Photo of Lynn Morris by James Stanford – 35mm Analog Film Portrait (2015)

‘Little Feller’ Lynn Morris

A Las Vegas Art Pioneer

BY DR. GEMMA MARMALADE

Julia ‘Lynn’ Morris is Las Vegas’s answer to the smallest atomic bomb you didn’t see detonate, but everyone felt her impact. In a town that screams to be seen and where fleeting expressions of outrageousness are commonplace, Morris has been a modest yet enduring powerhouse of art business (and funny business) for over forty years.

I’m hardly the one to tell this tale, given that I only rocked up to town for the first time in 2015—and that as a naïve British tourist. Like any visitor fresh off the tarmac at the then McCarran, now Harry Reid Airport, I was aware of some iconographies for my Las Vegas bucket list that I just had to tick off. After an incomprehensibly large, vodka-infused, slushy offering on the Strip, I bounded to Bonanza: The World’s Largest Gift Shop. Its famous kitsch was something I felt I had known indirectly for a very long time. I can’t recall any explicit place or time I learned about it. Instead, it seemed to firmly pre-exist in my mind’s eye from many informational sources in the United Kingdom. Fashion photographs; references in popular media, films, and TV shows – (notwithstanding it being the bizarrely chosen shopping location by 9/11 terrorists prior to their World Trade Center attack) – Bonanza’s pervasive allure penetrated my awareness, and like a slutty moth to a chintzy flame, I was ready for what ‘tut’ (as the British like to call it) I could swag.

Apart from the haul of funny gifts and brilliant mementos for friends and family back home, including having my photograph taken in front of the store for cheesy posterity, I didn’t anticipate this experience would awaken my own aesthetic and cultural interests in a way that has since significantly informed my professional and creative research as both an artist and academic. I knew Las Vegas was a natural home for my typically ridiculous performance art spectacles, and Bonanza would become a vital prop supplier. Eventually, and through a complexly magical series of serendipity, I came to learn the boss behind Bonanza, the person who coined “The World’s Largest Gift Shop” in a town built on silver dollars – and so much more – was the petite irrepressibly brilliant and undeniable dark horse: Lynn Morris.

A Las Vegas native, excusing her first six months in Idaho, Morris’ family flourished in the Valley during the 1950s and 60s. Bruce H. Morris worked in and ran a string of hotel gift shops for CT Harris, including The Stardust, The International Hilton, and The Desert Inn, to name a few. Bruce eventually developed his own souvenir businesses with partner John Lonetti around key locations in the heart of the city, Fremont Street, as tourists flooded in. With business booming, L&M Incorporated needed an ambitious and capable manager to run the show, and a state-wide recruitment search commenced. What they didn’t expect was the store’s trusted help, who had worked in the warehouses from the tender age of eight to twenty, would step up. In 1971, Bruce came to learn that his daughter’s keen observation of business, teamed with her BFA in Art History from UNLV, would become a winning formula that created a zeitgeist of pop culture and a beacon that drew the crowds from across the globe for decades.

“It appealed to my sense of the absurd,” says Morris, who also quipped that L&M had no idea the name of their company already had the initials of their best asset. If this wasn’t enough, Morris became yet another female cultural leader of Las Vegas who helped define the iconic ‘Glitter Gulch,’ not simply as a hugely successful business owner but by what the business did for the grassroots art movement of Las Vegas. Morris was one of the original minds who conceived and instigated the now thriving and ever-expanding Las Vegas Arts District.

In 1984, Morris made a ‘souvenir’ purchase of her own. One early Sunday August morning at City Hall, both wearing bow ties and with zero guests, Lynn married local artist James Stanford. Even though this irked the Justice of the Peace performing the ceremony as it interrupted the Dodgers game playing live in Eastern Time, her union with Stanford heralded their status as a power couple on the local arts scene. After assimilating with the then female-led Las Vegas Contemporary Arts Collective, known as ‘CAC,’ Morris, amongst others, helped create its new future in the early nineties. With the CAC’s sole purpose to platform and elevate the talent of Las Vegas creatives to a broader cultural audience, its growth throughout the decade saw it shift locations from its origin on Maryland Parkway to Downtown. On a hunch this could become a fresh and hip off-strip location, the opening event of the CAC at the then-titled Urga Building on Charleston Boulevard drew crowds in the thousands. The CAC and other pioneers of the area built upon this art audience precedent long before First Friday and any designation of it as an ‘Arts District.’

Morris’ instinct for both art and business coalesced. The Bonanza Store, by then under exclusive ownership and direction of Morris, was the steadfast financial engine that funded this uptick of home-grown creative industry. Just a year later, CAC made its final relocation to the fledgling Arts Factory, a stone’s throw from the Urga, and cemented the multi-organizational creative home of Downtown Las Vegas. After renovating the upper floors to incubate its creative industries, she co-founded Smallworks Gallery, one of the first commercial galleries in the area, with Stanford and artist Kathleen Nathan. Directly next door, Morris set about creating her own bespoke concept space, Lost Vegas Gallery. So ahead of its time that even a contemporary Las Vegan might struggle to comprehend its genius, Lost Vegas Gallery deftly straddled a cerebral, experiential art space with a commercial souvenir gift shop. Not only did this generate a cash lifeline to help sustain Smallworks Gallery, but it was also a remarkably unique location that featured Vegas-derived work by artists, including the ‘Elvis Throne,’ colloquially known as the ‘Elvis Death Toilet’ by John deFazio. If a ceramic homage to the bowel-burdened Presley doesn’t illustrate the camp eye of Morris, please read on.

Morris was initially informed by the aesthetic (or lack thereof) of being raised in the sobriety of Mormonism. Daniel T. Jenkins describes this condition in relation to art and theology as “not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think.” Morris’ protest of this faith system embraced the excess, exotic, and indulgence in the artifacts of her colorful world, as was her rejection of patriarchal femininity illustrated in her subtly playful androgynous style of dress. Rebellion from normativity became her business, both literally and figuratively. However, a sliver of Jenkin’s point remained true of Morris’ psyche – Lynn made space for the fantastic without demanding that space herself. She was not a monopolizer of the limelight like so many debutants drawn by the glitzy potential of the Valley. She was the brains, the facilitator, the enabler, and the grit that underpinned and expedited unprecedented creative growth in and for Las Vegas through the fiscal foundations she built almost entirely alone.

Today, one might hasten to think that the former owner of Bonanza – who, in its heyday, made her the Las Vegas souvenir maven – might be a ball-breaker broad bankrolled by her mobster love conquests. Instead, Morris is an impish, self-effacing ‘tomboy’ juxtaposed by her pistol whip wit, illustrated by her iconic choice of Bonanza Store signage: ‘If it’s in stock, we have it.’ Even whilst retired, Morris continues to be a dynamo of observant and relentless persistence to support emerging creativity. After a dormant period through various other sets of hands, the CAC entered yet another new era in 2023 with Morris at the helm as President, flanked by an international team of art experts. Its focus is to preserve the CAC’s historical contributions to the Las Vegas art scene made possible by the many artists and curators who exhibited between the 1980s – 2000s, as well as created future arts and culture opportunities for the community.

With wickedly clever brilliance, she maintains her keen eye for visual language and its incisive cultural coding teamed with her unextinguishable imagination. Morris cites American artist Joseph Cornell as a key influence on her personal style of curatorship. Skillfully turning the avant-garde to avant-gauche, her home in the Scotch Eighties is an ever-evolving treasure trove ‘museum’ of carefully staged art and artifacts, where in just a few strides, you’ve likely met an assemblage of a Martini drinking Godzilla feasting on the guts of a Fez-wearing human anatomical model.

Las Vegas and its loyal fans love a brazen tale of audacity, debauchery, and infamy. Indeed, this global fascination is a likely element of what initially drew me in eight years ago, just like it has for the millions of visiting tourists year on year, who fly in and then out, freshly laden with their vacation trinkets and holiday ephemera. However, it was through the good fortune of my staying just long enough to peer beyond the superficial shop front of Vegas and meeting the seminal Lynn Morris that a very different and more nuanced story emerged. The truly radical extreme is, in my view, best illustrated in Las Vegas’s few unsung and unanticipated heroes. Poet Rainer Maria Rilke says, “Go to the limits of your longing,” meaning that to fully step into life, it is not through the ego self. Instead, it is through an unapologetic immersion in the plurality of extraordinariness in human nature. From an anthropological perspective, Ernest Becker says, “Society itself is a codified hero system, which means that society everywhere is a living myth of the significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning.” Morris’ unpretentious and subversive magic truly resides in the paradox between what is conventionally perceived and its unconventional counterpart.

Once dangerously underestimated after the exponential growth of his businesses, Bruce Morris said to the newly successful Lynn, “You’re the son I always wanted,” to which she effortlessly replied, “I’m the daughter you always needed.” This cool, intelligent hutzpah, combined with her cultural contribution to a city that owes her so much, transforms her into the richest and most formidable example of heroism one might ever be lucky enough to encounter. The trouble is, how conscious one is of such an unassuming yet powerful encounter with Lynn Morris is much like this witness testimony from the 1962 Nevadan nuclear explosion codenamed ‘Little Feller’… “Well, you could have easily missed it, but boy, did it kick ass.”

Photo of James Stanford by Laura Henkel

James Stanford – The Man Behind the Genius – Nevada’s Most Influential Artist

BY LAURA HENKEL

I first heard of James Stanford when I moved to Las Vegas in 2007. I soon became aware of his philanthropic endeavors, his position as Chair of the Las Vegas Art Commissioner, his pioneering work establishing the Arts District, and his leadership of the Contemporary Art Center, a non-profit operating for three decades. Until then, I had never heard of him as a creative. When our worlds eventually collided, my firm, ArtCulture PR, was recruited to publicize the artwork he had been quietly creating since his 20s while also giving back to his community. While many are aware of his Shimmering Zen series—his spiritualized take on the glitz and ecstasy of Las Vegas—few know his ongoing exploration of new mediums and development of new work.

Stanford is an artist known as an alchemist because of his extraordinary capacity to take the visual language of Las Vegas and simplify it, making it more potent and evocative. He has earned this label because of his unusual ability to do both things. The depth of Stanford’s comprehension of the intricacies and nuances of urban life and the city’s magnetic pulse is a defining characteristic of his artistic output. His compositions are vivid and brilliant, giving spectators a feeling of sensory overload with each look at his work. Not only is Stanford’s portfolio admired for its aesthetic value and level of sophistication but also for the Zen Buddhist meditations portrayed within them. These meditations convey a sense of calm and harmony. His works also elicit a sense of melancholy and introspection. His talent for capturing the spirit of Las Vegas has won him the attention of many art collectors, not just from the West Coast but also from other parts of the country and the world.

Since his art presents a one-of-a-kind perspective of Las Vegas accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds, Stanford’s work has evolved into a prized possession among art collectors. He is able to capture the excitement and vigor of the city without sacrificing the city’s delicate beauty. As a result, the work of art that he produces is something that everybody can enjoy. Stanford stands out as a true artist in a world of art where there are so many various styles because he has managed to mix the complexities of the city with a sense of simplicity and beauty. This makes his work particularly notable. His artwork is a reminder of the beauty and vibrancy of Las Vegas and the emotion and energy that can be found inside its walls.

Artists like Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria, and Gianfranco Gorgoni have drawn inspiration from the immensity and majesty of their environments, and Stanford’s work connects to the canon of these and other contemporary artists. On the other hand, Stanford’s work is an innovation, a prismatic distillation of artistic discovery portrayed through meditative abstraction. In the huge expanse of desert, these pieces are like shining beacons. His portfolio is based on his Las Vegas photographs that have been digitally collaged to create a collection of mesmerizing imagery. Unique to this form of artistic expression are geometric tableaux bursting with shifting and overlapping hues, forms, and illuminations. The artist employs the alchemy of seeing potential in things that seem to have none at first glance, so transforming the profane into the sacred. The energy and stillness of the desert and the infusion of city lights only serve to heighten the strong sense of mystique that one gets from here and the inspiration as strange tableaux crisscrossed by light-infused patterns and a sense of pareidolia.

“It’s a modern take on psychedelic work,” says Alec Longmuir of Melissa Morgan Fine Art. “At the same time, it plays with the traditional ideas in pattern building and geometry all through the lens of a riot of color.” He adds, “You can see the more in-depth story behind each piece when you peel back the layers of the onion and realize that they are actually collages made from Stanford’s photographs. These works are similar to journals in this regard. Because of Stanford’s impressive history as an artist and his already-established reputation, collectors find that his works have a lot of appeal. One never gets tired of the task because there is always something fresh to see, which is a positive aspect from a personal standpoint.”

Born in 1948 in Las Vegas, his work symbolizes the greatest aspects of the city. Residents and visitors to Sin City have had the opportunity to view his work at various public sites, including Harry Reid International Airport, The Strat, Downtown Grand, and countless enormous murals and pop-up pieces around the city. Stanford makes the observation that he wants to emphasize, even at this late stage of life, the significance of the process of becoming the journey, and he says, “We are not solid entities; we are process and energy.” That is a direct reference to the city’s humble beginnings as a pioneer town to its absolute magnificence as one of the world’s entertainment meccas. According to Stanford, “The energy and pulse of Las Vegas, as well as the city’s propensity to perpetually reinvent itself, drive the contemporary artist to transform the obvious into the sublime.” The energy of Las Vegas, its pulse, and its ability to perpetually recreate itself are all captured in these limitless works, which contain what Stanford refers to as “the excitement of Las Vegas.”

John Barry of Kevin Barry Fine Art, whom Stanford has collaborated with on numerous occasions for site-specific works for a variety of individual residences as well as corporate collections, sums up his Shimmering Zen series best. Barry states, “Stanford is unlike any other work of art that I’ve seen.” A work that is visually engaging and has recognizable subject matter but is executed in an original way. In particular, the parts of the kaleidoscope represent famous Las Vegas locations. Clients who want to emphasize and showcase Las Vegas, but want something more sophisticated than the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign, really connect with Stanford’s work and find it resonant with them. His work compels the viewer to indulge their feeling of wonder by examining the piece in greater detail and engaging in an attitude of discovery in relationship to the components of the installation: ‘Which symbol does that represent?’ or ‘I remember that sign; thirty years ago, we used to go there with my aunt and Uncle!’ The narratives that emerge from his work contribute equally to the whole experience as the artwork itself does.”

When exploring James Stanford’s art, we are treated to a thrilling journey that reveals fascinating insights about the man behind the genius. Thanks to public museums and institutions like The Neon Museum and the City of Las Vegas, we have the opportunity to learn about and appreciate the artist’s extraordinary talent. Examples of his art may be found in prestigious collections all over the world. Looking over Stanford’s body of work, perhaps we can see his unique brilliance and come to value him as the beautiful human being and rare diamond that he is.

For my part, I consider it one of the biggest blessings in my life to count Stanford not only as a valued client but also as a dear friend I hold in high esteem. It has been a joy to watch him achieve success over these many years. Because of his presentation and exhibition at the Format Festival in Derby, which took place in the United Kingdom this past March, the path has been made for new projects in the United Kingdom, Europe, and Asia. And within days of his return trip from London, he was acknowledged for his contributions to the arts and the community by having his name inducted into the UNLV Hall of Fame. In April, the Forgotten Song Foundation gave him the VIVA Award recognizing outstanding achievement in Visual and Performing Arts in Las Vegas. I am ecstatic that attention is being given to Stanford’s many years of artistic and philanthropic efforts to promote Las Vegas, thereby establishing his place as one of Nevada’s most influential artistic ambassadors.

I am excited to see where his creativity takes him next. With that in mind, I say, “Captain, my Captain. Here’s to favorable winds and following seas!” I sincerely wish that you, the reader, will discover his work and enjoy the same sense of pride for his artistic contributions on behalf of our neon metropolis. It should be noted that the 13th of October is officially James “Jim” Stanford Day in Las Vegas per a Proclamation issued by Mayor Goodman. Celebrate art, my friends, for art has the power to transform space and build community! It certainly is more beautiful when it is inspired by the neon lights of Las Vegas.

Photo of James Stanford by Checko Salgado

James Stanford: An Artist Shines in the Desert

BY KENDALL HARDIN

Not many Las Vegas artists have their own Wikipedia page, but James Stanford’s entry contains a heap of accolades and tributes spanning five decades.

His vitae praises not only his accomplishments as a visual artist, photographer, digital designer, and technical illustrator but also underscores his pioneering role as a leader, teacher, curator, publisher, and entrepreneur in the Las Vegas cultural community from its founding to today.

Jim Stanford is a native son of vintage Las Vegas, born 73 years ago in the city’s only hospital when the population approached 38,000 residents. He grew up in the historic Huntridge District, the son of Bernice and Harvey Stanford, two high school teachers who resettled here in 1936 from Texas. In 1944, his father achieved local celebrity sainthood for coaching the undefeated Las Vegas High School “Dream Team” to the state championship title, outplaying the big teams that traditionally dominated.

DISCOVERING THE ARTIST’S PATH

Jim showed early artistic talent with an exceptional ability to draw, but it wasn’t until he traveled abroad that he encountered a rare transformative experience that thrust him onto the path of an artist.

“I was 20, and the Prado Museum in Madrid was the first museum I ever visited,” explained Jim. Standing before Flemish painter, Rogier van der Weyden’s monumental Northern Renaissance masterpiece, Descent from the Cross (1435), Jim experienced an episode of shock known as the Stendhal Syndrome, which produces an intense psychosomatic reaction.

“I fainted in front of the painting and was unconscious for 15 minutes. When I awakened, I had this uncanny insight into the painting techniques of the old masters that confirmed my devotion to making art. It was a kind of artistic conversion that made me feel whole again.”

In the first graduating class from UNLV’s art department in 1971, Jim received his Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree in painting. Two years later, he followed by earning a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Washington in Seattle two years later. When he returned to his Mojave Desert homeland—then more of a “cultural desert”—he faced a shortage of galleries and exhibition spaces.

“After graduation, I literally dug ditches and dealt blackjack until I established myself as an instructor in UNLV’s Fine Arts Department in 1978,” Jim recalled. “To survive, I produced technical illustrations for EG&G – Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier (Doc Edgerton’s company), which performed high-speed photography for above-ground atomic bomb explosions.

“When I set up my graphic design business, I had to leave all my traditional skills behind and become an early adapter of computer design and digital photography. At first, I was terrified of the digital age, but I soon recognized how this ‘tsunami of technology’ opened up a whole new world for me as an artist. The rewards have been amazing!”

PROJECTING A NEW CREATIVE FORCE

Recognized as a trailblazer of the Las Vegas arts community, Jim served the City as Chairman of the Las Vegas Arts Commission from 1999 to 2001, at which time he created the Downtown Las Vegas “Lightscapes” installation, cited by Art in America as one of 20 leading-edge public art projects of its time.

He also served three years as President of the Las Vegas Contemporary Arts Collective (CAC), later known as the Contemporary Arts Center. He established its second location on Charleston Boulevard, where he curated numerous exhibits and oversaw the organization’s day-to-day operations.

In 1998, Jim co-founded the Las Vegas-based Smallworks Gallery. Seven years later, he created Smallworks Press, a publishing company specializing in arts and culture publications, which secured international distribution through Midpoint in 2018 and later with IPG (Independent Publishers Group).

Smallworks Press has received critical acclaim for many of its publications, including such gems as Street Art Las Vegas by William Shea and Patrick Lai, Motel Vegas by Fred Sigman, and Compass of the Ephemeral: Aerial Photography of Black Rock City through the Lens of Will Rogers.

In 2007, he participated in the Mayor’s Roundtable to explore the future of the Downtown Las Vegas Arts District and First Friday events. Jim’s artwork continued to be represented by the Trifecta Gallery in the Arts Factory until the gallery’s closing in 2015.

ZEN MEETS THE DIGITAL AGE

Jim was introduced to Seon Buddhism (Korean Zen) as a young man, providing deep spiritual inspiration and discipline for both his meditative practice and artwork. In the last decade, Jim received wide exhibition and critical acclaim for his Indra’s Jewels series. He was deeply moved by the Jewelled Net of Indra, a metaphoric image in Hau-Yen Buddhism where everyone and everything is interrelated in the universe and infinitely reflected off each other as wondrous shimmering jewels.

Based on such paradoxical Zen principles as the “unity of polarity,” Jim uses digital technology to transform photomontages of Las Vegas’ mid-century signage, neon, and architecture into intricate, kaleidoscopic patterns superimposed on large circular discs. These exquisite “modern mandalas” are breathtaking. They can be enjoyed for their aesthetic beauty alone or at a much deeper level, where the “magic circle” becomes a spiritual representation of the cosmic universe and a meditative guide on the path to enlightenment.

In 2017, Jim exhibited the Indra’s Jewels series in his Shimmering Zen exhibition at Asia Art in London. At the same time, he released a large companion book by the same title, itself an objet d’art, exquisitely published with full-bleed details of over 240 mandala creations—a tour de force of visual dynamism.

The text of this art tome is equally joyful and full of wonder. One can take a “walkabout” with the artist by following his conversation with Laura Henkel . . . reminiscing about a primordial desert landscape that welcomed a young city dotted with gambling, Nellis Air Force Base and the Atomic Testing Site in the outback. His tales of coming of age in the Mojave demonstrate that vintage Vegas is in his DNA … and deeply reflected in his art.

Shimmering Zen book released in 2017.
Photo by David Jensen (UK)

Shimmering Zen Concertina (PDF Download)

Jim teamed up with Las Vegas fashion designer David Tupaz to create diaphanous scarves and fabrics printed with Shimmering Zen designs for Tupaz’s 2018 fashion showing at New York’s prestigious Fashion Week. A local fashion extravaganza followed at the Sahara West Library to complement Jim’s exhibition of select Shimmering Zen pieces on view in the Studio Gallery.

Shimmering Zen Fabrics and Scarves Animate the Runway
Photo by Checko Salgado

RE-IMAGINING THE PAST

In 2018, Jim designed a monumental mural to commemorate the beloved statue of the Blue Angel that adorned the rooftop of Blue Angel Motel (Fremont and Charleston streets) for over six decades, until “Our Lady of Las Vegas” was taken down in 2017 to be refurbished. The original 16-foot statue was created by Betty Willis, who also designed the iconic “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign.

A Phalanx of Angels Ascending was commissioned by Alison Chambers, the building’s owner at 705 North Las Vegas Boulevard. The mural spans over 2,000 square feet, wrapping around all three sides of the building. With a touch of classic wit, one blue angel appears on the half shell, a nod to Sandro Botticelli’s celebrated Birth of Venus. Multiple other angels rocket to heaven aided by the thrust of jet engines.

A Phalanx of Angels Ascending Print by James Stanford

Mural Celebrating “Our Lady of Las Vegas.” Photo by Laura Henkel

Jim’s latest large-scale design in 2019, entitled From the Land Beyond Beyond, spans that south wall of the Reed Whipple Building across the street from the Neon Museum Boneyard. The 154-foot mural pays tribute to two early Las Vegas landmarks – the Stardust Resort & Casino (imploded in 2007) and the Dunes Hotel and Casino (closed in 1993 to make way for the Bellagio that reopened in 1998).

From the Land Beyond Beyond Mural. Photo by Kin Lui

The images include two colossal lava rock Moai, which stood guard outside the Stardust’s Aku Aku Polynesian Restaurant and Tiki Bar. Also depicted is the giant Sultan from the Dunes, including the tiny harem darling perched on the toe of his pointed slipper. Such fabulous kitsch! No longer a memory of the past, these life-size images are granted new life on downtown walls.

Detail of the Dunes Sultan on the Reed Whipple Building.
Photo by James Stanford

PUSHING THE ENVELOPE

Jim has mastered a number of complex printing methods for his mandalas, depending on whether they involve single or multiple layers—employing such processes as light lasers, silver-halide photographic paper, aluminum metal plates, and dye-sublimation techniques.

If the image involves two or more layers, then a meticulous lenticular process is used. A lenticular print positions alternating strips of images on the back of a transparent sheet composed of a series of curved ridges (lenticules). When light passes through the lenticules, the images “flip” one to another through refraction and magnification to produce a single complete image. As the viewer shifts his line of sight, the image vibrates and shimmers.

I got lost peering into his Shimmering Zen works to ferret out images from Old Vegas that no longer exist: the Horseshoe Club, Sassy Sally’s, Stardust, Coin Castle, and Aladdin, to name but a few. For me, his work offers up a clever, witty conceit of composition that renders pure joy. The old is reincarnated in a whole new form of exquisite beauty. Is this a form of contemplation?

Put a child in front of a lenticular piece that is back-lit, and the “dance of life” between viewer and work is instantaneous: head bobs, arms wave, and giggles emerge. The response to Jim’s work is profound – whether from a Buddhist monk, an art lover, or a young child.

If it’s true that talent does an old thing well, but genius makes an old thing new, then Jim has found his voice and realized his passion.

I’d say this Las Vegas homeboy didn’t just make good; I’d say James Stanford, the artist hit the jackpot.

Blue Angel on the Half Shell
Print by James Stanford

Note: James Stanford’s Private Studio + Gallery is located in the historical Scotch Eighties in Downtown Las Vegas (available by appointment).

Visit jamesstanfordart.com for more details on the artist’s background, his portfolio, and a list of exhibitions, as well as an array of art and merchandise for sale.

Stanford’s 48” back-lit lenticular portal “Ing-Ing” will reside in the permanent collection of the Neon Museum, where readers may also purchase his book Shimmering Zen, scarves, 12” square aluminum prints, and T-shirts imprinted with mural images of the Blue Angel, “Our Lady of Las Vegas.”

Design by David Tupaz, Photography by Stanley Tran Photography

David Tupaz Couture

BY DAVID TUPAZ

Las Vegas designer, David Tupaz presented his 2019 collection at the West Sahara Library, The Studio “Art Galleries” (formerly the Fine Art Museum ) during the exhibition of “Shimmering Zen” by James Stanford. David’s collection was inspired by the Artist’s work and it showed in his choice of colors and shapes and the overall look of the collection.

“I am overwhelmed by James Stanford’s work”, David said. Being a Las Vegas designer, and James who is a native, was a perfect collaboration to bring the essence of Las Vegas’ culture and aesthetics. “There is certain vision that artists see and share” David adds.

The runway show was produced by The Industry Fashion Show and David Tupaz in cooperation with TNG models who sponsored most of the runway models in support of David. The event was by invitation only as most industry events and shows are.

The Industry Fashion Show (T.I.F.S.) is a production company that produces fashion events, conventions, expos, as well as fashion presentations during fashion week. Our focus is not just a platform for designers to showcase their collections to the press and media, but we bring industry professionals, retailers, buyers, merchandisers, stylists, fashion PR, and advertising to create interest, connections, and business, between designers and the industry. We want the runway to be the vehicle that will create sales. The Fashion Industry Show (T.I.F.S.) has a fully equipped production that includes a lineup of house models, hair and make-up artists, production staff, interns, and volunteers.

TNG Models is a full-service model and talent agency based out of Las Vegas, Nevada.