New curators are named for First Friday art

By Kristen Peterson

Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2011 | 11:33 a.m.

The new owners of the First Friday Las Vegas trademark are wasting no time raising the standards of the monthly downtown event, including the major thorn-in-side issue of parking (by adding managed parking lots).

Now comes the art part: The group has opened a submission process on its Web site for artists wanting to show work. They’ve hired Nicole Moffatt and Michele Quinn as consultants responsible for curating the art at the Casino Center Boulevard and Colorado Avenue intersection, long known as the street festival epicenter. The duo, responsible for the Locals Only series at CENTERpiece Gallery at CityCenter, also will be in charge of art marketing.

“These are people who take local art and expose it to a national audience,” says Joey Vanas, one of First Friday’s new owners. “It will give emerging artists a larger platform. The Locals Only series really attracted us.”

The rotating Locals Only series features solo exhibits of Las Vegas artists at CENTERpiece. Artists who’ve shown there include Sush Machida, Shawn Hummel and Aaron Shepard. Erik Beehn is currently on display.

Moffatt and Quinn (who now lives in Philadelphia) aren’t newcomers to the local art scene. Quinn is the former director of G-C Arts, which moved into the Arts District in 2005 as Godt-Cleary. While operating the contemporary art gallery owned by Glenn Schaeffer, she showed prints and other works by Robert Rauschenberg, James Turrell, John McCracken, Ed Ruscha, Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Long and Jasper Johns.

Like other gallery owners, she moved from the Arts District location on Main Street in 2007 after an outside company came to Las Vegas with plans to demolish the westernmost part of the Arts District and build a sports arena. Her new Michele C. Quinn Art Advisory, housed in a quaint Seventh Street home, hosted exhibits by local and international artists. Octagon: The Exhibition, featured the large-scale images from the UFC photography book Octagon by photographer Kevin Lynch. Quinn also helped curate and manage CityCenter’s art collection.

In addition to Vanas, the new owners of the First Friday Las Vegas trademark include Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, Fred Mossler, Steve Hill and Andrew Donner.

Artist submissions for the Oct. 7 First Friday can be found at First Friday's Web site (click on the painter's palette icon). Submissions are due by Sept. 29.