FIELD NOTES: A brief detour from the Paint This Desert  tour of “Recent Acquisitions” at the Barrick gives a chance to look at a Monday pop-up installation on campus from the summer Design Fundamentals II-3D. Under David Rowe, this was the week students used Saran Wrap to shape life-sized sculpture that responded to the campus. Here Luis Henriquez talks about his work that had a spirit of street art. His figure is armed with a giant Q-tip cleaning out a sculpted ear. The ear was first installed as a student assignment  some years ago and now maintained by campus services. Without critiquing the undergrads, I can still say these pop up people were a clever use of space and easily the lesson and process could lead to interesting works in the 18B Arts District streets during First Friday. Next Monday afternoon there will be another one day installation with the students using different materials.  

FIELD NOTES: This story from the street came from Zap 7 artist Gig Depio. While painting the UNLV mascot--his box is across the street from the campus--a women stopped to watch him paint. Then she asked him for a dollar to get food. Depio was apologetic that he had no change "even for myself," he said to her. She nodded and moved on. Depio saw her walk to the corner and went back to work.  A few moments later the woman came back with five dollars negotiated from a driver at the intersection. The she went in the nearby gas station food mart and got herself and Depio a burrito. I can't take this, said the artist. "Who else is going to take care of you?" Asked the woman.  

MEANWHILE: Readers can click on a dedicated page of artists and their boxes here (ZAP7) or the button on top of this page.

Audrey Barcio and her small paintings reflected in a mirror sculpture from  “There is more, but no more of this.” Photo: PtD

Mirrors, monitors, copper and masonite are some of the materials used in four segments of  “There is more, but no more of this,” a new installation by Audrey Barcio, UNLV MFA Fine Art candidate. Her midway exhibition is designed to work in the small space of Grant Hall Gallery and the newly painted white walls and polished floors were the artist's own laborious immersive experience. That makes the room frame the paintings, sculpture, video and sound sending out multiple meanings, a connotation based on existential givens of human existence. There's also subtext commenting on those wandering from subjective religious ideals. “By asking us to make connections while examining the beginning and end, it brings us together in the immediate,” writes the artist in her statement. It opened yesterday. The artist reception is March 9, on Friday the 13th, at 6 pm.  More at Facebook.

Also in this campus cycle, Shelbi Schroeder  "Innocence and Deviance"  is all about an artist responding to "notions of purity and corruption in normative sexuality. Using her body as a tool, she intervenes in daily female performance rituals." There will be a performance at 7 p.m. on Friday March, 13. More dates and times at Facebook.