Wednesday, March 1, 2006 | 7:16 a.m.
What: "PRE-FABulous"
When: 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Friday (for First Friday), noon to 3 p.m. Saturdays or by appointment only
Where: Archinofsky Gallery, 1551 S. Commerce St.
Admission: Free
Information: www.archinofsky.com
When the boom of themed hotels hit the Strip, some locals joked about the illogical possibility: a Las Vegas-themed casino that would replicate the vacations of the tourists who were on vacation.
Virginia artist Lily Cox-Richard appreciates that. In her exhibit "PRE-FABulous," opening Friday at the Archinofsky Gallery in the Commerce Street Studios, she plays the authenticity of people's experiences.
Using Las Vegas tourism as a theme, Cox-Richard has created a life-size interactive art exhibit on scrapbooking. The hobby - a $3 billion industry in the United States - is so hot, Cox-Richard said, that the process has in some ways surpassed the memorable experience it was designed to commemorate.
"There's this idea that these experiences happen for scrapbooking, instead of the scrapbooking resulting from the experience," Cox-Richard said Monday while installing the exhibit at 1551 S. Commerce St.
"It's interesting to me when the documentation of experience becomes the experience itself. With scrapbooking, they're editing and creating memories as they are documenting them."
To better explore this, Cox-Richard uses her art as a tool and allows viewers to participate in the process.
In "PRE-FABulous" she has created the experience of riding New York-New York's Manhattan Express roller coaster by replicating its seats and a rider's background scenery.
The props were then placed behind a wall designed to look like a Las Vegas-themed scrapbook page. Visitors to the exhibit can have their picture taken as if they were truly on the ride, creating a fake experience on the giant scrapbook page.
In some ways, the theatricality is not so far off from the story Cox-Richard heard about a woman who restaged Christmas (presents and all) when she learned that the photos of her family's Christmas turned out too dark.
In scrapbooking even the mementos need not be authentic.
"You don't even have to save a concert ticket, you can buy a ticket sticker and put it in," Cox-Richard said. "It doesn't necessarily have to be the actual artifact. That stand-in is enough."
A scrapbooker has access to millions of prefabricated materials, most notably themed stickers, decorative papers and cutouts. Some scrapbookers go directly to Web sites that allow them to create scrapbooks online, then hit print or share them with others.
In some ways, Cox-Richard said, the hobby can also dictate lives, prompting the question, "What do you do if you go to the store and your hobby doesn't have the stickers for it?"
"Magic Moments," her first scrapbook exhibit, featured a life-size, three-dimensional diorama of a scrapbook page that included theatrical sets for home life and vacation photos. It was featured at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis last summer.
For the Archinofsky Gallery exhibit, Cox-Richard looked online to see examples of Las Vegas-page scrapbooks and bought Las Vegas-themed scrapbook supplies, including stickers of showgirls, dice and quarters, all of which she enlarged. She also purchased a black cutout silhouette of the Strip.
In "PRE-FABulous" she continues to ask the magic question: "What drives people to commemorate experience?"
"Some will say, 'I'm doing this for my children,' " she said. "In that way it's very precious and sweet. But I'm a little suspicious of that too because is that what drives it ... or is it a way for that person to rationalize it?"
Pausing for a second, Cox-Richard added, "It's almost like death drives it - like, in some way on some level, it's about mortality."
The exhibit will be on display throughout the month.
Kristen Peterson can be reached at 259-2317 or at [email protected].
archive
