We're nothing short of obsessed about signs in this town. Whether we're exulting their centrality to our architectural heritage, or bitching about their scandalous effects on our tender children, we see the sign of Vegas as the Vegas sign. Where else do people bid buildings tearless adieus but clamor to save their signs?
As if we do not have enough signs, and as if our most renowned sign, Betty Willis' Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, were not enough in itself, the Contemporary Arts Collective presents a Vegas-sign design competition. Organized by Joshua Abbey and sponsored by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, the show presents some 30 entries from around the country and points in Europe.
Who knew we were so popular in Italy? Franco Lostumbo of Milan, like several others, takes Willis' icon as a point of departure, proposing we celebrate the upcoming "Centenary" with another foreshortened diamond, this one seemingly afloat in a sky of flame. Willis' iconography is prevalent here, mostly in sincere proposals the designers actually imagine being built. But many of the entries are either fantastic, whimsical or both.
Somehow, you can't quite imagine the LVCVA adorning the Strip with Lynn Morris and Jim Stanford's neon script, "Viva El Vishnu." And it seems likely highway bureaucrats would object to Darius Kuzmickas' huge, red stop sign proclaiming "You Can't $top/ Welcome to Las Vegas."
Nor would they be elated with the proposal by terraswarm of New York to thrust a "10 Mile Spiral" of roadway into the air. The concept is cleverly presented, interjecting quotes from movies such as Casino and Repo Man into a sequence of images detailing just how the spiral would work. Your way into or out of town would take you through the spiral, in which you could play "car slots" or "car roulette." Uh-huh. In any event, terraswarm's proposal was sufficiently ingenious to claim Best-in-Show.
Almost as fantastic, but also somewhat plausible, is the pink flying saucer, supported by sweeping pylons, by Scott Ogburn and Linda Buzby, adjunct architecture professors at Philadelphia University. Changing messages would scroll along the edge of the disc, including "Welcome to Sparkling Las Vegas."
Merely fabulous no more.
Dust to Dust
First Friday-ites who took in the sign show might have been surprised to find Dust Gallery no longer in the Arts Factory. A short stroll down Main Street was in order to find the gallery in its new storefront digs. Naomi Arin explained that the gallery was outgrowing its tucked-away space in the warehouse. That point is borne out by the inaugural group show.
Works by familiar locals such as Jerry Misko and Amanda Farrar are complemented by paintings and drawings from New York, California and other points. That would include Austria, home to Christoph Schmidberger, represented by two similarly sized but entirely dissimilar images, a high-chroma painting of a boy with a melting Popsicle in a natural setting, and a precise pencil drawing of a roadway through an alpine forest.
Superb graphite work is the hallmark of Patrick Nichols' large-scale, vertical drawings of swirling, looping vegetation, imagery with all the vaguely disturbing fussiness of Victorian hair wreaths.
But a flamboyant abstraction prevails. Angela Kallus shows a relief-surface painting with a flame-wave rolling across furrows of black, with rich accent colors along edges. Lisa Stefanelli's high-gloss red-garnet swirl is pulled from the world of candy-flake car detailing. And Peggy Bates' paintings are dense, glossy amalgams of tertiary tone blobs.
It's a varied, strong start for the gallery in its new location—itself a welcome sign that the arts district might be spreading.