It’s almost too much. Images crowd against each other, each of them vibrant, dynamic and actively competing for your affections. A fleet of flying saucers. A three-eyed businessman. A walking carton of sour milk, and many others, printed on small, toy-like wooden blocks. It takes real restraint to heed Nevada Humanities’ plea not to touch the art—to refrain from picking up the blocks and re-stacking them in new contexts.
Artist Shan Michael Evans, arguably known best for his murals and street art (there are several of his works on Arts District walls, and one inside the Freed’s Bakery on California Avenue), conceived Saints and Poets Maybe—showing at Nevada Humanities’ Arts District gallery through September 25—as an encyclopedia of his visual style and an introduction to his work for those who might not have previously connected these vivid art pieces with each other, much less with the artist who makes them.
“It’s years of work,” Evans says. “I’m not sure who has seen any of it … This opportunity presented itself, and I hope people are enjoying it.”
There are many ways to enjoy the show, whose name is inspired by dialogue from the classic Thornton Wilder play Our Town. (“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it ... every, every minute?” “No. Saints and poets … maybe they do some.”) But the unspoken “town” analogy seems particularly apt when you consider Evans’ rows of people, places and things. Don’t care for one of the works?
There may be a piece that you love literally one block over.
“I thought the wood could lend some substance to them,” Evans says of his decision to print the pieces on wood. “I wanted them like toys. Building blocks. Create your own adventure. Collectable. Affordable. I was thinking of tiny homes.”
The themes range all over, from popular culture to Vegas history to storybook fantasy. Asked about his jukebox of influences, he gives an answer as unexpected and playful as the works themselves.
“Something mystic. Bauhaus. Horrace Pippin. Folk art, the commercial art from by-gone eras, vintage comics … Advertisements are a big one. Bad printing,” he says. “There’s not a day, nor a thing in a day, that I’m not inspired by—but mostly, cheap plastic Halloween masks that once littered a K-Mart aisle.”
Going deeper, Evans says he’s inspired by “the human condition, though I absolutely worry that never comes across.” But the humanity is always, always present. It’s in the blue-eyed, freckled goth girl with high cheekbones dappled with perfect black dots, and the grinning skull with a rainbow issuing from its head. It’s even in his polygonal abstracts and his nods to classic Vegas signage and iconography. (Look for the five differently hued “one-arm bandits”—a proper gathering of robotic cowpokes.)
Oftentimes the “real” world feels like nothing but be gray concrete, smog-filled skies and emotional disconnect. But in Saints and Poets Maybe, Evans has provided colorful building blocks of hopes and dreams, ready to be assembled into something aspirational, something better.
Saints and Poets Maybe Thru September 15, free. Artist’s talk September 11, 5 p.m. Nevada Humanities Program Gallery, 1017 S. First St. #190, nevadahumanities.org.
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