Art

A creative space: Art, literature and the five senses at the Nest

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Artists Diane Butner, left, and Kathleen Nathan pose in the “Reading Room” at Nest Studio, 1800 S. Industrial Rd., Sunday, April 17, 2016.
Photo: Steve Marcus

Rainwaters flow like rivers at street corners, and drivers speed cautiously through the wetness. The tranquil rhythm plays like a lullaby into Nest Studio + Multisensory Projects in Downtown Spaces on Industrial Boulevard. Inside sit artists Kathleen Dillon Nathan and Diane Butner, old friends whose installation The Reading Room is calming to the extent that even on a day as audible as this, it keeps the outside world at a distance.

Photo collages by artist Diane Butner are shown in the "Reading Room" at Nest Studio, 1800 S. Industrial Rd., Sunday, April 17, 2016.

Muslin covers the walls, taut drapes hanging ceiling to floor. The cuckoo bird emerges when it wants and the sky unloads a gray that seeps into the room. “We call it more of a studio and installation,” Nathan says of the multidiscipline space that was a gallery when she shared it with a previous partner. “It’s more experiential. We want to work on themes based on the five senses.”

An established photographer, Nathan has been in and out of the gallery scene throughout her career and is one of the founders of Las Vegas’ Contemporary Arts Center (then Collective). Her work connects still images to “create a sense of expanded time,” including a series of photographs she took looking out of the same window at different moments in a cabin in upstate New York.

Butner, an artist and designer with a background in sculpture (a BFA from UNLV), worked for more than a decade in retail window-display and is now creative director for Destinations by Design. Her dadaist collages in The Reading Room ring with emotional depth in abstract narratives. One nods to Agnes Richter, the insane asylum patient who embroidered all over her straight jacket. Not free, but free. Determined.

Photographs by artist Kathleen Nathan are shown in the "Reading Room" at Nest Studio, 1800 S. Industrial Rd., Sunday, April 17, 2016.

Butner’s collaboration with Nathan on The Reading Room helped mold the environment. Fabrics define the space. Soft pillows and braided cotton poufs in neutral colors line the floor along a studio-length window covered with muslin, into which they cut a traditional window. Trompe l’eoil drawings of a bookshelf and a large potted plant loom on other walls. Objects, including a collection of faded, early 19th-century books printed in German, a magnifying glass and a nest atop a wooden tripod from that era, are placed about.

Bruce Isaacson, Clark County’s poet laureate, was the first to read there, followed by writer Chris Cipollini. On this morning, Nest had hosted women and children from Safe Nest, where Butner volunteers—an art field trip that had the women working on creative writing projects while their children drew pictures and picnicked in an open room.

Occasionally, Nathan creates portraits in the informal setting. Sitters end up reading to her, including artist James Stanford, who read for hours. Butner says the hope is for poet Angela Brommel to present the art of the story next, using aroma to invoke memory.

This is what they envisioned when they teamed up for Nest: no specific agenda, just letting the space foster creativity in multiple disciplines. “We believe that with art you can lose yourself and find yourself at the same time,” Nathan says.

Nest Studio Downtown Spaces, 1800 Industrial Road #200b

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