Thursday, Feb. 5, 2004 | 8:20 a.m.
E. Dunn Thurston unrolled the canvas onto the gallery floor and examined the painting.
"I painted it more than a year ago," he said. "I rolled it up and it was laying on my floor and I felt bad every time I walked by."
So Thurston brought it in to Left of Center gallery and studio, where director Vicki Richardson had him hang it in her office.
"He didn't know what to do with it, so I gave him an idea of what to do with it," said Richardson, who founded the Left of Center.
"That's part of our goal is to get these things from under their beds and out of their garages."
Thurston's painting, titled "Villages" and inspired by primitive communication, fits in with the gallery's mission.
Left of Center, a nonprofit, educational gallery, is all about the different communities its artists represent.
Works by Chilean artist Jorge Catoni and Nigerian-born artist Dayo Adelaja hang in the gallery annex.
Walls in the artist's lounge are covered floor to ceiling with paintings and mixed-media works of African leaders, Southern homes, gospel choirs, sports, landscapes and musicians.
Saturday morning workshops draw resident artists who work in the studio, jokingly chide each other and offer input on one another's art.
"What I'm trying to do is several volumes of sketchbooks," artist Harold Bradford said last Saturday while flipping through a hard-bound collection of buffalo soldiers, jazz musicians, athletes and friends. "This is my third volume and I'm on the last page."
Across the table, abstract painter Earl Dunbar explored a new medium introduced that morning by painter Jack Wilson. Vance Cannon, a native Hawaiian, painted a scene from a polo game.
Artist Don Jones sketched a caricature of Cannon and elementary school teacher Trisha Powers stitched remnants from a favorite T-shirt to a jean jacket. Usually Powers, who is a weaver, has her loom.
"Everybody's sort of into something different," said Richardson, who was in between trips to CopyMax, where invitations were being made for the upcoming exhibit at the Las Vegas City Hall Bridge Gallery in honor of Black History Month.
"We put coffee on early in the morning. Some of them bring in refreshments. Sometimes they spread out into the hallway. Sometimes I have to set up a table for them. It's a very relaxed setting; it's like being in a home."
The artists call it a family.
"This is where it happens," Bradford said. "We feed off one another. We learn from one another. Sometimes after we leave here and go to lunch.
"We like to say it runs from 10 to 2 but sometimes it carries on into the evening. It's kind of a home for us. It's fellowship."
Opening doors
Left of Center gallery sprang from Richardson's former studio on A Street and was moved to its location on Gowan Road in North Las Vegas 12 years ago.
It was a time, Richardson said, "when there was not a house anywhere near us."
"We used to set up our easels at the windows and paint the desert," Richardson said. "An occasional horseback rider would go by, and that was it. People thought I was crazy coming out here."
But, Richardson said, "I've seen excellent galleries come and go. They've been here two, three years and close down."
Richardson, a retired teacher who never really quit teaching, attributes Left of Center's survival to its member artists and cooperative atmosphere.
"It's artist-run," she said. "We require a lot of participation from our people.
"It's a different niche and it's educational."
Regarding visitors, she said, "A lot of people are intimidated by galleries that are exclusive, not inclusive."
Here, she said, "It's a real good vibe. The artists here are from every ethnic background, academic backgrounds, some are self taught. Some have masters degrees."
Left of Center shares the building with Richardson's husband's construction business. Rather than wood tiles and high ceilings, its main gallery has shag carpeting and a comfortable sofa.
Its current exhibit, "AFRICA: The Source," a Black History Month exhibit, displays masks, textiles, crafts and masks used in initiations and ceremonies. A more unique, authentic Masaai bridal bag that is passed down from mother to daughter when daughter is mature and ready for marriage hangs on the wall.
"The collection comes from a lot of different places," Richardson said. "We have an importer we work with in California. Some pieces are from private estate sales and auctions. These are things we've collected for the last 15 years."
Throughout the year Left of Center features local, national and international work. Richardson's file cabinet is jammed with resumes and slides from artists wanting to show their work at the gallery.
There are workshops at the gallery and mentoring programs. The gallery reaches out to minority artists, and its artists are involved with public art projects.
"If they didn't have a place to nurture their art, a lot of them wouldn't be producing the way they are," Richardson said.
Artist's corner
Sitting in the lounge across from an anthology of his work, Sylvester Collier, a distinguished painter whose social and political themes represent his passion for history, said, "Our main goal is to provide a place where people can express themselves.
"Our whole goal when we started was to have our work hanging somewhere all the time. This is a hectic time of year because of Black History Month. We try to get beyond that so it's year-round.
"This is a very creative place. We'd like to think we're the oldest and the best and the most consistent."
Collier, a retired teacher with the Clark County School District, has a bachelor's degree in fine arts with an emphasis on painting and printmaking.
Bradford, a sign designer at Yesco, has a master's degree in fine art from Washington State. He's had solo exhibits in town and is working on a mural for the D Gates at McCarran International Airport.
Jack Wilson, a retired custodian from the Los Angeles Unified School District, came to the gallery five years ago. He's been painting for 30 years.
His paintings often depict old homes from the South, his way of preserving the homes.
"I just like the old houses," Wilson said. "This stuff is not existing anymore. It's being torn down."
Pointing to a painting on the wall that features a woman in a blue dress and hat walking toward a country home, Wilson said, "That was 'Coming Home.' The idea is she had been to Chicago. It didn't work out so she's coming home to the house in the country.
Pointing to another, he said, "I call this one 'Sneakers.' This little girl is pretending to pick flowers. Her daddy is looking out the door and the boyfriend is sneaking around the back."
Giving
Collier's work is about social change.
He has a series of paintings that feature Nelson Mandela, Jomo Kenyatta, a political leader with the Mau Mau movement (uprising against the British) in Kenya, the more controversial Yasser Arafat and Anwar Sadat.
"They were all historical figures, fathers of their country, more or less," Collier said. "For every person, I picked someone who had an opposing idea.
"If I have an opportunity to make people think, then why not? When I put up work there's always someone who will say, 'Why did you do this?' There's always someone who says something."
Other works include a portrait of Sammy Davis Jr. and another painting, called "Practice Practice," that features a young, shirtless, sockless man on a porch leaning back on a kitchen chair playing the trumpet.
Collier, who taught for nine years at Cannon Middle School and another nine years at Green Valley High School, said he first met Richardson at an art exhibit.
"As for teachers, she is one of the most dedicated people I've ever seen," Collier said. "My definition of a teacher is that long after what you're doing, they come back and they keep coming back to her."
Born in Wilmington, Del., Richardson was teaching art to students at a recreation center by the time she was 16. She later moved to Nashville, Tenn., where she studied under Harlem Renaissance artist Aaron Douglas (1898-1979) at Fisk University. She studied for her graduate degree at Vanderbilt University and completed the degree at the University of Chicago.
Richardson moved to Las Vegas in 1979 and taught for 28 years. She serves as second vice-chair for the Las Vegas Arts Commission, and the gallery works directly with the Clark County School District and even a nearby day-care center.
"The reason I like to work with young people is that some of the art galleries are elitists and aren't encouraging," Richardson said.
"Sometimes we encourage them to come in and just sit with us. I guess it's just the schoolteacher in me being nurturing."
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