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Pete Wells, NYTimes "Critic on the Road," dropped by Las Vegas to stray from The Strip. Every day, I would leave my hotel in the City Center complex for some other part of town, eat a couple of lunches followed by a dinner or two, then return to my hotel bed. I believe this makes me the first person in history who went to the Las Vegas Strip to sleep. His stops: Sweets Raku, Kabuto, Chada Thai & Wine, Carson Kitchen, Eat, Le Thai, and Honey Salt.
Matthew Couper "Ex-voto, The 23rd of November" 'Forevermore': Trifecta Gallery hosts a talk with "Forevermore" artist Su Limbert aThursday, August 14. at 6:30 p.m. "While "Forevermore" is loaded with symbolism, it is not always personal." Mingling time begins at 5-ish. Trifecta Facebook. I Previous PtD post on Su.
'2014 CSN Art & Art History Faculty Exhibition' opens August 15 and runs through September 26. Artist reception is August 29, 6 to 8 p.m. Arts4Nevada. Also on August 29 is 'Topic: Art as Document?' rebooting Critique and Conversation at UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum after a summer break. Held at 4 to 5 p.m. this "Art as Document" talk will cover "the function of text in art and how we can view these works as documents or consider them for their aesthetic value." Chat is lead by curator Emmanuel Ortega and artist Matthew Couper I UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum At Vegas Seven, Jenessa Kenway profiled Vast Space Projects for its third anniversary and notes how the warehouse gallery has given regional contemporary art a chance to look west . . . "and the West looks back." For three years, Vast Space Projects has acted like a dowsing rod, locating the buried artistic groundwater flowing between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. By keeping an eye on coastal talent, director Shannon McMackin has encouraged a visual dialogue between the two urban centers. Kenway then shifts into the warehouse gallery scene that allows monumental experimental art, and how it's shaping into a connections to the Los Angeles warehouse art scene. As the number of alternative warehouse spaces continues to grow, it becomes even more critical to watch the visual dialogue between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Since Las Vegas is already a playground for L.A., the growing art movement here can easily link in with that city’s larger scene. One could envision the industrial sectors of Henderson and Las Vegas housing entire galleries freshly transplanted from Los Angeles. Artists Rachel Stiff and Jason Adkins have already made the migration from L.A. to Las Vegas. Perhaps the lost “middle-class” art scene of L.A. will be found in Southern Nevada? The more that L.A. artists show works at Vast and other galleries around the Vegas Valley, the more tenable this concept appears. By aggressively intermixing the work of Nevada and California artists and by being plugged into L.A. art trends, Vast Space Projects is more than a simple divining rod—it is leading the charge. Back in May, when Vast Space Projects hosted MAS Attack, Las Vegas felt quite at home as an contemporary art center. With solid programming in Phoenix, Scottsdale, Albuquerque, and Santa Fe, the local art community may want to look east. Somehow, Las Vegas could be the junction for experimental and contemporary art in the Southwest.
Life and death are the only events with a purity of moment. Everything else is confirmation of culture and with rapid-fire verbal editing Robin Williams spun the values of pop and political references like Marcel Duchamp used everyday objects for readymades. “There is always some detail in any object that would attract you aesthetically. Meaning you find it beautiful or even ugly,” Duchamp once said. During the Tonight Show With Jay Leno, staged at the MGM Grand one week in 1995, Williams said Las Vegas was “the type of town that even Timothy Leary would go ‘It’s too much.’”
"There's a pyramid, there's a sphinx, there's a fairy castle," said Williams. "Its the type of town where you don't need medication" Tonight Show With Jay Leno: Robin Williams [11.13.95] In 2008, Doug Elfman, columnist for Review Journal, asked Williams if he put any thought into his stage wardrobe. “Very little compared to Cher. Those are museum pieces. I think she puts more thoughts into the wardrobes than the tattoos. ‘This Place For Rent’ is usually the last tattoo,” he said. I Review Journal John Katsilometes on the response from the Las Vegas' comedy enclave I Las Vegas Sun ADDED AUGUST 13: “This art is similar with the carpe diem discussion Robin Williams [as John Keating in the film of ‘Dead Poets Society’] had. These art pieces are living their day, seizing it, and then they disappear" - M. Özalp Birol, the general manager of foundation which runs İstanbul’s Pera Museum, the venue holding Turkey's first exhibition on street art. Today's Zaman Trifecta Gallery will close after a decade of being an arts hub, reports Kristen Peterson at Las Vegas Weekly. The gallery made its official announcement today. The Walshes, both in their 50s and relatively nomadic in their 25 years together, decided it was time to move on. They’re returning to Ireland, where they have property 20 miles west of Dublin and where they plan to build a large glass enclosure, which will house a small home and a garden. Peterson writes the closure will be "considered a great loss for the community" for the gallery that's also a gathering space for "talks and community meetings." Even Marty's simple programming of screening art documentaries was to give artists the chance to share ideas.
The final exhibition will be in January, Parade, the annual exhibit featuring works by Cirque du Soleil staff and crew. When I first arrived in Las Vegas, Trifecta was an early venue I visited (if not the first) and the Walsh duo gave me the sense there was a real art community here, beyond the paintings. At the time, I was doing a monthly report on the downtown Los Angeles Art Walk, and Marty offered me some desk space as a one night home for a lap-top if I ever wanted do the same thing for First Fridays. Then there was the time I walked in to say a quick hello and a Nevada Humanities think tank was being held, just talking art. I stayed for two hours. Last month I met up with Su Limbert when she dropped off work for her solo show and there was Melissa Peterson, Contemporary Arts Center president, chatting with Marty on the couch. Jerry Misko came downstairs to hang out for a short while. Then Los Angeles art critic and Coagula Art Journal publisher Mat Gleason wandered in because it's the place to go. That was just in 45 minutes . . . on a "off-day." And the person having the most fun with it was Marty. Maintaining an art community is about being there and keeping the doors open. |
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August 2015
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