Thank you, Chase R. McCurdy for these BEAUTIFUL images of the opening night of Small Space Fest!
More photos by our other Small Space Fest photographers coming soon!
Cascade Wilhelm is an LA-based multimedia artist and writer.
See more of her brilliant work at Small Space Fest June 20th-July 21st.
Balitronica Gomez is a cyborg poet, performance artist and queer sex radical currently living in San Francisco. She was born and raised on the San Diego/Tijuana border where she was part of the punk and literary underground scene. She lived in Paris in a 17th century Dominican convent researching nun culture and expat literature. She holds an MFA in Poetry and Queer Theory from Mills College. As a photo-performance artist she has collaborated with several well-known photographers such as Manuel Vason, RJ Muna and Herachi Hache.
For the last 3 years, Balitronica has toured with Guillermo Gómez-Peña and the legendary performance troupe La Pocha Nostra as a core member.
One of her best known performance art projects is the “phantom mariachi”, a black spandex Sentai-suited “anonymous” woman wearing a mariachi hat, high heels and bearing a placard with statements like: “Against the erasure of complex identities and eviction.” This bold persona appears as a walking censorship bar. She silently speaks of the devastating erasure of complex identities. She is a symbolic inhabitant of past, present and future San Francisco.
To find out more about Balitronica Gomez, look her up at these websites: http://www.gomez-pena.tumblr.com and http://www.balitronica.tumblr.com and www.facebook.com/ballitron
See her perform live at Small Space Fest: June 20th, 2016.
The art of Michelle Dennis Kudyba. See more of her amazing work at Small Space Fest, opening June 20th!
Artist Statement: The donkey is a symbol I use to express specific experiences and social dynamics of humans. I am drawing upon my fascination with donkeys as a child, having grown up with them and always wanting to know more about them, somehow feeling connected. My mural sized paintings are created using my hands as a brush, actually sculpting them into the canvas with paint. When standing in front of the monumental scale of the donkeys, the viewer is the same size and able to identify with it even though it is not a human, the emotion seen and felt is intrinsically human. They are a visual interaction bridging the gap between man and animal. The way they are painted, their positions, and colors chosen become metaphors of specific human experiences, each telling it’s own story. The subject and the expression are most important to me. I do not try to render the donkey perfectly, but rather reveal his imperfections, and mine as an artist. Within these imperfections the individual personality of the subject is found.
I am most interested in how objects are situated in our everyday spaces. My work is motivated by the drama of landscapes and waterways, urban and rural. I experiment by transforming everyday materials, putting them into unexpected circumstances. Through photography, drawing, and sculptural installation my notions play upon the unpredictable juxtaposition of natural and synthetic matter.
Reenie Charrière received her MFA in 2009 from Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine. She currently resides in Oakland, California. Her work addresses environmental issues exposing the natural beauty as well as the synthetic troubles all around us, and actively considers the consequences of our human conditions.
Reenie has received numerous grants including 2 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant in 2015,and 2011, and a Roderick Dew Travel Grant in 2008, as well as funded residencies by the La Napoule Art Foundation in France, 2012-14, SF MOMA, 2013, Arts Benicia, 2014, and Vermont Studio, 2011. Her work has been exhibited in venues internationally, as well as all over the United States.
See more at Small Space Fest: June 20th, 2016.
Reenie Charriere's Website: HERE
The cast of "Cinched In Burlesque"
These girls are fabulous, sexy and oh so talented. See more of them at Small Space Fest on June 20th only. Their performance kicks off the late night festivities.
Buttercup
Las Vegas Burlesque performer, Buttercup, hails from New York City where she studied at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Along with her skilled voice and movement, Buttercup incorporates traditional burlesque elements into her routines. Her fan-dance, bump & grind and tassel & assel twirling create unforgettable acts which embody beauty and eroticism with light-hearted flair. Buttercup is a burlesque instructor as well as a museum assistant at The Burlesque Hall of Fame. She has performed in burlesque, comedy and variety shows across the country and in Las Vegas.
Kitschy Koo
Bred from the loins of an Elvis minister in a runaway bride Kitschy Koo is one-of-a-kind! Her burlesque journey begins with a scooter crash on historic Fremont Street. While teetering on consciousness, it is said the famous cowboy Vegas Vick came to her side! Vick gifted her a quest: to bring glitter and class back to the modern era. Armed with the words of a neon ghost and eager to earn her glitter she joined a burlesque school under the rhinestone fist of Cha Cha Velour. Graduating with top tassels in 2011 she now shakes her Fannie and brings light to any bar, stage or festival across America. With a dash of glitter and a splash of spunk this quirky cutie is ready to bring her sparkle to you!
Dee Dee Cupcake
DeeDee Cupcake is a Midwestern gal from the Windy City of Chicago. DeeDee has performed and competed her signature pin-up pole acts all over the Midwest and has recently performed in Denver and Las Vegas. DeeDee won the title of Miss Rockin' Bettie 2016 and will be featured in the next issue of Latina Pinup Magazine. DeeDee loves supporting local downtown Las Vegas businesses and is very excited to be a part of Small Space Fest!
Jess W. Photography
Kerri N'Fuego
Las Vegas' budding burlesque beauty, Kerri N' Fuego, is revered for her strength, stamina and sex appeal. She is an accomplished pole dancer as well as a pole fitness instructor for Pole Fitness Studio in Las Vegas. She ranks high competitively in pole competitions across the nation with a recent Bronze Medal in the Women's Professional category Pacific Pole Championships 2016. She also won 1st place and received a Master of Amazement award in The 2016 BurlyPicks Colorado Regional Burlesque Festival. Her unique brand of burlesque with acrobatic flair can be seen in San Francisco's, "Volare Variety," and Vegas' "Stand Up & Tease."
These girls are smoking hot.
Don't miss their smoldering act at Small Space Fest
Small Space Fest will be featuring work by Maureen Halligan: artist, educator, and curator currently based in Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been exhibited in Colorado, California, Nevada, Rhode Island and Italy...and soon, at Emergency Arts for Small Space Fest!!!
She earned her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, and attended the European Honors Program in Rome, and an MFA from the University of Las Vegas, Nevada.
We are so excited to see more of her work!
Go to Maureen Halligan's website HERE
Join us at Small Space Fest: June 20th, 2016.
Elizabeth Folk uses time-based media, sculpture, and installation to explore issues of class, labor, sexuality, communication, mortality, and revolution. Many of her works take the form of public interventions and guerrilla performances that invite audience participation, often using humor and play to stimulate discourse. Folk is a Lecturer of Art at UC Santa Barbara and an Adjunct Professor of Art and Art History at Santa Barbara City College.
Images from: Desperately Clinging to Something That Was Designed To Deteriorate (II)
Here's another way of putting it:
When I was ten I saw a dead guy on the side of the road on the way home from an Oriole's game. He flew through the windshield of a blue Toyota pick-up. Due to the accident we were stuck in unmoving traffic. As we approached the wreck, Jennifer Diling's dad said not to look. Our car sat next to the body for at least twenty minutes. The other kids in the car did not look. I am still looking.
Sometimes I cannot help but stare. I kept the pictures of my high school best friend. She is the sexiest person that I have ever met. I want to see more. I want to show you her mannerisms to make you want to look too. I want to create a point of departure and then hand it to you. I made this for you.
Images from: it couldn't get any worse or be any better
In a society where we spend much of our time in capsules traveling from capsule to capsule, I have realized that most of my art belongs somewhere between the capsules- a special delivery for you during your long day, should you choose to accept. These insertions into the everyday have taken the form of a mobile spa vending machine, a pirate waitressing performance, and unsolicited janitorial services with a twist, to name a few. In the spirit of stimulating community dialogue through play, my recent gallery work takes the form of large-scale interactive installation, games, collaborations with community members, workshops, and interactive performances. Each piece is designed to be accessible and interesting to a public without an art background, with layers that engage in conversation with contemporary art and art theory.
Images from: Desperately Clinging to Something That Was Designed to Deteriorate
Here are some questions that I ask myself in consideration of my work:
Does it look like Art (if so, start over)? Is it interactive? Does it start a conversation? Is it accessible? Am I part of the problem or part of the solution? What are my motives? Is it courageous? Is it humorous? Is it honest? Is it innovative? Is it revolutionary? Do I hear the sound of it clicking into place?
See more from Elizabeth Folk at Small Space Fest: June 20th, 2016.
Her website HERE
"My work explores change as a result of interaction, whether with a physical space and over time (Onflow, Hello!Plan), as a result of social interaction (Punch Table, Confidence Booth), or as a result of the random superimposition of elements (Rain Shadow).
I'm interested in combining this exploration with meandering and decorative forms. I welcome the jolt to myself (and perhaps to others) of using my careful hand-efforts as elements to be cut up, damaged, and re-purposed."
"Bachrun LoMele, has pursued art-making through college, art school, and many years as a freelance illustrator in NYC. For the past 13 years he has developed his artistic practice in a remote rural location in the California Sierra Nevada foothills. Living separated from any art scene has led to the necessity of creating his own scene in Pinehurst, and drawing others into it from afar.
With California and national artists he developed the Hatchery art spaces, utilizing abandoned hangar buildings adjacent to his studio (formerly drug-rehab compound operated by Synanon), organizing three art events for artists from around the country and the world. The 2015 exhibition, The Hatchery: Fortress, was selected to be part of an International City Tour, as conceived by UAMO (Urban Arts and Media Organization) in Munich, Germany. The Hatchery was the sole U.S. location chosen for the tour, which included Berlin, Amsterdam, Athens, Mexico City, Vienna, Prague, and Sofia. A video of the event, and works from the exhibition, will be presented at UAMO’s City Festival in Munich in April 2016.
Connections made through the Hatchery led to a solo exhibition at Arts Visalia (2012); installation of an interactive piece Punch Table for the apexart-funded Memphis Social (2013); a solo exhibition of Hello!Plan at Marshall Arts in Memphis (2014); and a solo exhibition of the interactive installation pieceConfidence Booth at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga’s Apothecary Gallery (2014).
In 2014 and 2015, the Fresno Regional Foundation (now known as the Central Valley Community Foundation), in partnership with the James Irvine Foundation, as well as the City of Visalia Community Arts Grant Program, awarded the Confidence Booth project grants to deploy the installation in numerous non-traditional urban and rural venues in the San Joaquin Valley of California.
He has participated in group exhibitions at the Painting Center (Chelsea, NYC), LA Artcore (Los Angeles), 31st Annual Made in California exhibition (La Brea, CA), GearBox Gallery (Oakland, CA), Gallery 1317 (San Francisco, CA), LuminArté Gallery (Dallas, TX), Gallery 263 (Cambridge, MA), and Janet Turner Print Museum (California State University, Chico).
Confidence Booth aka Hide Out
is an interactive art installation, functioning both as a significance harvesting unit, and as a display and broadcast venue, linking people in its community of heart-felt incoherence, and probing the tender boundary between public and private experience.
Welcomed into a sound-proofed booth, willing donors speak secrets ― their truths, their untold stories. No one is listening, nor is it recorded as decipherable information. Leached of meaning by a scrambling code, the spoken sentences are transformed into an essence of perceived meaning for use in the visually active, public context of the booth’s exterior.
Likewise, donated confidences are re-voiced by sound artist Anna Dembska, and broadcast from a piñata conch located outside the booth. The scrambled texts become sound through MAX/MSP using Apple Voices, to create a randomly evolving mysterious babble/Babel.
Confidence Booth is an inside-out gallery; invited inside the booth, individuals may securely reveal what is inside themselves, while on the outside their barely recognizable statements are embellished and publicized for all to see."
Take part in the installation at Small Space Fest: June 20th, 2016.
Bachrun LoMele's Website HERE
Clay Arts Vegas' own Thomas Bumblauskas is firing up some work for Small Space Fest! Join us on June 20th, 2016 to see it...perhaps even purchase it!
About the Artist: "I am a scenic designer and ceramic artist based in Las Vegas and an owner of Clay Arts Vegas, LLC. Clay Arts Vegas is the only ceramic studio in the Las Vegas Arts District that offers classes, supplies and has a gallery that is open seven days a week.
I have a BFA from the Theatre School of DePaul University, formerly the Art Institute of Chicago. I have worked over two decades as a theatrical designer and Art Director for both film and Television and my work has been seen internationally. My film credits include: The Sixth Sense, Annapolis and Igby Goes Down. My theatrical design credits include: The Walnut Street Theatre, Main Street Music Theatre, Opera Vivente and Philadelphia Opera. I have been a guest instructor at a number of major universities including The University of Pennsylvania, North Dakota Univeristy, Saint Joseph’s Univeristy, University of Missouri, among others. My work has been featured as part of the Faces show in Atlanta (Mudfire Clayworks Gallery), a featured artist at Earth, Wind and Fire (Laramie, WY), The Messy Moose (Casper, WY), The Corner Gallery (Boulder City), Phoenix Fired Art (Joplin, MO), and Baltimore Clay Studio. I regularly create work for a number of organizations including Las Vegas City Hall, Las Vegas Artist Guild shows and Nevada Clay Guild Shows. I will be a visiting artist at the Las Vegas Neon Museum.
As a ceramic artist, I create work that will outlive me, and likely outlive our civilization. I work with color and material that come to maturity at the temperature of a real volcano."
See more of Thomas Bumblauskas' work at Small Space Fest June 20th, 2016.
Vist the Clay Arts Vegas website HERE
See his Scenic Design work HERE
Charmed by her voice, artistry and spirit we had to have Dina Emerson perform during Small Space Fest! See her perform her solo pieces on June 20th, 2016 only.
Dina Emerson, native of Santa Barbara, CA, lived & worked in NYC from 1988-2000, and moved to the SF bay area in 2002. Since age 16, when she first heard the recordings of Meredith Monk, Robert Ashley and other cross-disciplinary artists, Dina has avidly pursued to integrate the separate media into performances that are at once installation, concert and theatrical event.
Originally trained in theater, Dina began her serious study and exploration of voice after graduating from Bennington College in 1988 and moving to Brooklyn. She subsequently became a fixture in the New Music and Interdisciplinary Performance world of New York, joining the Meredith Monk Vocal Ensemble in 1990 and remaining a member until the present. With Meredith Monk and others, Dina has toured The US, Europe and Asia and performed at the SF Symphony, Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Theatre de l'Odeon in Paris and many other venues.
In addition to Meredith Monk, other artists with whom Dina has worked include Tan Dun (2 world premieres), Gary Lucas, John Kelly, Nam Jun Paik, Ken Butler, David Soldier with Komar & Melamid,Jonathan Segel, Miya Masaoka, Nicholas Brooke, Lance Grabmiller and various New York theater companies including Tiny Mythic Theatre Company, Cucaracha Theatre and The Talking Band.
In 2000, Dina was invited to replace the lead singer temporarily in the acclaimed Cirque du Soleil production, "O," at Bellagio in Las Vegas. This position was extended into a full-time contract when Dina moved to Cirque's other resident Las Vegas show, "Mystère". Dina stayed with Cirque du Soleil until January, 2002, continuing to return as a sub for them until permantly rejoining the company in 2007, currently performing in Mystère.
Concurrent with her work with other artists, Dina Emerson has created a body of original pieces that spans from 1992-1999 (in 2000, performing with Cirque du Soleil eclipsed the possibility of creating new works for the time being; research and development has again commenced since moving back to California). Venues at which she was presented include PS 122, HERE, The Knitting Factory, Cucaracha Theatre, The Kitchen, and Thread Waxing Space.
Combining voice, text, electronics, physical theater and specifically chosen physical objects/materials, these works defy categorization. They could be monologues with extended vocal techniques and songs, or collages of images, sounds and movement, or an installation that is built as a function of the performance. There has been a definite progression from exploring more electronic techniques (digital delay & looping, for example) to ultimately letting those technical aspects fall away in favor of a much more "handmade" emphasis on the voice itself and the materials that make up the performance/installation.
Dina Emerson's Website HERE
See live performances at Small Space Fest on June 20th, 2016 only.
Visual Art will remain until July 21st.
Art by Deanne K. Sole may be small and intimate but it is full of personality. Her assemblages come to life and tell a story or become characters that "interact" with their surroundings. See more of her work at Small Space Fest: June 20th, 2016.
Her art is also currently on display at Satellite Contemporary's current exhibition: Debris Field.
On her art: "My works are small and intimate: hand-sized assemblages of found objects.
a sweet smile, so full of human love, 2016
I don’t consider them finished until I have brought them them into a space and arranged them in a way that suggests, I hope, the scattered irregularity of stars. Niches and scuffs on the walls become part of the curation.
he changed his tone, 2016
My sense of scale and arrangement has been influenced by Richard Tuttle; my enthusiasm for found materials has been affected by Rauschenberg, Schwitters, and Phyllida Barlow.
I have lived in Las Vegas for five years. I work at the Marjorie Barrick art museum on the UNLV campus, I co-manage the Satellite Contemporary gallery, and I assist in the editing of the local art website Settlers + Nomads."
Settlers and Nomads
Follow her on Instagram
Local artist, Jim White, creates work that is playful, expressive, and doesn't take itself too seriously --yet, it is thought-provoking and full of depth and meaning. See his installation work at Small Space Fest: June 20th, 2016.
His solo exhibition will be showing concurrently at Satellite Contemporary, located on the first floor of the Emergency Arts Building.
On his current work: "The stuffed animals evolved out of a curiosity of simply adding and subtracting parts to make myself laugh. It became something much more as I let them evolve. Now there is a psychological means to an end as well as the humor. If it doesn't make me laugh, I'm doing something wrong."
About Jim White
born in Moline, IL in 1975.
my formative years were spent in Des Moines, Iowa melting Gi Joes together with lighters,
and staring at what i couldn't explain as art while my father fished.
seeing mud faces on trees,
day dreaming sea monkeys were pinching me,
or not knowing i was making art out of melted plastics would later
inform my current work in both the more conceptual and the sculptural.
in 2003 i received my BFA in painting
in 2004 i was a resident at Bemis Artists Residency.
See more of Jim White's work HERE
Sarahann Walker is creating an engaging context for how we encounter "nests," or what we think of "nesting." Our interest has been piqued!
We at Small Space Fest are excited to experience her art installation!
Artist Statement
My work, in the simplest sense, is a recreation of natural nesting habits from different humanoid and animal species. I began researching ethology books on the behaviors of different species, primarily focusing on birds, and then selecting specific photographs from the books, usually being a birds nesting ground or actual nest. I would paint the image and recreate an attached installation that inhabited familiar structure or space. Psychologically, I would place myself in the behavior of the bird that I was researching and try to mentally gain experiences from the physical construction, adapting to each technique of nesting.
Just like human beings, each individual animal experiences life differently but we share mutual instincts such as reproduction, death and the time in between. As people, what are we meant to do during that time? Aside from simply reproduction and survival, what is our primary goal as humans? The typical nest I was taught to understand as a child was to attend school, receive a degree, chase a career, meet a man, get married, have kiddos, and, well, grow old and depart.
Therefore, my nest appeared actually as a cage. The idea is to create a nest, a world of protection, the act of giving a home a meaning and spiritual growth, that test of life and the origin of our own identities. The world is a nest but also a cage that limits us from the human experience. As an artist, I wanted to occasionally capture all of my human experiences and create reliquaries of my past and present.
Later, I began to focus on the relationship I would build with my pieces and how it engaged my own personal environment or "nest." I gradually began exploring the concept of creating installations that preserved pieces of me or pieces that nurture parts of my life. Such as structures that inhabited specific memories, personal relationships and sentimental objects. This concept has now opened up various ideas for me to reflect on how the artwork is being encountered by an audience and how my unique residences are seen as a reflection of their own homes. I want to create a universal space that is vulnerable, welcoming and protected, almost in a sense a living art that breathes and conveys itself as a conscious thing and inhabits common instincts of shelter, safety and yet is still its own home.
I work in various mediums that I feel help explore the ideas of construction, reproduction cycles and origins of identity, cycles of habit, and the psychological developments of space. Most of my installations are recycled objects that are held together by the unity of each material. I predominantly use materials or objects that interplay masculine and feminine qualities, allowing them to intertwine I create a voyeuristic space for the viewer, one desirable, questionable and alarming. I also construct a heat or light source to emphasize the artworks desire to stay alive. The obsessiveness, superimposed structures mimic the nesting habits that we unconsciously form within ourselves.
See more at Small Space Fest: June 20th, 2016.
Sarahann Walker's Website HERE
Angel Alcalá & Brett Salsbury, an artistic partnership that blends fashion and poetry and is ripe with possibility.
This collaborative statement encompasses two different artistic approaches: the visual arts, and poetry. As two different artists working separately in these fields --Angel Alcalá in visual art, and Brett Salsbury in poetry.
Alcalá’s work is influenced by both haute couture fashion and the fine arts (sculptures in particular). He works with fabrics such as neoprene, muslin and vinyl and also alternative materials such as paper, plastic, and foam board to create diverse, sculptural fashion pieces that double as wearable visual experiences. His work has been featured in group charity shows (such as Circus Couture, ARTrageous, and the Springs Preserve Foundation) as well as in solo shows. Most recently, he was featured as part of Vegas Cut + Sew, an educational fashion weekend with runway shows and panels at Zappos in Downtown Las Vegas.
Salsbury’s poetry usually explores humanity’s relationship to both their environment and also to fellow animals in both confessional and elegiac forms. His work has been featured in various magazines and journals, such as Posit, GTK Creative, Foothill, Fourculture, and Words Dance Publishing.
Both of our artistic approaches seek to push cultural boundaries and challenge labels that establish an official designated meaning toward concepts, people, and behavior.
Poetry Samples—Brett Salsbury
Museum Label #5
In this work I recorded my voice
every day for six months. I hated it
and I wanted it to take me out
to dinner to apologize. I began to
understand how uneasy it is to
paint: how much it slips away with
all the moist oil in its grasp. I
continued painting further—
when I ripped out the canvas
and spliced it onto a slated piece
of sandstone. This process continued
with even more acts, but that
wouldn’t leave you hanging if I
told you everything.
This work was comprised
of the following materials
(but who knows anymore):
stiletto heels; Tornado Alley;
Bobble-head dolls; pencil; expired
type-AB+ blood; celebrity-chewed
table scraps; brightness;
what you lost; magnetic
tape; magnetism; whiteness
again (like always);
acupuncture needles; and
cloth enough for a mummy.
Museum Label #8
for A.A.
This work could be worn by a mannequin or hanger—by woodplank
tiles resting in the yard, or by the hummingbird drinking dirty nectar.
It’s best expressed by vivacious makeup: metallic bits with dabs from
a hairy brush. I wouldn’t place it on a runway—I would cover it with
magnetic tape and buy it its own airplane seat. It’s a person, you’ll see,
in some shape or form. It won’t even submit its essay to receive credit.
This work is comprised of the following
media: bird feathers; self-help books;
semi-colons; a horizon line; drapery;
plastic canvas; holes; vision; sight; color;
line; wrong-way streets; personality.
Museum Label #20
The artist left us many articles of clothing. Some of them
were breasted with gold plates, while others were torn to shreds and
likely worn as skorts. We are thinking of creating an award to honor
their work—something along the lines of a Pulitzer or Raspberry. The
biggest accomplishments they’ve left us are their knack for rearranging
furniture; their wisdom to only drink coffee with paint thinners; their
adventurous spirit, that claimed many lives; and the memory of their
tongue flaps.
We don’t have any guesses
at the materials here, so
instead, we merely baa.
See more at Small Space Fest June 20th, 2016. Art will remain installed until July 21st.
More about their work HERE
We are looking forward to seeing more from Aaron Stephens. His work is raw and expressive. See more at Small Space Fest: June 20th, 2016.
Artist Statement
I am a self-taught comic book artist who fell in love with abstract art. I spent a year playing with expressionism in oil, acrylic, watercolor and ink. I was left unfulfilled. I was disheartened after all my paintings were destroyed in a sudden Miami storm at the second art fair I was selected to. I said an expletive and decided to go back to pencil and Bristol. I really missed drawing and now it is my focus. I use the storytelling aspect of comics and the freedom of expressionism to create whatever image pounds in my head. I enjoy creating abstractions of the human from, synapses and neurons. I also challenge myself to create two-dimensional representations of abstract ideas. I prefer using pencil, pastel pencil, water color and ink on paper or panel. My paper is usually smooth Bristol but I use a lot of black drawing and a wee bit of white drawing board. I will use clay board and wood panel as well.
Aaron Stephen's Website HERE
Small Space Fest: June 20th, 2016. Art work will remain until July 21st, 2016
Tatiana Hantig received a Bachelor of Fine Art in Photography at UNLV, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and has since returned to her roots in painting. Her major influences in art are Andy Warhol whom found inspiration from his photographs to create bright and creative portraits of the people he photographed. She also has a great interest in the pop and minimalist artist, Cy Twombly, and his colorful abstract paintings. Tatiana's greatest accomplishment in the art field has been her numerous art shows in Las Vegas, working with Clark County on the community ZAP project and participating in Art Prize in Michigan.
Artist Statement:
I use a reversal paint process, a technique I've kindly coined as thirtysixbricks. I paint with an (1) idea in mind, (2) on a surface, (3) allow the painting to dry, and then (4) peel the painting off the surface, (5) revealing the underside of the painting. It is always a surprise since I have given the painting the opportunity to express it self when I have only given it the direction and color to come to life with. This process is done several times to create layers and the building of texture throughout the development of the painting. Humans, animals, landscapes in turn are complex with layers of their history and I love painting them all.
My work is about the ephemeral nature of the moment, which can be simple as well as complex. Surface textures such as wrinkles, bubbles, cracks and folds, some in the manner of portraits while others in an abstract form embrace the fleeting material world and the memories that are unique to an individual. What we do experience together is the passing of time. These surfaces that we are usually ashamed of upon our own skin, hopes to be beautiful in some manner within the surfaces of these paintings. The viewer is left with insights of personal reflections and the possibilities of our brief existence.
Local Artist, Mikayla Whitmore "currently works as a staff photographer for the Las Vegas Weekly, Las Vegas Sun, and The Sunday at Greenspun Media Group. She graduated with a BFA in Photography from the University of Nevada Las Vegas in 2010."
Artist Statement
Every day our mind is recording and cataloging new information and experiences – at the same time old memories start to fade, corrupt, and blend together. As such, memories can no longer be safeguarded in precious photographic objects. We can longer distinguish between reality and the self-indulged perception we form from piecing things together. Instead, images act as palimpsests where memory and identity are constantly being lost. Photography too functions as passages of ancient manuscripts where the ink of words bleeds onto the next page to the point of loosing any trace of narrative. The art of Mikayla Whitmore seeks to fill the gaps in time where words become forms, and where photographic reminiscences turn into abstract images.
We are so excited to see more of Mikayla's work at Small Space Fest: June 20th, 2016.
Visual Art will remain installed until July 21st.
Mikayla Whitmore's Website HERE
http://www.mikaylawhitmore.com/
Alexander P. Huerta is a pillar at The Arts Factory in Downtown Las Vegas, and also quite prolific. Just talking to him, one gets the sense that he lives, breathes and devours art. His work feels raw, vulnerable and like he is trying to purge his life out onto a canvas.
If you take a visit to the 18b Arts District, you can bet that you will find Alex upstairs in his studio working on a new painting, collaborating with his arts collective: 3 Bad Sheep, body painting at an art event, painting a mural around the 18b Arts District, giving an arts talk for the community, or promoting a fellow Las Vegas Artist. He is an interesting character and has an inspiring story to tell about how he fell into a life of art-making (rather late in life) and he's never shy to share. If you ever get the chance, give him a visit.
Alexander P. Huerta was born in San Leandro, CA. on October 14, 1966 and lived in the Bay Area until 1983. At the age of 16 he moved to Las Vegas with his mom and younger brother. He graduated high school in 1985 and went directly into the work force, never thinking about art or being an artist. He once said he thought more about sports, ladies and booze until his life took a dramatic turn in 1995.
An Excerpt from The Las Vegas SEVEN, by Jarret Keene, July 28th, 2011:
"Huerta knows about elevation. A graduate of Clark High School, he worked for 15 years in the Harrah’s race and sports book before hitting “rock bottom.” “My poor decisions and drinking led me to a bad place,” he confesses. “I had an epiphany; my whole thought-process changed. God showed me I could be an artist. I started painting every day, and I’ve been climbing upward ever since.”
Before his decision to paint, Huerta had little formal training, just half-remembered art classes he had taken in high school, mainly as a way of picking up girls. Then he got serious: He bought supplies and taught himself.
Huerta began selling his artworks at First Friday in 2002. Emboldened by his fledgling success, Huerta started painting murals as a way to help local businesses deal with graffiti.
“The murals are just my way of letting people know that there’s art here in Vegas,” he says. “That there are artists waiting to be discovered, explored.”
When he’s not painting murals, Huerta uses oils and acrylics to paint abstract images and Sharpie ink pens to create pointillist images. In 2008, he sold a pointillist image on canvas to a collector, the proceeds of which enabled him to secure his own studio, PeaceNart, in the Arts Factory. He also founded and now helps organize Bar & Bistro’s Painters and Poets Jam, which he calls “the best-kept secret in Vegas.” He continues to collaborate and put on shows with his collective 3 Bad Sheep. And he conducted a July 23 live body-painting session at the Cosmopolitan as part of ARTrageous Vegas, an event put on by the LGBT Center of Southern Nevada."
See more of Huerta's work at Small Space Fest: June 20th, 2016.
Visual Art will remain installed until July 21st.
We are so happy to have these two Las Vegas locals: Joel Spencer & Nova May who enhance the Las Vegas Art Scene with creative, immersive installations and interactive art. If you are in town, visit their micro gallery space: 222 Space located at the Arts Factory in Downtown Las Vegas. We are thrilled to have Joel and Nova as part of our artist community and can't wait to see more of their work in Small Space Fest!
More about the artistic partnership:
As an artistic and domestic partnership, we work together creating art and raising our children. We came together 4 years ago, blending our family and collaborating on our art. We tend to work on a large scale, and like to create very sculptural, immersive pieces. We work with paint, Plexiglas, fiber, metal, foam, wood, vinyl and basically any material that we can lay our often dirty hands on. We come from very different back-grounds, but find that we both bring our unique perspectives and experiences to creating art and that makes our work stronger as a whole.
In addition to working full time as production and commercial artists, we have created installation art for various events and galleries in Las Vegas. Subtraction was an interactive installation that was exhibited in Trifecta Gallery in the Arts Factory in 2012. In 2013 we created an immersive installation for Greetings from Las Vegas at the Gate Way Motel. We have showcased our work at Life is Beautiful, both in the Art Motel last year and an interactive sculpture in 2013.
Currently, we have a gallery #222 Space in the Arts Factory that is a “micro gallery” where we create small immersive and interactive installations. We are also working on a large installation for the Winchester Cultural Center that will be combining some really exciting elements, like electricity and modular synthesizers.
See more at Small Space Fest: June 20th, 2016. Visual Art will remain installed until July 21st.
Joel's website HERE
222 Space
Facebook Page