Robert Kimberly came to Sin City from the Big Easy three years ago with some trepidation. Before moving, he went online to research his new home. Being an art fan, he was nervous when Google after Google for any phrase containing "Las," "Vegas" and "culture" turned up with "Your search did not match any documents."
But where others might have resigned themselves to making do with showgirls rather than Chagall, Kimberly decided to take matters into his own hands. In November, he launched his blog, Las Vegas Arts and Culture (
http://lvartsandculture.blogspot.com) as an electronic watering hole for the menagerie that makes up Southern Nevada's arts community.
What inspired you to start a blog about Las Vegas' art and culture?
It was the Survival Research Labs group coming to town, and when I talked to acquaintances of mine who I knew would be completely interested in an event like that, no one knew about it. I felt that that was definitely a sign that something needed to change.
Do you have a way of finding out how successful it is?
No. The only way I know about people visiting right now is through e-mail. I actually use the site so much for my own purposes that a counter that just measured visits would be skewed toward me and eight other people.
When you get flooded with e-mails—
A little trickle of e-mails.
OK, a trickle, then. Do you respond to them?
Absolutely. The whole point is to network and get people to just be in touch with each other, because there are these little discreet groups all around Vegas who are encouraging each other to do things. You have the Vegas goth mailing list (
http://www.vegasgoths.com ). You have the Avant Arts people (
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AvantGarden/ and
http://www.avantarts.com ). You have the Super 8 film group (Super 8 Punk Group,
http://groups.msn.com/super8punkfilmproduction ) and you have related people doing something called Brew and View (
http://www.brewandview.org ) which is at the New York Cafe, where they're just doing screenings of funky films. And one of those guys has a girlfriend in the Sin City Grind Kittens (
http://www.sincitygrindkittens.com ), a burlesque troupe which has just started up. So you have everyone reinforcing each other, but it needs a catalyst to break it out a little more.
What would you say to people who say that the arts scene in Vegas is not only dead, it's never been born?
They aren't necessarily incorrect, meaning in what little time I've seen the scene, I was actually shocked at how little there was in town. But conversely, the folks who were involved with it were extremely adament about trying to make it better. And it's easy to start something in a city where it has a flourishing arts community and parlay your success off of that. But Vegas, not only does it have a little arts community, but because of the geography of the city, it's all spread out. You don't have an area where you can develop such a thing. It's a tougher battle to be fought in Vegas, but I think you're starting to see the successes.
Do you think it's a winnable battle?
I think the population of the city is reaching a tipping point where it just may have to succeed. There may be so many people that want this and would attend things that are successful. But, you don't have an area in town where there are 15 galleries, unfortunately.
Do you think it would require a specific district or neighborhood?
Yeah. My comparison is New Orleans, and you have areas that are just completely dedicated to arts and museums. In a five-block radius in the warehouse district, you have maybe 15 galleries, you have the Contemporary Arts Center, you have the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. I think it needs an arts neighborhood, an arts district, which they're calling it.
Down on Charleston?
Yeah, Charleston and Main. It's a great place to start one, but there's going to have to be some things to really kick start it.
Would you say that First Friday, when artists open their studios to the public, is the start of it?
From my limited exposure, yeah. One of the things I found interesting about First Friday is that you're starting to see a real variation in the kind of folks who are going down there. The first couple of ones, it seemed to be all the same people, and they seemed to be really supportive. One of the last ones I went to, there were hardly any young folks around, but a lot of older couples, in their 40s and 50s. It seemed to be a striking difference to who normally comes down, but they seemed equally interested in what was going on. Enthusiasm can only take an area so far, and then there has to be a financial success to follow it.
Every once in a while, I talk to Naomi [R. Arin] over at Dust (
http://www.dustgallery.com ), which I think is also important. She actually had some folks stop by the gallery who were driving through Vegas and had read about it. They liked what they saw and immediately bought two pieces. And they got their information from a magazine.
Say the Weekly.
[Laughs] Yeah, the Weekly. I think a couple from Georgia had picked up a Weekly. It managed to migrate all the way over to the East Coast. No, I think it was some little blurb in a national magazine about Vegas arts.
Would you say that there's a Vegas style to the arts here?
I think there'd be a good argument made for the Vegas look in terms of some of the paintings that are being produced by some of the artists coming out of UNLV (
http://www.unlv.edu/Colleges/Fine_Arts/Art/EventCalendar/event.html ). I think that there's a real pop-art, graphic tradition that they're tying into, like Curtis Fairman's sculptures, which are quasi-ready mades but they're almost like sculptural clipart, real simple, real graphic, made up of a few elements repeated, and then you've got it.
Before you started your blog, did you see yourself as a person helping to give birth to the arts scene?
I've never seen myself as that, but I've never been one to underestimate the power of random acts as a means of something good happening. Never doubt the benefit of doing something because you just don't know who you're reaching.
Is there anything you want to add that I haven't asked?
One of my main concerns is that if I get burned out, or if something pulls me away from it for a month, the site dies. I would love to find a loose network of people who would like to contribute a blurb. I don't cover the theater, I don't know of anyone who's going to the symphony or the ballet, and these are worthwhile and they would round out the website.
So should they contact you via e-mail?
Yeah, the more the merrier. The only caveat would be that I play editor. Also, in a roundabout way, this website is a nod to Geoff Carter a little bit, who used to write The Passenger [column in the Weekly]. One of the few contacts I ever made in Vegas prior to us moving was beaming an e-mail out to Mr. Carter and him saying, "Well, when you're in Vegas ...." We met at one of the cool, funky bars in town, and Geoff introduced us to the better things that Vegas had to offer at the time.