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RFP: Mural in Cultural Corridor

2/27/2015

GoogleMaps

There’s a search for an artist to design a mural, then lead volunteer painters to complete it. The sponsors, a partnership with the Las Vegas Natural History Museum, the Neon Museum, and Zappos, hope it will convert the former Ukulele Lounge on Las Vegas Blvd into a visual marker for the Cultural Corridor. There is a small honorarium and supplies will be provided. The deadline is 5 p.m, Monday, March 16. Details, dimensions and requirements are also in the RFP I Cultural Corridor Mural Project

ADD MARCH 4: A Facebook post with this call-to-action for artists is saying the deadline was extended. As of this afternoon the March 16 deadline still stands.

ADDED MARCH 17: Deadline has been extended to March 20.

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'THE BURRITO STAND' BECOMES ART INSTALLATIOn

4/9/2014

Photo: PaintThisDesert

DOWNTOWN PROJECT WORK IN PROGRESS: Alexandria Lee is the artist behind this uncompleted portrait now underway at Fremont and Eighth streets. The building, which looks like an early 20th century service station, was once part of car lot, a car wash, until it ended it's commercial life as a Mexican food joint. “We are still calling it 'The Burrito Stand',” said Lee. The small lot was also groomed with new landscaping. The whole building will be painted, lit, and become interactive, said the artist.

Fremont and Eighth via GoogleMaps

A CHANCE FOR A MURAL THAT EVERYONE WILL LOVE

3/14/2014

When a Life Is Beautiful mural was whitewashed off the side of The Beat in late 2013, people noticed and questions were asked.

It also showed how the city’s culture is curated by gambler's superstition.

The mural by Interesni Kazki was figurative and the one of the better pieces that came out of LIB. A western gambling figure -- that played off the iconography of Vegas Vic -- watched over hands buried in the sand. The image was a poke to the town’s image and visible from the offices of El Cortez.

In other words, it was bad luck. Someone in that office wanted the mural down, so down it went.

It didn't give a positive image was the repeated reason. The mural was treated like an ad, a form of alternative advertising that branded image through the use of contemporary street aesthetic, and discarded.

The space is still blank, and Jennifer Cornthwaite, downtown cultural leader and co-owner of The Beat, was left to handle the questions asking why it was taken down.

In December, Jennifer and I were on Joe Downtown's radio show in different time slots. During her interview segment, she talked about asking a muralist what was the protocol for works. The artist told her murals are temporary. Listening in, I suspected she citing a street artist and a few weeks later she confirmed to me that was true.

Her source was right in one way. The murals seen around Fremont Street come from a style that has an expectation the installation is brief (or in the case of The Life Cube, go down in flames.)

But Las Vegas also has the more traditional form of mural; site-specific work that takes public memory as context and stay up with long-term residency in mind. The City of Las Vegas sponsored a Centennial Mural program in 2005 to mark the 100th birthday of the city. Many are still up.

As for the blank wall of The Beat, it's still waiting for the next installation, something Jennifer lobbied for.

Now there is a reason for longer lasting mural tradition to be curated.

The right subject may be a portrait of John D. "Jackie" Gaughan, a favored and loved founding father who many are saying shaped the spirit of Las Vegas. The former owner of El Cortez was still a beloved resident up to his passing at the age of 93. For many, he was much more than that, as I'm learning while Las Vegas mourns. Whenever there has been a obit written, it's usually with a photo of him as a younger man, the El Cortez sign behind him.

That's source material for a mural, provided it avoids being the inauthentic large-scale advertising that burdens the visual landscape of Las Vegas. With the right sense of realism, or with the retro aesthetic seen in some contemporary street art, a mural of Gaughan could be an example of stellar site-specific work coming out of Las Vegas.

It could be downtown's Fremont Street using the best traditions of murals, noting someone who brought a heartbeat to the city. And Gaughan can watch over his beloved El Cortez for as long as possible.

Drafting an idea: A mural about place

1/27/2014

Paul Revere Williams
Photo: Courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library/Herald Examiner Collection.

Above: La Concha postcard. PDT collection

Las Vegas is just the Strip to many, but the role of public art can find connections that extend beyond the obvious markers. In the last few years, while doing research on public art, I looked for content that would make an interesting mural to create.

Architect Paul Revere Williams is a good starting point for a mural design that ties in with the West, public space on the Strip, a building adapted for reuse, and make a broader connect to the region. In January, I had a few discussions and meetings with different parties to see how this could work. I will track this as things progress -- or stall.

Williams is well documented, and what seems to be the constant lede is him being the first African-American to be a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and how taught himself to draft upside down -- in case a white client was uncomfortable sitting next to him at a table. That gave Williams, born in downtown Los Angeles in 1894, the ability to render without having to pause to shift papers during a meeting. Williams went on to make his mark as a high profile mark as a favored architect to Hollywood celebrities, and was even more prolific with commercial buildings.

In Las Vegas, Williams is known is known for designing the La Concha Motel, built in 1961. The Google-arched “building-as-sign” lobby that was saved from becoming Las Vegas scrap and moved few miles north. It's now the visitor center for the Neon Museum, and makes a grand entry way for the Neon Boneyard.

The sweeping modernist lines of La Concha mirror the LAX Jet Age Theme Building, which Williams designed with Pereira & Luckman Associates, and Welton Becket & Associates, also completed in 1961.

No doubt, that lobby will be a topic at the upcoming lecture by Leslie Luebbers, director for the Paul R. Williams Project and the Art Museum of the University of Memphis in Memphis, Tenn. Her visit and talk is presented by the Neon Museum and will be held at the Marjorie Barrick Museum at UNLV February 6.

Also in Williams’ Southern Nevada portfolio was Victory Village and Carver Park. Completed in 1943, it housed workers of Basic Magnesium Inc., (BMI).

"Black families could only move into Carver Park," said Mark Hall-Patton, administrator for Clark County Museums, who has maps of both sites framed together. "But Carver Park wasn’t segregated. It wasn’t just for black residents."

“Envisioning homes that were comfortable, functional and defined by his love of California flavor, the Basic Townsite was conceived as a company town,” according to the Henderson Historical Society. BMI townsite was later incorporated as Henderson, and is the second largest city in Nevada. Only a few slabs of Carver Park foundation concrete remain.

This supplemental PTD project is tagged "mural manufacturing." It may never be installed as a public art piece, but will make for a great graphic for a midsummer nights post.

EXTRA: La Concha Panorama [Las Vegas Sun]

RFP: Mural in Cultural Corridor

'THE BURRITO STAND' BECOMES ART INSTALLATIOn

A CHANCE FOR A MURAL THAT EVERYONE WILL LOVE

Drafting an idea: A mural about place

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