An Oasis in the Desert for Visual Artists : Navy bombing ranges and dead animal pits are sources of inspiration in the state’s anything-goes atmosphere

“Driving out from Northern California, when the land stops being desirable, Nevada begins,” says Sausalito photographer Lewis Baltz. “It’s kind of a free-fire zone. You can do things there that you can’t do anywhere else. You can have prostitution and legalized gambling and blow-off thermonuclear devices.

“It seems like a wonderful place to do art.”

But in the mid-1970s, when Baltz first visited, Nevada had no major museum to exhibit the black-and-white pictures he took of the desert. The state’s only contemporary gallery dealt in paintings. Neither of the state universities--in Las Vegas and Reno--even offered a master of fine arts.

Hoping to find a wealthy patron who might help him, Baltz called Art Forum magazine in New York for a list of Nevada subscribers.

“I found out there were only three subscribers in the entire state,” he said.

He took his photographs and went home.

The wasteland that Baltz left behind is not so barren today. Photography, painting and sculpture are blossoming here. And, ironically, the Silver State is using outside artists like Baltz to sow the seeds of this cultural revolution.

For the last six years, Nevada has recruited successful artists from around the world to visit and work amid its cactus and glitz. The strategy is simple: bring in talent to jump-start the state’s reputation.

Leading this effort are two beer-drinking poets, Bill Fox and Kirk Robertson, who run the tiny Nevada State Council on the Arts. A dozen private arts groups have joined the fight.

This collective doesn’t have much money. But in an age of artistic repression, it can offer freedom. Nevada will promote and contribute to almost any project an artist dreams up. Strange work is flourishing across the terrain like cholla cactus:

* In January, a Reno gallery showed photographs of a U.S. Navy bombing range near Fallon. Richard Misrach, of Northern California, exhibited these pictures along with blueprints for a proposal to convert the pockmarked desert into a national park documenting “military abuse of the American landscape.”

* In Las Vegas, preparations are being made for a metaphoric wedding between the Statue of Liberty and Barcelona’s Christopher Columbus statue. Spanish artist Antonio Miralda’s ceremony is scheduled to take place on Valentine’s Day, 1992, with a procession down Glitter Gulch, a 110-foot wedding dress and a cake formed from white limousines. Caesars Palace is considering being host for the reception.

* On Interstate 15 near the state border, Craig Stecyk draws plans to build a monument of Coke bottles. After studying littered bottles and cans, the Los Angeles artist hopes to prove that such trash emanates in alluvial fans from roadside liquor stores.

“You can get stuff done in Nevada,” Stecyk said. “There’s a certain honesty you don’t see in big cities or states. Bill and Kirk basically let you do whatever you want.”

Noted artists like Claes Oldenburg, Barbara Kruger and Michael McMillen have similarly been lured to Nevada. National arts leaders are taking notice.

“Things are happening in Nevada,” said Richard Koshalek, director at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art. “If they continue to bring in as many important people as they can, there will be a lot of activity in the world of contemporary art there.”

Said Adrienne N. Hirsch, a former deputy chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts who dealt with the arts council in recent years: “When it comes to support of the individual artist, Nevada has become a real leader.”

Nevada’s headlong tumble into modern art began with Jenny Holzer. The New York artist mused about flashing one of her “truisms” on the Caesars Palace electronic marquee, a seemingly hopeless project. The state arts council and the Nevada Institute for Contemporary Art, a close ally, enlisted a wealthy developer with ties to the casinos.

In September, 1986, the words “Protect me from what I want” were repeatedly shown in front of Las Vegas’ best-known gambling spot.

“I wouldn’t have thought it possible,” Holzer said.

About the same time in Reno, Misrach was funded for his first project with the council, an exhibition of grisly photographs from the “Dead Animal Pit,” a county dump site for deceased cows, horses and sheep.

The council contributes to such projects from state and federal funds that will total $830,000 this year--a relative pittance in the art world. California’s arts council will spend $16.3 million in 1991, and New York expects to spend upward of $51 million.

A portion of Nevada’s funds go to symphony, opera and dance--organizations that formed over the last decade from casino musicians and dancers. But visual artists are the council’s primary concern, especially out-of-state artists.

“We need to bring in good and interesting artists to get people excited,” Robertson said. “Once Nevada has a reputation, it will be easier to take the work of good local artists and get it shown elsewhere.”

Robertson loves to get noticed. At 44, he is a burly man with a mustache and long black hair. The kind of guy who shows up at government meetings wearing snakeskin boots, said one artist. The kind of guy who will help you dig a hole in the middle of the desert, said another. He is also a tireless recruiter who spent last week in Washington asking for more federal money and courting a few of that city’s prominent artists.

“Kirk latched onto me and said, ‘This is interesting work,’ ” Misrach recalled of his experience with the state arts council. “He sort of grabs onto anybody he thinks is doing good work.”

Attracting outside artists isn’t as difficult as it might seem. Nevada’s contrasting imageries of desert isolation and casino decadence hold aesthetic appeal. So do Robertson’s promises of assistance.

“He’s a one-person kingpin of networking,” Misrach said. “He’s found sources of money for my work. At one point, I mentioned to him that I needed some architects to build a model for this project I’m working on. He called me back in a week and said, ‘I’ve got these people interested and you should call them.’

“You don’t find that in Los Angeles or New York.”

Such legwork gets done from an old Reno house--the council’s rented headquarters--where bedrooms and a kitchen serve as offices. Boxes of photographs and sketches fill the place.

The most recent success to rise from this clutter was Misrach’s proposed national park. It included a “Devastation Drive” and “Boardwalk of the Bombs” where visitors could stroll. There was a “Walk-In Crater.” According to the design, refreshments could be served at a roadside cafe and observation tower.

The photographs were published as a book, “Bravo 20: The Bombing of the American West,” last fall. And the project will be presented at upcoming, but as yet unscheduled, public hearings when the Navy seeks to renew its rights to the land.

“This could be a very important work,” Robertson said.

As for Miralda, the council has earmarked at least $10,000 for the performance-art ceremony. The city of Las Vegas and Clark County are adding $20,000 more, Fox said. He’s trying to find an airline that will transport the wedding slipper from Europe.

“It’s about the size of four Chevrolets,” he said. “We’ll need the world’s largest shoe box.”

Nevada’s dearth of culture is historical. Scattered Indian tribes that once inhabited the harsh land were too busy surviving to make much art, state officials said. In the mid-1800s, Mark Twain lived in Virginia City but soon left for San Francisco. People came to Nevada to work in mines and casinos and on military bases. These jobs attracted workers who stayed only a few years before moving on. No strong art community formed.

But by the mid-1980s, Nevada’s population began expanding. Renewed mining lured workers to Elko. The construction business boomed with new casinos and retirement developments. Now,1.2 million people live in the state, and an estimated 4,500 new residents arrive in Las Vegas each month, according to Clark County officials.

Such growth has brought a stable populace.

“People come here from other metropolitan areas. They’ve been exposed to symphony, museums, operas,” said Patrick Gaffey, executive director of the Allied Arts Council, another of the state arts council’s allies. “Some of them have an air of desperation--they think that coming here is like coming to a lonely outpost. They want cultural events.”

Fox, a longtime Nevada resident, knew the situation all too well. He accepted a staff position with the council in 1979.

Boyish-looking at 41, Fox dresses the part of the administrator in shirt and tie. He has published nine volumes of poetry, is an accomplished rock climber and, if you press him, will chart his ancestry back to Charlemagne.

He and Robertson knew each other through poetry circles. By 1985, Fox had become director of the arts council and hired Robertson as his assistant. They attacked the job with equal tenacity and irreverence--working long hours and wisecracking like college buddies.

Enlisting cohorts was easy. Groups like the contemporary art institute, the Allied Arts Council and the Sierra Foundation, in Reno, were looking to try something new. The collective pooled its money to pay outside artists.

One of the first joint projects, Holzer’s, made the cover of Art in America.

But it took until this year for the state legislature to show support for the arts. The government budgeted $386,000 for the council this year, a $100,000 increase from 1990. Still, only Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana spend less on the arts per capita.

Part of the problem is that Nevada has no personal income tax.

“They don’t have a heck of a lot of money, and they have a lot of ground to cover,” said Philip Horn, a manager for the California Arts Council.

So Nevada’s arts leaders have coalesced, forming a close-knit community. One group’s president usually sits on the board of directors for several others.

“We live, sleep, eat and breathe this stuff,” Fox said. “And we give legendary parties.”

The running joke at such gatherings is that if a bomb went off in the room, art in Nevada would be wiped out.

Perhaps kindred souls, odd souls, gravitate to Nevada’s wasteland-and-neon extremes. Local art is as strange as the work of visitors.

The state’s resident superstar, Michael Heizer, uses bulldozers to carve massive sculptures from the desert. Walter McNamara makes art from scavenged animal bones and wood. Robert Morrison builds metal contraptions that bark and buzz with electric current.

“We’re not bucking any artistic tradition here because there is none,” said Tom Holder, an adviser to the contemporary art institute. “In Nevada, we’re willing to try anything.”

A dozen local artists interviewed by The Times insisted they weren’t jealous of the outsiders. All the commotion has brought needed attention to Nevada art, they say. Besides, the council funds plenty of local projects, and Fox and Robertson conscientiously visit exhibits and art studios around the state.

“If it wasn’t for Kirk, a lot of things wouldn’t happen around here,” said Mary Ann Bonjorni, an artist and faculty member at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

James Pink, a painter, suggested that Nevada “is like Los Angeles was 50 years ago. There’s a lot of energy.” Evidence of this is apparent across the state.

In Carson City, the state government has commissioned large artworks for its new courthouse and library. East on Interstate 80, in Elko, the yearly Cowboy Poetry Gathering is nationally known.

In Reno, the Stremmel Gallery sold $2 million in art last year. A prominent New York art dealer recently chose the gallery--because of Nevada’s lenient tax laws--to warehouse and manage his $142.8-million collection of Matisse paintings.

Two years ago, the Stremmel was the only respected space in the state. Now Las Vegas has five contemporary galleries.

The state arts council, meanwhile, is planning its next project. Robertson wants various avant-garde artists to craft their own versions of the “roping dummy,” the wooden sawhorses that ranchers use to practice lassoing.

“We want to explode the distinction between folk art and fine art, which are usually confined to their respective ghettos,” Robertson said from Washington.

Fox, back in Reno, is gloating over his fatter budget. More money could mean more facilities down the road, so Nevada won’t have to rely on university galleries and small private spaces and high school gyms. More money will certainly pay for more art.

“As the state maintains its weird edge, artists will continue to come here,” Fox said. “We want them to use the state as a laboratory to explore.”