Las Vegas Weekly
“The Protectress” by Jennifer Henry
Photo:
Wade Vandervort
Geoff Carter Thu, Mar 11, 2021 (2 a.m.)
What I know about abstraction in art is not much. Sure, I get the bare-bones idea of it the freedom to create something that’s not representative, to allow the creative mind to wander where it will but the why of abstraction sometimes eludes me. (I blame the editor in me; if something doesn’t make sense to me, it needs to be rewritten and revised until it does.) But in curating
Two or 3 Things I Know About Abstraction a 12-artist group show now at the Summerlin Library gallery UNLV fine arts professor Pasha Rafat has anchored abstraction to a value I can get my head around: connection.
Las Vegas Weekly
Alisha Kerlin at ASAP
Alisha Kerlin is a shining star in the Las Vegas art scene. As the executive director of UNLV’s Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, she leads one of Nevada’s most important arts organizations. And yet, her success in showing others’ art has mostly kept her too busy to make her own.
“I’m around art a lot. I live and work around it,” Kerlin says. “And I haven’t made a solo project since I became a director and a mother in the same year.”
That was half a decade ago.
So when ASAP (Available Space Art Projects), located in New Orleans Square inside Commercial Center, offered Kerlin its space for the last week in February, she jumped at the chance to make and show new work. Deciding to “treat it as a residency,” Kerlin used the compressed time frame as a catalyst to finally prioritize artmaking.