Not So Scary After All: Tucson Artist Courtney Christie Helps Us See Nature Differently

🎙️ Courtney’s Unconventional Journey
From a degree in criminal justice to a full-time role at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, hear how Courtney found her calling through an unexpected path and a love for animals.

🐍 Life as a Reptile Keeper
Courtney shares behind-the-scenes stories from her day job working with snakes, amphibians, and invertebrates, including her early fascination with spiders and her first black widow encounter at age three.

🎨 Art with a Mission
Discover how Courtney uses painting and illustration to help others understand and appreciate desert wildlife, transforming fear into fascination through her stickers, prints, and large-scale murals.

🪲 The Beauty of Bugs
From the stunning scarab beetle to a six-foot-long centipede mural, Courtney explains how highlighting intricate insect details can change public perception and spark curiosity.

🌵 Deep Roots in the Sonoran Desert
Learn how Southern Arizona’s rich biodiversity fuels her creativity and why most of her subjects are species native to Tucson and the surrounding region.

📚 Inspiration Through Education
Courtney’s work doubles as a teaching tool, combining scientific accuracy with artistic expression to promote conservation and respect for the natural world.

When was the last time you looked at a bug and thought, “Wow, that’s beautiful”? For most people, the natural reaction to insects, snakes, and desert critters falls somewhere between discomfort and fear. But Tucson’s own Courtney Christie sees them differently. She sees vibrant color, delicate structure, and hidden beauty. She sees art.

In this episode of Life Along the Streetcar, host Tom Heath introduces us to a woman who wears many hats, often at the same time. Courtney is a zookeeper, an artist, and an educator whose work helps people look at nature with new eyes. Her journey from criminal justice student to reptile expert to visual storyteller is as rich and complex as the Sonoran Desert itself.

A Life in Balance: Zoologist by Day, Artist by Heart

Courtney Christie’s path has been anything but ordinary. Her first degree was in criminal justice, but it did not feel quite right. She returned to school with a newfound purpose, diving into ecology and evolutionary biology. That shift led her to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, where she eventually became a reptile keeper. She now works hands on with snakes, amphibians, and bugs that many people would rather avoid.

While her day job keeps her close to some of the desert’s most misunderstood creatures, her nights belong to her art. Courtney brings these animals to life through paint and pen, giving viewers a chance to appreciate what they might otherwise overlook. Her dual identity is not a balancing act but a fusion. Science informs her creativity, and art deepens her connection to nature.

Teaching Through Texture: When Art Becomes Education

Courtney’s art is vivid, intricate, and often astonishing in its realism. But beyond the beauty lies a mission. She uses her work to change the narrative around creatures that are commonly feared or ignored. Through detailed sticker designs, fine art prints, and large scale paintings, she helps people see bugs, snakes, and spiders not as threats but as essential parts of the ecosystem.

One of her first big pieces was a beetle painting created for a fundraising event. That beetle eventually became a sticker, and since then Courtney has produced over 100 unique sticker designs featuring native species from Southern Arizona. Her creations are educational tools that travel in backpacks and water bottles, carrying with them a subtle but powerful message. These animals are not scary. They are beautiful, important, and worth protecting.

Rooted in the Sonoran Desert: Local Creatures and Local Pride

The Sonoran Desert is at the heart of everything Courtney does. Whether it is a jaguar gliding through a canvas of glowing sunset or a scarab beetle rendered in shining detail, her work pays tribute to Tucson’s wild and wondrous biodiversity. Her pieces reflect the deep colors of the desert, the symmetry of its smallest creatures, and the majesty of its largest.

Courtney is not just painting animals. She is celebrating a region. She regularly includes Latin names and scientific accuracy in her pieces, bringing depth and legitimacy to her artistic expressions. Even her playful touches, like creating a holographic sticker of a favorite saguaro just outside her workplace, reflect the intimate bond she shares with the landscape around her.

Look Closer and See the Beauty

Courtney Christie invites us to take a second look at the world around us. Through her art, she gently challenges us to set aside fear and embrace curiosity. Her story is one of transformation, persistence, and love for Tucson’s most extraordinary life forms.

Listen to Episode 341 of Life Along the Streetcar and discover how one artist is changing minds and opening hearts with every brushstroke.

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🌐 Explore more local stories at lifealongthestreetcar.org
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🎨 Visit TucsonGallery.com to view Courtney’s work and support local artists

If this episode made you see nature a little differently, share it with someone who needs a fresh perspective on the beauty of the desert.

Tom Heath
Good morning. It’s a beautiful Sunday in the Old Pueblo. And you’re listening to Katy Tucson. Thank you for spending a part of your brunch hour with us on your downtown Tucson community. Sponsored, all volunteer powered rock and roll radio station this week. Our guest is Courtney Christy, a talented artist on display in the Tucson Gallery in downtown Tucson.

Tom Heath
By day, she’s a dedicated zookeeper, and by night she brings her love of bugs and animals to life through vivid and expressive artwork. We’ll explore how her two worlds intersect. Today is June 1st, 2025. My name is Tom Heath and this is life along the streetcar. Every Sunday we shine a light on the social, cultural and economic forces shaping Tucson’s urban core.

Tom Heath
From a mountain to the University of Arizona and all stops in between. You get the inside track right here on 99.1 FM, streaming on downtown radio talk or available on the Downtown Radio Tucson app, which you can get there on your phone to connect with us directly about the show, follow life along the Streetcar on Facebook and Instagram, or head over to Lifelong streetcar.org.

Tom Heath
Most episodes are posted there with the audio and video, plus you’ll find past shows, info on the book, and an easy way to reach out. Well, I get, is my role within the Tucson Gallery. I always get to talk to these artists and we do a series called Meet the Artist, and occasionally we like to bring those on to life along the street gardens to give them a little bit more legs, so to speak, as we talk about, an artist who does a lot with critters that have many legs and bugs and such.

Tom Heath
But we, met Courtney Christy know, a year or so ago, she came into the gallery, and was really, really liked what we were doing. We looked at her work, we’re like, oh my gosh. Yes, her stuff is fabulous and it’s hard to narrow down. She has wildlife, but she also has landscape and swirls and sunsets.

Tom Heath
Really talented, young artist. We sat down with her as part of the Tucson Galleries series, Meet the Artist, and I hear excerpts from, that interview with Courtney Christy. And today we are with the fabulous Courtney Christy. Welcome to Meet the Artist.

Courtney Christie
Thank you.

Tom Heath
I was trying to think like, it’s, sometimes it’s just, you know, our our our artists, but you’re like, zookeeper, animal tamer or snake charmer or wrestle alligators, too.

Courtney Christie
Is that sometimes? Yeah.

Tom Heath
Well. And what, what role? Like, where do you do all of that stuff?

Courtney Christie
All the animal stuff.

Tom Heath
Yeah. Like, where do you. Where do you. I’ve seen pictures of you holding, like, really big snakes.

Courtney Christie
Oh, yeah. So I’m a zookeeper at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. I’m, one of the reptile keepers, so I work with reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates. Saw the birds.

Tom Heath
So you have wrestled an alligator?

Courtney Christie
I’ve never worked with alligators, but very large snakes.

Tom Heath
Very large snakes? Yeah. On on the Tucson gallery’s website, there’s your profile, and and it’s got that picture. And the snake is as tall as you are.

Courtney Christie
I’m not even remembering what picture that is.

Tom Heath
I’ll just handle snakes all the time. So it’s like I’m thinking it’s this big deal, and you’re like, that was just a Tuesday.

Courtney Christie
I don’t know. Yeah, an everyday thing, but it’s really fun.

Tom Heath
Yeah. So it was, it was. This was zoo keeping. Was that your passion? Is that what you thought about you’re going to be doing or did you. How do you get into zoo keeping?

Courtney Christie
It’s kind of I honestly wasn’t really planned. I, oh, it’s. Yeah, I graduated college. The first time with an unrelated degree was not really a plan for what to do. Once I had the degree.

Tom Heath
Perfect. That’s what college is for.

Courtney Christie
Yeah, criminal justice was my first degree. Okay, and then after a year of not doing anything with my degree, I decided I wanted to go back to school because I wanted to do something with animals. I didn’t want to be a vet, but I didn’t really know what else there was. So I just figured I would figure it out along the way.

Courtney Christie
And, Yeah, towards the end of that second stint at the university, I, ended up doing an internship at the Desert Museum. And yeah, the timing worked out, the stars aligned. I got really fortunate with how everything worked out and, ended up with a job like a year later, a year after my internship. And I’ve been there ever since, so it’s been about eight years.

Tom Heath
Wow.

Courtney Christie
Yeah.

Tom Heath
So how does that work? You go to school, you graduate, you get a degree. Did you did you went back to school. So, like, how does that, like, what is that going back to you if you don’t start over, but you take just a different class?

Courtney Christie
Yeah. I basically had to kind of start over. So I did the full four years the first time, on a scholarship. And then when I went back, I had to just pay out of pocket. So I started a PMA and then went back to UVA. So it was actually five more years. So my entire 20s, I was just in college and then, five more years.

Tom Heath
So yeah.

Courtney Christie
Because I was working full time also. So I couldn’t go to school completely full time. Gotcha. But yeah, so I got an ecology evolutionary biology degree and then, yeah, I ended up at the Desert Museum, as is your keeper. And I always thought I would do field work afterwards. But then I started having, like, back issues, so I can’t seem to be mindful of the things I’m going to do long term.

Courtney Christie
And, yeah.

Tom Heath
So. So then how does this at what point did this artistic bug I say bug as a pun because we’re trying to work there bugs, but we not all of your work. But you have a quite a collection. When did you start getting involved with with art? I mean, was this just passing time when your nine years of college?

Courtney Christie
No. Ironically, I didn’t do any art during college, but, when I’ve always done art, like, since I was a little, just like from book reports to just random drawings like that. And then during college, I just didn’t really have time for, personal hobbies. And then when I graduated, I was like, I feel like painting.

Courtney Christie
So I went to Michaels for my first time and bought some paint supplies. Oh my gosh. I was like a 20 something year old and just started painting and, and then I went back to college. So it got paused again for another 4 or 5 years.

Tom Heath
So there’s definitely some canvas and supplies. And what what would be what your first painting was?

Courtney Christie
One of my first. It was like this really abstract, super colorful cityscape with like, crazy colors, kind of, I guess, winding through the city. Okay. You know, just very abstract, the experimental and stuff. But, yeah, it was fun. I really liked it. And then once I around the time I became a zookeeper, actually, I was like, I’m going to start doing art again.

Courtney Christie
And then it wasn’t until last year that I decided I actually want to try and do this full time, and I’m not there yet, but I’m making plans to hopefully make that happen. Okay. Yeah.

Tom Heath
And you know, you’re in. I think people should probably go to the website to sign gallery.com to see the different styles of work because you’ve got, color is definitely a part of your palette, but you have a couple of very different kind of approaches to art, or some is very, very accurate portrayals of animals and bugs, and others are beautiful landscapes with very vivid sunsets and, and things of that.

Tom Heath
But that like the, the, the, the, the, the the bugs and the creatures and the critters and the butterflies. Is that coming from the, the background of, of zookeeper and evolutionary biology, or is that something that you were doing? And it just sort of happened to be a coincidence?

Courtney Christie
Yes.

Tom Heath
Okay. The interview is over. To that question.

Courtney Christie
Yeah. So. Well, I’ve always liked bugs, since I was very, very small. And, my first bug encounter that I’ve been told from my mom is walked up to her with my hands closed and, wanted to introduce her to my friend Fred. And it was a black widow that was three years old. And she was like, all right, put that down.

Courtney Christie
I don’t pick up Black Widows now, but I’ve always liked spiders in particular. And then, I’ve always liked bugs, but never really had pursued it and didn’t really know any other people. I liked bugs, until I worked at the Desert Museum. And then I’ve met a couple of really, really awesome people who are entomologists and made a few mentors, or got a few mentors.

Courtney Christie
And I just learned a ton during the first two years working at the museum. And, yeah, I didn’t know, like, scientific names or half. I didn’t know any of the things we had, besides very basic things like that’s a beetle and that’s a black spider, and that’s a brown spider. But yeah. So I learned a lot just through my job and the people I met through there.

Courtney Christie
And, and then the art part came along later when a friend of mine encouraged me to. I had painted a beetle and for, like, an auction thing and, And he was like, you should turn that into a sticker. And I was like, I don’t know anything about stickers. Plus, I want to do fine art. So, like, I want to paint like giant cats, like big cats and stuff.

Courtney Christie
Because originally I wanted to go work with big cats. And, and he was like, oh, a lot of people will like that. So really, really special beetle we have in southern Arizona, the glorious scarab beetle. And I was like, all right, I’ll turn it into a sticker or whatever. But my main goal was to do, like, painting, like acrylic on canvas.

Courtney Christie
And I was like, this is just going to be a little side project. And that was five years ago. And that’s become my main project, which is still I’m hoping to make that my side project. But, yeah, from that beetle. And basically since that, I’ve drawn over like 200 different.

Tom Heath
I was going to ask the. Yeah. So many that you have.

Courtney Christie
Yeah, I have over 100 active sticker designs. And then I’ve just last year started branching out into like prints and greeting cards and things. Because I wanted to kind of steer back into, like, I want to make the leap to painting and then have, like, my sticker business sort of self-sustaining for a while or just a little less, energy putting into it.

Courtney Christie
Because painting is very time consuming.

Tom Heath
I mean, I don’t, I mean, getting back to pay. You are a painter. You’ve got several. We’ve got a few originals in the gallery, just so a couple, the that is, it’s a different feel on the, on the canvas. Then. Then the stickers. The stickers are very much like. Sometimes they look like photographs of of the the image of the images.

Tom Heath
But they’re, they’re hand drawings and then the, the canvas, they just there’s always not always a lot of times there’s, there’s sunsets or sunrises. There’s, that sun sort of blasting through the, the, the image on the canvas. We are interviewing with, Courtney Christy, one of the talented artist in the Tucson gallery, chatting with her about her time and as a zookeeper, as well as an artist and how those worlds intersect.

Tom Heath
We’ll be back to finish up the second half of that interview in just a moment. But first, I want to remind you that you’re listening to lifelong The Streetcar on Downtown Radio 99.1 FM and streaming at Downtown radio.org.

James Portis
This podcast is sponsored by Tom Heath and the team. Another home loans. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, continue listening or head over to life on the Street Khou.com. For current events and information on what to do while visiting Tucson. Tom Heath and MLS number 182420 Nova and MLS number 3087, the UK number 0902429. Equal Housing Opportunity.

Tom Heath
Well, speaking of Tucson Gallery, our guest today is Courtney Christie, one of the artists in the gallery. She was featured on our Meet the Artist series, and we have a part of that interview that we are sharing with you on life on a streetcar, because these artists deserve the spotlight. And we’re going to finish up, with the second half hour interview with Courtney Christie.

Courtney Christie
I think a challenge for a lot of artists is trying to find a focus, because the fun is in the creating, and it’s just so easy to have, like so many different outlets and interests. And I think some artists really do hone down on like a specific subject, subject matter or style or something like that. And some, some of us are just always in this experimental phase.

Courtney Christie
And I love doing the bugs. Like so. As with my zoo keeping and the bugs and the reptiles, I love, the bugs especially. So many people are afraid of bugs or just don’t know anything about them. And same for snakes and the thing I love about my job is there’s a little bit of an education component. We do programs in get to talk about, like I did today, and we get to show people these aren’t scary animals, they’re not out to get you.

Courtney Christie
They don’t want to hurt you. You get to educate them mostly about venomous, like snakes and lizards. But bugs too, you know, they’re we need them to live on planet Earth, and and people don’t know much about them. They’re so tiny that a lot of people don’t get to appreciate the intricacies. Like, they’re really cool abilities.

Courtney Christie
Their colors, their shapes. They’re just they’re little, tiny robots. They’re very, very complex. And people have no idea because they’re so tiny. And, actually, on my camera roll right now, I have about, I don’t know, almost 70 photos of a tiny wasp I found this morning. It’s called a Chelsea wasp. And they have very thick thighs.

Courtney Christie
Like they never skip leg day. And, I’ll show you afterwards. But the people, like, when I saw it just flying in the air, it was just this little, like, yellow thing fluttering around, and I didn’t recognize the flight pattern. I was like, what is that? So my coworker and I caught it in a vial and looked up close and I was like, oh, it’s so cool.

Courtney Christie
Only seen a few of these. Not the species, but point of that being, it’s so tiny it would be easy to overlook. And what I passed and through my art, my paintings and, some of my earlier paintings, I started doing these like jumbo bugs for, a work event we have called insect topia. And just like, hang them up for decoration.

Tom Heath
Is giant bugs. Yeah, they’re a lot of fun.

Courtney Christie
And the point of those is to to blow up all of these intricate, complex, beautiful details of these tiny, scary creatures to show people how cool they are. Because they’re really awesome. People don’t get to see them in that context up close. So I figured, like through art and painting, you can kind of create more of an appreciation, you know, because there are size, like, I mean, I did a six foot centipede.

Courtney Christie
Yeah, a couple years ago that fits in the door frame. And, maybe that’s not a great example of something to make people like bugs, because centipedes are, you know, kind of an actual, like, creepy crawly, but, yeah, bugs are so cool. And reptiles too.

Tom Heath
But just looking at the intricacies of your drawings and, and, you know, butterflies and moths and I did not know there is much of a difference between the two until I started, because one of my jobs at the gallery is to catalog everything and get it into the inventory. And so when you bring in your stuff, it’s like a whole lesson for me.

Tom Heath
I’m trying to learn because you bring in the Latin. Luckily, you give me like it’s the one with the blue and red on the wings so I can track it down. But I’m looking at these two and, and so sometimes I have to like, look them up online to figure out which exactly one is it. And I’m just amazed at the, the symmetry and similar and similarities between them.

Tom Heath
But also even in that case, once you really start to look at it, they’re so different, they might look the same. And in one respect, but then as soon as you kind of dive into it, the patterns are different or the the placement of the colors of the circles, you know, they’re all obviously they’re all independent and unique, but I don’t know.

Courtney Christie
That there’s yeah, there’s so much diversity and in not just insects and vertebrates and I mean just laps alone, which are moths and butterflies, there’s I think 800,000 species. And of those it’s like.

Tom Heath
Some more stickers to make.

Courtney Christie
I want to say there’s like 90% of those are actually moths. And like a very small fraction is butterflies. But moths are mostly nocturnal. So we don’t see them as often and, and. Yeah. And something else that has been one of my goals with my bug art is, to kind of make more niche things that are hard like that aren’t found anywhere else.

Courtney Christie
Like there’s so many bugs, you know, and you’re not going to find certain things anywhere. So when people give me weird requests, like, I love making those and, yeah, I want to make the things that you can’t find anywhere else just to support the people that are studying and.

Tom Heath
And what you’re producing in your stickers. Those are those like Arizona or those regionally specific, or do you? Because I know you just you came across these like traveled to Australia recently.

Courtney Christie

Tom Heath
To study bugs.

Courtney Christie
That was just like a for fun. Her big trip to find reptiles and. Okay. Yeah it was a little early and they’re like equivalent of monsoon. So the bug activity wasn’t amazing. Was pretty cool though. There was some cool bugs and a lot of really cool reptiles. But, most of the art I do is local, or at least southern Arizona, Sonoran desert based, I’d say like.

Tom Heath
It’s.

Courtney Christie
Like 80 to 90% is local. Because, yeah, the Sonoran Desert is a hot spot. We’re right next to the border, Mexico. A lot of stuff comes up. The habitats are quite a bit different. Plus we have all the Sky islands. So we have so much diversity and even just reptiles. We have over 50 lizard species just in Arizona.

Courtney Christie
We have over 50 snake species just in Arizona. And, yeah, a lot of people come here, I think behind Florida or like the second, maybe the third most biodiverse place in the US. Wow. And we have tons of plants. And.

Tom Heath
Specifically like southern Arizona.

Courtney Christie
I mean, yeah, the southern part is more, but all of Arizona. But yeah, especially our, our region, we just have so many really cool invertebrates, so many cool reptiles. And this is where people come to to find reptiles too. It’s a really cool spot. Maya. Home of the Hilo monster. Yeah. Which, yeah. Awesome lizards. And yeah, we’re really lucky.

Courtney Christie
We have a lot, a lot of diversity here.

Tom Heath
We also have a lot of sorrows. And there’s one there’s like you have a favorite. So. Don’t you like the the a couple noticed. Yeah a couple of years. It’s got a few arms coming up

Courtney Christie
Yeah. So that sorrow is right outside the building at my work. Okay. So every morning when I drive in, I get a nice sunrise, and then I, like, get that in the foreground. And I actually turned one of my paintings into a sticker, which is something I said I wasn’t going to do, at least for my animal paintings.

Courtney Christie
But my best friend encouraged to do this moro painting into a sticker.

Tom Heath
Or a sun.

Courtney Christie
Yeah, yeah. And it’s a really cool little holographic sticker. But every time I finish a sticker, one of my goals is to take it full circle and get it like, get a picture of the sticker next to the real thing. So for the bugs and the reptiles and stuff, I have to, like, wait till the season comes around again and do that.

Courtney Christie
But for this where I was really excited to do this, get a picture of that, sunset next to the real thing. And I was thinking of this the next day at work that I was going to do it. There had been like, crazy rain and wind the night before, and one of the arms broke off.

Tom Heath
Oh no.

Courtney Christie
So now it’s not the same sorrow. It just has two arms instead of three or like the day, the day I was going to do it. Yeah, that’s the world, you know, it’s probably 80 years old or something.

Tom Heath
I was going to say you captured it at the exact right moment, and it’s, that lives in perpetuity. Through the reproductions and the stickers the original has sold.

Courtney Christie
So it’s true.

Tom Heath
That’s no longer in the gallery, but, the stickers are really fun, and, we we I think we sell a lot of those. The holographic nature of them really catches the eye. The way the light, shines off of you and some of your artwork. It’s sort of like a combination. So you got some acrylic work of, like, an owl and a jaguar, I believe.

Tom Heath
And when we have those in the gallery, people thinking at first glance, their photographs like these are intricate.

Courtney Christie

Tom Heath
How long? Like how much? How long does something like that takes?

Courtney Christie
Very long time. Okay, good, good. Yeah. And that’s why, like, my painting has sort of been on pause for now. I wouldn’t say continuously for years, but I do painting projects like here and there, and then I don’t touch it for like 4 or 5 months because they’re so time consuming. So it’s like a sticker project, a draw from drawing to coloring to, like, sticker.

Courtney Christie
It’s like less than ten hours through the whole process. Most of the drawing part is like maybe about five, six hours. For those paintings, like my unamused, my great horned owl, that took somewhere around like 60 to 70 hours. And then my jaguar, which is muse. That one took, almost 100 hours. Oh my God, I would like log my hours and say, like what I was working on just for my curiosity.

Courtney Christie
But yeah, those take a really long time. And I’m. I’m still learning. Like, these are experimental. I’m trying to learn techniques and, I have some artists that really inspire me. There’s a Nick Snyder. He does tigers and lions mostly. He does other stuff too, but he’s like phenomenal. And they’re large scale, like, not quite as big as the wall, but they’re pretty big.

Courtney Christie
And I wanted to start doing really large. So each painting I do, I’m getting slightly bigger, and then.

Tom Heath
Run out of room because you got some big ones already.

Courtney Christie
Yeah. Another artist, Carla Grace. She’s. She lives in Australia. She’s actually South African, and she does a lot of mammals, but she also does really, really detailed, mostly mammals, but she does all kinds of, like, she does occasional birds and sometimes reptiles, but mostly mammals. And she is just phenomenal. Those two are like my biggest inspirations. And that’s if you look them up, you can see that’s what I where I’m trying to go with like learning techniques and stuff is just that, that level.

Courtney Christie
There’s so talented and.

Tom Heath
Well, I don’t think you’re you’re too far behind. I know there are people in the gallery that they will come in and they will look at your work and they’ll study your work, and I, I don’t think it’s going to be very long before people are reaching out to you as their inspiration, because you’re it’s it’s beautiful. It’s technically correct, but it’s, it’s also you’ve captured not just the, the, the realism of the animal.

Tom Heath
You’ve captured the beauty of it, and the insects and the moss and the butterflies, you’ve put them in positions and places in ways that they’re just. So this is extremely, flattering for them as well.

Courtney Christie
Thank you. Yeah, I try.

Tom Heath
I’m doing great as Courtney Christy can check out more on our website. Tucson gallery.com. A lot of the pieces that we talked about. So our sun, muse, unamused, which kind of funny that those are together.

Courtney Christie
That was intentional. Yeah, it was not. No.

Tom Heath
But those were the reproductions are available, and we still have, unamused. The great horned, the owl. We still have, in the gallery, the stickers, though I think that’s more they’ve got to come in to see those and we don’t really have we’ve got some reproductions online, but not stickers. I think those are something you need to come in to really check out.

Tom Heath
If you’re get your collection, you know, and if you’re.

Courtney Christie
Some of my.

Tom Heath
That’s perfect. Yeah. If you’re listening in the world.

Courtney Christie
It’s my.

Tom Heath
Paintings. Radio. She’s holding up her sticker holder, which also looks like a water bottle or something, but I love her.

Courtney Christie
Note that one.

Tom Heath
All of her critters.

Courtney Christie
Oh, my. Bugs. Yeah.

Tom Heath
Yes. Bugs and snakes. And then the Sahara sun. And so I really appreciate your time today. Yeah.

Courtney Christie
Thanks for having me.

Tom Heath
That was Courtney Christy, one of the artists in the Tucson gallery. And if you notice, we, I didn’t clip out all of the exit music from the Meet the Artist podcast. So you get some nice, cool little love vibes in there as well. I want to thank Courtney for her time coming into the studio. And you can check out, all of the Meet the Artists, podcast if you want to hear all of them there on, the Tucson Gallery website, Tucson gallery.com.

Tom Heath
Well, you’re listening to the Life Along the Street car radio show and sometimes podcast, and you’re listening on Downtown Radio 99.1 FM, streaming on downtown radio.org.

James Portis
Support for downtown radio is provided by the Tucson Gallery, located in downtown Tucson. Instead of the proper shops attended East Congress Street. The Tucson Gallery offers original work, reproductions, and merchandise from Tucson artists like Joe Padgett, Jessica Gonzalez, Ignacio Garcia, and many more. For information about other artists, including when they open up at the gallery, head to the Tucson gallery.com or find them on Instagram and Facebook as Tucson Gallery.

Tom Heath
Well, before you go, bye bye. Stay tuned for words and work with Ted Brazil as he interviews writers and others from the labor movement. And then at noon, it’ll be, Ty Logan with Heavy Mental. And then we’ll get back into some music. In the afternoon. If you’re wondering what’s coming up on Life-Long streetcar, we got some great guests.

Tom Heath
We always have great guests, but we’ve got even more great guests coming your way. Next week we have, Stephen Paul, co-founder of Hamilton Distilleries. And if that doesn’t ring a bell, then maybe the, the brand that they create whiskey Dale Bosque does. He’ll be in, to chat about their the kind of how they came to be a very interesting backstory on how they got from where they were to, this really incredible, creation of Whiskey Del Bosque.

Tom Heath
They’re not quite in the, the urban core. They’re up there, distilleries up near Grant road. But this is one of our road trip series. We’d like to do road trips every now and then and leave the urban core. And we thought, we’ll go that way for a little whiskey, del Bosque. And if you’re looking for something to, for us to cover, we would love to hear from you.

Tom Heath
If you’re involved with something, if you’ve got a passion, you’re listening to this, you know, really hyperlocal show. So you’re probably in tune with Tucson. We can reach us. Contact at life along the Street car.org. You can connect with us on Facebook and Instagram. If you’ve got a cool account or you know somebody that does, please tag us, because we would love to share things that are being done by others that highlight the wonderful things, throughout the, really the all of Tucson, but especially in our urban core.

Tom Heath
But yeah, just let us know. We, we’re big on the collaboration. It’s it’s really a key component of having a great, great dialog. And and don’t forget to head over to Downtown Radio Talk to check out the entire lineup of deejays and shows throughout the week. You’re gonna find something that you like. And I hope you, hope you get a chance to to explore the musical, talents of all of our of our deejays as well.

Tom Heath
James, for us is our executive producer. Amanda Maltose is our associate producer, and I am Tom Heath, your host. Each week, our opening music is from Ryan Hood. And we’re going to close today with some music from Jesse Wells from 2024. This song is appropriately called Bugs. Have a great week and tune in next Sunday for more life along the street.