At the age of 91, Las Vegas neon sign icon Betty Willis passed away. Her Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign sits on what used to be Highway 91.  From The Neon Museum:

Earlier in the day, the Neon Museum announced the passing of Brian “Buzz” Leming. 

Las Vegas Sun I Review Journal

Williams Shea, co-author of "Fade to Gray," dragged inventory to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC this past weekend. "Over the past two days we sold over 70 books, had 3 interviews, talked to over 400 people, drove 800 miles, got only 3 hours of sleep each night, and ate about 2 dozen tacos," reported Shea on Facebook. 

MORE LINKS:
• Las Vegas Arts Commission seeks matching funds for public art  I Las Vegas Weekly
• CAC juried show reviewed I Las Vegas Weekly
• Reno is having a mural throw down I Reno Gazette
• Do LaB creating "frenzy" of art at Coachella.  I Desert Sun  
• So the festival doesn't get all the attention, the city of Coachella is funding more murals by Date Farmers Art Studio. I Desert Sun
• Fargo Speaks in this editorial titled "A thriving city values public art." I InForum
•  Environmentalist Chris Clark says guerilla art is destroying  the desert: "It's not your blank canvas." I Beacon Reader
•  Bloomberg Business lists public art to look at in summer 2015. The desert is represented twice with projects by Los Angeles Nomadic Division and High Desert Test Sites. I Bloomberg Business.
• Take it to the West Bank: A Banksy murals in Gaza was recovered after being sold for $175 by accident I UPI
• Supporters from the political right took a cue from the left and trying street art to push ideas. The art is bad so far, like this anti-Hillary image made with a PhotoShop filter seen in Brooklyn. I Weekly Standard
•  Sabo is also a conservative street artist. I HuffPo

Michael Govan welcomes Dave Hickey back to Las Vegas. Photo courtesy of The Smith Center.

Field Notes: The Las Vegas art throng gathered to hear Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Dave Hickey, rascal art critic, talk land art at The Smith Center’s Cabaret Jazz venue Tuesday . . .  CAC Night Out: Hosted by Las Vegas Contemporary Arts Center, the pair used accessible art linguistics with the beat of mid-tempo jazz improvisation to pitch how the public should reconsider and embrace  Michael Heizer’s “City,” located 170 miles north of Las Vegas . The public owns it, Govan said of Nevada's cultural contribution to the nation that sits on Federal land. Govan, who championed Heizer’s 340-ton stonework “Levitated Mass” to LACMA, also debriefed the audience about “Double Negative” near Overton, Nevada . . . Hickey was Hickey and it was good to hear that drawl and crackle send a message that the sculpture could put Las Vegas on the map if grownups take over, and while "City" is big art it's not overpowering as a monumental form.

Video from The Smith Center's blog, Spotlight,  has some of the highlights.

ADD APRIL 19:  With the room filled with arts writers and reporters, it was expected there would be plenty of coverage on "City" project talk. Here's the previous list with some edits and additions.

"Brain still effervescing! As the bubbles settle, though, I’ll say this as a non-artspeak-speaking civilian who skirts the edges of the edges of the scene: Before last night, I’d heard only rumors and whispers about City, read a few articles about it. My pedestrian understanding was that it was, oh, cool, a work of monumental, isolated eccentricity. Govan and Hickey really tightened the bolts on what City entails — a work of slow, epic, generational urgency that seeks to rearrange how we think of art being objects that represent things or meanings — say, like a painting on a wall that offers a visual window. To paraphrase Govan, City is no window; it’s a world. Road trip!"
Andrew Kiraly in Tales of City: an evening with Dave Hickey and Michael Govan I KNPR 

"Heizer selected the area for its geology, remoteness and feeling of expansive space. 'In the ’70s he wanted to find a space that would be protected—a ranch surrounded by BLM land. In those days no one could touch BLM land,' Govan says, contrasting the idea with the more recent threat of nearby potential fracking and rail lines hauling nuclear waste (and in the 1980s, MX missiles). Encouraging residents to send letters to elected officials, Govan referred to the land as 'ours as citizens of the United States.'"
Kristen Peterson Las Vegas Weekly

"Hickey earns a laugh from his audience when claiming he gambled away his MacArthur Fellowship prize money in the casinos of Las Vegas. Tonight, however, Hickey's focus is not on the city of Las Vegas, but on the city nearing completion in Lincoln County that he describes as offering a large-scale, unique art experience." JK Russ for HuffPo.

Russ also notes Hickey saying: "Artists are all the time trying to occupy ordinary spaces... But to do a city? That is really cool. It means that you can walk along one area and take a right and see some absolutely strange thing that you have never seen before, and walk along there until you see something else you've never seen before."

OTHER LINKS: 
What's behind the #ProtectCity campaign for artist Michael Heizer I LA Times
Museums unite in campaign to save massive land art project I The Art Newspaper
Huge, top-secret sculpture taking shape in desert I KSL Utah

Protect Basin and Range I Facebook

By G. James Daichendt

"Street Art Throwdown"  is the Oxygen channel reality show that picked a photogenic set of emerging street artists to compete in a series of challenges to win a $100,000 grand prize. This week marks the season finale as three finalists are prepped to battle it out in front of a national audience. My hope is that each of these artists finds a bigger audience from the show but there are a few aspects of the program that deserve attention and are worthy of a critical look and discussion.

A reality show on a form of art that attracts a tantalizing advertising demographic should not be a surprise. There have been a number of art themed television programs in recent years that have been met with varied success. From "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist" to "Gallery Girls," the movement and genre of street art is perfect for television because of the accessibility of the concepts and popular imagery associated with street art. Yet the commercial appeal of manufactured reality can quickly be transformed into cheesy dialogue if that arc of conflict is more important than the work produced. This show has plenty of these moments – not great for art making but good to build television drama that will entice viewers to keep watching.

While all the artists involved in the program deserve recognition and attention for their involvement with the show – this alternative reality misses the mark. Shots of the artists running and climbing fences have little to do with their success and instead make for action filled clips to use in commercials and promotions.

A facetious aspect of the show is the use of vocabulary and attempts to co-opt the language of the sub-culture – sometimes by the host, no less.  From definitions of street art terms flashing across the bottom of the screen to several contestants spelling words wrong in their pieces – these instances did little to advance the culture of street art. It panders to the idea that these artists are not intelligent folks – something I don’t believe to be true. 

"Street Art Throwdown",  not unlike its predecessors in this TV genre, features timed challenges where the artists are provided a theme with limited materials. The demand for speed promotes the method of guerilla art, not the aesthetic. The result is often shoddy artwork that does not mirror a thoughtful creative process, a characteristic that does not have to be a standard. The artists involved in the show are talented and it would be fantastic to provide some conditions for them to showcase their gifts in a much stronger fashion. 

The co-judges and hosts of the show are commercial artist Justin Bua (who is also executive producer) and gallery professional Lauren Wagner. Each has made a name for themselves in their respective area yet don’t have much cache in the street art world despite being fans and influenced by the genre. 

Bua is particularly interesting. A born PR man, his successful print sales recall an urban version of Margaret Keane, the artist well known for creating inexpensive reproductions of paintings that pander to particular demographics. Wagner on the other hand is a galleriest that has the potential to offer an alternative voice, yet we rarely hear much from her besides describing their next challenge.

As an arts educator and critic, the most disappointing aspect of the show is the critiques offered by the judges. We find meaning in works of art through discussion and these ideas can be refined through careful analysis. It’s unfortunate that the individuals involved did little to facilitate such discovery. Too often the critiques were superficial and shallow. Comments on the importance of hands or the overuse of a color were commonplace. 

This dialogue is a missed opportunity because solid interactions could give young viewers a way to engage visual objects beyond emotional and conventional responses. It’s also a chance to stretch the thinking on what art can be – and for a mass audience who only view street art as an act of a vandal, a reflective and critical lens could break down fears a mass audience may have. 

In the end, it’s only a television show and an entertaining one. But the TV formula tells the viewer street art is not the real purpose of the show. That is unfortunate. The finale should have great drama, as well as exposure for the artists, and extend a base of support for all those involved, a recipe for success in today’s art world.