Rosemary’s Restaurant presents “downtown contemporary”
An exhibition celebrating downtown Las Vegas’ contemporary arts community.

“Downtown Contemporary” features work representative of five downtown contemporary art galleries: The Contemporary Arts Center, Trifecta Gallery, Henri & Odette, Brett Wesley Gallery and The Fallout Gallery. The works will be on view in the West Wing Gallery of Rosemary’s Restaurant from April 11-June 19th.

Participating galleries and artists:

Contemporary Arts Center
www.lasvegascac.org

The CAC is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization with a rich and dynamic history of promoting contemporary art through avant-garde exhibitions and educational programs within the Las Vegas arts community.  In 1989, a group of UNLV art students and faculty members founded the organization (originally the Contemporary Arts Collective) and established its first gallery space in a building on Maryland Parkway across from the University.  Its current home is located in the heart of the Arts District in historic downtown Las Vegas.  The CAC is dedicated to presenting new, high quality, visual, and performing art, while striving to build, educate, and sustain audiences for contemporary art.  The CAC strives to provide a place where artists and arts patrons can learn about best practices, test new ideas in the public arena, and connect with fellow artists and arts patrons within and beyond our own community.  In 2009, the organization changed its name to the Contemporary Arts Center, emphasizing the vital role the CAC has played through the years as a central meeting place for the Las Vegas community to engage with works of art and to participate in dialogues about contemporary art and culture.  The Contemporary Arts Center is a recipient of the 30th Annual Governor's Arts Award for Leadership in Organizations. The Nevada Arts Council and the Governor's Office present these honors for outstanding and enduring contributions to Nevada through artistic achievement and service to the arts.

Artist, Grayson Ronk

Emerging artist Grayson Ronk was born in Dallas, Texas in 1982.  He received his B.F.A. in Drawing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.  He has exhibited his work locally at the Contemporary Arts Center and Henri & Odette, where he had a solo exhibition in November 2009, and he is currently a member of the CAC exhibition board.

“Working from black and white images, Ronk’s rendering is exceptionally subtle, with line work that is remarkably light and spare; in a range of grays extending from a whisper to a fog, the darkest of the lot falls somewhere in the realm of a rainy day. Deep, dark tones are nowhere to be found, and evidence of the artist’s hand is barely perceptible. This technique adds a layer of complexity. The overall effect is dreamlike, and the drawings feel like impressions, or perhaps strive to be. A distance both real and desired makes for a more acceptable, or at least manageable, truth. Vision is obscured and unreliable.”  - Danielle Kelly, The Las Vegas Weekly

Trifecta Gallery 

Trifecta Galley is a contemporary art gallery focusing on paintings by national and regional artists. Their mission is to educate emerging collectors and artists, to research and select emerging and mid-career artists with a set of standards they believe constitutes success and longevity for an artist’s career. www.trifectagallery.com 

Artist, Leonardo Aguirre di Matteo  - Educated in Montevideo, Uruguay as an architect then Leo changed his tune to painting. Architectural references are made and one would think the artist also studied theatrics.  The well-drawn paintings take on a surreal stage presence but with an extremely compressed depth of field.  You begin to doubt your sense of weight, space and even time by the clever choice of totally unrelated objects drawn into his scenes. The fun begins when you start following lines that lead to trap doors, wrap around pinball bumpers and see heavy objects dangle from what should be a strong cable but is only a dotted line. 

Henri & Odette 

Gallery owner Jennifer Harrington is scheduled to re-open Henri & Odette (formerly of 6th and Carson) this April in her newest project, the Emergency Arts Building at 6th and Fremont. The program of the gallery is diverse and shows work from local and regional artists. Henri & Odette looks forward by searching for ways to foster, educate, and support the art community of Las Vegas and UNLV.  Harrington introduced the Jennifer Marie Gallery in 2007, and moved on to develop Henri & Odette in 2008. She has always had an interest in emerging artists. For Harrington, both galleries served as experiments and hopeful learning tools. www.henri-odette.com 

Artist, Danielle Kelly

Working in everything from painting to performance, Danielle Kelly’s chosen medium depends entirely upon the project at hand. She has exhibited across the Western United States including Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland. Kelly has been awarded residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Caldera Arts in Sisters, Oregon, and last year was the recipient of a Cirque du Soleil Cultural Action Department artist grant.  Blanket, a recent collaboration with performance artist/dancer Noelle Stiles, will be performed at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time-Based Arts Festival 2010. She received her BA from Beloit College and MFA in Studio Art from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2007; she has also studied at the University of Glasgow and the Glasgow School of Art.  Kelly is Operations Manager for the Las Vegas Neon Museum and has taught Sculpture and 2D/3D Foundations at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.  Kelly is a freelance arts writer and critic for the Las Vegas Weekly. 

Brett Wesley Gallery 

Located downtown in the heart of the 18b Arts District, award winning Brett Wesley Gallery is a respected resource for collectors, designers, and corporations. The gallery specializes in contemporary paintings, photography, and sculpture by established and emerging artists. Brett Wesley re-defines the gallery experience and exhibits works that are bold, relevant and of the highest quality. The gallery is currently developing a full schedule of art receptions, how-to sessions with renowned artists, lectures on collecting, preservation and other special events. Brett Wesley is a trusted advisor; helping new collectors find their own voice through acquired art and established collectors broaden and refine their collections with important new work. The gallery reflects Brett’s desire to “Share the unique power of art, the joy of ownership, and the enduring value of owning original works. www.BrettWesleyGallery.com 

Artist, Michael Stillman

Stillman was born and raised in Las Vegas. At age 6 his father built him a dark room and taught him about photography, it has been his life’s passion ever since. In 1959 Stillman moved to San Francisco to study acting – but spent more time photographing other actors than acting. Shortly after, he moved to Los Angles where he spent the next 25 years working independently in film and photography. In 1984 Michael returned to Las Vegas to begin a new series of work inspired by the bright lights and big city.

Although Stillman had mastered photographing people he long wondered about abstraction. Borrowing techniques he learned from theater set design and movie production, this veteran photographer built sets and reflected light off of water, oil, broken glass and other surfaces to create mesmerizing images. In the 1980’s Stillman was one of the few photographers experimenting with abstract photography and landed on such a successful series of over 200 images. Stillman’s light-painting photographs are abstract menageries of fluid shapes and energetic colors – all shot on film and without any digital manipulation. This rare collection was shot during the 1980’s & 90’s with 35mm and 4×5 view film-based cameras. Stillman lives in Las Vegas and currently spends time photo archiving the growth of the new Lou Ruvo Brain Institute to Keep the Memory Alive.

The Fallout Gallery

A contemporary art gallery located in the Las Vegas Arts District area. The Fallout Gallery presents exhibitions of art representing local and national artists working in a variety of contemporary media. Gallery owners are Rick Dominguez  and Cindy Funkhouser. They like new. They like edgy. They like art.Cindy Funkhouser is one of the founders of First Friday, Las Vegas' monthly festival celebrating art, culture and Downtown Las Vegas. She's also president of Whirligig Inc, the non-profit that promotes First Friday. An avid art collector, Funkhouser owns the Funk House Antique Store, where she encourages local artists to show their works, having exhibited artists on a monthly rotating basis for over seven years.  Rick Dominguez is a floor artist, having been in the flooring business for the last 20 years. A proponent of downtown revitalization and development of the Arts District, Dominguez is excited to contribute to the scene with the ongoing exhibitions of The Fallout. He was married to Funkhouser in their gallery last year in their opening month. Both Dominguez and Funkhouser live and work in the Arts District. www.thefallout.net

Artist to be announced.

Untitled Bar Series
in Rosemary’s lounge

Pasha Rafat’s work has been shown in Europe and throughout the United States. He teaches photography and multidisciplinary courses at UNLV.

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