Down, never out

Steve Marcus

Las Vegas artist Brian Porray’s forceful depiction of the 1995 Landmark implosion, below, is the Friends of Winchester Public Art Committee’s choice to represent Clark County’s centennial. The 12-by-16-foot mural, to be dedicated June 20, will hang outside the Winchester Culture Center on South McLoeod Drive in Las Vegas.

By Kristen Peterson (contact)

Friday, June 12, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Porray's mural.

Commemorating a centennial with a public mural creates an expectation of certain themes — history, culture, people, industry, progress.

The call for a centennial mural for Clark County, which stretches across the urban and rural landscapes from Laughlin to Mesquite, brought in myriad images from various artists.

A public arts committee picked one: The implosion in 1995 of the Landmark, sliced in half, falling down, a crumbling concrete tower becoming clouds of dust against a vivid sky.

Created by Brian Porray, the dynamic and charged image will hang outside the Winchester Cultural Center, an embodiment of the ingenuity and adaptive quality of the people of the Las Vegas Valley. The mural will be dedicated June 20.

Though a forceful work — far from the usual placid landscape or portrait of the everyman that comes with celebratory anniversaries — it fits, says Richard Hooker, chairman of the Friends of Winchester Public Art Committee, which selected Porray’s submission.

“The image suggests a kind of surrender to the future, a letting go of the past for something new to happen on the horizon,” Hooker says. “Good or bad, that’s always what Vegas has been about.”

No taxpayer money was spent on the mural, according to Patrick Gaffey, a cultural program supervisor for Clark County.

Porray was paid $2,000 for his design. The 12-by-16-foot mural was funded by the Clark County Centennial Project and the Friends of Winchester, which raises money for projects in the area.

For Porray, born in Las Vegas in 1979, the Landmark was literally a landmark, one of the few visible properties in an area yet to have tall buildings and megaresorts. He remembers it as monolithic, a midcentury modern building of the future, built at a time when nobody had any idea of what the future would bring to architecture in Las Vegas. Its implosion was featured in the movie “Mars Attacks” and the hotel is an iconic image of vintage Vegas, but Porray says most people don’t know about the Landmark. Compared with the Dunes or the Desert Inn, its life was too brief and unsuccessful to make a splash in the history books.

The Googie-style structure, which stood near the Las Vegas Convention Center and was part of Winchester Township, reflected the popular midcentury modern architecture that took hold of Las Vegas in the ’50s and ’60s. Funding problems delayed its construction, and the building sat incomplete for nearly a decade before opening in 1969. Once opened, it struggled financially. It closed in 1991 and sat empty for another two years. Its 1995 implosion was one of Las Vegas’ first, preceded only by the Dunes, and set off the chain reaction of razing the old for the new.

Porray doesn’t mourn the Landmark’s demise. Contrary to the chorus of preservationists, he celebrates implosions as part of our nature.

“The strength of Las Vegas comes from the character of its people,” says Porray, boasting a sense of Las Vegas pride. “Adapt and modify. The ingenuity inherent of the spirit of the people here, that edge ... separates Las Vegas from the rest of America. It’s like supernova implosions. You need them because what collects from the ashes is the solar system and the new sun.”

Porray’s slightly abstract rendition of the implosion is set against a bright sky adapted from the Japanese anime of “Speed Racer” and is literally an inverted racetrack from the video game. Like most of his work, it’s bursting with impact and motion.

This is his third public art project. Porray expects there will be some issues with the implied violence of the Landmark piece, titled “Everyone’s a Scientist.”

“People should be confronted by images that are equally beautiful and challenging,” Porray says. “Public art shouldn’t be submissive. It should engage people in dialogue.”

Hooker and others on the nine-member selection committee, most of whom live in the Winchester area, agree that the piece might be considered controversial. In the end, its sincerity won.

“This was the one that was probably the most challenging,” Hooker says. “But it’s part of our visual vocabulary of our past and our future.”

Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani, who represents the area where Winchester Center is located, says that the mural jarred her at first.

“It’s an intriguing piece. It will cause people to think about our history and learn from our history and make sure we don’t repeat our mistakes. Part of what we need to do is protect what little we have left. I welcome it,” Giunchigliani says.