Bingo! Life Is Beautiful sets its gallery, street program in downtown Las Vegas

By John Katsilometes

Published Friday, Sept. 12, 2014 | 3:03 p.m.

Updated Friday, Sept. 12, 2014 | 4:33 p.m.

Patrick Duffy sounds as if he’s on top of the world, and maybe he is, metaphorically. But in fact, he’s on top of an old hotel in downtown Las Vegas.

“I’ve spent the day on the roof of the Western,” says the city’s great art collector and curator. “We have a water installation that I’m really excited about, where slides lead into kiddie pools at the bottom. … We’ll make it possible for people to actually walk into these pools and lawn chairs so people can just sit if they want. I mean, why not?”

It’s a really good question. And the answer is, “We can’t think of a reason why not.”

The artist who created this installation is Eric Tillinghast, who also created the water fountain display for last year’s Life Is Beautiful arts program. Duffy is back, too, for another whimsical spin as curator of the gallery art program for Life Is Beautiful, which will be set up at the old Western hotel-casino and runs Oct. 24-26 in downtown Las Vegas. The ART-Tales program runs in concert with the expanded Life Is Beautiful street-art program.

As president of Las Vegas Art Museum and chairman of the UNLV Fine Art Galleries, Duffy is one of the foremost art experts in the West. He was asked back after last year’s well-received gallery exhibit “Art Odyssey” at Town Lodge hotel. To start the process of selecting a hard list of exhibitors, he sent an email blast to artists throughout the region.

Duffy received and reviewed nearly 50 submissions, and culled that collection to the 15 to be displayed at the former bingo parlor at the Western.

Those whose work will be displayed also include photographer and visual artist Linda Alterwitz; UNLV art instructor Audrey Barcio; Jevijoe Vitug, who moved to the city in 2007 from the Philippines and who has painted about the plight of immigrants to the United States; visual artist J.K. Russ, who arrived in the city from New Zealand; Matthew Couper, also from New Zealand and whose paintings are inspired by Spanish Baroque colonial art; mixed-media artist Gina Quaranto, featured at Blackbird Studios in the Arts District; visual artist Camilla Quinn Oldenkamp; sculptors Miguel Rodriguez and Jesse Smigel; Zac Ostrowski, whose work is a blend of paintings, industrial designs, sculpture and public art installations; and Jerry Misko, long a Las Vegas favorite for his paintings of classic Vegas signage, scenes and landscapes.

Also represented in the exhibit will be submissions from VAST space projects; Trifecta Gallery and Marty Walsh; and the students of Las Vegas Academy.

Duffy has a keen idea of what he wants visitors to the Western to feel when they walk out of the building.

“What I’m hoping is for a major, major visual, visceral and cultural emotional takeaway,” he says. “I don’t want them to be able to get that old bingo hall out of their minds. We have some great visual artists, performance artists and great photography. We have some very, very baroque installations — this one is going to be unbelievably baroque, and very emotional, too.”

Running in concert with the Western show is the Life Is Beautiful street art program, and returning to curate that exhibit intertwined throughout the festival grounds is Charlotte Dutoit, proprietor of an interior design firm in Puerto Rico who headed up the street-art program at the 2013 event.

In a release issued today by Life Is Beautiful officials, festival founder Rehan Choudhry spoke of both facets of the program: “The art program is as integral to the overall festival experience as any other aspect at Life Is Beautiful. Our goal is to change individual’s everyday relationship with art by inspiring creativity and challenging perspectives, especially among those who normally wouldn’t consider themselves art enthusiasts.”

Following are the artists contributing to the street-art program (descriptions provided by Life Is Beautiful’s news release):

Borondo (Spain): Borondo is a rising Spanish urban artist, currently living in London, heralded for his classical painting techniques. Since his formal studies, Borondo has painted large-scale street art in the United States, Brazil, Turkey and across Europe. He quickly became one of London’s most talked-about artists.

Cyrcle (U.S.): This collective of street artists, graphic designers and traditional fine artists from Los Angeles has been developing its own language for the past few years. In that brief time, Cyrcle has made a massive impact on the street and gallery scene, quickly gaining the respect of the international art community. Its aesthetic combines Classic Romanticism with alchemic symbolism, introducing it to the contemporary world through street campaigns, gallery work and collaborations.

D*Face (U.K.) D*Face is involved once again in this year’s street art program. Considered one of most prolific contemporary urban artists of his generation, he has been a leading figure in urban art for well over a decade. A contemporary of Banksy, D*Face was at the forefront of the urban art movement and has had a constant presence throughout its meteoric rise into popular culture.

Misaki Kaway (Japan): Japanese Brooklyn-based artist, works with painting, drawing, sculpture, installations and books. Her works are filled with colorful characters who appear to come from the dream world of film, music and comics. Strongly influenced by today’s consumer society — of which she herself is a part — Kawai fuses East with West, humor with seriousness and dreams with reality. In 2014, she was part of the show “This Is Not a Toy” co-curated by Pharrell Williams along Takashi Murakami and Kaws.

Li-Hill (Canada): He incorporates found objects and unconventional materials to structure complex, multi-layered pieces that are as aesthetic as they are thought-provoking. He has had works shown in such national institutions as the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

Fintan Magee (Australia): Moving away from traditional graffiti in recent years, the Australian artist has started to explore new ideas and imagery within his painting. In the last three years, he has created some of the largest and most interesting street pieces around the world.

Maser (Ireland): Maser first started painting graffiti in 1995 in Ireland and quickly gained a reputation as one of the most innovative artists working in the field. Alongside his paintings in the public realm, Maser produces works on canvas, video and 3D installations.

ROA (Belgium): Renowned for his unique portrayal of large-scale urban wildlife, disquietly cohabiting city streets, hand-painted in his distinctive black-and-white style, ROA has become famous from painting animals on derelict buildings, shutters and walls all over the world. He also has exhibited to much acclaim internationally and was included in the MOCA exhibition “Art in the Streets” in L.A.

Edoardo Tresoldi (Italy): Scenographer and sculptor Edoardo Tresoldi creates amazing handmade sculpture from metallic wire mesh, transforming a mundane industrial material into delicately crafted three-dimensional figures. The Life Is Beautiful Festival will be the first appearance of Tresoldi’s work in the United States.

Duffy spoke of the entirety of the art program entering Life Is Beautiful ’s second run downtown.

“We don’t want this to be a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey experience,” he said. “We want people to walk around and see this work and say, ‘This isn’t Las Vegas. This is universal.’ It’s an emotional feeling, and we will have them searching themselves, I promise you that.”

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