Pastel group adds a little color to valley

Saturday, Jan. 20, 2001 | 9:48 a.m.

Four years ago Barbara Ann Slade and Marilyn Sapienza placed an ad in the newspaper announcing an informal meeting of artists who use soft pastels as their medium.

They set up chairs in a conference room at the West Charleston Library and waited.

Five people attended; ideas were shared and pastel was discussed. Shortly after, the Nevada Pastel Society was formed, and the group linked itself with the International Association of Pastel Societies. The group, whose membership fluctuates with the arrival and departure of pastel artists in the area, has 30 members.

The mix of professional- and beginning-level artists meet every other month to share their knowledge, experience and ideas on working with the medium. Guest artists present recent works and explain their choices in paper and chalks.

"It's a learning process," Sapienza said. "The more you talk about art the more you learn. We encourage an open dialogue about work."

The group's second membership show will be exhibited in April at the Summerlin Library. Beginning in mid-February the group will display its work in the annex of the Las Vegas Art Museum Store.

"You'll see a variety (at the shows)," Slade said. "Still lifes, portraits, ocean scenes, flowers and, of course, desert landscapes."

"A lot of people do landscapes," she said. "The colors here are very different from New York. The colors in the sky and desert rocks are amazing. I have never seen the sky so beautiful."

Slade was a fashion illustrator in New York City. After taking time off to raise a family, she studied drawing and portraiture at the Art Students League in New York.

She moved to Las Vegas 10 years ago and teaches art classes for residents of Sun City.

"Most of our members are from other areas," Sapienza, who is originally from Wisconsin, said. "It's ideal to take all those backgrounds and see the direction they're going with their art."

Sapienza owned and operated Sapienza's Art Gallery for a year (on Alta Drive and Decatur Boulevard), where she showed local art and taught classes.

Las Vegas has many high-quality artists, Sapienza said. "And it's not just two-dimensional artists. We have great sculptors and ceramic artists. Many artists come here to live. (Yet) there are so few galleries."

Because of its affiliation with the International Pastel Society, members of the Nevada Pastel Society are able to participate in national shows.

Artists must be juried into the shows by national pastelists. Once a member is juried into four shows, the member is considered a master pastelist by the organization.

Sapienza is an international artist who graduated from the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, with a sculpture degree and has worked in nearly every medium. She said pastels are becoming one of the more important mediums nationwide.

"It's a very handy medium," she said. "It's quick. It's direct. You can travel and go on location with it in a high wind. The color is as close to a real painting as anything you can get."

Slade said she appreciates pastels because of the vibrant colors pastels produce. "Oil (paints) and pastels are similar. They're similar when working from dark to middle tone to light."

Some people in the group cross over and dabble in both mediums, she said.

Slade attends local arts shows looking for other pastel artists to demonstrate their techniques and share ideas with the group.

Both Sapienza and Slade said the lack of an established art district in Las Vegas hinders exposure to individual artists and art groups.

"Making contact with potential members is our biggest bout," Sapienza said. "It's a struggle here. This is a snowbird city, artists are traveling and there's the turnover.

"You don't have to be a pastel artist to be in the group." But to be in the shows you need to produce pastels, she said.

"It's always good to be with other artists," Sapienza said. "It's a learning process. It's the camaraderie. If you have a technical problem you can bring it to the meeting. It's sort of a reference point."