The Animazing Gallery is hosting an art and photography exhibit later this month that looks back at the work of Grateful Dead artists, coinciding with the band’s residency at the Sphere
The hit musical ‘Hamilton’ was supposed to run from September through October at The Smith Center’s Reynolds Hall has been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
Take art classes with your kids. Install a bidet. Practice yoga. Buy houseplants. Catch up your streaming queue. (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
The dT Alley Community Coalition unveiled a creative corridor of murals and interactive exhibits in Downtown Las Vegas. (Rachel Aston/Las Vegas Review-Journal)
“Banksy: Genius or Vandal?” at Immersion Vegas in Fashion Show mall in Las Vegas. The collection of more than 70 original works by the street artist will be on display through April 5. (K.M. Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @KMCannonPhoto
Artist and arts advocate Vicki Richardson talks about the power of art to inspire and challenge. (John Przybys/Las Vegas Review-Journal)
The Dark Arts Market is a place “for underground kids to come be seen, perform and sell their art work,” according to curator Erin Emre. Open once every three months, the market was hosted this month by the Cornish Pasty Factory in the Downtown Arts District. (Mat Luschek/Las Vegas Review-Journal)
Mojave High School students paint inspirational messages on their school bathroom doors. Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal @bizutesfaye
10 best things to do in Las Vegas on Halloween weekend
Susan Tosches-Deneau, an artist and business woman from the southwest valley, explains her art subscription service Art Box Surprise, and shows off some of the artwork from Las Vegas artists that is available through the service. (Madelyn Reese/Las Vegas Review-Journal)
Tom “Cruise” is known more as his graffiti name “save me.” At one point he was homeless in the Pacific Northwest, being arrested for tagging trains and walls, but also painting model trains to make money. This trend of painting model trains among graffiti artists is growing in California, where there are even art gallery shows for model trains, but has yet to take hold in Las Vegas. As a legal alternative, it doesn’t halt artists from painting real trains but monetizes their hobby. Some artists take a photo of the real train they painted, then paint the same work on a model train. Like an architect executing his plan, Tom says.
Today he has been commissioned to paint murals, in the Arts District and for the Linq hotel. His life is in far better shape. He has a full time job so he doesn’t have to rely on graffiti for money. But where he is at now, he gives all credit to graffiti, both the good and bad things. The community of artists he met supported him when he was homeless and pushed him to develop his creativity.
Between the ages of eight and 14, Clarice Tara lived under an umbrella of mental abuse from her mother’s boyfriend. At 14, she left to live with her father, whose abuse of drugs drove Clarice to forms of self-abuse herself.
After marrying at 20, her husband joined the army, and they moved to Texas. But after his return from a tour in Iraq, he became verbally and physically abusive. Cutting away from him, she set out to find some semblance of peace.
She apprenticed at a tattoo shop for 6 months, where a resident tattoo artist had her sit at a desk and draw human portraits over and over. During that time it became clear she wanted to do art for life.
She credits the Las Vegas art community for allowing her to thrive and grow as an artist.
“This art community seems to be elevating each other instead of there being this competition,” she says.
This fall is her second year at UNLV where she is working on her Bachelor’s in Fine Arts. Her main project is a series of portraits called “The Weight”. She arranges for friends to meet with her, talk about a time in their life when they felt a heaviness from suffering, and then asks them to pose in a way that they feel best shows where they are mentally at in handling the weight of the situation. She then photographs them, and later draws their portrait with pencil or colored pencil.
She recently began putting the portraits on mirrors. “The viewer is just as important if not more important than the artwork itself,” she says. It was important that viewers see the subjects in these drawings as experiencing a “weight” that she believes is universal. Her greatest goal is to connect viewers to that idea and receive some level of peace from that camaraderie.
“We all suffer alone but we’re not alone in that suffering,” she says. “Instead of dwelling on that heaviness, I had to see it as something as this is going to lift me up this is going to give me strength.”
The heaviness, she says, is usually circumstantial, and when you get through it, it becomes a source of strength. In the meantime, connecting with others assuages the pain.
You can find her work on Facebook at “The Art of Tara” and on Instagram @claricetara. Beginning in December an exhibit of her work will be displayed at Jana’s RedRoom in the Arts Factory in Las Vegas.
Marcus Henderson, Anthony Burnett, Rashawn Young, and Latazsha Reese make up the group BARS, or “Brothers Are Radically Superb”. They combine turfing, bone breaking, popping, and anything that inspires them to put on a improv-based theatrical show of raw self-expression.