Writings of Jeffrey Lazos Ferns

  Arriving With an Introduction I’m preparing for a visit from DANDY magazine's editor and photographer via Experience Scottsdale. They will be visiting from France next weekend; I’ll walk with them through Desert Botanical Garden, talking about the Sonoran Desert, its plants, its people, and the stories this place asks us to carry carefully. At the same time, I’m working on planning a fashion show at Taliesin West. These projects are beginning to speak to each other. I’m thinking about who will encounter the work once it leaves Arizona. DANDY describes itself as a bilingual French-and-English luxury lifestyle magazine concerned less with passing fashion than with elegance. Its stated target audience is active men and senior executives ages 30 to 70, with readers in Paris, across France and beyond. Its editorial interests include encounters, art, clothing, and culture. That audience is primed to look closely at style and craft; it is also an opportunity to introduce a place in...

  Thank You, City of Scottsdale, for Investing in Arts, Culture, and Tourism For FY 2026/27, Scottsdale is budgeting approximately $22.3 million in direct support for its principal arts and tourism partners, about $6.3 million for Scottsdale Arts and approximately $16 million for Experience Scottsdale—alongside additional City-administered investments in events, destination marketing, public art, and tourism development. I am deeply grateful to the City of Scottsdale for its continued leadership in recognizing arts, culture, and tourism as essential civic and economic assets. The City’s approval of tourism-grant support for the 2026 Arizona Indigenous Culinary Experience reinforces an investment that benefits residents, local businesses, visitors, and Arizona’s cultural landscape. I was honored to appear before Scottsdale City Council yesterday as the Arizona Indigenous Culinary Experience received final approval for a tourism grant supporting this year’s event, taking place ...

  A Day at Camp Naco, and What We’re Cooking Up for Unbelievable Borderlands Yesterday, Chef Apollon Mark Lewis and I drove to Camp Naco for a planning visit ahead of the Unbelievable Borderlands Dinner & Fundraiser and Festival in October. We were there to look closely at the Friday-night event: where guests will gather, where the tasting stations will go, what the kitchens can support, and how the evening will move through the site. Nothing beats being on the grounds to understand the practical side of an event. You start seeing where food will be finished, where people will line up, where a conversation might naturally happen, and what needs to be carried from one building to another. Camp Naco has a calm feeling to it. It sits near the border in a place where the landscape does much of the talking. After our meeting, I took Mark into the town of Naco, Arizona, only about 600 yards from the border wall at Camp Naco. We talked about food, family, what we learned growing...

  Tomorrow, Greg and I leave for Chicago. The trip centers on a milestone: the company Greg has worked for is celebrating its 125th anniversary, and he has given 33 years of his life to that work. Thirty-three years. In a culture that often treats commitment as disposable, I find that kind of constancy deeply moving. When I first met Greg, I noticed his tenacity right away. His dedication. His work ethic. But even more than that, I noticed the kind of man he is in the world: thoughtful, kind, professional, steady. He brings a balance to my life that I don't take for granted. He has a way of being present without needing to make a production of it. He shows up. He does what needs to be done. And he has built a life around that quiet, enduring integrity. So, this trip feels like a celebration of him, of the life we have made together, and of the city where so much of our story began. As soon as we land, we'll leave our luggage at the hotel and head directly to the Obama P...

  Yesterday’s planning meeting for Architecture of Indigenous Flavor and Fashion at Taliesin West reminded us that meaningful cultural events are shaped long before guests arrive. They begin with listening: to the land, to the artists and culture bearers whose work is being presented, and to the practical knowledge of the people who will make the experience possible. This November, Taliesin West will become a gathering place for Indigenous chefs, foodways keepers, designers, models, tribal royalty, cultural leaders, and guests. The event will bring Indigenous Arizona to the plate, the runway, and into one of the Southwest’s most evocative architectural settings—creating an evening rooted in taste, design, land, and cultural continuity. A Desert Setting With Meaning Taliesin West sits in the foothills of the McDowell Mountains, in the Sonoran Desert landscape that Frank Lloyd Wright regarded as inseparable from the architecture he created there. Established in 1937 as Wright’s...