Southern Nevada has many places to view art, and some of it just happens to be located in fairly peculiar places.
Nowadays, a drive into the desert – sometimes far into the desert – will take you to art installations that have become world-famous. In particular, local art has found its way beyond the local galleries – in some instances, in high-traffic tourist spots such as the Strip.
And while there’s plenty of local art in the Arts District, one unlikely space is giving several Vegas-based artists a free, high-visibility spot to show their work.
Back in March, Isaiah Jerez, attorney and owner of Jerez Law, bought billboard space in the Arts District. For the last six months, he has in turn donated each side to a different local artist to showcase their work to all passersby.
On August 21, the project known as "The Art Billboard" becomes an exhibit called "Art Over Main" at Mad Gallery. The exhibit will feature works displayed on the billboards, as well as related work from the 12 featured artists. Psionic Art Works, owned by Brian "Paco" Alvarez, is curating the entire effort, and what began as a 2026 campaign has been extended through 2027.
"My marketing director approached me and said, 'Hey, we've got to get a billboard up,'" said Jerez. "And I let him know I don't want to be on the billboard. If we're gonna do a billboard, we gotta do something different. We gotta [do] something that turns the attention to the community."
The idea came from a lawyer friend in another state, who began displaying images of local celebrities on his leased billboard, and then switched to charitable organizations. While Jerez wants to provide a civic and cultural service with "The Art Billboard," he's ultimately using it to promote his firm. "We're providing this space to the community because I think that's the best way that I can tell people about what I do," he said.
Local art — typically shown in local libraries, civic institutions, and galleries — has been finding itself more and more in places it might not have been expected before. One of those places: the tourist corridor, where so much of the aesthetic is in service to casino resorts. But as Scott Dickensheets, editor at large of KNPR's Desert Companion and longtime arts reporter, points out, visitors to the city end up getting a taste of Vegas talent when they least expect it.
"If you're here at a convention at the Rio, for instance, there's a lot of really cool art hanging in the hallways in that convention area by local Las Vegas artists whom we know, and that's just like one of many examples," he said. "And so to find art represented in places where the real job is fleecing the tourists, I think that sort of sets it apart in a certain way."
Tourists — and locals — have also been flocking to the desert for large, land-based sculptures. Two of the most famous are the 480-acre "The City" by Michael Heizer in Garden Valley, which requires reservations several months in advance, and Ugo Rondinone's "Seven Magic Mountains," the selfie-favorite series of 35-foot-tall, multicolored boulder towers near the Jean Dry Lake.
The latter does more than surprise and enliven weary motorists who may have just endured three-plus hours of earth-tone desert, according to Dickensheets. It threatens to distract us from our destructive ways.
"It's the super-bright, original object that's not trying to sell you anything, which makes it an anomaly in Las Vegas from the get-go," said Dickensheets. "But also, if you look around the site where it is, there's a massive freeway, there are railroad tracks, there's a quarry nearby, and a shooting range. So that area of the desert has been hard used by humans. And these seven joyful, buoyant stacks of brightly colored rocks are the only thing out there that redeems our presence."
Guests: Isaiah Jerez, attorney and owner, Jerez Law; Scott Dickensheets, editor at large, Desert Companion
