The UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum had housed tortoises in its front lobby but when it transitioned from a natural history museum to a fine arts museum in 2012 they created an ArtBar, a place for kids to create art.
Then last summer the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection exhibit featured found-art collage artist Stephen Antonakos. Antonakos is known for taking everyday objects and turning them into collages.
The museum added materials based on that concept to the ArtBar and a community collaging workshop was born. It became so popular the museum decided to keep it.
Now, people from around the community bring in bags of their own items to create from and to allow others to create with, making it a community project.
“All of the donations come from the community. We don’t buy materials,” Giguet said.
According to museum director Aurore Giguet, sometimes people just sit back and watch others create but eventually everyone gets in there and makes something.
Often, parents bring in kids and they’ll work alongside them or just let them work.
Local artist and museum employee DK Sole told about a mother and her two young sons coming to the bar. The bar had had a lot of donations of dominos, army men and paper money. The young boys took to the army men and money and started creating several collages using those elements.
The whole thing is part of the museum’s effort to make art accessible.
“We believe art plays a central role in every life and being able to experience it at the museum whether you looking at the exhibit and then coming out to the ArtBar and creating something inspired by it,” Giguet said.
Everybody at the museum works on the bar. Employees explain to people what it is and how it works, where the glue is and then let them go.
They encourage people to do their own thing. Staff will show them examples of other things that people have done or artists who have used collages, but usually they look at what is on the walls and go from there.
People can take their collages home or leave at the bar to be displayed. After works have been on display for a while, they're taken down and recycled back into the bar.
Sole’s new show that opens in January at the Winchester Cultural Center started because of the ArtBar.
“I had been doing mainly drawing, but because I’m staff there we were trying to get the thing underway all the staff were encouraged to make something,” Sole said, “So, I made something and I just kept making something.”
Guests:
Aurore Giguet, museum director, UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum
DK Sole, artist and museum employee, UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum
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