The stars have gone dark in Alex Huerta’s art, but his future has never been brighter.
“They seemed cliché, too easy,” Huerta says of his decision to forgo a speckled sky. Instead he added telephone poles and signage to his collaged urban landscapes, and enlarged them significantly, from a few inches long in his early work to as wide as 7 feet today.
The pieces are his most popular to date, landing the Downtown artist his first solo gallery show, Vintage Urban Collection, at Sahara West Library. One collector bought several to hang in a New York City penthouse that was featured on TV, and local band Wax Pig Melting will feature another on an album cover.
Huerta, a member of 3BaaadSheep art collective, began experimenting with the black-and-white mixed scratchboard and collage pieces when a visitor to his Peace N Art Studio at Arts Factory told him she expected to see color in his work. Though the artist of 19 years considers himself a colorist, he set out to defy expectations with the Vintage Urban series.
“That word, expectation, doesn’t sit well with me,” Huerta says. “Really in that moment I was trying to piss people off.”
He dove into Life Magazines and other publications from the 1930s to 1960s, clipping those images and old City of Las Vegas blueprints to construct and populate his collaged cityscapes. In the tenement-style dwellings, life happens. Women nurse babies, couples quarrel, friends share secrets. For Huerta, it’s about humanity, urban life, community and time.
“It’s about the evolution of life. You see a lot of babies and kids,” he says, remembering his father, whom he lost at age 13. Huerta says the art is a nod to his late father, who loved Life Magazine.
“Every experience I have as an artist, I think back to my room,” he says. “No one knew who I was, no one way buying my art. Now 100 people are standing there seeing art, but I’m still that guy in my room.”
Vintage Urban Collection Through October 4; Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Friday-Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sahara West Library.
