Stone Blind Interactive Installation

Vicky Kapo and I have been friends for decades, but it wasn't until she visited Las Vegas in early May 2016, that we took the opportunity to collaborate on a project. Although Vicky's background is in dance and choreography and mine in photography and collage, we have each incorporated community interaction in previous projects.

We visited a couple of sites in the Las Vegas 18b Arts District, home to the monthly First Friday Arts Festival. A boarded up home covered in graffiti art spoke to us of transience. This once solid site designed for occupation, has become unhinged, adrift from its mooring due to its lack of function. There are also homeless people in this neighborhood whom many choose not to see. In this context, the stones we found at the site, suggested the title for the work: Stone Blind.

Having first 'tied down' the house, we invite First Friday visitors to respond to the question "Where - or what - is home to you?". Some answer in specifics: "New Jersey", "Sin City", "Mexico", "Germany"... and others are descriptive: "Where my found family are", "Wherever love is reciprocated", "The location of my car".

The responses reflect the diverse cultural mix of First Friday visitors - locals, national and international visitors, toddlers in strollers and grandparents with walking sticks. Although the installation itself was transient, the messages live on as a poignant reminder of the importance of a safe, loving home that in reality, not everyone experiences.

Las Vegas 18b Arts District, May 6, 2016. 

Vicky Kapo ties down the house with stones found on the site.

Collaged "Seeing Stones" are interspersed with the stones on site.

First Friday visitors write or draw their interpretation of "home".

A project participant adds his messages of "home" to the temporary installation.

Participants add their messages of "home" to the temporary installation.

Participants' contributions festoon the ties at the conclusion of the project.

Visual Art Is Vibrant at Life Is Beautiful Festival 2014

"Love is Power. Power is Life. Life is Beautiful." The words are scrawled in red, encircling a cut out of a large, purple cactus flower. Pasted to the wall, the flower is surrounded by hundreds of other natural desert elements, with hand-written messages. For this year's Life is Beautiful festival, my proposal submitted to curator Patrick Duffy envisioned a collage installation created by the festival visitors themselves, slowly growing over the three days of the festival.
Attendance numbers were up for Las Vegas' second Life is Beautiful festival held during the last of the warm weather in late October. The focus on visual arts was again strong, with the exhibition venue moving to the previously shuttered Western Hotel, sharing space with the guest speakers in the Learning component. The Street Art Program, again curated by Charlotte Dutoit, brought new works to buildings in downtown Las Vegas. With many mural works from the first festival in 2013 still in existence, the face of downtown has changed dramatically.
I've put together a slideshow with Huffington Post, offering a tour of both temporary and permanent visual art features of the 2014 festival. I can't promise that it's fully comprehensive, but it gives a taste of the visual smörgåsbord available to festival-goers taking time out from the multitude of aural offerings. The first images were taken the evening before the festival opened, when some of the visiting street artists were putting the finishing touches on their works. For further information on artists, see the Life is Beautiful line-up.
The best festivals are uplifting, creating a powerful positive energy that lives on after the festival is over. In the downtown center of a city where stark reminders of the hard-hitting recent recession are still evident, the Life is Beautiful festival achieved that for me. As one of my collage participants wrote, quoting the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, "Destruction leads to a very rough road but it also breeds creation."

The Traveling Miracle Show @ Momas N Dadas

There was a great response to The Traveling Miracle Show at Momas N Dadas New Genres Project House in the Las Vegas Arts District. The First Friday festival brought in an audience who enjoyed the installations, unicorn rides and a Sin Eating feast. Seen here is Nathan Coté's, 'Self Watering Suspended Lawn' and Brent Holmes' 'Sin Eater' also featuring Yasmina Chavez and Ashanti McGee. DJ Cyril Noir and burlesque performer Ella Mental rounded off the evening in style. For further coverage, see the article and footage by Sonya Padgett and Chase Stevens of the Las Vegas Review Journal.

Carnevale at The Palazzo

Carnevale at The Palazzo features art, music, wine and food. Seen here is a chalk work in progress by artist Melanie Stimmell who holds the title of 'Master Street Painter' in Italy and Germany.

from the streets of LA...

These photographs were taken in LA's Downtown Arts District except for the last two which feature work by pop artist Kenny Scharf at Honor Fraser in Culver City.

from the streets of Greater LA...

Some art and architecture that caught my eye while traveling around the Greater Los Angeles Area. If you enlarge the image top right, you can just see a devil's head in one of the windows.

from the streets of LA...

Happy New Year 2012, 2013, whatever...

from the streets of Fort Worth...

There are a lot of beautiful historic buildings in Fort Worth - and some which are just designed to look old, like the Bass Performance Hall with the 48-ft tall angels sculpted by Marton Varo. The top four buildings are downtown, and the bottom four are in the historic Stockyards district.