“You feel like you have a license to do whatever you want here”

Leila Navidi

Artist Daniel Samaniego sits in front of his drawing “Axis,” part of his “Bottom For Queen” show of graphite on paper drawings showing at Henri & Odette Gallery in Las Vegas through December 6, 2008.

By Kristen Peterson (contact)

Monday, Nov. 10, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Leila Navidi

"Kiss"

Leila Navidi

"Axis"

Leila Navidi

"Exiles I and II"

Leila Navidi

"Axis"

Name: Daniel Samaniego, artist

Medium: Graphite on paper

Age: 24

Education: Bachelor of Fine Arts, UNLV

Day job: Works for a landscape construction company

Hobbies/interests: “Music junkie” who loves running (no marathons — yet) and shopping

On Vegas: Born in Sacramento, Calif., Samaniego moved to Las Vegas with his family when he was a child. Much like the characters in his artwork, he says, “Las Vegas seems like a desperate place, a needy place. Las Vegas is dying to be seen.”

His work: Samaniego has been featured in mixed shows around town, won best work on paper in the Las Vegas Art Museum’s 2007 Juried Roundup and currently is showing in a solo exhibit at Henri & Odette, 124 S. Sixth St., Suite 130.

His impeccable drawings explore and portray the hierarchies of male homosexual social systems. These are far from mere representations. Superb technical skill — seen in the repetition of tiny shapes — adds rich character and depth to the glamorous, powerful and competitive “queens.” You almost know them — how they talk, posture and think. They stem from models in fashion magazines that are “queered” in the drawings by accentuating subtle and not-so-subtle expressions and grooming. “The fashion campaign kings (or rather, queens) and literary icons exude power or pathos symptomatic of an isolated gay experience,” Samaniego says.

Samaniego’s faint and dramatic pencil marks enhance the “absolutes and extremes.” His subjects are adorned with gifts and embellishments and marked by physical scars and blemishes. It’s easy for viewers to gravitate toward mythological references, though that’s not Samaniego’s aim.

The competition, Samaniego says, is defined by the way the characters control the space on the paper and among the other drawings.

Amid the portraits and power struggles in the exhibit at “Bottom for Queen” at Henri & Odette is an abstract drawing titled “House Mother” that was inspired by the house mothers in drag houses in New York known for nurturing lost souls or runaways.

Being an artist in Vegas: “Everyone feels a sense of opportunity here. Any show I’ve wanted, I’ve had. You feel like you have a license to do whatever you want here, with a kind of unlimited freedom, and you can still enjoy the benefits of recognition.”

Sticking around? Hoping to move to a larger city by spring and continue his education. Looking at San Francisco or New York. “I’d book it to London if I could.”

Kristen Peterson can be reached at 259-2317 or at kristen@lasvegassun.com.