JW Caldwell, artist and preparator

Steve Marcus

JW Caldwell’s art is displayed at the Trifecta Gallery in the Arts Factory at Charleston and Casino Center boulevards. Behind him are works from his “Angelic Explosion” series, which is part of his “Pretty Bad” exhibit, in which Caldwell matches up images that typically don’t go together.

By Kristen Peterson (contact)

Wednesday, April 22, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Name: JW Caldwell, artist and preparator

Age: 34

Media: Paint, gunpowder, blood, coffee, wine, bullets, butterflies

Education: Bachelor’s degree in studio art, Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego

The artist: JW is not short for any other name. It’s just JW. A thick reddish beard hangs to his collar, where tattooed hummingbirds, vibrant and pretty, hold the banner “veritas,” Latin for truth. Beneath the beard is a scar, a little souvenir from one of his bicycle accidents. He pedals around town on his old-school pinkish cruiser, a Murray Westport with whitewall tires that he took from his grandfather’s barn in Caldwell’s hometown of Banning, Calif.

He hunts, fishes and drinks. His freezer is full of elk meat. His dad was an outdoorsman and gun enthusiast. In their house they ate fresh veggies from the garden, then shot and butchered dinner. Caldwell’s family is tattooed on his arms, including full-bodied portraits of his mother and late father. “I’d rather be fishin’ ” is tattooed across his lower back, above his brightly colored boxer shorts.

His art: Rugged cowboys, bucked from horses, flying midair or tumbling with the bronco, have been prominent in some of Caldwell’s work. They cling to reins against minimalist Western backdrops. Recent portraits of haloed skulls are painted in elk’s blood and surrounded by gunpowder that was sprinkled onto the paper, then lit. Paintings from photos of family outings made up his “I’d Rather Be Fishin’  ” exhibit in the winter at the Winchester Cultural Center.

Initially, Caldwell rebelled against the Wild West aesthetic. He started doing cowboy paintings when his father was diagnosed with cancer. They reflect his rural West upbringing, his dad’s vast collection of Louis L’Amour books and the Russell and Remington posters that hung in his home. A pop-art color by numbers look is prevalent in Caldwell’s work, something he says is probably derived from the color separation he did working at a silk screen company. Afterward, he worked in a scenic design company. That style of painting, he says, “became the way I saw things.”

Current exhibit: “Pretty Bad,” on display through Friday at Trifecta Gallery, is a play on the juxtaposition of pretty and bad: Things that don’t typically go together, or shouldn’t, do. Bullets with butterfly wings (created, he says, long before the Smashing Pumpkins song) are affixed to NRA rifle targets painted camouflage in colors that match the butterflies. Angels float above atomic blasts. Skull portraits grin from the walls. Gold-leafed halos give the skulls a religious feel — part of the question: “Who decides who really becomes a saint?”

Why Vegas? San Diego became too expensive. A friend from college bought a house here and invited Caldwell to work on it, fix dinner and stay with her rent-free in 2003. He now lives and paints in a studio apartment near the John S. Park neighborhood, which was a recent stop on the Modern Council for Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art studio tour.

The art handler: Caldwell has handled all sorts of contemporary art, from Andy Warhol paintings to Damien Hirst formaldehyde-rich sculptures. Shortly after arriving in town Caldwell started installing art for the Godt-Cleary gallery at Mandalay Bay. He’s worked as a preparator at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Guggenheim-Hermitage Museum, Las Vegas Art Museum, Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art and Michele C Quinn Fine Art Advisory. He installs works in homes and corporate collections.

On living in Las Vegas: “There are not enough bike racks in this town. I have to chain my bike up to fences and “no parking” signs. But I like how affordable it is. Just like any local, I avoid the Strip. I like downtown. I like the real Las Vegas, the people who live here.”

On art in Vegas: “It’s growing. It needs to keep growing. This is a really transient town. A lot of the guys from Dave Hickey’s clique are here. The guys in grad school now have no intention of staying here. We need to build a community of people who are going to stay here and be staples here. In order for a scene to develop and grow, it has to have permanence.”

Other interests: Drinking, hunting, fishing, surfing.

Sticking around: “I’ll stay until the well runs dry — the art-handling well. That’s my bread and butter right now.”