Since 2013, the Life Is Beautiful music and arts festival has left its mark on the buildings of the Fremont East district. This year brings several new pieces of street art to what was already a formidable outdoor gallery. Why not take advantage of this cooler weather with a walking tour?
Las Vegas Boulevard and Carson Avenue: Bezt’s tall, narrow portrait of a girl asleep in a church pew—with a stained-glass knight slaying a dragon hanging above her head, like a thought bubble—is achingly romantic, and a better “Welcome to Downtown” signpost than any the city has put up.
Emergency Arts (Fremont and Sixth streets): The unremarkable plaster façade of the Emergency Arts building is transformed into a pastel dream by Fafi’s three take-no-sh*t girls. Around the corner, Shepard “Obey” Fairey’s constructivist mural decries “corporate welfare”—a curious message, considering how much of Tony Hsieh’s money has been spent making Fremont hip.
Seventh Street, between Ogden and Stewart avenues: Felipe Pantone gives us a field of pulsating black-and-white zigzags, bisected by a metallic lightning bolt. Nearby, Mark Drew invokes a bit of Roy Lichtenstein with a giant panel from Charles Schulz’s Peanuts featuring a dizzy, defeated Linus.
Seventh Street and Stewart Avenue: Dulk opens a surrealist window to the American West, through which stampedes a herd of deconstructed bison. Martin Whatson’s dual-paneled trompe l’oeil tells two stories: a giant disembodied hand peeling back the wall to reveal a tapestry of graffiti, and a riot cop assuming a defense crouch against that revealed graffiti wall.
Seventh and Fremont streets: “Fear no fate,” declares Tristan Eaton’s portrait of a showgirl wearing a headdress of classic Vegas iconography. It ought to be adopted as the city seal.