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Thursday

Las Vegas Snowfalls

(Fig. 01) - Mount Charleston's Spring Range
Avalanche Warning: With the heaviest snowfall in nearly a decade, the U.S. Forest Service issued a voluntary evacuation for Mount Charleston's Kyle Canyon and Lee Canyon areas to to high avalanche danger. The last 12 days brought more than 80 inches of snowfall, the most 12-day accumulation of a 12-day period in 12 years. These recent snowfalls have resulted in a total depth of more than 94 inches. This is the worst winter we've experience since moving to Las Vegas.

(Fig. 02) Mt. Charleston Village
For those who have never visited the Mount Charleston area, most don't realize that there is a small unincorporated town with of roughly 300-400 homes near the top of Kyle Canyon. The town sits at an elevation of around 7,500 feet, several thousand feet below the summit of Mt. Charleston Peak, 11,916 feet. Click the picture in (Fig. 02) to enlarge it and you can better see some homes in this town that are surrounded by steep mountains and ridges. Even though many of the residents of the homes in Kyle Canyon are “part-time folks”, it is estimated that there are about 150 year-round residents living there. Even though the National Weather Service said no more snow is expected to fall in the upcoming days, the winds and warmth are moving in to the mountains this weekend. The U.S. Forest Service has indicated that the weight of the fresh powder, coupled with the area’s steep terrain, “could create spontaneous avalanches.” Still part of the Spring Mountains, the Mount Potosi Range (Fig. 03) is about 30 miles south of Mt Charleston. The Mt. Potosi Peak is at 8,517 feet. If you click on this picture to enlarge it you can see the radio/TV towers in the upper right corner of the image.
                                       
(Fig. 03) The Mount Potosi Range




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Monday

Antony Gormley Installation "Feeling Material XXVIII, 2007" at Aria

This page last updated on 03/24/2018               

The Artist: Antony Gormley is a British sculptor who was born in 1950. Antony Gormley is widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the human body to space. His work has developed the potential opened up by sculpture since the 1960s through a critical engagement with both his own body and those of others in a way that confronts fundamental questions of where human beings stand in relation to nature and the cosmos. Gormley continually tries to identify the space of art as a place of becoming in which new behaviors, thoughts and feelings can arise.

The Installation: Over the last 25 years, Antony Gormley has reinvigorated the human image in sculpture through a radical investigation of the body as a place of transformation, using his own body as subject and tool. This suspended reinvention of the human form interacts with the space on multiple levels. The work below is titled, Feeling Material XXVIII.
                                       


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Jack Goldstein Installation "Untitled (Volcano)" Mandarin Oriental

This page last updated on 03/24/2018

The Artist: Canadian, Jack Goldstein was born September 27, 1945 in Montreal, Quebec. He died March 14, 2003. As a boy he moved to Los Angeles, California and attended high school there in the 1960s. He received his training at Chouinard Art Institute and was a member of the inaugural class of California Institute of the Arts, where he worked in post-studio art under John Baldessari, receiving an MFA in 1972. Jack Goldstein’s paintings focused on imagery of natural phenomena and was among the most influential postmodern artists of the 1970s and ’80s and is widely recognized for his pioneering work in sound, film and painting. As the 1980s continued and finally fizzled out there was less and less call for "salon paintings" and Goldstein's work sold less well than some others'. Reluctant to teach rather than practice full-time, Goldstein left New York in the early 1990s and returned to California where he lived out the decade in relative isolation. His early work was revived at the turn of the century and he resurfaced briefly to some renewed acclaim. He was featured in the 2004 Whitney Biennial as a major film influence alongside Stan Brakhage, less than a year after he committed suicide by hanging himself in San Bernardino, California on March 14, 2003.
                               
The Installation: The painting below, acrylic on canvas, titled Untitle (Volcano), was one of his best examples of capturing the “spectacular instant;” in this case, a volcanic eruption, 1983. It is located in the Tea Lounge on the 23rd floor of the Mandarin Oriental, Sky Lobby.
                               



































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WET Design Installation "Halo" at Crystals

This page last updated on 03/24/2018

The Artists: These fountains were created by WET, the design firm responsible for the fountains at Bellagio and The Volcano at Mirage. WET, also known as WET Design, is a water feature design firm based in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1983 by former Disney Imagineers Mark Fuller, Melanie Simon, and Alan Robinson, the company has designed over two hundred fountains and water features using water, fire, ice, fog, and lights. and holds more than 60 patents pertaining to lighting, water control, and specialty fountain devices that use air compression technology.

The Installation: Stationed in Crystals, Halo is an attraction that invites pedestrians to walk among 50 columns of swirling water encapsulated in clear cylinders. High-power motors spin the water into vortices, producing a mesmerizing tornado effect. Colored lighting beneath the feature turns the water various shades of blue, green, red and gold. The cylinders are of various heights and some are sloped. Because the water vortices naturally move to achieve verticality, the sloped enclosures produce unusual twisting patterns. Twenty of the cylinders are above ground, but 30 are below floor level, giving pedestrians the opportunity to peer down into each vortex. Because the feature is programmed with changing water levels and the motors switch directions, the patterns are constantly in motion.
                                

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WET Design's Intallation "Glacia" at The Shops at Crystals

This page last updated on 03/24/2018

The Artists: These fountains were created by WET, the design firm responsible for the fountains at Bellagio and The Volcano at Mirage. WET, also known as WET Design, is a water feature design firm based in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1983 by former Disney Imagineers Mark Fuller, Melanie Simon, and Alan Robinson, the company has designed over two hundred fountains and water features using water, fire, ice, fog, and lights. and holds more than 60 patents pertaining to lighting, water control, and specialty fountain devices that use air compression technology.
                               
The Installation: Glacia is WET’s first attempt at taming frozen water, Glacia is a series of 15 frozen columns that protrude from a pool on the mall floor. Rods within the columns chill or warm to carve sculpture patterns. It “cools” guests with large pillars of carved ice that rise as tall as 15 feet. As each rises,
it is magically whittled into intricate patterns while mesmerizing spectral light contributes to a one-of-a-kind sensory experience. Lights illuminate the columns, and the feature can mix various levels of air during the freezing process to produce frosty white or crystal clear columns. With thirteen Ice Pillars rising 15 vertical feet, the core of each Pillar is maintained at a constant minus 5 degrees fahrenheit to keep them  frozen. It also takes up to 36 hours for the columns to re-freeze, which is no small feat when you considered it’s located just 50 feet from the entrance.  It’s a visual experience that never repeats itself. The columns allow passers-by the opportunity to touch the ice. The Glacia experience is accompanied by a tonal poem written by Grammy-winning former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, who also wrote and performed the soundtrack of the revamped Mirage volcano show.
                                             
Glacia
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Tony Cragg Installations "Bolt, 2007, Bent of Mind, 2009, Untitled 2009" at Aria

This page last updated on 03/24/2018

The Artist: Tony Craigg is British and was born in 1949 in Liverpool. Between 1966 and 1968 he worked as a lab technician for the National Rubber Producers' Research Association. In 1969 he enrolled in the foundation course at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. He studied at Wimbledon School of Art from 1970 to 1973, and then until 1977 at the Royal College of Art. Cragg moved to Wuppertal, in North Rhine-Westphalia in western Germany in 1977, and in 1978 began teaching at the Kunstakademie of Düsseldorf -- Academy of Fine Arts. Cragg has been the recipient of numerous distinguished awards, including the Turner Prize (1988), Shakespeare Prize (2001) and Piepenbrock Prize for Sculpture (2002). His biomorphic, sculptural forms investigate the physics of materials and spark a dialogue between man, material and the world.

The Installation: In his recent works Cragg has been pushing towards a new abstracted understanding of the figure. For the last years, he has been playing with the notion of compression and expansion in the use of totemic structures where the appearance of the human profile is often a reclusive aspect of the overall structure. For his bronzes and stainless steel he has developed a method for casting forms that appear to be liquid or molten. In recent years, he has made mainly sculptures of wood, bronze, stone and mirror-finished stainless steel. Cragg’s biomorphic forms investigate the physicality of materials and spark a dialogue between man, material and the world. These three towering columns, disbursed within the Aria self-park atrium, exemplify how the sculptor uses a material such as stainless steel to its fullest extent, pushing the boundaries of his material while creating exceedingly graceful works of art with substantial presence.
                             
Bolt

Bent of Mind

Untitled
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Francois-Xavier Lalanne "Tourterelle 1997" at Aria

This page last updated on 03/24/2018

The Artist: LaLanne is French, born in Agen, France, who died in 2008. Acclaimed for his surreal animal sculptures, Francois-Xavier Lalanne worked closely with his wife, Claude Lalanne, producing curious objects that blur the distinction between fine and decorative art. The Lalannes rejected the abstract styles popular during the mid 20th century, choosing instead to represent the flora and fauna of the natural world. While Claude preferred plant life, Francois-Xavier favored animals that added an artful element to daily domestic experience. Lalanne also created large-scale outdoor and public sculptures in which animals such as bulls, sheep, and gorillas are modeled in larger-than-life proportions, cast in bronze, and installed in locations ranging from rural backyards to bustling city streets. Whether indoors or outside, Lalanne’s works echo his belief that “the supreme art is the art of living.”

The Installation: Best known for his bronze animal sculptures, François-Xavier Lalanne is one of the world’s most original designer-sculptors. Solo and with his wife, Claude, with whom he collaborated for the last half-century, Lalanne created sculptures that were reliably whimsical and witty.

































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Henry Moore Installation “Reclining Connected Forms” 1969-1974 at Aria

This page last updated on 03/24/2018

The Artist: Henry Moore (British, B. 1898; D 1986) was an artist and sculptor, and was the most celebrated sculptor of his time. Often regarded as the father of modern British sculpture, Henry Moore’s large-scale bronze and marble sculptures can be found in public parks and plazas around the world. Working in various styles and mediums, Moore is perhaps best known for his highly abstract and interpretive renditions of the human figure, often portrayed in the reclining position.

The Installation: Moore created more than one of this sculpture, some in bronze, some in stone. Moore’s abstractions, such as this one, of the human figure usually depict mother and child or reclining forms.

Click to return to the ... Index-for Artworks and Sculpture


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Tatsuo Miyajima Installation "HOTO" at Crystals,

This page last updated on 03/24/2018

The Artist: Tatsuo Miyajima is Japanese, and was born in 1957. He is an internationally acclaimed artist known for his use of LED counters that merge philosophical appreciation of life with latest human technologies.

The Installation: In his works, the digit counters flash in continual and repetitious cycles between 1 and 9 and represent a never-ending cycle of life, a network which expands to an immersive sea of light. His theory derives from partially from humanist ideas, the teachings of Buddhism, as well as from his core artistic concepts of "Keep Changing", Connect with All" and "Goes on forever." In a Buddhist tale, HOTO - literally meaning, "treasure pagoda" - refers to a gigantic lower half as big as the earth, and signifies the importance of a single human life. In the story, it emerges from the ground and floats in midair and shines vibrantly in seven jewels. "I dedicate this HOTO for you to sense the miracle within you, and hope that your thoughts will extend to the miracle with the others".
                                         
(Fig. 01)
(Fig. 02)
(Fig. 03)
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Eric Jiaju Lee Installation "The Moment of Yuanfen 1" at Mandarin Oriental

This page last updated on 03/24/2018

The Artist: Eric Jiaju Lee is a Chinese-American artist, born in 1970, and resides in New York. He has studio practices in Brooklyn and Beijing, China. His work is exhibited nationally and abroad, and is included in various private and corporate collections.

The Installation: Every Mandarin Oriental hotel has its own fan, which is reflective of its local culture and bonds each property to the Group's Asian heritage. It is an acrylic on silk located opposite the windows in the 23rd-floor ''Sky Lobby'' of the Mandarin Oriental hotel. It was hard to get a good shot of the fan as it was set rather high on the wall and framed behind glass, and the glass has a (rather distracting) reflection of The Strip view visible through the Sky Lobby windows.

True to this tradition, Mandarin Oriental, Las Vegas is delighted to showcase its signature fan, created exclusively for the hotel by artist Eric Jiaju Lee. An artistic confluence of East meets West, Lee's work is an exploration of contemporary abstraction and traditional Chinese painting. Lee uses an improvisational process by pouring, dripping and brushing paint onto fabric, which he composes on various formats, including fan-shaped supports. The vibrant pastiche of colors in The Moment of Yuanfen 1 is inspired by the surrounding Red Rock canyons, as well as the sparkle of the hotel's location on the Las Vegas Strip.

The Moment of Yuanfen 1
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Jun Kaneko Installations "Untitled (Dango), 2002, Untitled (Triangle Dango), 1996, Untitled (Dango), 1992" at Mandarin Oriental

This page last updated on 03/24/2018

 The Artist: Jun Kaneko is a Japanese artist born in Nagoya, Japan in 1942. During his adolescence he studied painting with Satoshi Ogawa. The following decade, Kaneko taught at some of the nation's leading art schools, including Scripps College, Rhode Island School of Design and Cranbrook Academy of Art. Jun Kaneko’s most recognized sculptural form is the boldly glazed, monumental dango (it’s Japanese for “dumpling”). An enormous, rounded monolith, the dango presents visual pleasure and straightforward formal delight. As the distinguished philosopher and critic Arthur C. Danto has noted, “They communicate instantaneously their friendly and reconciling assurances, and wear the real world as well as the brilliant coverings that Kaneko has given them.” He has consistently followed his own path and continually experimented with the technical aspects of the ceramic medium. His enormous dango forms, which range as high as eleven feet, challenge the physical limitations of the material and the firing process. Also, in his work at the European Ceramics Work Center, he has succeeded in applying extraordinary glaze color to ceramic tile and slabs, boldly painting in a direct and graphic manner.
                              
The Installation: There are three glazed ceramic monoliths at the Mandarin Oriental - Ground Floor Hotel Lobby. These three rotund pieces of the Untitled Dango Series are (Fig. 03) Untitled (Dango), 2002,  (Fig. 01) Untitled (Triangle Dango), 1996,  (Fig. 02) Untitled (Dango), 1992, and typify their Japanese name "dumpling". Jun Kaneko’s three works offer the perfect balance of scale and design, allowing the work to unify within the surrounding architectural design. Made entirely of clay and fired in a giant kiln, the tallest of the three sculptures reaches an impressive seven feet tall, a difficult feat in ceramics.
                                   
(Fig. 01) Untitled, Triangle Dango, 1996, 67 x 63 x 14 inches
(Fig. 02) Untitled, Dango, 1992, 73.5 x 52 x 35 inches
(Fig. 03) Untitled, Dango, 2002, 86 x 29 x 22 inches
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Frank Stella Installation "Damascus Gate Variation I, 1969" at Vdara Hotel

This page last updated on 03/24/2018

The Artist: Frank Philip Stella (born May 12, 1936) is an American painter and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. Frank Stella was born in Malden, Massachusetts, to parents of Italian descent. His father was a gynecologist, and his mother was an artistically inclined housewife who attended a fashion school and later took up landscape painting. After attending high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where he learned about abstract modernists Josef Albers and Hans Hofmann, he attended Princeton University, where he majored in history and met Darby Bannard and Michael Fried. Early visits to New York art galleries fostered his artistic development, and his work was influenced by the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. Stella moved to New York in 1958, after his graduation. He is one of the most well-regarded postwar American painters still working today. He is heralded for creating abstract paintings that bear no pictorial illusions or psychological or metaphysical references in twentieth-century painting. As of 2015, Stella lives in Greenwich Village and keeps an office there but commutes on weekdays to his studio in Rock Tavern, New York.

The Installation:  Frank Stella’s incredibly vibrant acrylic on canvas art makes the Vdara Lobby come alive with its fluorescent colors and interweaving shaped canvas. Recognized for more than 45 years for important contributions to abstract expressionism, sculpture and the concept of the shaped canvas, Stella’s work has been the subject of several retrospectives in the United States, Europe and Japan.

(Fig. 01 - Damascus Gate Variation I)

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WET Design Installation "Latisse" at Aria

This page last updated on 03/24/2018         

The Artists: These fountains were created by WET, the design firm responsible for the fountains at Bellagio and The Volcano at Mirage. WET, also known as WET Design, is a water feature design firm based in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1983 by former Disney Imagineers Mark Fuller, Melanie Simon, and Alan Robinson, the company has designed over two hundred fountains and water features using water, fire, ice, fog, and lights. and holds more than 60 patents pertaining to lighting, water control, and specialty fountain devices that use air compression technology.
                             
The Installation: Located in the ARIA Resort & Casino, North Lobby, Latisse soars as a series of two-story-high water walls composed purely of thick, textured glass. Brilliant white lighting illuminates the sloap (Fig. 01). This two-story textured glass water wall was designed by artist Joel Berman. As the water flows down the backside of the towering glass, it hints at how it would feel to walk under a rippling waterfall. Ushering in new technology, WET designed this feature to be programmable in water flow patterns, while still maintaining an unpredictable quality to its movement (Fig. 02). Latisse creates a dramatic backdrop as you make your from the casino floor up the escalators (Fig. 03). The walls programs allow the designers to change the images created by the water as it cascades down the four walls of the feature.

(Fig. 01)
(Fig. 02)
(Fig. 03)
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Maya Lin Installation “Silver River” at Aria

Maya Lin - “Silver River” 2009

ARIA Hotel & Casino

                                    
The Artist: American, Maya Lin was born on October 5, 1959 in Athens, Ohio. Lin studied architecture and sculpture at Yale University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1981 and a Master of Architecture degree in 1986. She has also been awarded honorary doctorate degrees from Yale University, Harvard University, Williams College, and Smith College. She was among the youngest at Yale University to receive an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts in 1987. She received her bachelor's degree from Yale, where she studied .In her senior year she won a nationwide competition to create a design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

The Installation: Maya Lin is considered one of the most important artists of the 21st century. Her remarkable body of work maintains a careful balance between art and architecture, including many large-scale, site-specific installations, intimate studio artworks and architectural works and memorials. She became famous for her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and is well known for contemporary land sculptures and interior art installations that encourage environmental consciousness. The concept of the sculpture came from the spirit of CityCenter’s commitment to sustainability. ARIA is the world’s largest hotel to achieve a LEED Gold rating. Lin's “Silver River” sculpture was inspired by the boundaries and topography of the Colorado River as it carves the western desert landscape of the United States. It weighs 3,700 pounds, hangs from steel cables, slants horizontally and swells at two points of its winding journey - at Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Topographic steps provide a sense of volume to the body of water. In light of Nevada’s standing as “The Silver State,” Lin cast her creation in reclaimed silver. Elegant, graceful and floating before a panoramic window, it provokes contemplation. She had been quoted as saying, “I’m asking people to take a look at the natural world around them. You want to get people to think of rivers as an entire ecosystem. You want to talk about a river as a volume of water, as an object rather than a ‘flow.’ ”




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NANCY RUBINS

Nancy Rubins - "Big Edge", 2009

Harmon Circle at CityCenter

                              
The Artist: American, he was born in Naples, Texas, 1952, and grew up in Tullahoma, Tennessee. She studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, where she received her BFA in 1974, and then at the University of California, Davis where she received her MFA in 1976. Rubins currently resides in Topanga, California. Driving through Harmon Circle, it will be impossible to ignore Nancy Rubins’ monumental Big Edge. This colossal work, with hundreds of boats carefully sculpted together, creates the perfect centerpiece for the city’s greatest architectural achievement. She was commissioned for the collection at CityCenter based on her ability to achieve this scale of work with such grandeur. 

The Installation: Nancy Rubins is a sculptor and artisan that is famous for her grandiose works created from salvaged and industrial consumer goods. With the creation of "Big Edge", she has created a colorful composition of numerous aluminum rowboats, canoes and other small river and ocean vessels finessed into an eye-catching, gravity-defying form the artist calls “a blooming flower.” At 51 x 75 x 57 feet, these stainless steel and aluminum water vessels, sitting in a traffic circle behind Aria it is cantilevered over Vdara’s main drive. I feel that it is one of the most visually stunning commissions at CityCenter. The boats are connected with thousands of pounds of stainless steel wire cable that forms a web-like structure. Each of the nearly 200 canoes were precisely placed according to Rubins’ direction based on its color, shape and structural contribution to the whole. Each of the reclaimed craft are showcased in the piece exactly as originally found. The commission is located on the exterior of Vdara Hotel & Spa and is one of Rubins’ few works with a permanent home. Over the course of her career, Rubins has designed amazing works of art from mattresses, trailers, hot water heaters, airplanes and small appliances since the 1970s. For more than 25 years, Rubins has exhibited extensively around the world in major solo and group exhibitions.


















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Jeffrey Doze Green Installation "Crossroads of Humanity" at Aria Tram Stations

This page last updated on 03/24/2018

The Artist:  Jeffrey "Doze" Green is an American street artist. Jeffrey "Doze” Green was born in Washington Heights section of Manhattan, New York, 1964 to a family which consisted of musicians and artists. He attended the High School of Art and Design, along with graf artists like Lady Pink, Daze, Ernie Valdez, Seen TC5, Mr. Wiggles, and others. He is one of the pioneers of street art movement and a b-boy member of the legendary Rock Steady Crew, which popularized breakdancing. In 1977, he joined the world famous Rock Steady Crew. The crew first started dancing at art exhibitions and galleries of Soho and the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The subway-tagging graffiti artist often participated in breakdance performances at SoHo and Lower East Side galleries. The Crew also appeared in major movies such as Wildstyle, Flashdance and Style Wars. Over the years, Doze Green’s paintings have progressed from streets and into galleries. In the same spirit of graffiti they tell the stories of the oppressed which continue to be largely untold. His art career began on the walls and eventually the trains of NYC in 1974. By the mid 1980’s, he was exhibiting his work in art spaces such as the O.K. Harris Gallery, Tony Shafrazi Gallery and the fun gallery. Doze Green’s work is in may public and private collections throughout the USA, Japan, Europe and Australia. The artist is also interested in sculpture, ceramics and animation. He has performed live painting shows.


The Installation: Moving from walls to canvas, Green’s recent paintings, influenced by the art of the Edo Period in Japan and created with gesso and sumi ink, incorporate his signature style of figurative abstraction and use of letterforms while at the same time posing metaphysical questions about the nature of narrative, the physics of time, and the possibility of immortality. He calls them “biological entities, a swarm of arrows coming in from infinite perspective.” Taking three weeks to complete in 2009, Doze Green recently completed a set of two large-scale public murals commissioned by CityCenter. The artist titled the project: Crossroads of Humanity. Located at the Bellagio and Monte Carlo ARIA Express Tram Stations, the two murals, which contain muti-figure imagery, occupy the surfaces of 6 conjoined walls (3 walls each). Wrapping around several corners (Fig. 01), the total combined wall distance measures 80 feet wide by 20 feet high, per mural. Using an art of mediums such as link, gouache, and metallic pigments with an evolved, organic cubist quality to his high-contrast fluid line work. The artist’s genealogy inspires many of the themes explored therein, influenced by ancient civilizations and indigenous cultures, including his own Afro-Caribbean roots. The totem-like human and animal figures are conceptually based on various polytheistic deities (Fig. 02). There divinities represent sentinels guardians of universal truths, immortal warriors warning mankind of the dangers contemporary society has manifested, looming on the horizon and threatening to destroy us.
                                   
(Fig. 01)
(Fig. 02)
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Masatoshi Izumi Installation "Cactus Life – Living with the Earth, 2007 – 2008" at Mandarin Oriental

This page last updated on 03/24/2018

The Artist: Masatoshi Izumi is Japanese and was born in 1938.  Izumi’s work celebrates harmony with nature by taking existing forms and altering them slightly to reveal an even more beautiful state. Born into a family of stone carvers in the town of Mure on the Japanese island of Shikoku, Izumi began working with stone in 1953. In 1964, he co-founded the Stone Atelier in Kagawa Prefecture, dedicated to new architectural and artistic uses of traditional stone cutting techniques. Izumi and his colleagues have realized some of the most ambitious architectural stone projects in Japan.

The Installation: In accordance with Mandarin Oriental’s traditions and values of Asian hospitality, Masatoshi Izumi’s sculpture “CACTUS Life – living with Earth,” 2007-2008, is presented in the hotel’s entrance, welcoming guests in a Zen-like manner. Following CityCenter’s ideals of sustainability, the sculpture is made of Masatoshi Izumi’s minutely carved graceful sculpture from large pieces of intricately poised basalt – a form of lava that has cooled on the surface of a volcano. It towers more than 17-feet by 6-feet and weighs approximately eight tons.
                                       
"CACTUS Life – living with the Earth,” 

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WET DESIGN

WET Design, Focus - Fountains of Citycenter at ARIA Resort, 2009


The Artists: These fountains were created by WET, the design firm responsible for the fountains at Bellagio and The Volcano at Mirage. WET, also known as WET Design, is a water feature design firm based in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1983 by former Disney Imagineers Mark Fuller, Melanie Simon, and Alan Robinson, the company has designed over two hundred fountains and water features using water, fire, ice, fog, and lights. and holds more than 60 patents pertaining to lighting, water control, and specialty fountain devices that use air compression technology.

The Installation: Just steps away along the outer entrance circle to Aria Resort you'll see Focus, an expansive, curved water wall made of highly textured stone, that is an ever changing wall of choreographed patterns.  This water wall measures 250 feet long by 24 feet high, making it WET's largest water wall to date. This breathtaking, calming water wall brings a sense of peace as you enter the property. The fountain is programmable and the engineers can control the speed and direction of the water. The all-enveloping flow creates a calming ocean-like timbre.
                               


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Isa Genzken Installation "Rose II, 2007" Outside Crystals

This page last updated on 03/24/2018

The Artist: Isa Genzken, born 27 November 1948 in Bad Oldesloe, Schleswig-Holstein, is a German contemporary artist who lives and works in Berlin. She was raised mostly in the small northern German city of Bad Oldesloe and in Hamburg. She studied fine arts and art history with Almir Mavignier and Kai Sudeck at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts (1968-1971) and the Berlin University of the Arts (1971–1973). To pay her tuition, Genzken worked part-time as a model. Randy Kennedy (November 21, 2013). In 1973 she transferred to Arts Academy Düsseldorf while also studying art history and philosophy at the University of Cologne. At the academy, fellow students included artists Katharina Fritsch and Thomas Struth. Upon graduating in 1977, Genzken taught sculpture at the academy. She married German visual artist Gerhard Richter in 1982 and moved to Cologne in 1983. The couple separated in 1993.
                           
The Installation: Her primary media are sculptures and installations, using a wide variety of materials, including concrete, plaster, wood and textile. She also works with photography, video, film and collage. One of Genzken's best known works, Rose (1993/7), is a public sculpture of a single long-stemmed rose outside Crystals' front entrance made from enameled stainless steel that towers eight metres. The installation here is one of several similar installations world wide.

The Rose II

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HELMUT JAHN

Murphy/Jahn Architects, Veer Towers, July 14, 2010


The Architect: The towers were designed by Helmut Jahn's office based in Chicago. Lobbies and public spaces were developed by Francisco Gonzalez Pulido and showcase works by natural light. Dianna Wong Architecture & Interior Design designed the residences.

Building Description: Veer Towers are twin 37-story, 480-foot, residential towers located within CityCenter on the Las Vegas Strip. Each tower houses 335 luxury condominium units ranging from 537 to 2,256 square feet. The two towers were designed by Murphy/Jahn Architects of Chicago and lean in opposite directions (five degrees from center). Every residence has a view of the Las Vegas skyline. The rooftop Sky Decks include infinity edge swimming pools, hot tubs, sun decks and summer kitchens. Resident fitness and locker rooms, billiards rooms and lounges are on the 37th floor. A private residential driveway leads to separate vehicle entrances, secured elevators and valet service, all monitored by 24-hour security. The towers are the only all-residential buildings at CityCenter.



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Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen Installation "2009 - Typewriter Eraser" near Mandarin Oriental

This page last updated on 03/24/2018

The Artist: Claes Oldenburg was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1929. After living in New York City, Rye, New York, and Oslo, Norway, he moved to Chicago in 1936. Oldenburg attended Yale University from 1946 to 1950 and became an American citizen in 1953. His wife, Coosje van Bruggen, was born in 1942 and died on January 10, 2009. She was a sculptor, art historian, and critic and collaborated extensively with her husband. Claes Oldenburg is best known for his public art installations typically featuring large replicas of everyday objects. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions of everyday objects.
                               
The Installation: Located near the pedestrian bridge near Mandarin Oriental, one of the best examples of celebrated pop artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen is this four-ton, 24-foot-high fiberglass and steel red and blue Typewriter Eraser, Scale X. This typewriter eraser will be familiar to people who grew up in 1950s and '60s. The eraser was used to erase mistakes made while typing, and the brush was meant to brush away the residue. Most of us though, just blew it away. This playful use of a common everyday object, one that is possibly unknown to recent generations, is a unique experience, meant to elicit humor and curiosity.

(Fig. 01)
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Peter Wegner Installation "Day for Night, Night for Day, 2009" at Vdara

This page last updated on 03/24/2018               

The Artist: Peter Wegner is an American artist and was born is Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He earned his BA at Yale University. He works in multiple media, ranging from paintings and photography to large-scale installations and wall works. His pieces are included in major public and private collections worldwide. He currently works in Barkley California with his wife and child.

The Installation: The physicality of paper is brought a step further, nestled into the facing walls of Vdara’s soaring concierge lobby. “Day for Night, Night for Day” is comprised of two wall pieces: one solar-themed and one lunar-themed, represented on the east and west walls in the lobby to correspond with the rising and setting of the sun. A hanging light sculpture designed by the Wegner is suspended between the pieces to encourage “dialogue” between them. “Day for Night” soars to approximately 45 feet while “Night for Day” reaches approximately 34 feet high. It is framed with limestone, 465" x 126" x 8". These two grided stacks of blue and red have both the color balance of a great painting and the physical presence of a powerful sculpture. The two installations are comprised of 1.7 million sheets of postcard-size colored paper (Fig. 01) stacked 45 feet high (solar) and 35 feet high (lunar).  They were installed using a cherry picker. This commission is Wegner’s largest work of art to date. 



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Richard Long Installations "Circle of Chance” & "Earth" at Veer Towers

This page last updated on 03/24/2018              

The Artist: English, Richard Long was born in Bristol, England, 1945. He studied at the University of the West of England's College of Art during the years of 1962–1965, then to Saint Martin's School of Art, London during 1966–1968. Within a year after he graduated from St Martin's, the artist became closely associated with the emergence of Land Art; a movement in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked. Known as one of Britain’s best-known sculptors and conceptual artists, the majority of Richard Long’s works, inspired by natural landscapes, are created using natural materials such as wood and stones. Over the past 40 years he has extended his concerns to encompass photographic and text-based work, sculptures made in stone and wood, small-scale works using handprints and fingerprints on paper and driftwood, and monumental wall drawings made using mud and china clay. 

 The Installation: Across from the Typewritter Eraser, the connecting walkway area is a great spot to view the two 72-foot by 54-foot hand applied diluted River Avon mud wall paintings by Richard Long, visible through the lobby windows of the Veer Towers across the street. For Long, the natural world provides both the palette and the canvas on which he manifests his earthworks. Circle of Chance, 2009 and Earth, 2009 in the Veer Towers Lobbies. You can either view from across the street or get a closer look from wirhin the Lobbies. In the case of the Veer Towers, he brings the outside in. These large-scale commissioned works, are two enormous mud paintings, nearly seventy two feet tall. In each of these two awe-inspiring wall drawings, one encounters his energetic use of mud from the River Avon. For these works, Long created a viscous paint by diluting mud and then carefully applying it to the walls with his own hands, resulting in extraordinary images fashioned from purely mundane materials. Long transported the mud to Las Vegas from the River Avon, which runs through his home town of Bristol, England.

“Circle of Chance” 2009, 72 x 54 feet 
“Earth” 2009, 72 x 54 feet


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Robert Rauschenberg Installation "Lucky Dream" at Vdara

This page last updated on 03/24/2018

The Artist: American, he was born as Milton Ernest Rauschenberg in Port Arthur, Texas, 1925. He died of heart failure on May 12, 2008, on Captiva Island, Florida, after a personal decision to go off life support. At 16, Rauschenberg was admitted to the University of Texas where he began studying pharmacy. Rauschenberg subsequently studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Académie Julian in Paris, France, where he met the painter Susan Weil. In 1948 Rauschenberg and Weil decided to attend Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Rauschenberg married Susan Weil in 1950. After only one child, they divorced in 1953.

The Installation: Over the course of his career he created a wide variety of early works that anticipated the pop art movement. By 1962, his paintings were beginning to incorporate not only found objects but found images as well, transfered to canvas by means of the silkscreen process. Silkscreening allowed him to address the multiple reproducibility of images, and the consequent flattening of experience that implies. In this respect, his work is contemporaneous with that of Andy Warhol. Rauschenberg is frequently cited as an important forerunner of American Pop Art. Also a noted photographer, he utilized his own photography in these silkscreen works, taken during a lifetime of travels. His technique of juxtaposing disconnected images with distinctive character presents what the artist has self-described as working with the “gap between art and life.” On loan from Bellagio, LLC. Rauschenberg's 'Lucky Dream’ features found images such as a trophy, Asian cranes and tigers and the Sistine Chapel. "Lucky Dream" by Robert Rauschenberg Vegetable dye transfer on polylaminate, 8.5 x 14 feet - Vdara’s lobby, adjacent to Bar Vdara.
                                     
"Lucky Dream" by Robert Rauschenberg Vegetable dye transfer on polylaminate, 8.5 x 14 feet - Vdara’s lobby, adjacent to Bar Vdara

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