We're exploring the role of visual arts during times of crisis and division.

That's this week on Nevada Week.

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(Kipp Ortenburger) Experts say that arts in general can be a source for comfort, strength, connectivity, perspective and even health and healing, particularly during very difficult times.

But of course many of our local art staples like performing arts and culinary arts cannot be enjoyed from packed theaters, restaurants or other gatherings because of COVID-19 restrictions.

Well, we want to explore on this show how visual arts in and around Southern Nevada can fill some of these voids.

Also, we'll discuss why visual art matters in larger COVID, racial injustice and political divide conversations.

Finally, where does visual art fit into larger discussions on sustainability and diversification during very tough economic times?

We'll explore this as well.

Joining us for this conversation, please welcome Tony Manfredi, executive director of the Nevada Arts Council; Ally Haynes-Hamblen, director of cultural affairs at the City of Las Vegas; Jerry Schefcik, director of UNLV Galleries and a Nevada Arts Council board member, and Yale Yeandel, scenic artist.

Well, Jerry, Yale, Tony and Ally, thank you so much for joining us.

We really appreciate it.

It's such an important topic, and I want to come to something I mentioned in the intro.

A lot of our engagement in arts or our access to arts is in that culinary arts side and the performing arts side, and of course it's not that we cannot access those now, we just can't access them the same way maybe that we could have.

I want to go around our entire virtual table and talk a little bit about how visual arts maybe can fill some of the voids that we've been feeling over the last, you know, year really at this point, but now as we're looking even in reopening phases, you know, where some things are going to be more accessible but then other things won't.

Yale, let's start with you.

How does visual art really kind of fill some of these voids for us?

(Yale Yeandel) Well, I think the visual arts are very therapeutic and will get us through this rough time.

I just recently saw an opening with the Mega Mart, which is the Meow Wolf exhibition at Area 15 here in Las Vegas, and it was great to see people, you know, all enjoying art, and it's a great thing because it really-- you can tell people want to get out and they're antsy from being home on quarantine so I think it's a good thing.

I mean, there are other art galleries in town that you have to go to virtually on your computer, and it's a good experience but it's not the same as interacting with live art.

-Jerry, let's get your take there.

As Yale said still-- when we're talking about visual art, the human interaction portion of this is still very important.

The social interaction portion is very important.

Let's talk about maybe the art itself and maybe the personal connections, the human connections you might make to the art itself here.

(Jerry Schefcik) I see visual art as a one-on-one event or happening where the artist is making something, making a statement or communicating something, and then the viewer comes to it with a certain understanding, a certain experience level and they see something that resonates with them.

Ideally, it's with the actual art, one-on-one with the art.

There are a few spaces that are open in Las Vegas, but the next best thing I think is the virtual experience.

I'm at the university at the Donna Beam Gallery, and we've put together two virtual exhibitions, one dealing with-- the title is "Justice," dealing with the problems and social ills that have been happening, and the other one is called "6 Feet of Art" as opposed to 6 feet apart.

And they were open calls to the university community and anyone who wanted to enter, so we got quite a range of work that dealt with those two questions.

So the artist has something to say, and the viewer has something to learn or something to see, so it's a communication between the two.

There may be something I didn't notice before or didn't realize or yes, that's how I'm thinking about things.

So there's some sort of interaction that happens either in person or virtually if that's what we have to work with.

-I'm going to come back to both of those issues and talk about racial injustice and of course COVID in general and how art could potentially address some of those areas, explore some of the personal connections related to those two issues in just a sec.

Ally, I want to come to you and talk a little about the City of Las Vegas here.

As Jerry mentioned art related to racial injustice, art related to COVID, of course there's a lot more applicability at the City level.

Of course one thing that has happened is we've seen murals early on with closures that formed, but that's not the only form of art the City has been promoting.

Tell us a little bit about how the City is kind of integrating crisis and COVID with visual art.

(Ally Haynes-Hamblen) Yes, so that's exactly what I was going to talk about, you know, how visual arts is really helping to bridge the gap between folks having a desire to get out of their homes and participate in viewing art with, you know, their friends and with other folks.

And you know, having the Boards Up Downtown campaign through the City's grant program for hiring mural artists to paint the boards that businesses Downtown have had to put up on their windows while they were closed really gave folks an opportunity to get out of their houses, get on their bikes, start biking around Downtown and taking themselves on a tour of all the new murals that have popped up.

But not just the new murals that came up with the Boards Up campaign, but also to really check out how much incredible public art there is throughout the city of Las Vegas and beyond.

I have to say a lot of my friends took their bikes all the way down to the Strip and biked around and discovered a lot of the public art that is around the Strip that you didn't really realize until, you know, that was really all that there was to see and then biking back to Downtown and really taking in just how much art there is to see.

That's, you know, one of the messages the City really put out throughout our COVID lockdown was that it's safe to get out and enjoy the fresh air, get on your bike where you have to stay six feet away from somebody else or you're going to crash, and it's been really-- it's been really wonderful to have that opportunity for us to really promote how much art there is Downtown, how much public art there is going on.

The other thing that I wanted to mention was that as the Office of Cultural Affairs and the Las Vegas Arts Commission, we have been able to move forward with some of our plans, public art commissions, because a lot of the work that the artists do, you don't see it until they have finished it and installed it.

But right now there's a lot of artists who are working on fabricating sculptures and designing murals that they're getting ready to install.

So that's been something that, you know, the City has been really proud of us being able to continue to move forward on that and, you know, keep artists employed even if the general public hasn't seen the results of that work.

-Absolutely.

Let's mention also the murals on the closed buildings of using the boards, there were grants related to that, grants for the materials for businesses to board up and of course the grants were awarded-- one stipulation was that there was art on those murals, a great program.

Tony, I want to come to you.

Something Ally mentioned that's so important here is just the accessibility of art and some things that if we're in our cars and we're driving around, we're not seeing the nooks and crannies of a city like Las Vegas, but many other areas within Nevada too where there is art everywhere you turn sometimes.

Talk to us a little bit about that accessibility on the public art side of things when we can't necessarily have access to museums in the same way or, you know, closed door or closed facilities to look at art, but we can look at a lot of outdoor art.

How important is that to this conversation too?

(Tony Manfredi) Well, thank you very much for having me and for putting all this together.

And it's critically important I think.

If anything the pandemic has shown us all is how much we miss going to see performances, going to see visual presentations of art and experiencing that together and, you know, any opportunity you have to go and drive around and see things, you know, in that way.

I really love what Jerry says is that one-on-one experience there, it is important and there's the health aspect of that and just being able to experience that public art, you know, in times like this again is really important.

I've been so impressed by-- this word has been way overused during the course of the pandemic, but I will use it-- the pivot that so many artists and arts organizations have made to adapt to this scenario.

It speaks to the creativity and the innovation that artists and arts organizations live and breathe every day, to find ways to get their work out and continue to build and create and provide those opportunities for the public to view.

-Great point.

Yale, I've got to bring you into this conversation here too, the adaptability of artists.

Of course a lot of artists have-- their day jobs are related to art but a lot of times, and you're a perfect example of that, a set designer in this case on the Strip.

How are you personally adapting and the art community itself?

How adaptive have you seen artists becoming here in this last 10 months?

-Well, I have seen my fellow artists, professionals on the Strip actually taking their time doing individual art, fine art, exploring more things that don't depend as much as the collaborative effort which a scenic designer production crew has to deal with in putting up shows.

It's been hard.

I mean, going to Area 15 the other day, seeing all the people, it was both sort of exciting and also like terrifying because here you're in a room with hundreds of other people and you're like, I'm not used to this, I'm not used to this.

So you try to find other things.

The virtual thing is really interesting.

A lot of the community theaters in Las Vegas have been doing more virtual.

They'll put on a performance which they can film and then appeal to patrons directly and say well, you know, for $15, can you do this.

A lot more fundraising things have been online and it's very creative, but it's different in a way.

You want it to get back to normal so you can have the regular interactions.

You know, sometimes it's difficult.

You know, I've been out of work now 10 months and, you know, I'm like painting neighbors' houses as sort of an outlet to raise money for my family.

You know, it's difficult, but I think the arts survive.

I think it's one of those things where, you know, if you block-- if you dam up this river, the river finds another course.

You will be able to, you know, seek other outlets, and that's pretty much been my experience with it.

-Well, let's talk a little bit about bringing things back to normal.

There's a lot that we've been talking about, how visual arts can play many different roles, many multifaceted different roles here.

We decided to go and talk to one artist in particular and also an instructor at UNLV, Frederic Bonin-Pissarro, who is displaying some of his artwork at a local gallery.

Let's take a look.

Art is one of the most powerful instruments humans possess.

It amplifies voices across the ages.

It transcends borders and skin colors and political divides.

(Frederic Bonin-Pissarro) If you want to bring people together, you should talk about what people share, not how they're different.

Painter Frederic Bonin-Pissarro creates positive images addressing our connectivity in a conflicted world.

The way I work, ideas come to me.

I'm not cerebral in the term that I'm not a concept artist.

Mine is abstract, meaning-- and figuratively abstract, meaning that when you look at my paintings, you can tell what it is, okay?

That's a profile, that's a face, that's a group of people, that's the skull, but it's not realistic.

I'm not trying to copy.

I'm trying to express something different.

And he uses a variety of materials to express himself on the canvas.

It's like the recipe for the fried chicken.

I don't want to say there's a bunch of secrets in there, a lot of processes, a lot of layers.

Starting on March 5 at 6:00 p.m., 22 of Bonin-Pissarro's paintings will be on display and up for sale at the Priscilla Fowler Art Gallery in Las Vegas' Arts District.

It's going to be the body of work I created during the pandemic treating with questions like speech, communication, togetherness, a few paintings about death but in a good way, not necessarily-- I mean, in our culture death is seen as something negative; I see it as just a step.

In addition to being a world-renowned artist, Frederic Bonin-Pissarro is also an arts instructor at UNLV.

I give students a place where they can feel safe to be themselves, to express themselves without being judged, and to sometimes really find out who they really are.

So it's not only a discovery with the media, with the work, but with yourself.

Discovering oneself is an important step towards relating to others and the uncertain world around us.

For Nevada Week, I'm Heather Caputo.

Thank you, Heather, we appreciate that clip.

I want to go to something Frederic said right at the beginning, sharing more of our similarities than our differences, such a big part of this conversation, particularly when we've already touched upon it a little bit, the racial injustice conversation, some of the protests we've had over the last 10 months as well.

But in addition to that, our political divide is something we haven't talked about, and of course we've seen that in our recent elections.

We're maybe divided politically more so than we ever have been before, and I want to go to that.

Jerry, let's talk about those exhibits that you have yourself and how those kinds of things are being expressed, particularly that sharing of how more we are connected than we are different.

-That's really important, that connection, because that's what we're missing right now I think is trying to connect with one another.

That's something the visual arts can do, like that one-on-one experience where I go and I see something and I have an empathy or a sympathetic response to it or I understand, I feel your pain.

I have a better connection with what's happening when I can see it through another person's eyes how they're responding to it.

This one exhibition that we did, a virtual exhibition, "Justice," we've got a wide range of work in that show and it's available online through the Donna Beam website.

It fulfilled a desire to connect with someone, just be able to understand through their eyes what they see, and for me to maybe expand what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling or how I respond to a situation as to-- I don't know, just broadening my viewpoint.

-Ally, building off of that, let's talk about art itself and maybe some emerging forms of art or themes that are developing and things like that that is kind of challenging to expand your thoughts, expand your comfort zones, of course are things that we're talking a lot about.

Are you seeing that in some of the art that the City is supporting?

-Well, most definitely.

I would say as far as emerging art forms, you know, one of the things that has certainly popped up over the last year in a huge way is digital art forms and looking at, you know, how do you meld the digital with the physical world and bringing in elements of artificial intelligence and augmented reality.

I think, you know, exhibitions like Area 15 and Meow Wolf are really showing us some of the product of that really outside-of-the-box thinking with visual art that appeals not just to your visual senses but your other senses as well.

So I've been excited to see that, and for the City, we're really looking forward to commissioning some new work for some of our upcoming exhibitions that really challenge the way people interact with art.

We have an exhibition that's coming into the City Hall main lobby soon that will offer patrons an opportunity to experience an artist's residency and literally walking through these small studio apartments that artists work within, and I think, for me, that's been one of the great things about what's happened in the world of art over the past year is that it's really brought into a mass market that, you know, art is an avenue for expressing yourself and as Jerry said understanding someone else's perspective.

You know, to me, art is the ultimate take the politics out of the conversation and insert the humanity because it's all about the human experience and human expression, and that for me has been a wonderful revelation.

-It's funny, you said take the politics out.

Tony, I was just going to go to you and bring the politics in and talk a little bit about our legislative session and how art fits in.

I do want to talk about that, but I do want to come to you more specifically and talk about a big piece of what the Nevada Arts Council does, and we've been talking about it here a lot, just being able to sustain artists and support artists in this way, very similar to the projects that Ally is talking about here.

Give us some perspective on what the Nevada Arts Council does to support artists both in a COVID crisis, like we're seeing now, but as we move into recovery.

-Sure.

Most people know the Nevada Arts Council through our grant program, so I can certainly lead with that.

On a good year, we're granting out about, you know, $1 million-40,000 worth of grant funds to artists and arts organizations.

Some of those are project based, some of those are operational grants for our organizations, our arts organizations, and it's really rewarding, one, to be able to do that work, to be able to kind of seed these projects and activities, and in some instances we're the primary funder for an artist or an arts organization, and in some instances, we're a smaller portion of their overall funding, and all of it really matters.

What is exciting about the political side, I suspect, of our arts industry here and what the state does is that the Nevada Arts Council exists and we exist in statute.

We were established back in 1967 to be a state arts agency in the state back then, and the language expresses that arts need to play an ever-increasing role and important part of our society so, you know, really visionary back then and understanding the value and critical need for arts and culture and creativity in our state.

Oftentimes people will say well, why should the public fund the arts, and it's really important.

You know, it's important that the state invests in the economic vitality of the arts and the creative expression of the arts just as much as they invest in, you know, other critical areas of infrastructure.

So we're really grateful for that.

Two, what's been said about how the arts bring us together, talking on the legislative session, we can easily talk about the north/south divide, we can talk about the urban and rural divides that we have, and we look at it as a tremendous opportunity for arts and culture and creativity industry to really help bring that together and open up those conversations.

And that's been expressed here already, you know, see how we are more alike than we are in our differences and that we are one state and we have these fantastic, you know, opportunities and experiences that are out in Las Vegas, in Reno, in Tonopah, in Elko that really define who we are in particularly unique ways and particularly new unique ways as it comes to international travel.

So there's a tremendous draw, an opportunity for us as an industry to continue to operate in that way.

-Yes, really great points.

You checked all my boxes on the political side of that thing, and specifically also as you mentioned there at the end, the economic drivers, bringing tourism in.

But not only that, bringing new business in that wants to see art and culture thriving, very important to new business coming in too.

We've got about a minute left, and Yale, I want to talk to you.

We've been talking a lot about the public accessing art.

Let's talk about the public being involved in art and if you are somebody that maybe has never dabbled in visual art but maybe you want to get involved because of that personal connection, because of that self-expression we talked about.

Give us a couple pointers here on how we can get engaged.

What's the easiest way to do that?

-I think a lot of people are trying to connect with the public.

The public is a little bit fearful about getting out right now, but once we beat this COVID, the arts are going to thrive again.

And it's like Tony said, you know, once we can sustain art groups and the artists themselves, recovery is going to happen.

I mean, people are busting seams to get to shows and to see art in public like Downtown Las Vegas.

I was shocked at Area 15 how many people were there.

Today was the grand opening for the Mega Mart, which is the Meow Wolf at Area 15.

I mean, you can see that there's a need for art, and that's one place I would definitely recommend to go.

-Well, thank you as always for joining us this week on Nevada Week.

Now, for any of the resources we've discussed on this show, please visit our website at vegaspbs.org/nevada-week.

You can also always find us on social media at @nevadaweek.

Thanks again, and we'll see you next week.

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