Fall Culture Guide 2024: Visual Arts

Stanley Webb, who teaches art at the College of Southern Nevada, uses mixed-media painting to express his experience as a multiethnic person — as he puts it, “different elements being both without losing their individual distinction.” At first glance, one of his pieces may look like a painting. But get closer, and you’ll see layers of other media adding complexity to the work.

The traveling exhibition will be on display Saturday June 1, 2024, through Monday, September 30, 2024 at the Henderson Campus - Student Union Gallery; Tuesday October 1, 2024, through Friday, January 31, 2025 at the Charleston Campus - Student Union Gallery; and Saturday February 1, 2025, through Saturday, May 31, 2025 at the North Las Vegas Campus - Tyrone Thompson Student Union Gallery. This project is supported in part by the Nevada Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The CSN Student Union Art Galleries are free, family friendly, and open to the public. Gallery hours vary by campus and semester. Please visit https://www.csn.edu/student-unions for current hours of operation. For more information, call 702-651-4146.

Born in Russia and raised in Ukraine, Elena Wherry grew up surrounded by the art and music her family created. In this exhibition, she returns to another old love, watercolor, experimenting with new ways that wet media can bring her ideas to life. The former Neon Museum resident’s paintings have been exhibited at the Barrick Museum and are part of UNLV Student Union’s permanent collection. Social media content creator Kira, of The Art Revival, curates this show.

Exhibit runs through January 31.

Laura Esbensen’s work isn’t for the faint of heart. Or stomach, spleen, or kidney. The San Diego- and Las Vegas-based artist’s paintings and sculptures put the organ in organic, juxtaposing pulpous, pulsating pink and red blobs with hard-edged, heavy construction materials, hinting at the vulnerability of a living thing, recently excised from its host. In this new show, Esbensen says, a study of mutilation and revival draws out the idea that the grotesque, before it is horror or alien, is simply and beautifully a sum of parts. Wondering what that means? Ask the artist at the opening reception, 6-8 p.m. on October 3.

Exhibit runs through December 13.

Darren Johnson, the gallery manager for the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, curates this collection aimed at celebrating how art enriches everyday spaces. Consider, for instance, Harold Bradford’s 2014 oil painting depicting the jumbo, neon bulb-dotted silver slipper being loaded onto a flatbed truck in front of Young Electric Sign Company as three professionals, who are apparently involved in the shoe’s delivery, confer about it over architectural drawings. It’s a mid-century modern scene retracing the circle closed when the Strip’s iconic public artwork began making its way to the Neon Museum.

The exhibition is on display through Oct. 26.

Nuwu Art Gallery + Community Center and nonprofit Indigenous AF host Luis Varela-Rico for his first solo exhibition, which opened with a splash in September, as Varela-Rico’s huge skull-centric sculpture made the trek straight from Burning Man to downtown Las Vegas, just in time to serve as the show’s centerpiece. If you missed that, fret not. On Friday, October 18, at 6 p.m. the artist will be back at Nuwu for a closing reception and discussion of his evolution from skilled tradesman to celebrated metalworker. (Hint: Get there early, as gallery owner Fawn Douglas says the event will fill up. But also note, there will be overflow space with speakers outside.)

Exhibit runs through October 26.

Arts Foundation Hayes Advocacy for Vegas curated this display of works by Guatemalan, Haitian, and Mexican artists, including Antonio Vasquez Parra and Carmel Washington. Summerlin collectors donated the pieces to the exhibition, with the aim of furthering education about Latin culture.

Exhibit runs through November 3.

If anyone should know a thing or two about fun, it’s Clay Arts Vegas. With its inclusive, try-everything approach to plastic arts, the group has gained a reputation for classes that are as enjoyable as its exhibitions are brave. This show highlights how usable art can add whimsy to everyday tasks — think: a parrot spitting tea, or a pair of marmots delivering salt and pepper. If that can’t inspire would-be sculptors to sign up for a pottery class, then nothing can.

Exhibit runs through November 13.

If this show sounds familiar, that might be because it’s been in the Barrick’s East Gallery since April. But with almost two months left (from the date of this publication) to see it, we wanted to give it one last shout-out. A who’s-who of international arts organizations support this culturally rich collection of contemporary work by Latinx artists inspired by the Mexican tradition of Ex-Votos, small devotional paintings that are a type of retablo, or “altar art.” The artists, which include some names familiar to locals (Elena Brokaw, Justin Favela, Zully Mejía, Krystal Ramirez, and others), engage with the U.S.’s largest collection of retablos, curated by University of Illinois at Chicago art professor Emmanuel Ortega and kept at the New Mexico State University Art Museum. They riff on the theme in a wide variety of ways, from mixed-media installations, to repurposed signs for Las Vegas Latinx businesses.

Exhibit runs through November 23.

In this exhibition, the prolific local artist looks to level the viewing field, if you will, by rendering her subjects in a sort of photographic heat map. A high-resolution thermal camera “takes away the familiar,” Alterwitz says. “It creates ambiguity to the physical characteristics that can socially divide us, such as color, gender, or age. Pigmentation, tattoos, hair color cease to exist.” What’s more, her technique flattens images, putting subjects against dark backgrounds, their essence shimmering untethered in the foreground. At a time when people are deeply divided, Alterwitz aims to disorient viewers in their preconceptions — and orient them toward a new way of seeing their fellow humans.

Exhibit runs through November 23.

This recommendation may be less about the art than the bonus that comes with it. Stop by the Corn Creek Visitor Center at the Desert National Wildlife Refuge, about 40 minutes northwest of Las Vegas, and you can get a dose of hometown pride. P.S. I Love You is an exhibition of postcards, made by all-ages folks from around the state, drawing what they adore about Nevada. After browsing the exhibit, take half an hour (or day) to stroll around Corn Creek (or drive around DNWR), and you can see for yourself an example of why naturalists and outdoors-people can’t quit the Silver State.

Exhibit runs through December 2.

When folk herbalist Iyana Esters goes out in the field to learn about Afro and Indigenous ancestral healing practices, she takes her camera, she told Double Scoop’s Brent Holmes in October 2023. Holmes reviewed the opening of Esters’ photography exhibit, Birthed From the Soil, which was on display at UNR’s Front Door Gallery through January. Now making its way to Las Vegas, the collection explores the life- and food-ways of Yawah Awolowo, an Alabaman farmer, chef, and midwife known as Mama Yawah. The photos’ gentle color and focus reflect not only Esters’ connection to her subject, but also her use of plant-based dyes in processing the images.

Exhibit runs through January 29.