The Contemporary Arts Center presents “Tomorrow People,” a group exhibition showcasing painting, sculpture and drawing by four emerging artists from February 4- March 19th at The Contemporary Arts Center 107 E. Charleston Suite 120 in the Arts Factory.
The opening reception is Thursday February 4th, from 6p.m. to 9p.m. with the artists speaking at 7 p.m. Within the past decade, Leah Craig, Catherine Cruse, Justin Favela, and Thomas Willis were nurtured by the Las Vegas art community while developing their art practices at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. This visual proximity and artistic cultivation has influenced each artist’s work. Instead of prescribing a theme to the viewer, “Tomorrow People” allows systems and patterns to arise from their artworks’ interaction.
About the Artists:
Leah Craig
Leah Craig is an artist currently living in Boston, Massachusetts. She was educated at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2008. Her work investigates the effects that routine and social constructs have on an individual’s relationship to his or her environment. Creating visual catalogues of the various objects and architectural styles, the artist sketches commonly traversed paths that occur within the periphery of local Boston neighborhoods. She is interested in how this practice of cataloging, through the act of attention, can expand one’s visual boundaries.
Craig participated in the Las Vegas art community as an art teacher in the ArtsBridge of America program, as an artist in the Zap2 public art project, and worked as a technician specialist at the City of Las Vegas Office of Cultural Affairs. Over the past four years Leah Craig has curated and exhibited in various Las Vegas venues, as well as across the nation in Reno, NV and New York, NY, and internationally in Adelaide, Australia. Craig currently lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts, where she is an MFA candidate at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University.
Catherine Cruse
Catherine Cruse received her B.F.A. in painting from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has exhibited her work locally and internationally as a participant of the Adelaide Fringe Festival in Adelaide, Australia. She currently lives and works in Las Vegas. In the artist’s earlier paintings, old photographs served as a starting point as she explored family relationships through the filter of memory and the reality of the present. More recently the artist examines how relationships with loved ones shape and define us. Her figurative paintings explore body and flesh as metaphors for the damaged or re-fortified self.
Justin Favela
Justin Favela was born in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is currently a Bachelor of Fine Arts candidate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. After years of being lost in the world, Justin found Art in 2007. He jumped head first into the Las Vegas art scene, participating in performance events with fellow artists (most notably as the notorious MC persona “Favy Favela” of Lustre Flux fame,) showing work, curating shows, and editing UNLV’s art journal, The Vagus Nerve. His recent work is a response to his Las Vegas upbringing. “My home, my heritage and bad television motivate me to make things.”
Thomas Willis
Thomas Willis is from Las Vegas where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2009. His paintings have been the focus of two solo shows and more than 20 exhibitions locally and across the nation. Willis is interested in the idolization of material objects in Western culture, and its relationship to binary systems such as the absent and the present, the limited and the unlimited, and the natural and the unnatural.
Within the local community, the artist has participated in the ArtsBridge America program, the Zap2 public art project, and last year’s “The Bus Stops Here” public art project, where 25 poster-size replicas of his paintings were displayed in transit shelters across the Las Vegas Valley. At the 2008 Annual Juried Art Exhibition at Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery, Willis was awarded the “Juror’s Choice Award” along with receiving the “Outstanding Graduate Award” at the 2009 UNLV commencement ceremony. Willis currently lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.
About The Contemporary Arts Center:
The Contemporary Arts Center, founded in 1989, is a non-profit 501(c)3 art organization dedicated to presenting new, high quality, visual, and performing art, educating and sustaining audiences for contemporary art. The CAC provides a place where artist can learn about best practices, test new ideas in the public arena, and connect with fellow artists within and beyond our own community. The CAC provides valuable opportunities, programs and educational services not just for artists, students and aspiring art professionals, but everyone interested in experiencing contemporary art. The Contemporary Arts Center is located inside The Arts Factory at 107 E. Charleston Boulevard, Suite 120. For more information, visit their website at www.lasvegascac.org.
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