Posts Tagged ‘examiner.com’

I love reading and watching process pieces, when an artist opens a window to the creation of works we’d otherwise not see until they were finished and ready for public consumption. Whether it’s a comic book illustrator’s blog, an in-the-studio music video or even a behind-the-scenes feature on a film, I find the nuts and bolts of the artistic machine to be fascinating. And I think as a culture we do as well — that’s why you kids love the Blu-Ray things with 14 hours of bonus features, right? Right.

So I was quite pleased to have the opportunity to follow an artist at work a few weeks ago for my latest Examiner.com piece. When photographer Kenneth Lamug pitched me a story on his upcoming street photography show at the College of Southern Nevada, I instantly thought this would make a great entry in my series of videos about the Las Vegas art scene. Unlike painting or sculpture, where the artist isn’t as camera-friendly in the midst of his or her work, Lamug’s photography approach — roaming the streets of Sin City letting his camera lens spontaneously capture life as it’s happening — is perfect for moving pictures.

I think the video turned out to be one of the best I’ve cut so far, and I’m still pretty sure I’m one of the few — if not only – folks at Examiner.com generating original video. Hope you enjoy:

Las Vegas Street Photography from Pj Perez on Vimeo.

It’s Thursday, and that means the new issue of Las Vegas Weekly has hit the racks around Vegas (and the ol’ intertubes). It looks like my article about Hal Savar’s Acoustic Soul is in there.  This was another situation where I had to cut a tremendous amount of meat from the story.

The piece was originally pitched as “an acoustic cover band’s struggle to break itself away from the ghetto pigeonhole of coverbandland.” But after starting work on the story, I realized it would never fit into 500 words. Hell, I couldn’t fit a profile of the band framed around one night’s show into 500 words. I had to leave out the story of the man who tipped the band $100 to stop playing Johnny Cash, as well as Hal’s origin story of the song veto process. And everything else: The band’s origins, more comments from the audience, etc.

This happens quite a lot. I did a 20-minute interview with Swedish indie-pop singer Lykke Li just to get one quote for a Coachella preview I wrote for Six Degrees, and never did manage to re-sell the rest of the interview. I probably have hundreds of pages of similarly unused interview notes with bands, artists, writers, architects and other subjects collected from these 15 years in journalism. One day I need to transcribe and organize these scraps and create a comprehensive archive. Who knows? Maybe someone will actually want to read them.

In other journalistic news, I’ve started getting back on track (somewhat) with my fine arts coverage at Examiner.com. If you haven’t subscribed yet, I highly recommend doing so if you have any interest in Las Vegas-spawned arts. If not, um … forget it, I guess.

We’re about to round a corner with the completion of this week’s two pages from The Utopian. Page 31 is now live, but Friday’s strip is not only the tense conclusion of Part 4 of the serial (“Out of the Closet”), but also will be the last page in the first print collection, which will be released this fall. I received cover art from Mark T. Zeilman (also bass player in a certain awesome local rock band) last week, and, well, I am trying really hard not to post it yet, because it’s pretty rad.

As I’m heading to San Diego for Comic-Con International tomorrow, there will be no new Utopian pages posted next week, but I’ll be back with Part 5, “Revelations,” the first week of August. Which is, coincidentally, 33rd Annual International Pj Week. Bring your party hats.

I’m sure I’ll have all sorts of news for you after I get back from Comic-Con, but until then, chew on the latest article I posted on Examiner.com about Nevada Ballet Theatre’s fall season, and keep your eyes out for tomorrow’s Las Vegas Weekly, in which there should be a Pj-penned article about fast-rising Vegas electro-core band This Romantic Tragedy.

Oh yeah, if you want to be really amused, check out Cracked.com’s “Worst Webcomic” forum, in which the forum trolls dwelling there do their best to ooze snarky criticisms all over The Utopian. Of course, since someone started posting links to my webcomic over there, traffic on my site has increased hundredfold, so I guess that goes to prove, once again, there’s no such thing as bad press. If I get really bored one of these days (because, you know, that happens), I might address each of their complaints in a blog post in my own refined and delicate manner.

And to end on a more positive note, how about good press? Internet pals Kevin Church, Benjamin Birdie, Max Riffner and others get some love for their webcomics over at NPR.com, which is about the most awesome sauce you’ll ever taste.

Andy Warhol's "Flowers"

You might think that Las Vegas couldn’t justify the existence of two columnists covering fine arts for the same website, Examiner.com. You might be wrong.

Our territories tend not to overlap: the other Las Vegas Fine Arts Examiner focuses on more tourist- and family-friendly items, while I often stick to locally grown art, theater and performance. But today, both of us wrote about the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art today, likely because that august institution is unveiling new additions from Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein to its current “Classic Contemporary” exhibit. I dropped 500 words critiquing the relevance and impact of the pop art movement (while promoting the new works and other timely stuff).

What you may notice is I’ve only been writing about one story per week. But it’s not due to a dearth of fine arts activity in Las Vegas. Quite the opposite: It’s because there’s actually almost too much going on. I have an e-mail inbox overflowing with press releases and updates about thesis shows, ballet performances, philharmonic concerts, cultural heritage exhibits, poetry readings and so much more that I barely know where to start. And between my other freelance work, doing a weekly webcomic and keeping you fine people entertained, well, there are only so many hours of the week.

That being said, I’m trying. So feel free to tune in to my Las Vegas Fine Arts Examiner channel to stay on top of things, and if you come across any interesting fine arts-related news items or ideas, well, you know where to find me.

Just so no one thinks I’ve been slacking off and doing nothing but making comics, here’s evidence to the contrary: The most recent (well, until a few days from now when another one comes out) issue of What’s On Las Vegas, featuring (aside from the raven-haired beauty distracting you on the cover) my stellar recap of a pampering session at The Art of Shaving inside the Mandalay Place shops at Mandalay Bay.

Yes, it’s a tough job, getting paid for undergoing a Royal Shave and writing about it, but you know, someone has to do it. Better me than you. And to be honest, the experience did give me a new appreciation for the, um, art of shaving. I now use a brush and aftershave and preshave oil and all that stuff … when I actually get around to shaving every few weeks.

Oh, and I’m still (though less frequently than I or my channel editor would like) writing about Las Vegas fine arts over at Examiner.com, in case you were wondering. I even posted something in the last 24 hours. So there.

This Fine Arts Examiner thing is interesting. It’s giving me an opportunity to broaden my understanding of facets of the arts I’ve previously had little experience with. During my time as a contributor to the CityLife and as editor at both The Rebel Yell newspaper and Racket magazine, I covered visual art inside and out, from interviews with artists and gallerists to assessments (let’s not call them reviews) of painting, sculpture, mixed media, photography and other gallery staples.

But areas such as dance, opera and — to some extent — poetry are fairly undiscovered territory for me, journalistically.  So forgive me if I stumble a bit, but I have to say I’m fairly pleased with my first review of a ballet performance, and expect to see more such coverage in the near future. Here’s what you may have missed:

• Nevada Ballet Theatre breaks genre barriers with “American Masters”
• Clark County School District students given a “VOICE” in the art world
• Contemporary Arts Center encourages culture lovers to get “Off The Strip”

In the works are reviews of the “Classic Contemporary” show at the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art and the new Danielle Kelly exhibit at Henri & Odette, and other stuff that’s all artsy and whatnot. If it’s your thing, be sure to sign up for RSS updates. Go art!

Just a reminder: I’m writing regularly about Las Vegas fine arts over at Examiner.com. That includes visual art as well as theater, poetry and anything else that comes along under the vast topic of “fine arts.” Recent stories you may have missed:

• Smith Center gets $170 million boost from Las Vegas City Council
• Celebrated poet Mani Rao hits the Coffee Bean for ‘Word Up!’
• The Yellow Brick Road leads to Winchester Cultural Center this March

One thing I am trying to do — something it appears is relatively unprecendented at Examiner.com — is incorporate original video reports. I did regular video blogs at VEGASinsight, but that was more me doing a talking head thing than actual broadcast journalism. So expect to see more nifty pieces such as this one I threw together about Jennifer Maupin’s photo exhibit at Henri & Odette:

So if you live in Las Vegas and want to keep somewhat informed on the fine arts scene here, feel free to subscribe to the RSS feed for my Examiner articles. And if you’re using Vimeo, please add me as a contact, as I’ll be posting my new video material there. If you’re already subscribing to my YouTube videos, don’t worry: I’ll be adding stuff there as well, just slightly delayed.