The Art Box

The Art Box - Episode 91 - Barrick Museum of Art - Modern Desert Markings - Poem for the Ages - Ms. AyeVee - MDM

Please let your heart and soul enjoy a poem written by Ms. AyeVee during one of our artist visits to the Jean Dry Lake Bed for the Modern Desert Markings exhibition. 
Ms. AyeVee is an award-winning poet and curator from Las Vegas. Her work has been published by Zeitgeist Press, Red Rock Review, Nevada Humanities, and Las Vegas Review-Journal, to name a few. She also curates poetry workshops, events, and features for Poetry Promise, Nevada Humanities, and the City of Henderson. During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, she founded Beyond the Neon Poetry Slam.
 
 

The Art Box - Episode 90 - Barrick Museum of Art - A Cornocopia of Land Art Wisdom - Meet Hikmet Sydney Loe - MDM

The best thing about Hikmet's interview with us was that I got to edit it and listen to it again about another twenty times. 
You may know her as Katie Hoffman's co_curator for the Modern Desert Markings exhibit at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, we know her as the consummate art professional and friend that we could have talked to for days.
Born and raised on the east coast, Hikmet Sidney Loe fell in love with the Great Basin's deserts and the environs of Great Salt Lake. She is an author, curator, and educator whose work examines the changeable nature of the earth and addresses our perceptual and cultural constructs of the land. She draws inspiration from the smaller patterns found in the larger environment and from the changeable nature of land, water, and sky. She is the author of the award winning book The Spiral Jetty Encyclo: Exploring Robert Smithson's Earthwork through Time and Place (2017), the first book in a new series devoted to our cultural and regional understanding of Land art from the 1960s and 1970s.In 2021 she was named as a Research Fellow with Holt/Smithson Foundation; her work centered on organizing the artist Nancy Holt's extensive library for research purposes.
https://www.hikmetsidneyloe.com/
 

The Art Box - Episode 89 - Barrick Museum of Art - No Doubt Our Favorite Sculptor - Meet Emily Budd - MDM

Emily Budd
Linda and Steve were ever so privileged to sit with Emily at her metal shop @ UNLV for a wide ranging interview on all things art, paleontology, desert trash and Rhyolite. If it wasn't for schedules, parking fines and the need for humans to nourish themselves with food we would likely still be there.  Listen in to a great interview. More about Emily.
Emily is a queer artist specializing in time travel through mold-making. Drawing from a background in bronze-casting and paleontology, her work speculates on our own futurity and fossilization. Reformative monuments, memorials, and artifacts become an act of queer place-making while contemplating human sustainability when facing imminent change. Pulling from experiences as a foundry craftsperson and metalworker allows her to navigate between structure and experimentation within a queer context, exploring the possibilities of a separated difference.
Budd has been awarded various inspiring artist residencies including PLAYA Summer Lake, the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, Vermont Studio Center and Recology San Francisco, the latter at which she spent four months developing a body of work made from materials gleaned archaeologically at the city dump. Budd earned an MFA at California College of the Arts where she received a Cadogan scholarship from the San Francisco Foundation, and a BFA in Sculpture at Miami University. Budd has exhibited throughout the US including at SOMArts Cultural Center and Minnesota Street Project in San Francisco, Site:Brooklyn, the Barrick Museum of Art in Las Vegas, the University of Arizona in Tucson, and SEED Lab at the Anchorage Museum. Currently serving as Visiting Assistant Professor of Sculpture at UNLV, both her personal practice and teaching philosophy consider how we define equitable futures and renew transforming worlds.
https://emilybudd.com/home.html
 

The Art Box - Episode 88 - Barrick Museum of Art - Living from the Land - Meet Mark Brest van Kempen - MDM

Mark Brest van Kempen
Steve must thank Mark for his take on the Modern Desert Markings exhibit that the 50 year old art became real art as the land has taken it back.
Mark Brest van Kempen has created a variety of artworks using the landscape itself as sculptural material. From the Free Speech Monument on the UC Berkeley campus to Land Exchange at the National Academy of Art in China, his work explores the range of emotions and issues that are embodied in our complex relationship to the environment. He has spoken around the country and abroad on the possibilities of creating artwork that functions outside the museum /gallery context and that brings aesthetic and symbolic meaning to everyday situations.
He has received numerous commissions for public art projects including the San Francisco Art Commission, the City of San Jose, the City of Seattle and the Haas Foundation.
In 2012 Brest van Kempen was one of three Americans invited by the German Government to submit designs for a national Reunification Monument in Leipzig.
His work has been presented in several books including Lucy Lippard’s The Lure of the Local and Peter Selz’s Art of Engagement as well as many publications including Time Magazine, The New York Times, Art in America, and the LA Times.
Exit Art in New York, The Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena and The Richmond Art Center featured his performance project Living From Land in which he lived entirely from the land in a wilderness area for one month.
Brest van Kempen has been Artist in Residence in several institutions including Dalsland Museum in Sweden, the Headlands Center for the Arts in California and the University of Utah's Marva and John Warnock biennial residency. He has received a California Arts Council Fellowship and has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, Stanford University and California College of the Arts.
https://www.mbvkstudio.com/
https://www.sfartistsalumni.org/post/1990-free-speech-monument-uc-b-by-sfai-s-mark-brest-van-kempen

The Art Box - Episode 87 - Barrick Museum of Art - Mixing Archeology, Art and Goodness - Meet Paige Bockman - MDM

Paige Bockman
Meet the unsung hero of the Modern Desert Markings exhibit at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art @ UNLV. You could find her on the field trips, find her arranging for art deliveries, coordinating artists, installing art and yes, even watering our special Mojave plants. 
Growing up in a small town in eastern Nebraska where everyone knew everyone, I was always interested in stories and eager to meet people with backgrounds different from my own. I went to college at Creighton University in Omaha Nebraska, where I studied Anthropology and Classical & Near Eastern Studies. It was also during this time that I also participated in archaeological digs on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, and fell in love with the island. I went on to focus my studies on the ancient history of Cyprus, looking at patterns of gender identity and social power through the medium of ceramics.
I moved to Las Vegas in 2013 to attend the Master's program in Anthropology at UNLV. I quickly realized a life in academia wasn't for me, and started to look for other career paths. This led me to the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, where my skills as an archaeologist could be used to organize the large collection of objects housed at the museum, and my interest in stories could be used to share information about artwork and artifacts to an audience beyond the classroom. I am now the Collections and Exhibitions Manager at the Barrick, where I do all of these things and more.
Outside of work, I like to keep in close contact with my family back home, especially my nieces and nephews! I'm a dedicated plant mom, with a large collection of houseplants (though I've fallen in love with the desert, I haven't quite mastered the outdoor planting skills). I love hiking and going on bike rides, and going to different cultural festivals with friends. I'm an avid reader and always trying to learn more about something, especially the ecology and history of Nevada and this new region I'm now calling home. 

The Art Box - Episode 86 - Barrick Museum of Art - Solitaire, Lunch Bags, Front Yard Art - Meet Alisha Kerlin - MDM

What a fantastic interview we had with Alisha, from front yard gardens, to use of snail mail, lunch bag art for her daughter and the possibilities of cloning to facilitate 24 hour work days. All who listen know of our final question "What has inspired you this week?" Well, Alisha gave inspirational answers three times, I am sure she could have gone on. GREAT podcast!
Alisha Kerlin encourages dialogue about art and ideas through interdisciplinary programs and innovative exhibitions linked to wide-ranging community outreach. With full graduate faculty status, she received the UNLV College of Fine Arts Outstanding Administrative Faculty of the Year in 2017. In the same year, she earned an inaugural UNLV Top Tier award, confirming her academic excellence, creative activity, and pursuit of research befitting a Top Tier institution. Kerlin played a vital role in the Barrick’s transition from UNLV’s “hidden jewel” into an award-winning university art museum. She introduced practices that brought the organization of the visual art collection in line with international museum standards. Committed to making the Barrick an accessible resource for all, she has created initiatives that target both the academic community and K-12 schoolchildren. In the first year, the Bus to the Barrick program brought over a thousand visitors to campus, most of them for the first time. Kerlin also rebranded the institution by adding “of Art” to the name, solidifying the fifty-year-old museum as a gathering place for the creative community. A graduate of the University of Tennessee (BFA) and the Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts, Bard College (MFA), she connects the university to a top-tier cohort of emerging scholars and artists. Kerlin’s own artwork has been shown at institutions ranging from P3Studio at The Cosmopolitan, Las Vegas, to the Museum of Modern Art’s PS1 Museum in New York.

The Art Box - Episode 85 - Dastardly Desert Desperados - A Chat with the Cast ”in Character”

Steve made his way via horse drawn ATV out to Lizard, Nevada this evening to chat with the zany residents. We talked to the cast "in-character" on the stage, was it noisy, yes, was it funny, OMG yes. The scene stealing donkey even got in the act. See what all the fuss is about, get out to our theatre 150 N Yucca St, Mesquite, NV 89027 this weekend or next for a fun time. 
Tickets can be purchased here: https://www.mctnv.com/
Reviews: https://mvprogress.com/2023/03/21/mct-brings-melodrama-magic/?fbclid=IwAR099zo8Lkt0yCL2Re7t11v3Y_q9ojbXrmwjUvxpapKEAvuZXfvJPY-2yls
This hilarious melodrama was written by Mesquites own Nancy Arnold and Sue Kjellsen.
Directed by Nancy Arnold.
Listen to our previous podcast with the writers:
https://www.mesquitefineartscenter.com/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=590375&module_id=561139
 
 

The Art Box - Episode 84 - Barrick Museum of Art - Drones, Land Art, Conservation and Maker of Monuments - Meet Paula Jacoby Garrett - MDM

The first time I heard the term Land Art was in college. My ecology instructor showed us images of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. We learned how creating the spiral altered the environment enough to cause the tiny microscopic organisms to change the color of the water surrounding it to red. 
Living in southern Nevada, I knew we had a few key Land Art pieces in the area. I had heard rumors about Heizer’s large Land Art piece called City. He spent decades creating it, but to date, only a select few had ever seen it. I have visited Heizer’s Double Negative and Ugo Rondinone's Seven Magic Mountains several times. In one sense, I am in awe of the scale and uniqueness of these Land Art pieces; on the other hand, it seems like the senseless destruction of a fragile desert environment. An environment that I deeply love.  
Fast forward to the pandemic of 2020, isolation indoors had started to take its toll on me. I needed time in nature and found solitude at the Jean Dry Lake Bed. This vast area is close to my home and provides easy access to open space with relatively few other individuals. During a Google search of the Jean Dry Lake, I learned that Michael Heizer’s Circular Surface Planar Displacement and Rift were created there. Around this time, a friend sent me the open call for the Modern Desert Markings at the Barrick Museum on the campus of UNLV. I applied and was selected to participate in the exhibit.
The images I created are from a series of attempts to ‘go large’ in the vein of Heizer’s Rift without the impact on the environment. The art pieces I created encompass a variety of materials, from spray-painted cardboard to aluminum insulation and landscape cloth. I increased the scale through trial and error, eventually making a 180-foot line. After taking photographs via a drone, I removed all materials.
The case for Land Art is complicated; is it art on the scale of Egyptian pyramids or the Nazca Lines? Or is it a degradation of the environment for the sake of art?
https://www.paulajacoby-garrett.com/modern-desert-markings-exhibit

The Art Box - Episode 83 - Barrick Museum of Art - Social Media, Bottle Caps and Why No Smelly Exhibits - Meet Deanne Sole - MDM

Rayette and I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Deanne and chatting about her many roles at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art at UNLV as well as her unique art and believe it or not the ins and outs of why the fifth sense is not a museum staple.  

The Art Box - Episode 82 - Be Your Best Self - Meet Maureen ”Reenie” McFarland

Rachel, Linda and Steve had the pleasure of chatting with our friend Reenie McFarland the other day. If you do not live in Mesquite, Nevada, after hearing this conversation with Reenie, you will want to move here.
Reenie McFarland                                                                                         2-3-2023
As the daughter of an Army colonel, I grew up in a variety of locations and attended a dozen schools by the time I graduated high school.  This gave me some strengths, such as the ability to adapt to new surroundings easily and to feel comfortable getting to know new people, but it also gave me some weaknesses, like no life-long friendships and an “out of sight out of mind” mentality.  In addition, I had many opportunities to visit new places and get to know different cultures while my dad was stationed in Germany for 9 years of my life. I’ve climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa, been to Pompeii, seen concentration camps, been to the Acropolis in Greece, skied St. Moritz, been to the Netherlands, Sweden, and other places in Europe. I’ve also seen Plymouth Rock, the Alamo, Niagara Falls, and many other US sights.
I feel I had a fortunate childhood although different from many others.
As a young adult, I graduated college and became a special education teacher. Later, I started my own elementary school that I operated as a one-room school for 10 years. I got my master’s degree in Educational Leadership, and spent the last 10 year’s of my career as the Director of Career Services at a private applied arts college.
But for me, the greatest achievement of my life was mothering and raising four well adjusted children. I credit the 10 years I spent as a volunteer for La Leche League International with helping me become the best mother I could be. Your Child’s Self Esteem by Dorothy Corkille Briggs was my “go-to” book, which I read 3 times, where I learned that we are our children’s mirrors, and to only criticize behaviors and not the child, and many more things that build confidence and security in a child.
As a retired adult, retired Dec. 29, 2017, I now have the time to explore things I thought about doing, things I started and stopped because work got in the way, or things I never thought I could or would want to do. The first thing I jumped into when my husband, Larry, and I moved to Mesquite, was volunteering. I joined Mesquite Works, the Mesquite Showgirls, and the Women’s Center. The second thing I did was get involved with the Mesquite Rec Center and personal fitness. I have always enjoyed exercise, specifically step aerobics, so I became certified and started teaching classes. I currently teach 5 classes at the Rec Center and 2 classes at Mesquite Fitness. Truthfully, this is my passion! It makes me feel good about my body and mind and I love the people I have met through my classes. I hope to continue doing this for as long as my body will let me.
Performing at the Virgin Valley Theater is a new endeavor for me. I never did any acting as a child in school or church and never thought about doing it as an adult. I have always enjoyed plays and while attending one in Mesquite, one of the actor’s drew a blank with their lines and said “I got nothing”. Nothing happened and they continued the performance and there were no negative responses from the audience. This is what most people fear the most, and I thought, “it wasn’t that bad, I’m going to give this a try”. So, I auditioned for the upcoming play, “An Evening of Culture” and got a part. I did my second play, “The Hallelujah Girls” and still find it enjoyable so I will probably do another.
Who knows what lies in store for me next, but I am always open to exploring new avenues!