Art

When you’ve been tagged by Banksy—the anonymous, subversive British graffiti artist—you don’t break out the scrub brushes and cleaning supplies. You count yourself lucky, because you’ve provided a canvas for one of the most influential artists working today. And you may have been handed a lot of money. That’s what Las Vegas’ Light Group thought when one of their rather generic Los Angeles billboards was hit last week. The ad depicted a woman in a black bra and jeans tossing her tousled hair to-and-fro with mild abandon. The artist added an inebriated mouse bearing a remarkable resemblance to a certain Walt Disney character groping the woman’s breast with his left hand and holding a martini in his right, while a starstruck Minnie-like character looks on. It’s a definite improvement, if this non-art critic does say so himself.

On March 5, the Southern Nevada Museum of Fine Art will present Forms Environmental, a collection of large-scale acrylic paintings by artist Marlene Tseng Yu. Although the museum’s location, on the second level of Neonopolis Complex, may scream “tourist attraction,” this nonprofit organization has been bringing fine art to locals since 2003.

Wendy Kveck is a curator, and curators make choices. When they make inspired choices, they can guide culture forward. So in creating Vantage Vegas, Kveck’s choice of visual artists Ginger Bruner and Lisa Stamanis was only the beginning. Her culture-propelling genius was adding culinary artist Michael Jordan, poet Dayvid Figler and mixologist Michael Shetler to the mix. The theme is Las Vegas, and by choosing this group of artists, Kveck has tapped into an important curatorial practice in contemporary art—one that seeks to merge and blur the lines between art forms, reminding us that all forms are somehow related and we can embrace them together.

The Arts Factory is proud to be the geographic and creative center of the 18b Las Vegas Arts District. The Arts Factory is a 50-year-old commercial warehouse building with traditional bowstring truss architecture. It sits near the junction of Charleston Boulevard and Main Street in an old section of downtown Las Vegas. The conversion of the Arts Factory into a thriving commercial art center started in 1997.