PAINT THIS DESERT
  • Field Notes
  • Resources
  • About

'Latinos Who Lunch' With Paint This Desert

1/18/2018

0 Comments

 
WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS:  At an undisclosed cul-de-sac, somewhere in Las Vegas, are the production studios for Latinos Who Lunch. The popular podcast is produced and hosted by Favy Fav, aka Justin Favela, and Babelito, aka Art History PhD Emmanuel Ortega. I am on the books as Episode 56.  
​
​Latinos Who Lunch
0 Comments

​Lisa Stamanis:  ‘Lucky to be Alive’

1/17/2018

1 Comment

 
Lisa Stamanis’ intimate installation has an uncompromising title: “Lucky to be Alive (The Healing Room).” With determined baby steps and art as an invention to recovery, there is an understanding to the meaning of healing. Time still exists, and Stamanis is happy to pick and choose how to use that time, including this long-awaited return to her own artistic practice.

It is possible, thanks to some personal traits. “My stubbornness and my will,” says Stamanis. “I feel lucky and grateful.”
 
The Las Vegas cultural enabler was a founding member of the Contemporary Arts Collective and an arts administrator for the City of Las Vegas since 1994. She retired in 2014 after suffering a brain hemorrhage. In converting Winchester Culture Center Gallery into an environment of healing, hinting of a medical facility, she shares being alive with a festive outlook, despite the hardships that come from dodging a final bed rest.
 
The skills that are beginning to come back shine in this exhibition and speaks to personal strength. “Everything you know as normal is gone,” she says. “I made it through and now pushing forward.”
 
A bed sits in the middle of the room: an industrial frame covered with bling seems prepared to be a chariot to the heavens. A disco ball and music are subtext from the subconscious, making Donna Summer and others a soundtrack of youth, a Greek Chorus of physical freedom, back when walking or using a paint brush wasn’t a laborious routine. Your mind may hum along other songs if you are from the same generation (“Staying Alive” is my request to the DJ).
 
On the curved wall of Winchester there are Cy Twombly/Jean-Michel Basquiat-like scrawls that bump up to the entrance of the gallery. The scribbles take shape with a “hello,” a greeting from the artist. That “hello” is also a welcome back to living life as an artist.  It can be read when one leaves the representation of a cancelled wake, back into a lobby of the real world.




​Lisa Stamanis
"Lucky to be Alive (The Healing Room)"
Through Feb. 16 at Winchester Gallery

Opening Reception Thursday, January 18, 6 - 8 p.m.
Gallery Talk Saturday, January 27, 2018.  11:00 a.m.
Clark County Winchester Cultural Center Gallery
 ​


During the “Lucky to be Alive (The Healing Room)" reception, Lisa Stamanis will present companion pieces curated under the title of the “Thank You Project,” a collection of original artwork by other artists that will to be gifted to Las Vegas doctors, nurses, police officers and firefighters. "The 'Thank You Project” is an experimental performance work involving artists and their artwork in a giving, healing gesture to the Las Vegas caregiver community,” says Stamanis. A selection of the donated arts works will be displayed and presented to recipients during the artists reception.

​
1 Comment

Eduardo Carrillo at Pasadena Museum of California Art

1/9/2018

0 Comments

 
Cabin in the Sky, 1966. Oil on board, 72 x 58 3/4 inches. Private collection

Eduardo Carrillo’s (1937-1997) was an artist who introduced the mural as urban social practice while at UCLA. His paintings are the subject of "Testament of the Spirit" at Pasadena Museum of California Art., which opens later this month. My post about the exhibition is up at LAObserved. 
0 Comments
<<Previous
Forward>>

     ABOVE: Gig Depio
    “Through the Muddy”
    2017-18 480” x 144”
    Oil on Canvas
    ​Moapa Valley


    Picture
    An Online Arts Journal

    FOUNDER + WRITER
    Ed Fuentes​

    CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
    G. James Daichendt
    ​Andrea Lepage ​

    Picture
    Exhibition:
    February 2 – March 31, 2019

    ​Artist Reception
    and Gallery Talk:
    ​Sunday, February 10, 2019, 
    4 p.m.–7 p.m.
    Picture

    Picture
    S P O N S O R

    ARCHIVES

    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013

    TAGS

    All
    Artists
    Books
    Desert Region
    Field Notes
    Guest Author
    Las Vegas
    Link + Ink
    Media
    Murals
    Outside Las Vegas
    Photography
    Public Art
    Street Art
    UNLV


    Tweets by @PaintThisDesert


    Tweets by @viewfromaloft
© 2013- 2019  Paint This Desert
​
  • Field Notes
  • Resources
  • About