have to deal with from time to time, you have to give a shout out.

And that's what I'm doing right here — a shout out for Elizabeth Albert and her coolest of cool boutiques, CandyStrike, located in the warehouse district off Toole Avenue. The last time I talked to Albert was when she was starting Tucson Fashion Week back almost three years ago.

CandyStrike is her new project — a store with cool clothes, some designed and made by Albert, mostly for plus-sized gals. What drove me into her store was the Virgen de Guadalupe skirt (pictured above). I ended up leaving with a dress and a shirt, too. Her clothes are beautiful, unique and priced right. Plus, Elizabeth is another example of a strong and creative woman I'd like to grow up to be one day.

Need proof? Check out her blog, Your Life in Design. It's smart, sexy and makes me feel so lucky Albert calls Tucson home. I'm particularly excited about the relaunch of her online store on June 1. For more info, go here.

But please, please visit CandyStrike to find out what it's all about: 197 E. Toole Ave.

Historical reimaginings are always a fun way to compare modern society to historical society (look at basically any Baz Luhrmann travesty where period pieces are shoved into a contemporary box or given modern flavors, for example), and this experiment by the folks behind British biography series "Secret Life of..." looks at historical Brits through a present-day lens — complete with plastic surgery and bad haircuts!

• Modern-day Shakespeare is, not shockingly, a terrible hipster.

Yep, that's Shakespeare, as a hipstery actor/playwright/maker of terrible hair decisions (though I will say that the shirt and vest combo kinda works, surprisingly). From the Telegraph:

Daring and forward thinking hipster Shakespeare has been fashioned as a 'modern day playwright' with his edgy Shoreditch shirt and waistcoat look.
He has been given piercings on both ears, leaving questions about his sexuality unanswered.
An actor as well as a playwright, Shakespeare might have taken advantage of modern-day hair transplanting techniques to sport a full head of hair like numerous celebrity actors.

Check out more, including my personal favorite, Admiral Lord Nelson, at the Telegraph (via Laughing Squid).

Broadway in Tucson is bringing the story of the amazing Sun Studios to Tucson with Million Dollar Quartet, the story of Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash coming together to perform one day in 1956.

We have tickets for the show Tuesday, May 7 at the TCC Music Hall. All you have to do is enter on our Free Stuff page by Monday morning, and we'll draw winners and contact them via email.

If you'd like a chance at the best tickets we have, answer a relatively simple, eminently-Googleable trivia question as well.

Good luck!

• Courtesy of the ArtsEye Gallery website

If you have an affinity for photography, or are camera-challenged but inquisitive into how the medium works, the ArtsEye Gallery’s annual Curious Camera Event might be a fitting event for your weekend agenda.

Returning for the fifth year on Saturday, the Curious Camera Gallery encourages visitors to “embrace the unpredictability and fascination of photography” by viewing work shot with the full spectrum of cameras throughout the ages: from centuries-old pinhole cameras to iPhone images, the work in the gallery could not be more visually varied.

The auction is Saturday, June 8, 6:30 p.m. at Fluxx Studio and Gallery, 414 E 9th Street. The deadline for entries to Fluxx is 5 p.m., Monday June 3. What's cool about this project is that it's not just another request for donations that many local artists get every day — this time all artists who enter will receive 25 percent of the winning bid.

Here are the rules for participants:

(1) Only one entry per artist
(2) Piñatas must be fully functional with a hollow interior, to fill with objects and breakable
(3) Piñatas can be no bigger than 6 feet in either direction & must fit a 30-inch wide doorway
(4) Piñatas may not weigh more than 30 lbs.
(5) Piñatas must be ready to hang with a built-in, secured sturdy loop
(6) 50% of the piñata must be constructed out of newspaper (traditional paper maché is optional)
(7) No Pottery, glass, plaster, metal or ceramic can be used on the piñata
(8) The palito or stick must accompany the piñata
(9) The palito cannot exceed 4 feet in length & be fully functional to break the piñata
(10) All entries must be delivered to Fluxx no later than 5pm on Monday June 3, 2013
(11) Piñata & palito may be of any artistic theme of the artist’s choosing

For more info, email Ruben Romero at [email protected] or check out the event's Facebook page right here. And yeah, maybe start putting that list together of your favorite Tucson artists and ask them to enter a pinata. The possibilities go beyond Dora and super heroes, and maybe something you'd buy and not dare take to a birthday party.