Art
Faces of First Friday
Flesh and Feathers
Kevin Chupik’s diptych series explores visual link between birds and babes
June 30th, 2011
Plumage, Kevin Chupik’s new show at Brett Wesley Gallery, is as dazzling as the feathers of the most exotic avian. It presents split-canvas diptych paintings of birds and women’s body parts, reducing them both to aesthetic objects and demonstrating how far apart and close together we are as species. Read more »
Art
Crimson Confidential
Engaging the enigma of Red, as the mystical artist visits the Venetian
June 30th, 2011
The oil paintings of L.A.-based artist Red possess an otherworldly quality. They are at once dark and vibrant; their figurative subject matter—goldfish, Buddha, demons and dragons—is spiritual, psychedelic, eerie, Eastern. Read more »
Art
In the Black
Painter Jerry Misko turns off his trademark vibrant style and crowdfunds his latest mural project
June 23rd, 2011
For more than a decade Jerry Misko has served as our city’s foremost visual poet, forging a language of bright color and neon that evokes the Strip at night. Indeed, no one has embraced the vivid veneer of Las Vegas—its crackling energy and buzzing garishness—with more success than Misko. Read more »
Art
Pop-Up Doll House
Kidrobot brings its blend of art and commerce to the Cosmopolitan’s P3 Studio
June 23rd, 2011
The popular and often subversive Kidrobot is one of the leading purveyors of the vinyl doll craze. Its line features both do-it-yourself figures and exclusive characters from a global array of lowbrow and street-influenced artists. Read more »
A&E
Power Lines and Parking Lots
A new art show digs beneath Vegas’ glitzy veneer to show us what we’d otherwise ignore
June 9th, 2011
Gazing upon the oil-painted canvases of Abraham Abebe, you get a powerful sense of the nondescript areas of Las Vegas. Sure, “nondescript” isn’t normally attached to Sin City, but that’s the point of Abebe’s new solo exhibit, The Other Side of Las Vegas, on display at Winchester Cultural Center Rotunda Gallery through Aug. 11. Read more »
Art
Lyrical Landmarks
Three pieces to admire at Bellagio Gallery’s A Sense of Place
June 9th, 2011
As a paid Strip attraction, the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art has more resources to create an incredible show than most other efforts in Las Vegas. And with the help of some friends—the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego and MGM Resorts International—its current exhibition, A Sense of Place: Landscapes From Monet to Hockney, doesn’t disappoint. Indeed, A Sense of Place showcases quite a range: from the quiet naturalism of Monet to the brassy pop art of Lichtenstein. These pieces stood out for their spirited vision, blithe execution and high style. Read more »
Faces of First Friday
Captured Gestures
Cristina Paulos returns to her Strip caricature roots with a portrait show
June 2nd, 2011
If you’ve been hanging out at The Beat Coffeehouse inside the downtown Emergency Arts building lately, you’ve probably seen her. She’s the lady in a sundress sitting on the floor, creating rapid-fire watercolor portraits of local characters such as artist Jerry Misko and writer/comics guy/drummer Pj Perez. She chitchats with her subjects all the while, sometimes discarding a paper canvas after a few strokes, at other times laboring intensively over a portrait as if it were a math formula. Her name is Cristina Paulos, and she’s been a Las Vegas artist and First Friday fixture for the better part of a decade. This week, she unveils her first solo exhibit in more than four years. Read more »
Art
Flash of New Talent
Photography auctions embrace some new stars
May 26th, 2011
Auctions are nothing if not ruthless. In early April, Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips held multimillion-dollar spring photography sales of a combined 644 images. The results offered clues, as the art market continues to thaw from the 2008 recession, as to which contemporary photographer’s stocks have risen, whose have fallen and whose are holding steady post-crash. Read more »
Art
Love Fest
Art show based on mutual affection between Emergency Arts and Opportunity Village
May 19th, 2011
This is the story of a nonprofit organization and a downtown cultural scene uniting for an arts awareness event. On one side, there’s Opportunity Village, a work-training program for people with intellectual disabilities and the Valley’s best-known charity group. On the other, Emergency Arts, the Vegas hot spot that has been the main reason for much recent press about our Sin City arts scene. Read more »
Art
Art Anarchy
May 19th, 2011
Melanie Coffee’s personal collection of 1980s nostalgia and teen angst is perched behind black wrought-iron gates and displayed upon X-ray light boxes and metallic blue walls. The punk-rock art fliers, Ann Summa photography and video art installations are all part of the inaugural exhibition of Coffee’s new space in Emergency Arts, Gamma Gamma Gallery (Fri-Sat 7-9 p.m., 520 E. Fremont St., Suite 109). The show, which runs through May 30, is appropriately called Gamma, Gamma Hey! 1980s Punk Rock Flyer Art and Ephemera Show. Read more »
