Galleries come and go—heck, in this town, even museums move on—and few tears are shed for most. But the swan song of Gallery Au Go-Go is worth noting. Saturday marks the last time Dirk Vermin will open the space adjacent to his Pussykat Tattoo Parlor for an art show party, and it's a sad moment, indeed.
"I think I just did everything I set out to do," says the punk entrepreneur, explaining why he was shutting down the gallery he opened in 2002. "It just felt to me it had run its course."
Titling the last waltz Gallery Au Go-Go Must Be Destroyed, Vermin has invited local artists to hang their wares for the 8 p.m.-to-midnight affair. And, following custom, the party will repair to the Double Down Saloon, itself celebrating an auspicious 13th anniversary, for performances of his band, the Vermin, and others.
In addition to feeling the upstart art space had jumped its own kind of shark, Vermin says he was pulled in too many directions—father, musician, gallery director and author. Actually, it was the last of these that started pushing out the one before it. Vermin says he's been working on a history of the local punk scene, from the late 1970s and early '80s through today, when many of its central figures—and Vermin's about as central to it as anyone—find themselves sustaining the punk ethic in middle age.
Vermin says he's about halfway through his epic, having interviewed about 40 other veterans of the scene, with maybe as many to go. The title will be Boredom Was the Reason, and in keeping with the DIY spirit of alterna-Vegas, he plans to publish it himself. It's clearly a labor of love, and one he believes was getting cheated by his commitment to the gallery. Calling the project "the first book ever written about growing up in Las Vegas," he not only reminisces about local bands come and gone, but landmark visits by seminal groups such as the Misfits, Social Distortion and the Dead Kennedys.
"Boy, do I miss those days," he says.
Las Vegas might have cause, eventually, to say the same about the brief life of Gallery Au Go-Go. "There was no pretense here," Vermin says, adding that all it took to hang something in the gallery was "a nail and hammer." More to the point, it took an ability to catch Vermin's eye with an original idea. Occasionally he found critics, and some unsuspecting gallery-goers, missing the point, which was to provide four walls, and a nail and hammer, to aspiring artists who might not suit the mainstream art scene.
Vermin notes with some pride that several artists he exhibited, for instance, the graffiti-inspired Dray, have opened their own spaces and become stalwarts of the growing Downtown arts district.
That's an unexpected result of one tattoo artist's desire to show his own work. Having organized shows in Los Angeles, Vermin wondered why he couldn't do it in his hometown. "It really bothered me."
So he took the plunge, organizing shows such Tattoos and Trash, a 100-artist Halloween extravaganza, and a kid-friendly refrigerator-art show, with work hung "at knee level." The penultimate show was In the Kingdom of the Blind, comprising Keri Schroeder's "Traditional Portraits of Extraordinary People," such as "Elephant Man" Joseph Merrick.
Vermin says he's not bowing out entirely, and might make contributions to First Fridays, including a possible Tattoos and Trash IV. At the same time, he worries about the Downtown scene losing some of the free spirit he helped bring to the Las Vegas art world.
"It kind of seems like you were at a party you weren't invited to," he says. "I think a lot of the smaller artists will be lost in the shuffle."
Let's hope not.
Gallery Au Go-Go, 4972 S. Maryland Parkway, No. 11. 419-5681. 8 p.m.-midnight, November 26.