Taking initiative not yet a lost art

By Scott Dickensheets

Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2010 | 2 a.m.

Las Vegas Sun

Curator and art director Gina Quaranto at Place gallery, 1045 S. Main Street, Monday, February 1, 2010.

Downtown explosion

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Maybe your reasons for visiting South Commerce Street will be different from mine. Maybe you will need a little paternal help (Dad’s Bail Bonds) or something from Clark County Bar and Restaurant Equipment. It’s a street of niche destinations, for sure.

Me, if I’m down here, it’s for the art, which, I’ll grant you, is just as specialized a reason as the others — especially in this town, especially with this art.

“I want to be on the fringe,” says Gina Quaranto, sitting in the cluttered and green-striped office of Blackbird Studios, the gallery she’s just opened in the Commerce Street Studios, two months after the July 11 explosion of a downtown NV Energy substation closed her old place, called Place.

Fringe is an apt word here, both for the desultory urban setting and for the art in Blackbird — defiantly lowbrow stuff with a certain scruffy charm.

But let’s stipulate that images of surreally twisted figures bulging across neo-Cubist canvases probably aren’t your thing. Nonetheless, why don’t we follow Gina as she walks us through the narrow 3,800-square-foot space — just in case there’s more going on here than off-mainstream art.

Here are two display areas, she says, and six mini-studios she sublets to other artists, a central space for art classes, a hallway in which she plans to hang more art, and a backyard where she wants to host bands, show outdoor movies and center a homeless-aid project.

“All mine,” she says, grinning. “It’s my name on the lease.” If you were listening closely, you realized that she meant that less in an it’s-good-to-be-the-boss way than as something else: a declaration of responsibility.

Gina plays gothy den mother to a gaggle of artists who used to gather at Place to create art together, learn from one another and generally impose a rambunctious sociability to what is typically a solitary pursuit. “We had 20 or 30 die-hards,” she says.

After the explosion closed Place, she wanted to stay in the same area, Charleston Boulevard and Main Street, more or less the crossroads of the Arts District — indeed, she says she had a shot at a nice gallery space in the area. But it was too small and expensive to accommodate her band of like minds. And she decided that it was important to keep the good times rolling.

“I couldn’t have taken everyone with me,” she says. “And it was everyone or nothing.”

So when the space in Commerce Street Studios became available, “I thought, ‘I can’t not do this.’ It’s sort of like I had no choice,” she says.

In a city of no community, this is how community gets made: Someone just does it. Takes the responsibility, does the work, signs the lease — commits. Usually well beneath the radar of those who are griping about our lack of community.

If she’s lucky, plucky and, well, let’s face it, even more lucky, Gina might eventually nurture Blackbird Studios into one of those Vegas culture spots long-timers talk about years later. Like Enigma Café or The Newsroom or MTZC Gallery, which once thrived upstairs from Gina’s place.

And this isn’t just for her people, by the way. Gina plans to repeat a homeless program — a coat-and-blanket drive called Artists Aid — that she began at Place. A soup-and-sandwiches program may follow, she says. “If the need is great, we’ll do it every week. And if artists can donate coats and blankets, anyone can, because we’re all flat broke!” She laughs. “But stuff like that is super-important.”

Meantime, the gallery has to stay viable. The building she’s in, at Commerce and Wyoming, while home to several good galleries, is on the fringe in terms of art traffic — on First Fridays it’s a long slog from the center of the action.

“It’s gonna take extra work to get people out here,” she admits. “But extra work is what I’m good at.” She snickers: “I’m a working girl.”

So even if you can’t dig the art — the next exhibit (Oct. 1) is about zombies — you gotta like the attitude.