Off the Strip 2010 Las Vegas New Genres Festival

October 14-16, 2010, city-wide

The Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) is pleased to present “Off The Strip 2010” a three-day new-genres festival October 14-16, 2010 that offers an alternative to the highly formulated entertainment and spectacle of the Strip. Artists from the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe have been selected to present work in Las Vegas in a format that invites the community to experience contemporary art and dialogue with participating local and international artists about their work. These artists will present challenging work addressing themes of consumption, visual spectacle, displays of sexuality, atomic testing, and Las Vegas as a global hub. For more information, schedules, and participating artists, please visit the Off the Strip website here.

Interview with Aaron Sheppard

Aaron Sheppard is on the brink of a solo exhibition opening October 30 at Western Project in Los Angeles. He recently took the time to discuss his new work, Las Vegas, and friendship.

CACBlog: Thanks for taking the time for this interview. I’ve been thinking about your work (and you) since before we moved to Vegas. The first time we met was at a party at Brian [Porray] and Kyla [Hansen]’s house over a year ago, and I knew who you were even before we shook hands (and maybe hugged?). My sense is that who you are—your body, your persona—has always been critically and psychologically linked to all of your production, whether performance, painting, or sculptural work. As example, in the recent interview you did with Scott Dickensheets for Desert Companion, you described your relationship with painting,

It’s using your body, your thoughts, using the things that come naturally to you—it comes through in movements, which are recorded in the marks you make on the canvas.

Without letting the cat out of the bag, for your upcoming exhibition at Western Project (LA), I know you're fabricating a monumental cast aluminum sculpture that has required you to learn casting techniques. Would you discuss how these new procedures--sequenced, particular, coded, new movements--have affected your relationship to your other process(es)? Which is to say, casting doesn't seem natural to anyone; it's hot, awkward, tense, and potentially dangerous. Different than painting, in so many ways.

Aaron: "Hot, awkward, tense, and potentially dangerous," as you refer to the casting process is not all dissimilar to the fashion I utilize other materials, which came as a surprising irony to me. I was intimidated by the material. My ignorance developed unfounded fear and expectation. Previous to this, and a few other smaller pieces I have been working on in metal, I had limited exposure to the material: a friend and I used to build lofts out of wood and metal for artists living in Brooklyn (Studs on Studs was our company name); and volunteered for The Wooster Group, crawling underneath and helping to make adjustments to their custom stage design (volunteer rather than paid, since while in undergrad at the Corcoran I refused to learn metal for my obsession with wood and clay).

"Knowing is half the battle." Once safety concerns are met and procedures are understood, all that's left is to create.

I have appreciated learning casting techniques taught me primarily by Eric Pawloski. This process requires a team of others to help in pouring and moving/lifting. I owe much to Diana Mateer, Shannon Eakins and Emily Kennerk as well for their assistance. Diana and Cliff (at WP) edged me on, insisting that I learn the process and create this piece ("Phal-Fem") myself rather that paying out to have it done, which I had been looking into. I am grateful to them all and for the experience and plan to do more with metal! (I have ideas for incorporating metal and wax into my paintings. Inspired by the material itself to actually paint with metal, as well as to create other castings.)

I provide an image for the original inspiration, etching by Franz Von Bayros, for "Phal-Fem"...

Responding to all of your diverse approaches collectively, would you discuss the discrete roles of your different ways of working? Which is to ask, really, in your remarks that I quote above you delineate painting as being a performative act, but it is an act that for you resolves itself on the canvas, as an object created with certain materials, methodologies (however expansive that field may be), and histories. I guess my question is, when you discuss movement associated with painting, do you find yourself thinking about painting in ways similar to, perhaps, Viennese Actionists or Gutai group? Does your work in that way of being a record of movement—of event—share a kinship with someone like Hermann Nitsch or Shiraga Kazuo? Kazuo’s Challenge to the Mud (1995) and Nitsch’s Aktions both comes to mind, for example.

It's a more spontaneous fluxus, happening attitude, I think. With a pinch of Suckdog or Nike, "Just do it" and perhaps a slight romantic simmering aroma of modern William S. Burroughs putting holes into doors and ex-wives heads. I wish my balls were as big as Mother Flawless Sabrina's otherwise it would be like that.

Various materials find their way in, and ways of slinging a paintbrush will change when I paint. I don't have one specific method for creating. I go with my gut. I'm a paint whisperer. Sometimes the paint won't talk, just like in life some conversations are meaningful, others are just small talk... I want to connect with the material and listen to its passion. This process involves performative full body acts at times. Just as performing live in front of an audience the performer is fueled by the energy of the house. That energy changes with the weather, sometimes quite literally.

I may buy material and stretch canvasses with distinct intention of what I plan to happen on the canvas, other times I don't, other times still that might change along the way. Ultimately, I must take time with each composition and be open. A lot of paintings get painted over like this, but layers and veiling is what I am interested in anyway. My focus for many years has been to focus on not overwhelming each composition. Unlike people, diptychs, triptychs and a series might develop. Cutting the arms and legs off people in this world may not be the best way to improve someone's attitude, but often that IS the case with painting.

I'm searching for creating profound moments that can be had between me, material, other viewers and the final work ("me" more as conduit". I think Philip Glass and David Byrne each said something about they're just being the thing that taps into the underground river source... that's it!)
[I sound hippy, oh well.]

At the end of that same interview, you’re quoted as saying that your hopes for your works is for them to potentially bridge your experience with the viewer. You state, “what is really the essence of your story and mine when they come together?”

I love the notion of coming together in/with/for the work. How are you envisioning the space at Western Project as an environment for this kind of engagement? Do you design the space to encourage different or perhaps discrete stories to exist simultaneously, or will your work offer a single spatial narrative that frames this meeting? In terms of time and the psychological space of your work—of the story and its essence—when is a good time to visit an exhibition of your works? Crowding into the opening? Alone on a weekday afternoon? Both? Neither?

This is not one installation piece. This body of work is intended to be no more or less effective at one time versus another. The gallery space has two sky lights so I must say that I am interested in seeing how the changing of light will have its affect on the works, especially considering there is an abundance of neon in this work as well as many sculptural elements. I do see connections between individual pieces mostly based upon formal elements, especially concerning light, in the work.

It's difficult to talk about this show hypothetically concerning how it is to be curated.

This is a bit of a departure from the other questions, but hopefully returns to and reframes some of the ideas about (your) persona that I approached earlier. Would you comment on how the community in Las Vegas has supported your work, and how you reflexively support them? The Desert Companion article does a great job of talking about the literary and visual references in your projects, but I guess what I’m curious about (and what it doesn’t address) is how much you are invested in a close-knit group here. You share a studio with Justin Favela, teach multiple classes at UNLV, attend every opening you can, and seem to know everyone. Actually, I’m pretty sure you do know everyone. Does—or can—any of this directly translate to how you approach your practice as an artist?

Community and street culture overwhelmed my senses in the metropolis. New York was a writhing parasitic beast with adornments, attachments, extremities coming out it's pooter... and cooter. This Ouroboros lived underground, in the shadows of fame and its main nutrient was the constant of reinvention. Its heart pulsated with the tracks of the subway and as we walked from car to car, stumbled from cab to cab, intro/extroverted understanding of our collective consciousness was had. We saw our present and future selves unite while ever riding upon the beast's scales; scales of such extreme judgment as to hit the back of the head of total acceptance. We supported one another with a quick cliff notes version of zen doing and being and instinct and passion. Spontaneity was the body's intake and exhale brain floss, our action/reaction, our rock n' roll beast's heroin.

Vegas has turned me into a blues singer and stripped me of the New York rock-stardom I arrived with because Las Vegas is death. I turned my back to the collective beast. It was left in the dust one Sunday morning and was slain by my works becoming individuals of their own. The sparks of performative happenings had seeded their own physicality. The non-physical became object. My children had birthed me as their pitiful parent. Sitting in sweat under a pile of neon flashes, I sing to my barefoot children and to fat mid-westerners in search of a win. I sing of memory of the beast, that their Momma is the beast that will one day return to us. In the faces of my children I see tears as love letters to energy of the past, pooled reflections addictions afflictions showing us all clutching to the present. They are veils of layers of iconic imagery, of color of slaps across her beastly ghost of a face...

"God's away on business..." Tom Waits won't walk the streets of Vegas as skulls panhandle like sluggish bugs under the feet of the wanna-be-gangster fortress while strippers on stage have forgotten how to cry. East on Freemont Street is where Coney Island pops up like urban daisies. Can't see the ocean but nobody ever goes in anyway... but you sure as shit hear its waves roaring, floating at this 15/95 hub and screams of ecstacy and horror flood over the sound of semis... cuz the boys and girls are riding machines called slot and tables called crap. Not to mention the smell...

A date once in a while can do wonders for a man.

You are right. I do know many people here in Vegas. (Not anything near to the socialite I was in NY.) I enjoy differences in people and NEED people with whom to bounce energy back and forth.

From 2006-2009, while engaged as grad student at UNLV, I felt I was VERY closely engaged with my school, city and larger global community. Along with David Sanchez, Justin Favela, Mary Margaret Stratton and many others, we created an event called 'Lustre Flux' where we engaged local talent on stage at The Thunderbird Lounge at The Aruba Hotel. Many of us performed and showed works at various venues around town including regular involvement at The CAC. We would regularly drink and sing karaoke at The Champagne Lounge, Stakeout each Friday, bowling at Gold Coast Mondays... We would sit each night beside our pool and philosophize underneath police helicopter spot lights, shooting stars and the occasional UFO. Big impacts upon local community can be noticed and felt here unlike other places, perhaps since The Strip dominates most all else. Community and team efforts were big with us at The Pawnee House, where Lake Newton, Dave Sanchez, Favy Favela, Brian Scanlan and others lived over the 3 years.

Much of that changed when Favy and I obtained our studio downtown during the summer of 2009. We focused on creating a working environment in which we could spend most/all our time creating. I have removed myself from my good pals. I have met some of my best life friends and loves in this town as well as some of the biggest pains in my ass. I still try to keep in touch. Favy is a great pal to have around as we work side by side regularly in the studio. He has turned into one of my best critics.

I feel extreme solitude now since graduating, a hermit in my cave. The Vegas death surrounds me and I'm thankful for most of it. It's romantic, eh? It is very hard to be your own boss but for the past year alone with my works, I know I'm giving nearly all of my attention to what I want to now. I am getting to a place now where I want to engage with people coming over to my studio more as I also want to frequent seeing my colleagues' work. A better balance.

This is a transient town. Similar to when I lived in Washington DC, people come and go. I feel Las Vegas is to Los Angeles what Washington DC was to New York in that respect. Every once in a while an artist will move to LA but ALL of us talk about moving there. Las Vegas defines "identity crisis," it is afraid of losing its talent. In being Vegas-centric, this town holds back and lacks support for its local artists, living up to the adage, "What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas".

In line with this, we’ve also spoken very deeply on numerous occasions about pedagogy and the crucial role of art education. I’ve never attended one of your classes, but my sense is that you are deeply committed to teaching and your role as an artist-educator. Building off the questions above, what attracts you to teaching? As a performative, experimental space it seems singular and as a shared learning community it seems—especially in Las Vegas—a vital resource and necessary forum for artistic exchange. How do you engage with or navigate these notions in the classroom?

Teaching undergraduate art holds a HUGE responsibility. I'm constantly assessing myself to ensure that I'm upholding my end of the bargain as educator.

On the other hand, I do not believe in fudging information. If I am not knowledgeable about a certain aspect or artistic practice I make sure that I acknowledge it to my students. I will do research and find specific information pertinent to particular individuals in my class as I see fitting. I have as much to learn from my students about art, and I am constantly, as they do from me. The main ideas in "The Ignorant Schoolmaster" by Jacques Ranciere apply to this thinking as it does in much of art-making itself. Teaching and obtaining tenure is hypocritical unless each educator is required to pass along their own areas of expertise by way of the school supporting each teacher as artist within their practice doing research first and foremost. Many programs do work like this.

Being employed by UNLV it's not politically correct for me to say, but I don't believe in liberal education. Not everybody needs to learn how to draw. I say, know what you want and learn by doing it. Do not get distracted by irrelevant requirements. School is overrated and public libraries are underrated. Intern with professionals in the field, perhaps. The UNLV curriculum is far too lenient and takes advantage of their students by not providing goals and direction for more direct success.

Last question. We've discussed it at least once, although it's come up in various conversations I've had with others about you, but you're well known for your cracker salad. Any chance you'd like to share the recipe with our readers?

You need a bowl. Crackers...and a plane ticket for my Mom or Grandma to fly out and make it for ya.

Aaron Sheppard in Desert Companion

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

Neon Lit at CAC

NeonLit Poetry and Fiction reading
Friday, September 24. Doors at 6:00, Reading at 7:00
Snacks and Cash Bar

First Friday Call to Artists

Dear First Friday Art Family,
Our last fundraiser at Firefly at the Plaza was so successful and so much fun we have scheduled a second one for early November. Once again, we will offer a low cost, all-inclusive ticket price (entry, food, and a signature cocktail created just for the event) so that people will be more inclined to participate in the fabulous live and silent auctions that have become the key draw of the event. I am writing to ask you to consider donating one of your artworks to the auctions and this time I have a way to sweeten the deal for you.

Whirlygig Inc. is providing a $1,000 cash prize from the proceeds of the fundraising event that will be awarded to the Juror's favorite piece in the live auction. The juror, Kenton Aemmerson, Cultural Action Coordinator for Cirque du Soleil, will select 20 pieces for the live auction from all submitted entries and will make his award from this group to be announced the evening of the event.

All other donated works will be included in the silent auction along with goods and services from local restaurants, shows, hotels, and businesses who believe strongly in First Friday's ongoing contribution to the cultural life of Downtown. If you would like to show your support for First Friday by donating one or more original artworks, please send a 72 dpi digital image of your piece(s) along with title, medium, size, date and value to info@firstfriday-lasvegas.org no later than September 30, 2010. Subject line should read: Artist Submission, First Friday fundraiser

Note: The Fall Fundraising event will continue to accept donations of artwork after September 30, but only works received as a digital image and with complete information will be eligible to compete for the Juror's Prize. Include contact information. If you have any questions, please email (best way to get in touch with me) this address or call 678-6278 between the hours of 11am-4pm Monday-Saturday.

Thank you again for your great and generous support of Downtown's premiere art event, and I look forward to seeing you next First Friday.

Sincerely,
Cindy Funkhouser, Whirlygig, Inc.
www.whirlygiglasvegas.org
www.firstfriday-lasvegas.org

Interview with Stephen Hendee

Perhaps appropriately given the context of the exhibition, I recently conducted an email interview (from questions written in a cabin in rural Michigan) with Stephen Hendee around his new exhibition at the Marjorie Barrick Museum, The Textiles of Dark Age Era North America: True Artifacts and Reproductions, From 2026-2280.

CACBlog: Thanks for taking the time for this interview. One of the things I was thinking about when I read the press release for the exhibition was that many of your works (both here and in past projects) have taken a strong interest in looking at and proposing civilization after the fact, posing—in no uncertain terms—what happens (or in this case, what happened) later. Similar perhaps to the approach that Ridley Scott adopts in Blade Runner or William Gibson in All Tomorrow’s Parties; transitioning out of the world we use now and leaving some things intact, but different; broken, rigged, temporary, shifting, unstable, homemade. Maybe improvising in a sense on what is already there. Like commenting in the role of a cultural historian on the eruption of Vesuvius before it erupts.

Stephen: I’d argue that these are not displays of lost civilizations as such, but present a process of continuity and reflection that is consistent with how society cyclically reformats and re-imagines the past. The museological historicization that occurs within cultural institutions is a mechanism optimistically used for public knowledge, but is more often used for a subtle propaganda that provides a variable but common ground. I assume that this convention will continue to occur as long as people signify the past. Recontextualizing our future within the past of the described subject in a believable manner requires conveying enough of what we can understand in order to outline the prospective narrative. Science fiction and speculative fiction, its semantically more socially relevant sibling, provide subtextual links to the everyday. As William Gibson spoke of science fiction: “The future is already here - it is just unevenly distributed.” This would then be a relative equation, the axis of time and content being placed anywhere along a converging line held by the viewer and their ability to understand enough of the elements to build a narrative.

Artifacts have the benefit of the history of the everyday woven into it’s story, whereas contemporary art doesn’t normally make the point of providing that information, often an artist is expecting the work speaks for itself as an optical, representational, or materially provocative subject. This exhibition simulates a representation of events that have never occurred, while as art, the utilitarian objects presented need the viewer to entertain that this fictional history is realistic enough to believe.

In such a scenario, your Monument to the Simulacrum would appear to be a remnant of this (our) civilization, but the sculpture effectively disrupts any straightforward temporal reading; it is here now as part of our world, yet somehow commenting on and physically diminishing it’s referent (the Mirage). Would you discuss the criteria and processes you use in choosing (or mining) specific objects—or in the case of the Barrick exhibition, specific language—to use as artifacts to a lost civilization, or rather, the notion of a lost civilization?

I did not generate a silver plate photo of revolutionaries waving flags from the top of the Monument to the Simulacrum or of Daniel Oshima parkouring off of it, though I was tempted, because there is a perch designed up there for such. The Monument to the Simulacrum is dedicated to the writings of the late philosopher Jean Baudrillard, which describe the hyper-real empowering the development of Las Vegas. The Monument sits on top of the Centennial Time Capsule for the City of Las Vegas to be opened in 2105. Its history is already on track, to suggest anything about what that reality holds could be taken as a political indictment of the current conditions. Will the city still be present in the absence of water sources, or as the core of the alternative energy industry, a robotics silicon valley, a high speed regional transportation hub, or end up as just another tourist trap ghost town? Any sustainable future here is based purely on speculation.

In the text for your work Storyteller’s Drops (2035-2250) you write,

Before the chaos, most of the world’s libraries and archives had been converted into digital formats. Paper books became antiquated and though cherished by many, the production and distribution of book editions had diminished to a trickle and completely ceased more than a decade before the disruption. It is obvious to us now during the event of 2026, we lost nearly the entirety of human historical record. It was no small tragedy that most print paper had already become uncommon, but compounding this problem the electricity used to run all other informational archives both public and personal disappeared almost overnight. Unaware of the scope of the unfolding events anything that could be burned for warmth or cooking was used for survival, including most of the remaining books and paper.

For as many who wandered looking simply for food and clean water there were as many in shock that their lives, location, and history had been erased. Individuals and then groups became recognized for their ability to remember and re-record the history of collective memory among the survivors. Traveling storytellers became an instrumental part of community life. The arrival of those reciting their personal and handed down memories was met with excitement and anticipation.

Many storytellers would travel with lightweight banners often painted with a list of authors or stories they were keen to perform. Sometimes these selections were an assortment of fragmentary works, with others the oeuvre of specific authors might be the focus, or single works of literature that would be recited over many nights. Central meeting places became a social hub of storytelling, music, shared communal knowledge, and history.

I’m reminded of an anecdote from my friend Steve Stelling. Late one afternoon we were discussing different ways we would potentially want to be buried after we had passed from this world. The conversation quickly took a savage, derailing Gonzo turn, with both of us trying to outmaneuver the other in pure weirdness. Steve offered that he would love to be buried in a pink bunny costume (of the quality and variety employed by college mascots) in the hopes of one day being exhumed and people assuming (wrongly, perhaps) that he had been the shaman of a powerful rabbit cult. I’m reminded of this with your banner that carries the phrase All Yesterday’s Parties, a clear transformation and temporal shift of the title of William Gibson’s book, as though it had already happened, and perhaps been forgotten, or misinterpreted. How vital is misinterpretation in your project and how do you see loss as being a potentially vital part of our future history?

For a period of time in the early 90’s I lived at the Phoenix Ironworks in West Oakland, a 100,000 sq ft warehouse, blocks from the port and last exit to the Bay Bridge. At least 20 people at one time lived there in two sometimes three-story houses made from scavenged materials. The Immortal Piano Company used the space for their business resulting in many finely tuned and restored pianos, but also those that could not be saved.

Piano mover Steve Heck used dead pianos to build giant walls and hallways separating spaces. Oddly enough when reading All Tomorrow’s Parties, the descriptions of the community on “The Bridge” read a lot like the construction and feel of the Ironworks. When looking at the images of the Ironworks it is not hard to imagine that the world has ended outside the walls of the vast yet miniature city.

The distortion created by context is powerful. To forget and then only partially remember things is common, as is the strength of completely forgetting something. In Baudrillard’s later essays he writes about the disappearance of meaning, as the internet never “forgets”, and this informational immortality creates a barrier to innovation and creative problem solving. The result of forgetting within the creative realm by definition allows “new” ideas to emerge. Once an idea dies it then has the opportunity to be created again within a completely new context for good or bad. If it is not forgotten, it then requisitely lives in an undead compost of masticated hyper-real culture. The fantasy of restarting culture itself is implausible but has hypothetical advantages for meaning or the quality of that valuation. I think that is why zombies and other post-apocalypse related pop-culture narratives are prevalent. There is a desire to pair the reality that exists without hyper-real culture with the world of our personal perceptions. Ironically, the only way to reconcile that is to simulate the experience by representing cultural survival and rebirth in the wilderness of the end.

In your use of camouflage patterns (and patterning in general), could you comment some on what the nature of camouflage has to do with the project? Which is to say, in his book Disruptive Pattern Material, Hardy Blechman posits that essentially there two different approaches that camouflage can be successfully deployed, as either disruption or blending. While these are not polar extremes, they do offer some sort of a frame, or a means of delineating approaches. What role(s) does camouflage fulfill in your practice?

I started this work because I had to find the cheapest way to continue making sculptural work. Camouflage is the cheapest fabric you can find and many of the camouflage elements are made from even less expensive bolt end cuts no one wants. In this case, the use of camouflage was to draw a line between the rare fabric being used carefully and being imbedded with significance to those who employed it. In this narrative, the warlords use it for intimidation and the Dawn workers use the pattern ostensibly to hide assets integral to restarting electrical service against the will of agricultural extremists.

Could you comment on Creech? Nellis? Since their inception, the military presence just outside of Las Vegas has always had a strong presence on shaping the city. Since moving to the city, I had always heard that certain casinos were built to cater to the military, and certainly other aspects of the city have followed suit. Are there particular ways (that may not be entirely visible) that the military presence presents itself in your practice? When did you begin to notice that the culture and aesthetics were entering into your practice, or have they always been present?

If you knew, you’d have to be destroyed. But seriously, the military is a philosophically existential presence in our society. In Pure War, a discussion between Paul Virilio and Sylvere Lotringer, there is an analysis of military advancement as the leading edge not only of technological hardware, but the perceptive high ground that accompanies that new way of seeing or utilizing that advantage. The locative and strategic advantage given to military assets will ether be created by or filter down to companies who will eventually use the same concepts to sell us consumer devices, that will control our perceptions of space, our subsequent behavior, and provide direct access for advertising and purchasing goods. Eventually we’ll all be on computers 8 hours a day. Nah, that all sounds like some far out science fiction, Philip K. Dick paranoia.

This is almost an aside, but when I was checking to make sure that Gibson had not also written a book entitled All Yesterday’s Parties, the first book that came up in my search was in fact All Yesterday’s Parties: The Velvet Underground in Print, 1966-71. Any chance that was intentional? Do you even like The Velvet Underground? Is this homage?

No, it was intended as science fiction in-joke in relation to the past of the narrative.

For images and more information on the exhibition, please visit Stephen's blog here.

Using algae as biofuel lecture at Barrick Museum

Using Green Algae for Biofuel Production and Carbon Recycling.

Dr. John C. Cushman - 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 7 @ Marjorie Barrick Museum Auditorium

Green algae are ideally suited as a non-seasonal, renewable energy resource for the arid western U.S. because they can be more productive than terrestrial crop feedstocks, can be grown on marginal lands with municipal waste, in brackish or saline water unsuitable for traditional agriculture, can leverage geothermal and solar resources, and provide widespread potential for recycling of CO2 from biomass, coal or gas- red power plants. This lecture will discuss current research methods to optimize algal production and compare production harvesting systems.

UNLV Visiting Artist Series

UNLV announces their 2010 Visiting Artist Series. Lectures are held on campus at BPB Physics Building Room 102 @ 7pm. For more information on the series and biographies of the artists, Click here for their site.

Panel Discussion at Sci-Fi Center

Panel Discussion
Sci-Fi Center 900 E. Karen Ave.Suite D-202 Las Vegas, NV 89101
Date: 9 September 2010, Thursday 7:00 PM

Please join us for a round table discussion with CAC exhibiting artists and UNLV scholars on Thursday, September 9th.

This dialogue will present and expand on the relationship and overlaps between two consecutive CAC exhibitions that explore ideas particularly relevant to the Las Vegas community. The exhibitions are “America’s #1 Foreclosed City: Las Vegas” by Emily Kennerk (August 3 through September 18, 2010) and the previous installation “Reign of Glass” by Erin Stellmon.

Seating is limited. Registration is recommended but not required. Admission is free and open to the public, donations to the CAC a 501c3 non-profit are always appreciated.

Click here to read Emily Kennerk's interview with CACBlog

Click here to read Erin Stellmon's interview with CACBlog

Stephen Hendee at Marjorie Barrick Museum

These images can't possibly do justice to this exhibition, so my suggestion would be to go to the opening on August 27 @ 6-8 pm and see for yourself. Stephen's project Monument to the Simulacrum was recently featured in Desert Companion here.

Here's the press release:

Join us for an opening reception and gallery talk with Las Vegas artist Stephen Hendee. The Ice Next Time is an exhibition of fictional post-apocalypse textiles, clothing, and artifacts. The objects are presented with post-dated interpretive panels describing the narrative arc of catastrophe, social disruption, and civilization's eventual return. Hendee said about the project, "This exhibition subverts speculative representations of the apocalypse to highlight the dependence we have on digital media, which has augmented our collective memory and experience." In our world filled with mass media entertainment, virtual communities, and instantaneous communication, this exhibition focuses the viewer to consider what it would be like to experience a world returned to direct interaction,unassisted memory, and cultural autonomy. Exhibition will be on display at the museum through Oct. 23.

Grindhouse!

Interview with Emily Kennerk

In advance of her upcoming panel discussion with Kirsten Swenson and Erin Stellmon, CACBlog recently sat down with Emily Kennerk to discuss Las Vegas, transience, and her new exhibition America’s #1 Foreclosed City: Las Vegas currently on view at Contemporary Arts Center.

In the press release that accompanies the project, [The installation] casts bright, critical light on the real estate collapse that has transformed our city. As her previous projects have dealt in American preoccupations with being Number One, it is with curiosity, empathy, anxiety, and subtlety that she now examines her new home as the country’s leader in foreclosures. Her installation America’s #1 Foreclosed City: Las Vegas investigates this phenomenon as a transitional space; growing, yes, but also fleeting, transforming, and adapting. We have all lost.

A twenty-two hour-long video projection pays momentary homage to every foreclosed home in the city in 2009. Photographs appropriated from online images are reproduced on sheer textiles at room-size; the interiors (and houses that surround them) unevenly obfuscated, disintegrating, evaporating. A powdered graphite rubbing traces the exterior wall of a vacant home and like rubbings of tombstones, Kennerk’s act of transference and inscription functions here as both memorial and artifact, conflating distances and uniting surfaces. Las Vegas has changed forever, and with Kennerk’s work our collective experience becomes significant, hopeful, and ephemeral.

CACBlog: Do you think Las Vegas is dumb?

That’s a good question. In one respect, you look at…there is an incredible history of city planning and civic structure, but Vegas from it’s inception hasn’t followed any of the proven structures that help a city in improving itself, whether by choice or how fast its city grew, or leadership; for some reason it was not considered.

Are you approaching this narrative as an outsider or insider?

You’re neither. It’s hard to be an insider or an outsider here. It doesn’t follow the norm of community—I’ve refrained from preferencing one…It’s emotionally removed, which probably could only be understood by someone who lives here. It’s an odd emotional state.

In your artist statement, you write that you are “interested in the transitional state of current modernity, the departure from a solid plausibility structure to a liquid one, and how seemingly discarded ideologies operate within current modes of thought”. So my question is, in this exhibition, is the seemingly discarded ideology the American Dream?

Yes.

It’s funny that the statement was written prior to coming here. I feel like I’m living in the middle of the thing I’ve always set out. Everything is moving. The American Dream has been in the process of being dismantled, it’s been a long time coming. Layer upon layer is being eroded, changed, shifting; the icon of the home, such a charged image.

Responding to the actual works in the exhibition, we’d like to spend some time discussing the rubbing. In that work, different from the others, your level of removal is not as far as in, say, the photographs or projection piece that utilizes found imagery. In the frottage, you were essentially massaging the façade of a building; standing (probably) in the sun, with graphite powder on your hands, tearing sheets, and walking around. Could you describe this process and perhaps how, if at all, it was a different experience for you and ultimately the viewer?

That piece was the hardest for me to do, both conceptually and as a physical artwork.

A return to a form of mark-making and drawing that had been discarded [in my practice]. Difficult to justify. At first, I did 15’, a heavy rubbing, working to get every edge, every crease. Speaking of the way I work, I would have thought it would have been more in line with the work.

It was difficult, starting at 5 am, working until noon, in the sun. I realized it was not working, it looked like a rendering, I thought it was too there. I thought it had lost some of its transparency (like the other works). The next day, I went back out, and picked up whatever got picked up; it was quick, it took a day. I left more up to chance, perhaps like a concrete skimmer; not being attached, not wanting a specific outcome.

With the photographic prints on the textiles, do you see the works responding more to a notion of transience or memory or both or neither? Are they related to sheers, like in so many of the houses you depict (not ours; we’ve got those cheap plastic blinds), or is the fabric a surrogate for something else? Are they hiding or revealing?

Both hiding and revealing. My interest; the images are like “seconds”; like raw data. Not the money shot, but a secondary image, something that only tells you a room is 12’ x 8’. That we believe this, that we do not see the room; we are not actually digesting what the image actually is. I’m interested in taking the image out of its context. Showing them as abstracted planes, very flat. Removing that and blowing that up. One, bringing back dimensionality, playing into space. They become a beautiful lie, like they were in the beginning, yeah? Seeing them as an artist, rather than a homebuyer perhaps. They are sort of like a myth.

How about the pace of the video? It seems surprisingly optimistic when you consider that the images were originally (and are perhaps even now) being used to sell these houses. Can you talk about optimism?

Optimism. What is optimism? I don’t see the video as optimism. It’s blunt, raw; nothing beautiful. Data, 1=1; one second equals one home. It’s a very literal piece. You need to stand there for twenty-two hours and nine minutes and that’s a lot. You stop looking. It implodes upon itself. Imploding, but it has no start and no finish.

There was another couple in the room while we were visiting the exhibition that made a point of saying how sad the work was. For us, we felt somewhat betrayed. We are seeing images that are designed for us as consumers, a role that we’re very comfortable with. But when you realize the images are of houses that people have lost, then you become very sad; this change in emotion.

They are consumer images. The images are looped. Thinking of Dan Graham’s Homes for America, first done as a slide show… functioning in the same way as the printed images on the textiles.

The myth again.

Since we’re looking at context, does the cycling of the video have an analogue to gambling, to card counting, to finding patterns in seemingly random images? Is this the most Vegas work?

That’s so dead-on. Yeah. Like Fashion Show Mall. The images flashing on the signage. Keno. Maybe a light pattern of the flickering. Subliminally we’re picking up on this everywhere. Like the story on This American Life.

No Whammies.

Would you discuss the notion of distance in your works in the exhibition? In all of your pieces, the distance to/from the viewer is mitigated by significant space(s); photographs and projections both point to a removal from the viewer in both temporal and physical space. In the frottage (rubbing), this space is shrunk, with your hand coming into contact with the paper which in turn is attached--however briefly--to the surface being transposed. Are these spaces and their degrees of removal different for you? Do they function differently in your practice?

With the found images or an icon, it’s a bridge to the viewer. It’s not mediated by me. It’s almost more comforting, or banal. It becomes more of a trigger. The rubbing may become this other thing. I think that one … it is a stand-in. It’s a process. Maybe I’m trying to hint at loss. There is a sweetness, a sentimentality.

In the other ones, the viewer becomes part of the medium.

In line with that, how does the concept of transience appear in the exhibition? The photographs are thinly visible and fluttering, the rubbing is done on site, removed, and transplanted to the gallery, and the images in the video cycle quickly and somewhat erratically. Everything feels like it may have to (or is) in the process of leaving. Are they coming or going?

I find… I wonder if they were ever real in the beginning. Did the structure ever exist? There has always been a shifting, moving. The show lacks so much structure in a way. It almost can’t react, or bounce, or return. It’s a vagueness that permeates. It’s a smell.

Maybe more than a smell, it’s a scent.

Yeah.

Our sense is that this exhibition is not so much a bold statement about the nature of foreclosure as it happens in Vegas as it is another chapter or facet of your response to your new home [Kennerk is a professor at UNLV and has lived in Vegas for two years and one week]. As example, looking back to your project for the Clark County Government Center Rotunda, you seem to be focusing in an extremely sensitive and analytical way on the ways that Las Vegans make their environment their own and the difficulty that comes along with that. Now that the exhibition has been on view, and you’ve gotten the chance to talk to some of the visitors who may be experiencing your projects for the first time, could you describe how those exchanges are influencing your approaches?

This show in particular has a framework that I’ve been working with for the last ten years. America’s #1 was a way for me to approach Vegas. Everywhere else there has been an environment structure. Vegas threw me for a loop.

That framework is still really viable here. The outcomes are so different; the framework still works for me. Some people will approach the work and instantly approach it as a negative press, but I’m not looking at it in that way. It’s not tied to a projected outcome that is negative. It is the material I’ve had to work with.

How do you reconcile this with other #1 works, such as your project America’s #1 Kitchen [at Cranbrook]? There is no doubt from the other projects that you are the insider, the American. In Las Vegas, there is something distant, but foreclosure is something else; it presents another spacing perhaps. In one you are a participant, in the other I’m not sure you are.

In America’s #1, #1 has to be at the top of the food chain. It has to be this thing that—America’s #1, then everything else is secondary. If I hadn’t come to Las Vegas then I’m not sure I would have approached it in this way. It is a way of me being able to deal with this. Maybe it is a coping mechanism for me to enter into this city.

Mid West vs. Out west?

Maybe I’m still believing in the openness, the freedom, the Wild West. But I can’t say I prefer one over the other yet, but it’s more of the essence of THE WEST. Not the Strip. Not nostalgia, but a lure perhaps.

Here’s the trailer for your next project: What happens next (for you) at Donna Beam? We hear there may be a ping-pong table?

Maybe two.

Fin

Community Counseling Center announces a call to artists for its Bite at the Museum 20th Anniversary Gala

To celebrate CCC’s 20 years of service to Southern Nevada, Community Counseling Center is celebrating with a gala event, Bite at the Museum, an evening of fine food, raffles and entertainment to be held at the new Nevada State Museum at the Springs Preserve.

Deadline for submissions is August 13^th. Works may be dropped off at Community Counseling Center 1120 Almond Tree Lane, Suite #207 M-F 8am -8pm. Or email JPEGs of work to tlucero@cccofsn.org. Non-selected works will be available for pick-up after August 16^th. Selected pieces will be available for pick-up after September 20^th.

To learn more about the event, please go to www.biteatthemuseum.com. For more information about Community Counseling Center, please go to www.cccofsn.org. For questions, contact tlucero@cccofsn.org.

Writer's Workshop and Reading at Sunrise Coffee

Writer's Workshop and Reading at Sunrise Coffee
Monday, July 26, 6-8pm

Brad Summerhill, a visiting writer from northern Nevada is is town briefly to promote his recently launched (July 21) first novel, GAMBLER'S QUARTET. Brad will be reading a few short excerpts from his book, and then conduct a free creative writing workshop for the first 30 attendees. A question and answer session will follow.

What they are saying about GAMBLER'S QUARTET: "Brad Summerhill writes a story of obsession and betrayal with an intensity that burns like neon. His characters move through a surreal landscape of desire, terror and loneliness...", "Brad Summerhill understands the tragic seduction of gambling and his work introduces that bleak and complex world in a tight, often tense, but ultimately redemptive narrative that challenges at our notion of human strength and vulnerability... "

Exit interview Part 5: Kyla Hansen

Kyla Hansen provides us with our fifth in an on-going series of interviews with artists soon departing Vegas for elsewhere. Kyla begins her graduate work at Claremont in the fall. We wish her the best and hope to see new work soon. Go Kyla go!

Your original Las Vegas dream:

This may not be a “dream”, but when I moved here I really wanted to park cars at a casino… because you make cash while you’re staying thin… and that seemed quintessentially “Vegas” to me.

On your connections:

I see Mike Tyson on a fairly regular basis.

On casino executives and the media:

I thought they were the same people.

The popularity of poker:

I love video poker. I have since I was a kid. (My uncle got me a small video poker slot machine for Christmas one year). Since Bingo is only on odd hours, Brian & I end up playing a lot of double double bonus poker between bingo games.

What you’ll miss most about Las Vegas:

Its’ optimism. Despite being an incredibly harsh place, it seems to maintain a feeling of possibility. Even in the midst of an economic climate worse than Detroit’s, Vegas is still looking forward, assured that things will turn around (even if, in reality they may not). That kind of optimism is infectious… and I’ll miss it.

If you're going to miss the Eureka, his [Dave Hickey's] favorite neighborhood casino:

I know this may sound redundant (Brian has mentioned)… while we will not miss the Eureka we will dearly miss Arizona Charlie’s on Decatur. We LOVE bingo there… It’s the best in town… seriously. It changed our lives for about 3 months… we went every week.

What you won’t miss about Las Vegas:

The harshness. It’s toughened me up a little, but I’m ready for somewhere a little softer.

Also, my skin is in a continual state of peeling because it is so dry here. The skin that connects the earlobe to the face was cracked the entire first year I was here. Every time I would pull my shirt over my head to change, it would catch on my ears and make them bleed. Plus, no amount of expensive face cream, or miracle serum has been able to keep my nose from flaking. It’s all very disgusting and I won’t miss it.

What that last class at UNLV was:

… My last BFA class in the ceramics lab… I really love all those people.

What you will be doing at the [enter your new city here]:

I’ll be attending Claremont Graduate University, which I am so thankful for. The faculty is amazing. My first semester I’ll be taking studio time with Rachel Lachowicz… I read about her in art history! Claremont has beautiful studios, amazing facilities, the art office ladies have been so nice already… so all I’ll have to worry about is making artwork, and that sounds pretty great.

If you're ready to start over:

I am really looking forward to starting new. I’m ready to take better care of myself and take myself more seriously. I think it’s really easy to get ahead of yourself in Vegas. I spent way more money than I care to remember and had more meals at 7-11s than one person should. I’m looking forward to living very simply again. It’s been very cathartic to mine through all my things and keep only the few things I really need. Our house is slowly becoming more white as the rooms empty.

What kind of city you're leaving behind:

In ten years it should be fine.

If CityCenter was the right answer:

I’m mostly indifferent about it. It feels a bit like entering an airport… and a bit like the entrance to space mountain in Disneyland. I feel much more excited at the entrance to space mountain.

What’s to fear about Las Vegas in the future:

It makes me really sad whenever I listen to KNPR and they’re talking about the water shortages that Vegas will face in the very near future. I really developed a pride for Vegas in the short time I was here & I hope that it will continue to, as it always has, grow and change.

What Las Vegas is going to miss about you:

I don’t think I’m a big enough deal to be asked this question yet.

Images: Casa Walsh, Alta Dena, CA; Duncan

Exit interview Part 4: Sean Schumacher

How do we truly define something or someone as local? That's a tough one, right? Well, Sean Schumacher meets the criteria for Vegas deeply and seriously, in multiple ways, always, truly, forever. In a city in constant flux Sean grasps at the shards--what Vegas leaves behind and forgets but what ultimately defines it and blows it's cover. As he himself describes it on his website, Sean Schumacher is an artist from Las Vegas, Nev. He loves the old, the broken, the disliked, and the forgotten--scraps of past glories and the relics of the unexceptional. Say hello.

Say hello indeed. But say it quickly. Sean leaves to begin graduate studies at Portland State University in the fall. But if you're lucky, you may just catch him before he goes, somewhere, somewhere inside the Stake Out. Say hello.

Your original Las Vegas dream:

Strangely, leaving. I suppose it is a common dream of those born here, but one that I haven't really had much lately. Right after I graduated high school, I managed to get into UNR and was convinced I'd never want to come back, so naturally I was back at home within the week. The difference this time is that I'd quite like to stay, but I have a reason for being in Portland now that I didn't necessarily have for being in Reno then.

On your connections:

Back to front: MagSafe, Ethernet, FireWire 800, Mini DisplayPort, dual USB ports, an SD card slot, and digital/analog audio out. Regrettably, no one seems to actually stock Mini DisplayPort-to-DVI adapters yet. My external display sits alone in a corner collecting dust, practically begging to double my pixel count, and I've nothing to give it but a sullen look and a shrug.

On casino executives and the media:

They're okay enough in my book.

The popularity of poker:

I've often wondered if growing up in Las Vegas has some effect on your makeup with regards to gambling. I've never gambled, nor had any temptation to gamble, yet practically every other person here still can't get enough of it. They've had slots in grocery stores for as long as I've been alive, and holding live poker tournaments as you wait in line to buy eggs seems like the obvious next step.

I thought I was finally going to be able to get away from all that madness when I moved, but Portland has Oregon Lottery-branded slot machines everywhere. So much for that idea.

What you’ll miss most about Las Vegas:

That it won't be here to come back to. Rather more accurately, it will be, but it won't be this Las Vegas anymore. Change never pauses here: places will be ripped down, and people will have moved on. That last one will be the hardest to accept because it's the people I'm close to—many of whom are leaving themselves—that define this place and make me want to stay more than anything.

If you're going to miss the Eureka, his [Dave Hickey's] favorite neighborhood casino:

No, but I have this odd thing about not enjoying being stabbed.

I'm sure it's perfectly safe, of course. I'd simply rather not take the chance; I do enough of that every day on Maryland Parkway.

What you won’t miss about Las Vegas:

The blow-dryer climate during summer isn't exactly doing this region any favors. I've reminded more than a few people that nothing will make me glad to deal with an adjustment to gray and chilly more than battling one last August here. They might have to fish me out of a puddle during my first week to get me to class, but I'll be content at last.

What that last class at UNLV was:

During the spring, I was having a great time assisting Bekah Just's web design class on a semi-official basis, which is the most official thing I've done for the Department of Art since I graduated. I do feel as though that was the start of a tipping point between just being an undergraduate with no real comprehension of the system of which I'm a part, and being a post-baccalaureate with a tenuous grasp on a future in art and a genuine reason to be milling around.

I suppose that's the other thing that will make for an odd adjustment: almost everything I've accomplished here has been completed surreptitiously. Even things that I did ostensibly for the school were skunkworks projects, and I get the feeling that Portland—while perhaps more liberal in attitude toward art at its face—is less forgiving towards that type of activity. The school's facilities office even has, amazingly, a public art installation approval form. Another project like 50 scraps would be essentially impossible with that kind of roadblock, though they'd likely prefer it that way.

What you will be doing at Portland State University:

Either working or reading, I suspect, and the balance will likely shift in favor of the second option if I end up living on campus next to Millar Library. I've also been offered the chance to teach a course or two, which I'm quite looking forward to; I'd be a third-generation teacher on my mother's side if I decide to continue on with it.

If you're ready to start over:

Really, no one can escape their past, and that's the most major lesson Las Vegas still has to learn. The least appealing characteristic about this city is the notion that you're perfectly in the right to attempt to obliterate something of someone else's because it's old or because you simply don't like it anymore; most of what Hickey seems to be going through relates back to that in some way. For my own conscience, I can't try to force out all the experiences—good or bad—I've had here without losing something integral to myself. Of course, I'll also be leaving with only what I can bring on the plane with me, so perhaps this is as close as I can get to a fresh start.

What kind of city you're leaving behind:

One I can't ever go back to. I don't mean to sound morose about it, but the Las Vegas of today bears little relation to the one I was born into, and will likely grow even further from it while I'm away. I'll certainly be back to visit, but I don't expect that it will resemble what I left. I'm willing to believe that won't necessarily be bad, though.

If CityCenter was the right answer:

Whenever I have a spare moment, I like to pass by the electrical room and cinder brick wall that are left from Maude Frazier Hall. Frazier wasn't the nicest building by any metric, but it had meaning and purpose—which is why they still can't take down the last bit of the south wing (the nearby wall of overly-large plaques memorializing important people deemed not good enough to have named buildings anymore is just weird, and reeks of the UNLV administration's guilt in marking the 50th anniversary with the purge of everything relating to that era from campus). CityCenter, on the other hand, is a monument to the pace at which the developers were competing to define the Las Vegas experience for the next decade, if only because it's the project that got finished when Echelon and Fontainebleau didn't.

So, I'd say CityCenter's a much better answer to the question of "how should we approach the next generation of Las Vegas resorts?" than the Frazier Wall is an answer to "what should we do with the one building that we absolutely can't knock down?".

What’s to fear about Las Vegas in the future:

A Las Vegas without green spaces is quite appalling to me, but seems to be the inevitable way forward. 110 degrees feels unpleasant enough beneath a tree-lined walk, but on bare concrete is quite nearly a death sentence for people who enjoy going outside. I don't envy those who'll be left behind with that experience.

What Las Vegas is going to miss about you:

My single-minded quest to keep the Stake Out in business by veggie burgers alone; my loitering at Grant Hall; my knowledge of Windows Mobile 5 barcode scanners, which the world may ultimately be better off having lost.

image: Maude Frazier Hall at UNLV, 1957; architectural rendering and site photo. Courtesy UNLV Special Collections.