Monday, March 29, 2010

AJS

Juried by Jeff Gauntt
Opening Reception Wednesday March 31st, 6-9
Juror's Remarks, Awards Ceremony at 7
Preview Thursday 6-9
First Friday 6-10
For a list of participating artists, please visit www.lasvegascac.org

Stay tuned to CACBlog for an upcoming interview with Jeff Gauntt and John Bissonette. Soon!

Zabriskie Point

Nothing says hot summer in the desert like Michaelangelo Antonioni's 1970 film Zabriskie Point. As the trailer states,
Zabriskie Point, a remote and barren blister of land in the American desert as isolated as the face of the moon. Zabriskie Point, where a boy and a girl...meet...and touch...and blow their minds!


Zabriskie Point is part of Death Valley National Park, and the film is available through the Las Vegas-Clark County Library.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

UNLV SoA Poverty Project

Students from The UNLV School of Architecture are engaged in a collaborative project with The University of Kentucky. From their website:

We are a group of 4th year students at UNLV that are working to develop a prototypical neighborhood and housing unit that supports, rather than erodes, the development of wealth and upward mobility. Our studio is collaborating with an architecture studio at the University of Kentucky to compare the similarities and differences between affordable housing in the two very different environments.

Image: courtesy SoA project site.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Art Handling, Vegas & New York



Over the past several months, Shannon Eakins has been programming a series of workshops for the Sculpture Department at UNLV that are "designed to introduce students to the tools and basic techniques of preparatory art practices". Based in the woodshop (and woodworking) these have included making french cleats and pedestals, power tool operation and techniques, and this morning, a demonstration on the fabrication of a wooden shipping crate for art. Today's workshop was conducted by JW Caldwell, artist and art handler (his blog is here). His demonstration seems especially timely and prescient in this economic (and artistic) climate, as noted in this recent article in The New York Times.

While the workshops are currently open only to UNLV students, faculty, and staff, you can follow their exploits and see image albums by following Sculpty Unlv on facebook.

Top image: JW Caldwell, working his magic. Bottom: Art Handling Olympics, image courtesy NY Times.

Sex and Space Use






Walking through the Juanita Greer White Life Sciences Building (WHI) on the UNLV campus yesterday, I ran across this flier (reproduced here from an image I took with my phone). In the interest of communicating art-related events in Vegas, it seems like a lecture with the title Sex and Space Use in the Outskirts of Sin City: A Rattlesnake's Perspective pretty much fits the bill. Xavier Glaudas is a PhD candidate at UNLV. The images in the flier immediately reminded me of the following images by Ralph Gibson from his series Deja-Vu (1972, top) and Days at Sea (1974, bottom). The last two images are courtesy of Glaudas' Crotalus Mitchellii webpage.

Opportunities

OPEN CALL FOR ARTISTS
*Music *Spoken Word *Poetry *Performance Art * Painting *Photography *Sculpture * Film *Monologues *Dance *Short Plays * and More…

Bamboo Bridges presents
Making Waves: A Gathering of Asian Pacific American Voices Against Gendered Violence

Submission deadline: April 10, 2010
Exhibition May 22, 2010
(Early Show 5:30pm & Late Show 8:00pm)
Liberace Museum, Cabaret Showroom
1775 East Tropicana Avenue
For submission requirements and more information, please contact:
making.waves.may22@gmail.com

*****
The Contemporary Arts Center is now accepting submissions of work for East Side Projects, for monthly two-week projects in the gallery’s front window space facing Charleston Boulevard. This is an ongoing call open to all contemporary artists working in any media. Site-specific work for the space is also encouraged (please see link to window specs). Artists must be current CAC members (defined as dues-paying members starting at the $25 level) in order to be eligible for consideration. We encourage artists to visit the gallery to see the space. Please note that the window receives a generous dose of Las Vegas sunshine.

Our first call honors Las Vegas Pride 2010 and will coincide with Pride events scheduled for downtown. The mission of Pride is to ".......to educate the community by invoking, promoting, 
and celebrating lesbian/gay/bisexual/
transgender pride." We are seeking work informed by a queer aesthetic that explores identity, gender and sexuality and supports the Pride mission statement. The following events are scheduled for April: Artrageous Vegas Art Extravaganza, AFAN’s AIDS WALK Las Vegas, April 25th. Annual Pride Night Parade is April 30th, Pride 2010 Festival May 1st

Submissions must include a proposal, current CV/resume, artist bio/statement, disc with JPG images of original artwork (1 MB or less please) and image reference sheet (including artist, title, media, dimensions, and filename). Send SASE for return. Mail or drop off your submissions labeled “East Side Projects, Pride” to The CAC 107 E. Charleston, Suite 120, Las Vegas NV 89104. Or email submissions with the subject heading “East Side Projects, Pride” to caclasvegas@gmail.com

Deadline: submissions for Las Vegas Pride must be received at the CAC by April 9th; selected artist(s) notified by April 12th. Opens Friday, April 23rd.

To be considered in the open, ongoing call for future East Side projects, follow the above steps and label your submissions simply, “East Side Projects.” Questions? Contact the gallery at info@lasvegascac.org or call 702-382-3886.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Autumn Gem at Marjorie Barrick Museum

Autumn Gem: A Documentary on China's First Feminist
A free screening of new documentary film Autumn Gem and Q&A session with filmmakers Rae Chang and Adam Tow.

Tuesday, March 23, 5:30-7:30 p.m. Marjorie Barrick Museum Auditorium

Autumn Gem explores the extraordinary life of the Chinese revolutionary heroine Qiu Jin (1875-1907). An accomplished writer, women's rights advocate, and leader of a revolutionary army, Qiu Jin boldly challenged traditional gender roles and demanded equal rights and opportunities for women. Compared to a "Chinese Joan of Arc," she emerged as a national heroine who redefined what it meant to be a woman in early 20th-century China.

The event is cosponsored by Asian Film and Drama Club, Asian Studies Program, Department of Foreign Languages, and US-China Peoples Friendship Association. For more information about the film, please visit http://autumn-gem.com.

As this occurred last night, I'm sad about posting it now (although I just found out about it). We'll definitely keep you posted on upcoming film events at the Barrick Museum.

Gaming Research Colloquium

March Gaming Research Fellow Pascale Nedelec delivers a Gaming Research Colloquium talk entitled "Urban Dynamics in the Las Vegas Valley: Casinos and Sprawl" on Thursday, March 25, at 12:15 p.m. The talk is being held in UNLV Special Collections' Reading Room on the third floor of Lied Library.

Nedelec, a doctoral candidate at the University of Lyon 2 in Lyon, France, is studying the role of neighborhood casinos in the development of Las Vegas. While the casino industry has played an obvious role in the development of Las Vegas, no systematic study has evaluated the exact nature of urban growth and the rise of neighborhood casinos. This presentation examines whether the neighborhood casinos are a driving force for urban sprawl, or if they are a local outgrowth of residential developments and master-planned communities. The event is free and open to the public. Those interested in the history, geography, and sociology of Las Vegas and casinos are encouraged to attend.

More information can be found here: http://gaming.unlv.edu

Contact: David G. Schwartz, Email: dgs@unlv.nevada.edu, Phone: 702-895-2242

Ballet Mecanique at UNLV

UNLV College of Fine Arts presents George Antiel's Ballet Mecanique

Two performances at the Black Box Theatre:

Thursday, March 25, 7:30 p.m. (doors open at 7 p.m.)
Friday, March 26, 7:30 p.m. (doors open at 7 p.m.)

Tickets: $10 and $8, available from the UNLV PAC box office.

This concert is a College of Fine Arts collaboration between the departments of dance, theatre (lighting design), and music (piano and percussion). Each area will be featured in the first half of the program with the second half dedicated to George Antiel's great work: Ballet Mecanique.

Ballet Mecanique is George Antheil's most famous--or notorious--piece and was originally written in 1924 to accompany a Dadaist film of the same name. The music was premiered by in Paris in 1926 with the concert ending in a riot. In 1953, Antheil wrote a shortened (and much tamer) version for four pianos, four xylophones, two electric bells, two propellers, timpani, glockenspiel, and other percussion. This version of Ballet Mecanique is a highly rhythmic, often brutalistic piece combining, among other elements, sounds of the industrial age, atonal music, and jazz.

Antheil's description of this work is "...that the piece leans toward the barbaric and mystic splendor of modern civilization; mathematics of the universe... a mechanical scientific civilization, and the 'time-space' principle."

Contact: Timothy Jones, timothy.jones@unlv.edu

Phone: 702-895-1066

Image: Film still from Fernand Leger's Ballet Mecanique (1924).

Brent Sommerhauser at Brett Wesley


Brent Sommerhauser's exhibition Unlikely Events opens April 1 from 6-9 pm at Brett Wesley Gallery. Works are on view through April 30.

Study for An End of the World No. 2, Part II




Before you read this entry, check out the post for Part 1 a little farther back on the blog.

The location of Jean Dry Lake Bed as a working space for Jean Tinguely's project was chosen for any number of reasons; Emily Scott posited that the site potentially functioned (for Tinguely) as an analogue for Yucca Flats, the site of numerous nuclear tests in the 1950s. As part of their research methodology and preparation for the project (and maybe some strange, misguided date night), would Jean and Niki have seen The Beast of Yucca Flats? I like to hope so. Tor Johnson cast as a defecting Russian scientist transformed into a monster by a nuclear explosion serving as inspiration for a self-destructive kinetic sculptural installation realized in the desert and then detonated? Perhaps.

Regardless, Jean Dry Lake Bed has been the location for numerous music videos, temporary projects, and while we were there, some awesome dirt biking. It was also the location of Michael Heizer's Rift 1, the first of his Nine Nevada Depressions, executed in 1968. More on Heizer soon.

Image: (top) stills from The Beast of Yucca Flats; (bottom) Michael Heizer, Rift 1 (1968), photo courtesy Jean-Pierre Hebert.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Tomorrow People & Neon Lit

Kristen Peterson reviews Tomorrow People and Neon Lit, the UNLV MFA Creative Writing Series in this week's Las Vegas Weekly here.

Image: Installation view, CAC, works by Catherine Cruse and Justin Favela. Photo courtesy Kristen Peterson/Las Vegas Weekly.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Study for An End of the World No. 2










Emily Scott, a PhD candidate at UCLA, recently came to Las Vegas to lecture on Land Art at the Historic Fifth Street School. The topic of her lecture (and dissertation) was a work that Jean Tinguely developed during his time here in Las Vegas in 1962 entitled Study for An End of the World No. 2. I'll go a little deeper into the entire project soon, but here's an image (top) of Jean working in the desert and us returning to the same area 48 years later.

Okay, it's been a few days since I wrote that, so here's more of the story: Tinguely (accompanied by his wife, the sculptor Niki de St. Phalle) was invited by NBC to do a project in Las Vegas. Tinguely and his entourage spent their time in town gathering materials from the city landfill (closed in 1999 having reached capacity after forty years of operation, the site is located east off of Vegas Valley, past Boulder Highway), then were given space at The Flamingo to fabricate the work, which was subsequently transported to Jean Dry Lake to be detonated. More soon.

Top image: Jean Tinguely at Jean Dry Lake in March 1962, by Allan Grant, courtesy LIFE.
Bottom images: Las Vegas Landfill (looking towards LV), images of objects collected on site, and Jean Dry Lake Bed, March 2010.