Vegas art lovers now say, ‘TGIF’

THE success of the art-focused street fair First Friday debunks conventional Las Vegas wisdom in two ways: The first is that nothing can succeed here without a huge marketing budget, and the other is that people don’t go downtown.

Most visitors to the Strip don’t realize that their Las Vegas vacation rarely includes actually visiting Las Vegas. The city’s boundary extends south to Sahara Avenue; most everything on the Strip beyond that (including the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign) is in Paradise, Clark County. The surrounding suburbs have much of the area’s gigantic population growth while downtown has suffered the fate of many an aging urban core.

Like many cities, in the late ‘90s Las Vegas created an arts district to encourage galleries and artists to help revitalize downtown. “The city had tried a couple events. But other than for gambling, people didn’t come downtown,” recalls Cindy Funkhouser, a former bartender at the Four Queens who owned an antique store downtown, the Funk House. “People who lived in the area didn’t think there was anything to see downtown and they perceived the area as being seedy and dangerous. We are still working our way out of that.”

Inspired by seeing Portland’s First Thursday event, Funkhouser conceived the idea of holding a First Friday (so named because it’s on the first Friday of each month) downtown with local artists showing their work not just in the galleries but also stores and restaurants. Funkhouser says her friends in the downtown arts scene tried to talk her out of her plan, insisting that it had no chance of success.

The next First Friday, on Feb. 2, is being sponsored by Cirque du Soleil. Though none of its five resident shows is technically in downtown Las Vegas, Danielle Rodenkirchen, the cultural action coordinator for Cirque, makes the point that this area is home for employees at all of the Cirque shows. “First Friday is something we want to attach ourselves to. We are very proud of it. I’ve personally watched it grow from a few hundred people to thousands.” Overlapping with this week’s First Friday will be an exhibit of Cirque employee art at the Arts Factory.

First Friday launched in October 2002. Within a year the city saw a winner and got heavily involved, offering a trolley to shuttle people to First Friday locations. So many locals began showing up that it became necessary for the city to shut down a few streets to allow for all the pedestrians. Stages and bands followed and tents were set up to allow artists to offer their work along the street.

“Everything for the streets is juried,” Funkhouser says of the selection of artists. “In the winter it can be as few as 20 artists and in the summer there are about 50.” But First Friday features other examples of urban culture rarely given a stage in Vegas, such as street performers and slam poets.

In the last year, crowds have held steady from 8,000 to 10,000. In a brochure with a map marking the dozens of shops, restaurants and galleries that now participate, Mayor Oscar Goodman crows, “First Friday is the best thing that has ever happened to Las Vegas.”

Back in October, First Fridays hired Nancy Higgins as executive director, relieving Funkhouser of much of the daily work. Nowadays, Funkhouser says, First Friday has a budget of about $450,000, with half provided by the city and the rest by the nonprofit that Funkhouser set up to promote the show and recruit corporate sponsors.

Of course, a successful arts fair does not an art scene make. “The art scene is still in its infancy here. It is in its first days of evolution,” says 36-year-old local artist Mark T. Zeilman, whose career parallels the success of First Friday. He has gone from painting on the sidewalk in front of the Funk House to opening his own gallery at Commerce Street Studios two years ago. Zeilman describes his paintings as informed by L.A.’s lowbrow and street art. Of the impact of Las Vegas on his work, Zeilman says: “I’m not particularly Vegas. I don’t go to casinos. I don’t watch shows.”

Funkhouser says Zeilman is typical of Vegas artists. “There is not a bunch of people who do the Vegas thing. For the most part they have gone to art school somewhere else or, if they are unschooled, they grew up someplace else. A lot of the younger artists are heavily influenced by anything going on in the L.A. arts scene.”

The quality of the art, however, is not the principal concern for many attendees of First Friday. “Some of the art is good, and some is boring. As an art scene, I have to say, Vegas is mediocre compared to L.A.,” admits Stephanie Weedin, 21, an aspiring artist and UNLV student. Yet Weedin keeps going to First Friday each month.

“Every time I go, I meet interesting people and I am surprised because it is all these arty people you don’t think live here and at First Friday we all are discovering that we do.”