You want to be entertained. Las Vegas wants to entertain you.
Entertainment is a fundamental part of Las Vegas’ cultural DNA. Everyday and every night, shows, events, festivals, pop-ups, and meet ups decorate streets and venues all over the city. There is a lot to see in this fair city, and we’re not just talking about the events that pepper the famous Las Vegas strip.
It is important to know that Las Vegas has a local creative culture that is inclusive, entertaining, and increasingly diverse. 
Painters, muralists, clothing brands, vocal artists, producers, DJs, crafters, pod-casters, streamers, photographers, videographers, the list goes on. This is important to know because you have to explore art and creativity in order to live a life filled with meaning.
You want to be entertained. Local Las Vegas knows how to entertain you.
The ArtHaven team is all about discovering art and artists. We want to support our creative community and experience the joy of living a life filled with beauty. We want you along for the journey so that you can experience the excitement of being part of a profoundly unique creative movement.
We were new, innocent maybe, in our last series where we took our best guess, and journeyed through Las Vegas to get a lay of the creative land. We’re no longer new, and our innocence is a topic best left for a different blog series. Don’t worry about it. We’ve met some folks, taken a few pictures, hung out, and carried equipment. We’re ready to share our experiences with you.
This series will reveal to you the hidden gems of Las Vegas, the power of exploring art, and the importance of showing up for your community. Caution! This series contains 100% Las Vegas culture. This isn’t the club scene. We won’t be going to the strip.
Welcome to Las Vegas Renaissance!
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About the Pictures
The pictures in this post were taken in the iconic Las Vegas Arts District in early 2019, learn more here.
Explore Art?
How and where do you explore art? Let us know in the comments below, or maybe just let us know how we can do better.
Thank you for showing up! Check back soon, Las Vegas Cultural Renaissance Episode 1 coming soon!
It’s a confusing holiday, which means it’s the perfect occasion for discovering art.
Our dreaming bodies were pushed through the casino’s caves and meandering alleyways of slot machines,high-end retail stores, restaurants, and ersatz statues. We were chasing salvation from the oppression of knowing we were but an insignificant part of a larger mob. ‘Why’ echoed in our heads. We pressed forward.
We breathed in a hesitant sigh of relief, and began unpacking our gear. Japanese flute music played over hidden speakers, the bubbling sound of falling water could be heard with a strained ear, and among the large pools of families, selfie-hungry tourists, and crying children, there were sharp moments where the floral displays could be appreciated.
On that fateful Easter Sunday, in the Bellagio’s Atrium, we had only begun our contemplative journey, our internalization of the grand artistic display swimming around us. Fresh from our resurrection, we stood ready to dive deep into the meticulously arranged prana.
Our lives are grand, our riches vast, and yet still, we seek something outside of ourselves. We search for realities and experience that speak directly to our complex neural cortices and stimulate our reticular activation systems. Our eyes bright with fervent longing, we divorce ourselves from the moment, from nature, and from one another to bail headlong into the matrix. 
Indeed, the city of Las Vegas itself could easily stand as tribute to this somewhat amorphous concept, a melting point for where our dreams mix with concrete and dust. The feeling of being close to such contrived nature was that of instant amusement and appreciation for the artists.
We jumped, we ducked, we used our elbows, and we glimpsed the matrix. Escape proved elusive in the Bellagio’s Garden that day, though we left the atrium with an assured feeling that there remained a healthy portion of untasted appreciation between artist and artee. Perhaps we would return some other time….
Do you seek out space? How do you create space, and what do you do when you have it?
We trekked out on a smoldering Las Vegas summer day to the University of Nevada Las Vegas to find answers. In the center of the desert town’s most prestigious academic institution we found refuge from the oppressive heat in the Marjorie Barrick Museum.
That seemed right, though that wasn’t exactly the truth we were after. We ventured further inside and around… the museum was strangely empty, and there was rhythmic thumping, a record skipping over itself, making a course scratching sound coming from somewhere inside the museum’s small indoor theater space.
The space you choose is wholly your own. Sometimes it’s a physical space like a library, your bedroom, a festival or a concert. Sometimes the space is mental, like when you meditate, or sing in the shower. Sometimes it’s that soft nap at your desk after a heavy lunch.
Are you indulging your creative aspirations? 
The Las Vegas Arts District hosts a street fair and festival every first Friday of every month. If you say ‘art’ in Las Vegas, someone will invariably say, ‘Have you been out to First Friday?” 
Inside those buildings there are small rooms, universes, filled with pure, color-filled imagination. Tight hallways. The smell of street food mixed with the smell of fresh paint and crafting materials. There are numerous nooks and odd walls that make it easy to walk in circles, which is both pleasurable and confounding at the same time. 
We love the art, but we went to connect with the artists. We wanted to know how they did what they did because we believe that there is something unique about the temperament of a dedicated artist. We believe that they have within them an inner compulsion to work out the calamity of their existence through their craft.
Our desire to see, to understand the people we know and choose to follow has been amplified by the increasingly wondrous capabilities of communication technology. Mostly, it is difficult to feel a connection when we cannot experience the story. 
We have all at one time suffered at the hands of procrastination. A tardy bill gone late fee, a litter box gone toxic, and for most of us, a childhood dream turned dust by the daily grind. 
Here’s a cold truth. Your art cannot wait. Your spirit and the world are waiting for you to make manifest your unique perspective of what our species can do. Your creative expressions must be shared. Show us what you’ve got!
Las Vegas is perhaps, for most, little known as a place where you might think to find a happening art scene, and it’s true that many places that have dedicated their space to the arts have found themselves too quickly boarding up their windows and barring their doors, but as you might imagine, the art survives and thrives because where there are people, there is art. 
Some works featured delicately stated verses alongside the materials used: innovation as the hallmark of creation, 
We dove deep with this adventure. Every time we finished with one gallery, we wanted to rush off to the next because we recognized that each gallery held rich works that were simultaneously portals into the distinctive views of individuals, and representations of our local and global culture. 
Our previous adventures have mostly leaned toward exploring the visual arts, and not as much toward performing arts, music, etc. but we felt absolutely compelled to attend this annual event that is unique to Las Vegas and in celebration of ‘the arts’ overall.
For the many that may not know what the Life is Beautiful festival is about, we’ll give you a quick rundown. It is a three day event that extends well into the late night. It spans eighteen square blocks in the old downtown Las Vegas, also loosely known as Fremont St., which also happens to be near the Art District. For three days and three nights the streets are filled with people from all over walking to and from different stages where well known musical artists perform, trekking between awkwardly large and colorful art installations, sauntering in and out of bars and art galleries alike, and maybe even stopping to listen to intriguing panel discussions about the future of our culture. People doing what people do best; eating, drinking, and making merry. 
In previous adventures we had occasion to talk to artists about their thoughts and feelings on the Las Vegas art scene. For many, the story is a bleak one, and Las Vegas is not the place to be an artist. Las Vegas is branded and known as a place for uninhibited tomfoolery and not so much a place where people go to experience and talk about the high culture of art….
The draw of this internationally known party city is at times unreal. Hordes of people from every corner of the world spilling in continuous waves, breaking on the shores of ‘the strip’ to cut loose, and every day this city works hard to maintain an image of luxury so that people know they can cut loose in style. 
Surely it’s true that some artists seek an established community with deep historical roots and a long A-list of big fish, while others seek calmer waters. What remains is that any place is what you paint it to be, and Las Vegas is ripe with opportunity on many levels. Good or bad, thriving or sputtering, the art scene and community in Las Vegas is tangible. Real people, real depth of spirit, real art. 
