Link + Ink: The Heart of Local Art Edition

"Bliss Dance" at the Park I Photo by Ed Fuentes

ART FIGURES: In May, “Bliss Dance" had detailed coverage in The Review Journal. The article was thorough to explain MGM Resorts' intent to bring art to its public space, but reads like the investment in art is more business development. There is a lot of copy on the costs but not much on meaning.  The article also reports on the attention "Bliss Dance" is getting  social media, which make it a testament how art is a tool of marketing strategy. The May 21 article made more sense when I researched the writer, Buck Wargo. He covers business and real estate. 

Many in the local art community have been tepid to Marco Cochran's nude figurative. It is stunning, but it was created for Burning Man. As an installation on the Strip it's another version of plop art; works that are generic and do not respond to a region with site-specific ideas. 

I don't have to go on with what could be done with local public art. The answer is in the very same Review Journal story: 

Much of the Las Vegas artwork has focused on sculptures and large format paintings where the maximum amount of people can enjoy them. When the company opens MGM National Harbor in Maryland later this year, the art will focus on collection of historic importance to the Mid-Atlantic region, [MGM Resorts International Chairman and CEO Jim] Murren said.

A hint of local narrative is what many from Las Vegas hope to someday see in any major investment that is declared to be public art.

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OTHER NEVADA FIELD NOTES:

Robert Ferry and Elizabeth Monoian are looking toward Las Vegas to be another site for Land Art Generator Initiative, a project that promotes clean energy through public art I LV Weekly

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ArtPop matches unrented advertising space with local artists to make billboards instruments of public art. Las Vegas is the first Western U.S. city under ArtPop's rendition of art taking over ad space I  Review Journal
There's also video at FOX5 that features artist JK Russ.

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"The Barrick Museum does it again. The fresh and zesty "Five" presents work by five recent UNLV artists-in-residence based in LA, New York and Brooklyn. Co-curated by Aurore Giguet and Alisha Kerlin." Says the review at Las Vegas Weekly.

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Nancy Uscher will head The College of Fine Arts at UNLV and will work toward different art departments work in collaboration I KNPR

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UNLV Library Special Collections has archived 16 boxes of slides, prints, catalogs and other working materials created by Robert Beckman, along with renderings of murals of Beckmann Studio.  The forty year archive will be made available online.

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C-SPAN explored Southern Nevada history and literary stops for new documentary, reports the Review Journal. The videos will be archived at C-Span.org. Such as Book Discussion on "Being Oscar",  "Sun, Sin and Suburbia", "Doom Towns" and "The Writer's Block Bookstore." Other segments are already up. "Las Vegas Early Settlers" with Mark Hall-Patton, Administrator Clark County Museum is online.

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New public art in Reno by Paolo Cividino is the topographical layout of Northern Nevada made of steel and concrete panels. “We wanted to create a place that makes you wonder where you’re from and what does it mean to be a Nevadan,” Cividino said to the Reno Gazette

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Art at Burning Man will include a jumbo jet converted into an installation and hauled to the Playa, hopefully I
Record Searchlight Redding

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"VERSE-CASE SCENARIO" is the snappy headline used by Desert Companion for an article on Bruce Isaacson, Clark County's Poet Laureate. Scott Dickensheets' updates the progress of the poetry initiative. Scott was kind enough to include me in the conversation. The magazine can be picked up around town, or downloaded at Desert Companion. 

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Lila Brissette was selected by Isaacson to receive the “Poetry Promise” award. The first award for a student poet for “exceptional promise and achievement.” KNPR

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R-J also interviewed Isaacson. One question asked was  "Has anybody asked you why the county even has a poet laureate?" Isaacson replied:  "I suspect there are a lot of people out there (who might), but nobody’s approached me and said, “Why do we have a poet laureate? What does it all mean?” (Laughs) So let’s just say Southern Nevadans are polite about it." Review Journal

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On the subject of poetry and powerful words, it could be said the self promotion pageantry that thrives in Las Vegas was in part the inspiration for the self authored spectacle we knew as Muhammad Ali, who passed away Friday at the age of 74.

​From "The 20 best moments that made Muhammad Ali The Greatest" compiled by The Guardian, I give "The Greatest" the last word. 

4) Clay meets the wrestler Gorgeous George (1961)After turning professional, Clay won six fights in six months. Then, on a Las Vegas radio show to promote his seventh contest, he met the wrestler ‘Gorgeous’ George Wagner, whose promotional skills got audiences coming to watch. As Ali later told his biographer Thomas Hauser: “[George] started shouting: ‘If this bum beats me I’ll crawl across the ring and cut off my hair, but it’s not gonna happen because I’m the greatest fighter in the world.’ And all the time, I was saying to myself: ‘Man. I want to see this fight’ And the whole place was sold out when Gorgeous George wrestled … including me … and that’s when I decided if I talked more, there was no telling how much people would pay to see me.”
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