Sunday, Feb. 26, 2006 | 8:22 a.m.
The world that artist Shan Michael Evans creates is a place where black-and-white rainbows stretch across hot pink skies and monsters lurk in desolate spaces.
Robots, squids and imaginary creatures float among stars and neon clouds.
And Evans' world is becoming more visible in Las Vegas.
His hot pink robots and other characters cover utility boxes in the Winchester Neighborhood where a mural of his covers a wall near a skate park.
Similar creatures poke up from the ground at Obstacle Art, an artist-created miniature golf course on Commerce Street, and Evans' work covered the walls of Trifecta Gallery, where his exhibit "everyone wants to live forever," just ended.
Then there are the plush toys he makes with his wife, artist Jennifer Devereaux, to sell outside the Funk House on First Fridays.
More recently, a CAT bus, wrapped in his work, was unveiled and is moving through the streets of Southern Nevada in all its futuristic/spaceship glory.
This past year has been a successful one for the 30-year-old self-taught artist.
"I think he's on the rim of something big," said artist Marty Walsh, owner of Trifecta Gallery and juror for the bus art contest.
"his work is joie de vivre - full of life. It's always on the happier side of things."
Patrick Gaffey, cultural program supervisor of Clark County Parks and Recreation, noticed something special when he saw Evans' artwork, and also when showing it to other artists during a slide show.
"More than halfway through, we showed Shan's slides and all of the sudden there was this huge reaction from the other artists," Gaffey said. "It's something that's so immediate.
"It's so fresh and so much fun."
You'll find the source of this fun in a second-story apartment in North Las Vegas, where Evans lives with his wife and two young children.
A stone outside their front door reads "La La Land." Inside, dabs of neon are exposed from behind the everyday clutter of family life or on canvases of Evans' work hanging on the walls.
His home is his studio and a workplace for he and Devereaux's tragicmagichead toy company. Production takes place on a passed-down Kenmore sewing machine atop a tiny kitchen table.
"Usually everything is all over the floor," Evans said while looking around. "I generally have to surround myself with what I'm working on.
"We picked up a little."
Nearby shelves hold stacks of material cut into patterns and toy art that the couple collects. The shelves also hold the original thumbnail sketches for the finished work that is hanging on the wall.
He paints with acrylic, but sometimes just scans his designs into his computer then fills them with color. Most of his work, priced between $100 and $600, sold at the show at the Trifecta Gallery.
On a good night at First Friday, the couple might bring home $400 in sales from their plush toys, prints and, when they remember to bring them, their stickers. If they don't have time to create new works, they take pieces off the wall and sell them.
On being selected for the Regional Transportation Commission's Wrap It Transit contest, Evans, who received $2,500 for winning, says mainly he's "relieved ... for financial reasons."
Mostly, he said, "It's nothing but utter surprise and amazement at every step. And we're just here dealing with these little ones, sewing and hoping, and then we hear from someone."
Born in Phoenix, Evans said he grew up in a military family and lived all over England and Germany before settling in Las Vegas. His first love was skateboarding, but he fell out of a tree and broke both arms. So he then pursued music, or more specifically, "pretty music, like Enya," before delving deeper into visual art.
The first show in which he participated was an open Halloween exhibit at Dirk Vermin's Gallery Au Go-Go in 2002. The following year, his 165-piece exhibit, "The Gallery of Horrors," was displayed at the now-defunct Cafe Roma. That followed with an exhibit at a local Starbucks and a monster-themed show at the Funk House.
Evans had already been sharing his art via three-inch clay bunny sculptures (with the words "peace" or "love" on them) that he placed on the street, behind rocks or up in trees.
Eventually, he and Devereaux, 26, began making the plush toys based on his designs. Evans follows and participates in the toy art movement, selling some of his toys in specialty stores.
"We're just muckin' about really," Evans said. "Everything is about that. We just go. Everything starts coming out. I love toys. I have a whole toy room."
Asked about themes in his artwork, he says, "If I think about it a lot, I come up with some answers."
What inspires him, he says, are "myths, cartoons and movies."
"I use themes like the human condition - sometimes it's sad, but there's always something uplifting."
Walsh sees Evans' work as symbolic of a new era of art, one that is influenced in animated, robot and spacelike designs seen in work by Los Angeles artists and at the M Modern gallery in Palm Springs, Calif.
"I think he's still finding his voice," Walsh said, "and he's very near that."
Kristen Peterson can be reached at 259-2317 or at [email protected].
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