Art Roundup takes Vegas artists seriously

By Kristen Peterson (contact)

Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2007 | 7:04 a.m.

What: Art Roundup

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday to Saturday

Through: Aug. 26

Where: Las Vegas Art Museum, 9600 W. Sahara Ave.

Admission: Free

Information: lasvegasartmuseum.org

This year's Art Roundup exhibition at the Las Vegas Art Museum shows once again that we're not just slumming in Las Vegas.

Focusing on contemporary works reflective of the museum's new mission, as well as the seriousness of Las Vegas artists, Los Angeles artist Matty Byloos, the show's sole juror, selected 43 "quality, unique works" from more than 750 entries.

Rather than covering the walls with a mishmash of genres and ability, the show is thoughtfully curated, giving the impression that the museum takes the jurored show of Nevada artists seriously.

Part of this might be because of the construction taking place in the main gallery that opens the spacious Polis-Carver Gallery, allowing for more space. Whatever the reason, it works. The individual pieces have a chance to breathe.

First place winners are: Kathelyn Bessette, photography; Daniel Samaniego, work on paper; Mark Grothman, video; Susan Neiry, watercolor; and Ashlee Fletcher, painting.

Because sculpture has such a strong presence in this year's juried show, we take a look at the diverse collection of winning and exhibited sculptures.

The iconoclast

At first glance Miguel Rodriguez's over-the-top "Ladies Love This Kitty" could be mistaken for a parody, intentionally riddled with irony and humor.

Maybe it's the way kitty's opulence and preciousness immediately allude to camp or kitsch.

Its billowy tufts of hair, highlighted with pinkish urethane paint, are sprinkled with glitter. The cat, created with a found mold, looks as manipulative as a cat can be. It's perfect contours are accentuated with impenetrable auto paint.

It placed second in sculpture. And from artist to judge, there is no pretense here.

Rodriguez, who works with glitter simply because "it's pretty," says the cat is akin to "indulging in the inner 12-year-old girl" and is a nod to the culture of community storefront ceramic-making shops.

More than anything, Rodriguez says , he wanted to make something that is "superjuicy and desirable."

Byloos: Calls "Ladies Love This Kitty" a substantial piece selected not for kitschiness, but for being genuine. "I got the impression that this wasn't about a punchline."

The poet

For Brent Sommerhauser, art is a conduit for collecting and sharing stories and memories.

He salvages doors, drawers, mirrors and floors to reconfigure architectural interiors.

The process combines Sommerhauser's interest in Jungian theories - interiors being the home to the psyche - and his former occupation as a glass blower. He found himself asking, "what if I could move this wall or curve this thing and lose the assumption that these rigid structures are rigid."

Sommerhauser uses interior items thought to have poetic significance. A drawer - a utilitarian object used to keep precious items safe and private - is contemplated in "Wedge," which placed third. The piece is made from wooden drawers, sliced like pie pieces, sanded and fused together.

Also on display is Sommerhauser's "Placemark," which is a section of wood flooring with its corner folded like a book page marking a place. The fold in the section of flooring marks one's place in the physical world.

Byloos: "The drawers piece was interesting to me - somehow reminiscent of Rauschenberg, maybe, without being derivative at the same time. In terms of its size, I like how it worked. The drawers were drained of their functionality, but not made larger or smaller - they were 'slices' of drawers. I like when art-making practices somehow link up with ideas that seem the province of other media."

The nonconforming minimalist

The principles of geometry, commonly found in Danielle Kelly's drawings and sculptures , are taken to another level in "inter, " which placed first in sculpture.

Kelly's process for the piece had her asking, "Wouldn't it be great to make a form that would disappear?" "How can it disappear?" and "What does it mean to occupy space with this object?"

Made from mirrored Plexiglas, medium - density fiberboard, Bondo and acrylic paint, "inter" uses minimalist principles to address the active space around us that we can't see.

Its dimensions flatten depending on the viewer's vantage point. Mirrors enhance the idea of disappearance and "force viewers to negotiate their own reflection along with the space around them." For motion, she sought a slender dynamic angle rather than a rectangle or a cube that would be static.

The surface is reflective and smooth on one side and rough on another, a comment on life's "messiness" and a "beautiful form that offers hope."

Byloos: In contrast to typically pure objects found in minimalism, "Danielle's piece was more brute in terms of its surface treatment - you could see the 'handmade' quality, the workmanship or facture of the thing. It was not excusing itself, or posturing in such a way as to assert (like so much of the work of minimalism, to me, does) that it may have come to the world as a thing that always existed - without human effort, or with complete independence."

The newcomer

Kyla Hansen's wall-mounted sculpture made of lead foil, wallpaper and birch took the Wally Goodman and Patrick Duffy Best in Show Award.

Hansen's "Resurfacing," an installation of origami, wallpaper and linoleum, is also on display.

In both pieces, Hansen uses origami for its design and traditional meaning. Origami butterflies made of lead foil in "Untitled" flock to a line of wood box "environments," each with a wallpapered interior. But Hansen's work is not literal, she says, even though it plays on expectations of women.

The wallpapered boxes create a "fake environment." Lead butterflies allude to something "protective, but toxic," she says, explaining that traditionally origami butterflies were made for marriage.

In "Resurfacing" the linoleum and wallpaper represent "domestic services," but also fake surfaces. Hansen says origami stars, in this case are placed on the floor, are traditionally made to hold children's wishes.

Byloos: "The formal quality of the work was especially attractive to me, and it wasn't a kind of overbearing formalism. It was loved, natural and seemed highly considered ... It referenced something beyond just its materials or its medium."