Making art more public

Friday, Jan. 12, 2007 | 6:59 a.m.

We're standing on gravel alongside the Flamingo Wash staring at a grocery cart abandoned in the stream.

The water twinkles in the sunlight. Graffiti cover the fat chunks of concrete lining the bank. Cars whiz past. Wading birds come and go.

Buster Simpson, Barbara Grygutis and Kevin Berry are taking notes.

"There are stories here, layers of meaning," says Simpson, a Seattle environmental artist known for his public art.

The three-member team is designing trail heads and art for bridges along the nearly 12-mile Flamingo Arroyo Trail that lines the wash. It's a $2.5 million project, funded by a Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act grant.

Patrick Gaffey, Clark County's cultural program supervisor, expects this project to change the perception of the wash and of public art in the Las Vegas Valley: "The way to do it is by starting with a few good projects that people like. A lot is riding on this. If it's a flop ..."

He stops himself, then continues.

"What we're hoping is that what the artists create here is going to set a standard so when anyone builds a trail it will include artists."

These are big-name artists, and their presence in the junk-filled wash is a big deal for Las Vegas. Their resumes are thick with well-designed community-improvement projects that are environmentally sensitive. They don't erect a sculpture in a park and leave. They are involved from early in the collaborative process.

Berry, who is based in Scottsdale, Ariz., says the project could send a different message of Las Vegas to the world: "This is a counterpoint to the Strip. It's just the opposite of consumption."

The trail will run from the wetlands to Maryland Parkway. Desert landscaping and art will replace the environmental neglect, dumping and litter.

"This is pretty shocking," Grygutis, a Tucson artist, says, staring at the Pecos/McLeod trail head. "Instead of viewing the arroyo as a dumping ground, we see it as an amenity for the community."

The artists discuss their impressions and ideas as they tour the trail with county officials, engineers and landscape architects. They focus on the sites for parking lots, restrooms, benches, shade shelters and informational signs at the trail heads.

As a five-car convoy makes stops at the sites, the story of dumping continues. It ebbs and flows. Its contents change - tire parts at one site, flattened cardboard boxes at another and litter, graffiti or a particle of clothing at another.

Simpson wants to play off the history of the wash and not ignore how it's been treated. This includes the tradition of dumping.

"It's what we have to work with," he says. "There are many artists who make areas pretty in a shallow way. Pretty can also have content and meaning."

For example, on another project near a penitentiary and enclosed stream in Washington state, Simpson has poets creating poetry on license plates that are attached to the concrete walls. "It talks about imprisoned souls, imprisoned streams," he says.

"In the Southwest, old cars were used for riprap , like they do with concrete. And we're still doing that. It would be nice if we could somehow exploit that, turn that around into something."

County engineers are planning on concreting the wash to prevent floods - essentially covering its nature and creating an ugly concrete basin like the Los Angeles River, famous from movie-chase scenes.

"In other cities they've treated the flood control in different ways," Grygutis says. "There are ways to cement the sides so they won't erode and leave the bottom natural, keep the living place alive."

Looking at a three-tiered concrete waterfall at the site on Lamb Boulevard, she says, "Last night we were here and there were a lot of ducks."

Another issue is maintenance. The county is already stretched thin keeping up with graffiti and other vandalism, so the work would need to be easy to maintain. "There's a great deal of compromise," Berry says.

Regarding the concrete, he adds, "anything we can do to mitigate it with some landscape and art would be good."

Simpson argues that as Las Vegas develops, it will create more hard surfaces and that the flood channel would need to be expanded. He talks a blue streak about rethinking the entire system.

But at the wayside site at Lamb, Grygutis is more concerned about the small size of the area for the public and lack of access to the channel, where a planned maintenance road divides the space.

"The whole point of the Flamingo Arroyo Trail is to be on the wash and what we're doing is taking everybody off the wash and putting them on little pieces of land," she says.

Simpson spots a group of kids climbing on a large bin in the parking lot of the adjacent Jerome Mack Middle school: "Are those kids over there recycling? That's interesting. That's good."

Soon he's asking about contacts with the School District, suggesting the school be part of an adopt-a-trail program. The programming could be mutually beneficial, he says, "a nice tie-in with science and biology. Look at the ecosystem. That's quite lovely."

That wayside location already seems more manageable than the planned rest area at the east end of the trail, near the Clark County Water Reclamation's main facility. Graffiti and trash have already marred the only finished (paved and landscaped) portion of the trail.

"It's too bad," Grygutis says, looking at the black spray-painted markings on the stone wall.

Simpson adds: "It almost has a petroglyph quality to it in a weird way. But it's 'me' rather than 'us.' "

But Gaffey is hopeful.

"We're trying to change the way people think and feel about their community. Children and teenagers are strongly affected by what they see. When they see something that has no meaning for them, kids are happy to mark it up."

Standing on the paved trail, the artists stare off at the undeveloped and quiet landscape surrounding Frenchman's Mountain (aka Sunrise Mountain) and at the former county dump buried under the sand.

"I think this would be a good place for a plaque," Simpson says. "It could say, 'The affluence of early Las Vegas.' "