Scottsdale’s CityCable Channel 11 focuses on airing the hundreds of City Council meetings throughout the year, but officials created a new show that takes the camera crew outside the meeting room and inside the studios and galleries of local artists.

Called “Scottsdale Art Beat,” the show aims at promoting Scottsdale’s local artists and its art district, said Tim Delaney, one of the program’s creators and producers.

“We have so much beautiful art in Scottsdale, whether it’s public art or private art, it’s almost like the best kept secret,” he said.

The idea for the program began when another producer of the show, Amanda Willis, was filming an independent segment showcasing the city’s Public Art Program. The segment failed to air.

But this past winter, while brainstorming ideas for new shows, the idea for a Scottsdale-based art show reemerged and “Scottsdale Art Beat” was born.

There were two rules the creators would not compromise: the artists must live in the city or have works displayed in it. The 30-minute show, which has been airing monthly since January, broadcasts three times on Saturdays and once again on Sundays.

Guests have included:

• Teacher and artist Earl Linderman, a former Arizona State University art department chair whose art contains his trademark motif following a mysterious tuxedo-wearing character called Doktor Thrill.

• Author and artist Victor Ostrovsky, who has a gallery on Fifth Avenue in Downtown Scottsdale containing his “Metaphors of Espionage Collection,” inspired by his days as an intelligence officer or “katsa” in the Mossad, Israel’s version of the CIA.

• Performing artist “Sister” Patti Hannon, whose one-woman show “Late Night Catechism” was a long-running centerpiece at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts.

• New Orleans artist Willie Birch, whose art was recently exhibited at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

The itch to get away from the grind of City Council meetings contributed to the producers’ motivation to begin the show.

“We have not shot five seconds of anything for this show in the studio,” Delaney said.

When they got the go-ahead from the channel’s higher-ups to produce the program, one thing they were told was to shoot everything in the field.

“They said, ‘I don’t want any talking heads sitting at a desk talking about art. Shoot them as artists,’” Delaney said.

Associate producers Al Kane and Dennis Grezelak also contribute to the making of the show, as does the programs host, Diane Bykowski, local artist and member of the Arizona Artists Guild.

When Bykowski volunteered to be a host, she wanted to showcase all phases of art.

“We want to do everything from culinary art to two-dimensional to three-dimensional to theater to performing arts,” she said. “We’re trying to do a little bit of everything.”

July’s episode features an artist who sculpts art from food and another artist known as a “chocolatier,” who creates art with chocolate.

“He has chocolate that looks like wine corks, that look like turtles and even has edible paint on chocolate,” Delaney said.

August’s episode will feature the Scottsdale Artists School on Marshall Way. Upcoming ideas include an episode about Scottsdale’s Greasepaint Youtheatre, a children’s theatre that offers theatrical training to those 6 through 18.

“There’s so much to talk about,” Delaney said. “There’s never an end of subject matter.”

“Scottsdale Art Beat”

When: Airs on CityCable 11 at 1 p.m., 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Saturdays and 9 a.m. Sundays.

April 2009 : Metal sculptor and painter Joan Waters

How to get it: CityCable 11 is available to Cox and Qwest cable subscribers living in Scottsdale AZ. The show is also available via streaming video by going to