Mark Twain’s Suicide Table Blood Bucket Ghost Bonanza Amen

With a nod to Virginia City’s lively popular culture and lengthy history, the Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI] announces its exhibition, Mark Twain’s Suicide Table Blood Bucket Ghost Bonanza Amen, by artist Justin Favela at St. Mary’s Art Center from June 29 – August 30, 2014. CCAI and St. Mary’s will host a reception for the artist in the 4th floor gallery on Sunday, June 29, 1 – 4pm. St. Mary’s Art Center is located at 55 North R Street, Virginia City. The reception and the exhibition are free and the public is cordially invited. The gallery is open to the public Thursday – Sunday, 11am – 4pm.

Annually, CCAI and St. Mary’s Art Center collaborate on an artist residency and exhibition. Mr. Favela began his residency at the Art Center mid-June to create the work for his exhibition. This is the sixth artist residency collaboration between St. Mary’s and CCAI.

Justin Favela’s show features paintings and sculptures based on Virginia City’s iconic signage and history. His colorful artworks have little in common with Nevada’s countless high-end and expensive electric casino signs. Instead of light bulbs, pulsing electricity, metal, neon, and mammoth scale, he uses a street vernacular of common cardboard, wire, glue, glitter, bed sheets, and paint to recreate the signs listed in the show’s title: Mark Twain, Suicide Table, Blood Bucket, Ghost, Bonanza, and Amen. He reproduced Amen from a sign he found in St. Mary’s Catholic Church and Ghost from a Fourth Ward School sign — both in Virginia City.

Favela’s artwork draws from art history, contemporary culture, and his Latino heritage. He brings a youthful and whimsical perspective to a field that often takes itself quite seriously. His 2011 installation at the Clark County Government Center spoofed the Center’s high-end art collection. Following the Center’s purchase of a large travertine marble sculpture by Henry Moore, Favela mimicked the form in cardboard and paint. He gave homage to Miya Lin’s “Silver River” sculpture that used recycled silver to trace the Colorado River’s path by tracing the Las Vegas Wash’s trajectory in chicken wire, aluminum foil, and cardboard – materials he found in the Wash.
Justin Favela, a Las Vegas native, paints, makes sculpture, and does performance to make his art. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Nevada and nationally. Most recently, he had work in comedians and magicians at Trifecta Gallery, Las Vegas. Other Las Vegas exhibition venues have included the Contemporary Arts Center, and Gamma Gamma Gallery. Favela’s solo show County Center, at the Clark County Government Center, received local and national attention including a review in the Wall Street Journal.
Favela earned a B.F.A. in Studio Arts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2010 and works as a substitute teacher for the Clark County School District.
Emmanuel Ortega has written the exhibition essay, Virginia City Pavilion, for the exhibition. Ortega received his M.A. in Art History in 2010 from the University of New Mexico where he is now a doctoral candidate in Ibero-America colonial art history. Ortega’s dissertation investigates the violent history of eighteenth-century Novohispanic Franciscan martyr images. In 2012, he presented in the XXXVI Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte conference, “Los estatutos de la imagen: creación-manifestación-percepción” of the Universidad Autónoma de México in Mexico City (UNAM). Emmanuel has also published for the Polish art magazine Magazyn Sztuki and is part of the board of directors of the largest art residency in Mexico, Arquetopia. He presently teaches art history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

More information and images about Justin Favela’s art is available online at http://www.justinfavela.net/

This exhibition is supported with a lead donation from Comstock Foundation for History and Culture.

The Capital City Arts Initiative is an artist-centered organization committed to the encouragement and support of artists and the arts and culture of Carson City and the surrounding region. The Initiative is committed to community building for the area's diverse adult and youth populations through art projects and exhibitions, live events, arts education programs, artist residencies, and online projects.

CCAI is funded in part by the John Ben Snow Memorial Trust, Nevada Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, City of Carson City, Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the John and Grace Nauman Foundation.

For additional information, please visit CCAI’s website at www.arts-initiative.org.