The Lucy’s visiting artists absorb, and adorn, Las Vegas

Since June, six multidisciplinary artists have moved to Las Vegas, entrenched themselves in the local art scene and produced a work of art to reflect the weeks they spent here.

The residencies have resulted in final works that explored gender, compared percussion with clay, facilitated interactive performance and found relationships between gambling addiction pamphlets and deli meat.

In the inaugural year of the residency program at The Lucy in downtown Las Vegas, artists aimed to fulfill the Rogers Art Loft’s mission by collaborating with local talent, leaving a work of art behind and taking something from Las Vegas with them.

“I think they’ve each in their own way made a place for themselves in the community by meeting local artists and working with them,” says Beverly Rogers, who opened The Lucy last April. “To have people come in and have a good time and do phenomenal work, it fulfills my mission to help spread the word around the country of what’s going on in Las Vegas.”

‘An interesting group’

The six artists who temporarily called The Lucy home came from across the U.S., hailing from a variety of backgrounds and representing several mediums.

Using paint, print-making, sculpture, technology and performance, they imbued their final works with their experience in Las Vegas.

“We got a really exciting pool of applicants,” says Ryan Reid, residency director for the Rogers Art Loft program. “It’s been an interesting group making really different final work.”

Ella Weber, an artist who works at a deli in Nebraska, found inspiration in locals’ relationship with casinos.

“In casinos, it’s like time stops,” Weber says. “Some have that fake sky and they’re all repetitive. They have the same sounds. I really liked the ‘When The Fun Stops’ pamphlet.”

Weber’s final work converted the Rogers Studio Gallery into a multi-room exhibit featuring a collage using the gambling addiction pamphlets, a wall lined with comedic comments she hears at the deli, custom-made playing cards and a liberal application of deflated balloons.

“She had such a unique perspective of observing Las Vegas and bringing that into the work with humor and lightness,” Reid says. “I really like work that makes me laugh — and think.”

Working with locals

Rodrigo Lara Zendejas brought his unique sculpture medium with him to UNLV, where he worked for a month in the ceramics studio.

“I saw the residency post on Instagram and everything sounded amazing,” Zendejas says. “From the first moment, it was like what do you need? How can we help you? How would you like to interact with the community of Las Vegas?”

In Chicago, Zendejas teaches clay sculpture. One technique he uses is to cut slices off a nearly completed sculpture and rearrange them to create a more abstract work. He’s found similarities between his interests of sculpture and drumming and often incorporates drumsticks into his work.

“I sit in the same stool. I arrange sculptures around me. In both scenarios, I use wooden sticks. Sometimes movements are rapid and sudden, sometimes slow,” he says.

During his residency, local performers and dancers posed for him while he worked. He presented his final work at Test Site Projects’ print-making studio in the Arts District.

Zendejas also led a workshop with young percussion musicians at Las Vegas Academy of the Arts in which he arranged a large slab of inch-thick clay at the front of a room and drummed on it with four students. The result was a unique musical performance and a keepsake clay sculpture that resembles a landscape.

Back home in Chicago, he is replicating the technique in a new project, working with a composer to arrange a musical piece using sculptures fired at different temperatures to produce unique sounds.

2020 artists

The lineup of artists coming to Las Vegas in the year ahead will include a collaborative pair and the residency’s first international visitor.

The first resident of 2020 is Cory Tamler, who will present her culminating project on Thursday.

The New York-based interdisciplinary artist comes from a theater and performance background, where many of her projects explore social issues and areas of scientific research.

“Basically, here, I’ve been looking with small groups at precarity,” Tamler says. “Economic precarity, housing, health, all those things in context of precarity as defined as insecurity that you don’t have control over that a lot of us experience under capitalism.”

While Tamler has led similar sessions before, she says the luxuries of time and space that come with a residency have been beneficial.

“When I’m at home, making work, there’s this constant pressure and desire to be social or go see all the things people I know are making or be home and not do anything,” Tamler says. “The change in environment is huge and solitude is a huge gift.”

On Thursday, she will lead a workshop on the effects of precarity on our bodies with students from Core Academy using breathwork and performance techniques. Her final showing at The Rogers Art Loft will reflect those themes through a more performative lens.

Applications for the 2021 residency program will open in March.

“I’m really really pleased and only expect it to grow and get better,” Rogers says. “I see artists meeting with people from the community and making friendships among themselves. And this gives them a glimpse of what can happen here.”

Contact Janna Karel at jkarel@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jannainprogress on Twitter.