What it’s actually like
Main Street was built on bronze and oil paint. Pavilion Fine Arts puts photography at the center. The gallery was founded by Jon Wendell, a fine art photographer whose work is about light, form and the overlooked moments in nature, and his images are printed and hung so that from across the room they read as paintings: canyon light, coastline, wildlife, abstracted water and stone. The collections range widely, from the Southwest and Route 66 to Alaska, the Oregon coast and the ocean, with black-and-white and urban series as well.
Around him the gallery shows a small, deliberately varied group of invited artists. Jenny Simon paints thickly textured oils of nature; Curtis Patchin paints and grinds metal into luminous color fields; Juston Daniels is a glassblower and teacher; Jenny Floravita makes colorful art and lighting; Rocco Pisto works in water-based abstraction; Bill Battaglia builds sculpture from discarded natural and man-made materials; and Chris Dellorco, a Los Angeles native who moved from Disney work and movie posters into portraiture and oils, has joined more recently. The mix gives the room a lighter, more local feel than the big dealers nearby.
It is also one of the more social rooms in the Main Street Arts District. Pavilion runs artist talks, flower-art workshops and charity evenings, and turns out for the themed ArtWalk nights. It shares its block with Altamira Fine Art and Bonner David Galleries, which makes this short stretch one of the best concentrations of contemporary work on the street.
What to buy
A Wendell photograph at full size. The landscapes are the reason the gallery exists. Limited editions are the collector’s choice; open editions are the accessible one.
A custom print. The gallery prints to size and works with interior designers, which makes it unusually practical for a specific wall.
Glass or metal. Daniels’s blown glass and Patchin’s painted metal are the most distinctive three-dimensional and surface work in the room, and a good counterpoint to the photographs.
Parking, timing and the practical stuff
The gallery is on the north side of Main Street between Goldwater Boulevard and Marshall Way. Street spaces on Main are scarce and short-term, especially on winter Thursdays; the free Civic Center garage off Drinkwater Boulevard is the dependable choice, about ten minutes on foot, and the public garage on the Fifth Avenue side near the canal is the alternative. The Old Town on foot note covers the walk and the Old Town guide covers the rest.
Pavilion keeps daytime hours Monday through Saturday, closes Sundays, and stays open until 9 p.m. on Thursdays for the ArtWalk. The themed Gold Palette ArtWalk nights, from Western Week in late January to July’s Summer Spectacular, are when the gallery usually hosts its artists in person. The events page on its website lists workshops and talks; they are small and fill up.
Eat while you’re there
Sel is a couple of doors east on the same side of Main and is the obvious dinner. Craft 64 at the west end of the street is the casual option, Sip Coffee & Beer House on Goldwater handles coffee, and Malee’s Thai Bistro a block east is the long-running lunch. The gallery has also placed Wendell’s work at the Canopy by Hilton Scottsdale Old Town, a short walk east.
How it got here
Main Street became Scottsdale’s gallery row in the late 1960s and has spent the decades since adding new kinds of art to its Western core. Contemporary painting arrived in force in the 2000s and contemporary Western in the 2010s. Pavilion Fine Arts, a photographer’s gallery, is a 2020s addition to that mix.
The gallery’s own calendar shows it established on Main Street by early 2024, when it hosted Wendell and the painter Curtis Patchin for the Western Week Gold Palette ArtWalk in February and joined the Native Spirit night later that month. Through 2024 and 2025 it built a steady program: small-works shows, live painting, a live art show series with talks by local artists, flower-art workshops and Summer Spectacular nights in July. In September 2025 it hosted a charity wine tasting for Arizona Golden Rescue.
Wendell’s work has travelled beyond the gallery. A 2025 exhibit filled the 6th Floor Gallery at Mayo Clinic in Phoenix with his photographs, and the gallery has placed his work in local businesses including the Canopy by Hilton in Old Town. The invited roster has grown too, from the glassblower Juston Daniels to the sculptor Bill Battaglia and the painter Chris Dellorco, with each arrival announced on the gallery’s news page.
What Pavilion adds to the district is a different entry point. On a street where many rooms ask you to decide how you feel about the West, this one asks how you feel about light. The Main Street Arts District guide covers the rest of the row.