Nevada: The Photography of Cliff Segerblom at The Springs Preserve

Thursday, June 10 @ 6:00 pm
The Springs Preserve

The Contemporary Arts Center is pleased to announce a special invitation to the Springs Preserve on Thursday, June 10th. Join Springs Preserve Curator Mike Spiewak as he leads a tour of the current exhibit "Nevada: The Photography of Cliff Segerblom" in the Big Springs Gallery on June 10th. The tour will start at 6:00 PM and be followed by the guest lecturer Kirsten Swenson's "Transitional Landscapes: Photographing the New West". Swenson, an Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art at UNLV, will speak on the role of photography in documenting land use in the American west in the 20th century. Dr. Swenson will place Segerblom's photographs within the broader context of regional landscape photography of the period. The tour and lecture are free and open to the public on a first come first serve basis. Pre-registration is appreciated but not required.
Registering is easy by clicking here. Or R.S.V.P. to the CAC gallery at 382-3886.

Image: Cliff Segerblom, Hoover Dam Needle Test 1941

Best of Las Vegas Weekly

Congratulations to John Bissonette, Stephen Hendee, and Trifecta Gallery for being named (respectively) Best Artist (Up and Coming), Best Artist (Established), and Best Art Gallery. The entire article is here.

Erin Stellmon at CAC

Erin Stellmon's exhibition Reign of Glass is on view at CAC from June 3 through July 24. An interview with the artist is upcoming! Check back soon!

Erin's exhibition will feature a collaborative drawing project entitled If you lived here you'd be home by now. Sales of these works (we'll hopefully have a list soon) will benefit CAC programming.

Image: Boardwalk Hotel and Casino, site of MGM Mirage's CityCenter.

Tim Hawkinson @ Blum & Poe

This exhibition is amazing. Thank you Blum & Poe, thank you.

In their press release they write,

Tim Hawkinson’s practice is known for its sprawling, surrealistic self-portraiture in which the body, through intense introspection, becomes an alien landscape open to radical redefinition and transformation. This artistic agenda is mirrored materially by Hawkinson’s use of familiar and ubiquitous consumer packaging and household objects in highly unconventional ways. The new work continues these refrains, while also exploring more pointedly, temporality, mortality, and the cyclic.

Hawkinson works in a wide array of media involving sculpture, painting, photography, and installation. The exhibition reflects this range, with such pieces as Orrery, a towering eight-foot tall sculpture of a woman at a spinning wheel atop a platform of rotating concentric circle tire treads. This piece looks to mechanical models used to illustrate the motions of the planets and their moons in our solar system. A sculptural collage of water bottles, plastic shopping bags, recouped hardware, and odds and ends comprise the woman’s head, hands, eyes, ears, and spindle; every part of the piece is interconnected and eternally spinning. Even the pattern of her dress creates the illusion of motion with its “Rotating Snakes” pattern designed by Kitaoka Akiyoshi. Wheels upon wheels, this hyperkinetic sculpture resembles a Whirling Dervish, a hypnotic mystical dancer forever circling and cycling between the material world and the cosmic.

Image: Tim Hawkinson, Orrery, 2010.

Last Minute Horror

Thursday, May 20 @ 9:00pm
The Huntridge Tavern
B Horror Movie Night at the Huntridge Tavern

Art Intitute of Las Vegas Call to Artists

1st Annual Juried Art Exhibit at The Art Institute of Las Vegas

The Art Institute of Las Vegas announces a call to entries for its first Juried Show to be hung in the Main Gallery. Juried by a panel of three instructors. Subject matter is open. All contest finalists will be shown. There is a strong possibility of this becoming a Traveling Show to be exhibited at several of our Art Institutes throughout the country.

Enter by submitting JPGs of your original work on a CD. Entry fee is $5 per piece. Maximum 5 pieces. Medium: Photography, Drawing, Animation, Web Design, Graphic Design, Fashion Design.

Deadline: July 16, 2010. Questions? Please contact Gabi Etenberg at gabisweb@gmail.com or getenberg@aii.edu

East Side Projects

Ultimately
by Wes Fanelli and Nico Holmes-Gull
May 15th-June 4th, In the front window project space at CAC

"He tried to spit out the truth;
Dry mouthed at first,
He drooled and slobbered in the end;
Truth dribbling down his chin."
-from Ernest Hemingway's Eighty-Eight Poems

The closet is a common utility- the most private and secluded section in a bedroom whose primary function is to store all that will be displayed publicly. In closets, we store our most public behind closed doors. Ultimately juxtaposes Hemingway's text with an image of a glory hole, lovingly framed and displayed on a bedside table. Ten pairs of shoes are neatly organized along the bottom, illustrating the functional nature of the closet while recalling cues for bathroom cruising. Each pair of shoes represents an anti-gay activist that has been caught in the act of homosexual conduct. As queer individuals choose to either express their private lives or instead subscribe to an opposing persona, their lives become just as mysterious as the closet itself. This installation is meant to provoke thought not only within one's personal life, but also within a critically important political context.

Nico Holmes-Gull is an artist living and working in his native Las Vegas, Nevada. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2010 and hopes to continue to make work that dissects the costume and ornament of an engendered society.
Wes Fanelli received his Bachelor of Arts in Studio Arts from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2006 and remains very active in the Las Vegas arts community. He continues to make work exploring the intentions behind perceived masculine behavior, and recently received an honorable mention in the CAC's 21st Annual Juried Show.

Image: Wes Fanelli and Nico Holmes-Gull, found image

Nachleben at Goethe Institut, NYC

So why a posting about New York on a blog dedicated to promoting arts and culture in Las Vegas?

Good question. Information about this exhibition and its linked programming just came to me in an email and while it's doubtful many of us will make it next week for the lectures and screening, it seems like a good opportunity to reach out towards New York, again. The BFA class at UNLV made the sojourn a few months ago to see the Whitney Biennial (among other things) which, coincidentally had the catalog designed by Project Projects--the firm that designed the publication (above) which accompanies Nachleben. This fact alone is probably enough to justify the inclusion of this out-of-town project on this local blog.

Beyond this, we're going to be traveling a bunch over the next few months so field research will likely be playing a much larger role in the scope of the blog anyway. What happens in New York happens in Vegas? What stays in New York happens in Vegas? What happens where? Staying where?

“Nachleben” is an exhibition organized by Fionn Meade and Lucy Raven at the Goethe-Institut's Wyoming Building in New York’s East Village. Project Projects produced a newsprint publication featuring essays and images related to the show’s exploration of German art historian Aby Warburg's concept of “Nachleben” (afterlife or survival) in the setting of contemporary art.

Following upon three great programs with artists John Miller, Peggy Ahwesh, and a screening of Stan VanDerBeek films hosted by Sara VanDerBeek, Nachleben continues with three programs, including programs with David Levi Strauss and Matthew Buckingham this week. More on the exhibition and contributing artists at the following link http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/ney/en5968014v.htm

A free newsprint exhibition publication is also available at the exhibition http://projectprojects.com/nachleben-publication/?view=list

And the exhibition is reviewed on Artforum.com at http://www.artforum.com/?pn=picks&section=nyc#picks25609

Wednesday, May 19, 7pm – David Levi Strauss lecture: Breakdown in the Gray Room: Reconsidering the Images from Abu Ghraib

Thursday, May 20, 7pm – Matthew Buckingham revisits his installation and book project Improbable Horse

Tuesday, May 25, 7pm – Screening of Harun Farocki's The Taste of Life (1979) and Berlin Flash Frames (2010), a new work by William E. Jones, followed by a discussion with Jones.

The Summer Reader, Part II (Used)

Besides listing online reading for the summer, it seems prescient to note that Vegas also has an amazing used bookstore community. In fact, the Booksellers of Southern Nevada have a collective website, listing all their contact information and resources for binding, archiving, and restoration. And Amber Unicorn is an amazing name for a store of any kind, much less an incredible bookshop that carries amazing titles.

Images: The shelves at Book Magician.

The Summer Reader, Part I

With the summer upon us here in the desert, it seems like a perfect time to catch up on all that reading we've been meaning to do, but just haven't got a chance to dig into. And, with the launch of the iPad (they claim it as "a magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price") and all the excitement surrounding Kindle, we've decided to put together a reading list of all online resources (although most can be downloaded as PDF files so you can still make those old school xerox packets for your friends). So, in no particular order, here's our first round:

Seth Price, Dispersion
Wolfgang Tillmans, Wako Book 4
Ed Greene (illustrations by Jeff Sims), Peony Trivet
Mark Amerika, Sexual Blood
Cabinet Magazine
UbuWeb
Dexter Sinister/The Serving Library, Right to Burn, Message on a Bottle

If you haven't searched around UbuWeb yet, here's your chance. It's a treasure trove of conceptual writing, concrete poetry, essays, magazines, mp3, and well, you'll see. We'll select a few great things and profile them soon, but in the meantime just start with the Kota Ezawa videos that were recently uploaded. Kota was a Visiting Artist at UNLV this past semester and his project The Simpson Verdict (2002) has been shown internationally.

Images (from top) No House Limit, from an installation of Las Vegas fiction at the UNLV Lied Library; Seth Price, Spoonfeeding; Kota Ezawa, The Simpson Verdict (2002)

Drawing classes at Arts Factory

Andrea Perkins, an active art teacher at the Meadows School, is offering a drawing class for middle school and high school students over the summer at the Arts Factory in Studio 215. The program will begin Monday June 7th. Andrea plans to hold the classes on Monday and Wed evenings from 5:00 - 8:00 in 2 sections: ages 10 - 14 5:00pm - 6:30pm and ages 15 - 19 6:30 - 8:00pm. All materials including paper, charcoal, pencils and easels etc will be supplied along with instruction for a modest fee. At the end of the summer Andrea is planning a student exhibition to show the progress and talents of her students. (If the program is popular and demand sustained she will continue the program after the school year begins). Details about the program can be found on her website: www.u-draw.com

Image: Studio 215, from the website.

Live Music Series at Brett Wesley Gallery

Stop by Brett Wesley Gallery for some Gypsy Jazz and Sangria on the patio. Join us Thursday May 20th for 7-8:30 and celebrate the sounds of the amazing group Hot Club of Las Vegas. Tickets are $10, smart casual attire, seating is limited. The Live Music Series features a new group every third Thursday of the month. So stop in, unwind, and enjoy some exceptional music in the casual, artistic surrounding of Brett Wesley Gallery.

Ayako Ono at Caramel

CineKink

CineKink
The New York-based Cinekink Film Festival kicks off its national tour in Vegas this week, with a gala event at the Erotic Heritage Museum on Thursday evening and screenings at the Onyx Theater on Friday and Saturday. The line-up includes documentaries, dramas, shorts, erotica, and a showcase featuring some of the best talent in adult entertainment. Tickets for individual screenings and day passes are available. You can also purchase an “all access” pass, which includes the opening gala, for $50 ($40 for students).

Complete program details can be found here:
http://cinekink.com/tour/vegas/

Inside the Mirage

It's rare that you get to see inside (or through) the massive signage that dominates Las Vegas Blvd.

Arts Awareness Luncheon

Wednesday, May 12, 2010 @ 11:30 Reception 12:00 Lunch
Gold Coast Hotel – Nevada Ballroom Salon A&B
Arts Awareness Luncheon

Speaker: Tony Gladney, Vice President
National Diversity Relations
Harrah’s Entertainment
Entertainment provided by: The Teddy Davis Jr. Group
Open Microphone: Share your next arts event or good news
Nevada Arts Advocates is a non profit corporation 501 (c) (3) established to promote cultural arts as a fundamental part of the quality of life in Nevada. Legislators are guests of NAA, Candidates will be introduced, Doors Open 11:30. Share your cultural news. Bring flyers or materials to display on a resource table.
Reservations required.
$30.00 per person if paid by May 7, 2010/$35.00 per person if paid after May 7, 2010. Credit card payments contact Debra Tarantino, Treasurer at 702. 461-1124 Send payment to Nevada Arts Advocates, 7555 Spanish Bay Drive, Las Vegas, Nevada 89113 Fax: 702/362-9252 e-mail: nvartsadvocates@earthlink.net

Nevada Arts Advocates
7555 Spanish Bay Drive
Las Vegas, Nevada 89113
Tel. 702/362-8885
Fax: 702/362-9252

PROW, again

We're going to be doing more interviews and passing the mic to guest bloggers soon, but in the meantime I'm going to be intermittently posting projects inspired by or responding to conversations I've been having with friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. As example, here's a link to a conversation with PROW (Peter Rostovsky and Olav Westphalen) that came up in a recent conversation with John Bissonette. They recently composed two concurrent exhibitions that functioned in tandem (or response, or contradiction) for Art in General and Sara Meltzer Gallery.

Image: PROW, Obstacle Course (detail), 2009-2010

Blog on Blog on Mob

Thanks to Wendy Kveck for sending along this posting from Real Clear Arts about Las Vegas' changing commitment to the arts, museums, and (Mob) culture. Check out our new Blogroll!

Broad Acres

Broad Acres Swap Meet is Las Vegas' answer to, well, everything. If you haven't been, go. As they suggest on their website, "If you're looking for it, we've probably got it!".

In addition to their six restaurants, they also claim four beer stands, three food stands, three soda/water stands, four chicharron stands, and three lemonade stands. Visit soon and write to us here at the blog to let us know what you've purchased, seen, or done there. We're putting together a list!