Mary Warner's "Zinnias" in Panorama (29" by 37")
Back in 1989, the Nevada Arts Council began offering fellowships to artists who excelled in their discipline. It was a way to champion and encourage contemporary professional artists throughout the state via individual gifts of $5,000.
Twenty-five years later—and with a healthy roster of accomplished artists—the NAC is touring its third exhibit of works by fellowship recipients. Curating the show, which will travel the state for two years, fell to Las Vegas’ Richard Hooker, an artist and cultural planner who considered the challenge of operating without an overriding aesthetic theme to be the “exciting part.”
“In my conversations with the artists I saw these common threads,” he says. “Biography, place, memory and the storytelling from each artist about celebrating object making.”
Zoltan Janvary's "Travel Notes II" in Panorama (12" by 9")
The resulting Panorama at the Barrick Museum is literally a show within a show. It not only celebrates works by 12 fellowship recipients, it extends into a second show, Panorama+, filling the rest of Barrick with works by an additional eight recipients, curated jointly by Hooker and UNLV’s director of galleries, Jerry Schefcik.
Hooker considers Panorama+, presented in conjunction with Nevada’s sesquicentennial, a wonderful statement on the commitment of the Las Vegas community.
Panorama features recent works by former Las Vegan Catherine Borg, on erased and altered places; Dean Burton’s sky-based photographic “stacked horizon lines” and new digital works by Shan Michael Evans. Along with recent paintings by Mary Warner are Tamara Scronce’s photographic images; pieces from Stephen Hendee’s post-apocalyptic The Ice Next Time: Textiles and Artifacts of Dark Age North America (2026- 2280ce), originally exhibited at Barrick; and works by Zoltan Janvar, Robert Morrison, Candace Nicol, Nolan Preece, Heather Protz and Christine Siemens.
Panorama+ works are by Rebekah Bogard, Philip Argent, Suzanne Kanatsiz, Cara Cole, Wayne Littlejohn, Diane Bush, Michael Sarich and Peter Goin.
