Art shows utility in urban zone

By Kristen Peterson

Monday, July 28, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Strip malls, fast food chains, closed businesses and cracked parking lots line the half-mile stretch of East Tropicana Avenue.

But mercantile chatter bombards drivers: smog checks, cash for cars, hot dogs (3 for $1), liquor deals, dry cleaning specials, mobile phone services, sandwich boards. Graffiti tag a palm tree.

At McLeod Drive and Tropicana Avenue, Jeff Fulmer paints a utility box with stylized curves and clean lines in calming greens and blues. It’s his interpretation of Aven Nelson phacelia, a native plant on the watch list of the Nevada Natural Heritage Program. He painted the Charleston beardtongue, another rare plant, on a smaller box.

Landing your eyes on Fulmer’s work is heavenly.

Laura Jane Spina agrees. Spina heads Friends of Paradise Park, an organization that has been trying for three years to get funding for the public arts project, Zap2!

The first Zap! project, completed in 2005 in the Winchester neighborhood for $22,500, was funded by Las Vegas Centennial grants, but money was hard to come by for the next project.

“We wrote letters, knocked on doors, applied for grants,” Spina says. “It’s just kind of slim pickings right now. It was really disheartening. I live in the community. I’m raising children here. We’re trying to revitalize the neighborhood.”

Finally the group, working with Patrick Gaffey, a cultural program supervisor for Clark County, came up with enough cash to pay seven artists. Friends of Paradise Park worked with the Goldwell Open Air Museum to raise money, including some from area residents and businesses. Other funding came from the Nevada Arts Council and a Clark County Neighborhood Small Project Grant.

Each artist is paid $2,250 — the same as in the first project. Once painted, the boxes are covered with a sealant to protect the work from graffiti damage.

Unfortunately, taggers move quickly. Brian Porray’s piece on McLeod Drive at the Silver State School Credit Union was hit when it was half finished. Porray has to redo one side of the box.

The boxes are along Tropicana Avenue and McLeod Drive and in Paradise Park. Five of the sites are water district boxes. The rest are county traffic signal control boxes.

Gaffey, a longtime advocate of public art who initiated the Zap! project, says the only requirements are that artists stay away from politically charged work and use themes that reflect the valley “whether in a direct, abstract, theoretical or some barely existent way.”

Leah Craig, a UNLV art student known for creating representational objects in motion, is painting a moving pink bicycle around a 6-by-10-by-3 foot box on the property of Walgreens near McLeod and Flamingo Road.

Christian Oland is painting melting ice cream onto boxes near a tire store on East Tropicana. Thomas Willis is painting abstract portraits of neighborhood residents, and Greg Allred is creating purely abstract works. Ozzy Villate’s portraits of smiling children will cover boxes near the Children’s Dental Clinic on Harrison Drive.

Spina hopes the completed box projects will inspire neighborhood residents to become more involved in other projects, including a desert demonstration garden in Paradise Park. The group formed three years ago after residents saw the success of the Friends of Winchester group.

The Zap! project in the Winchester neighborhood featured the work of Marty Walsh, who turned a utility box into a retro toaster to represent the desert heat and a former appliance store in the area, and Suzanne Forrestieri, who painted portraits of children playing.

In both projects, artists met with residents.

“It’s a wonderful way to beautify and revitalize our older urban areas,” Spina says, “and it adds a lot of funk.”