Downtown Las Vegas’ Bunkhouse Saloon debuts themed art show this weekend

People will have a reason to stop and admire the roses when they drop by Friday’s show at Bunkhouse Saloon.

The outdoor area of the downtown music venue will house a gallery-style display on the theme “roses” while the band Hawthorne Heights performs inside. ISI Group, a local collective that coordinates art installations and events throughout the city, is hosting the art show. The event will also include a drawing for two pieces painted live.

The theme stems from “the fact that most of the artists that we’ve built our relationship with from the beginning have been tattoo artists and underground artists,” says ISI Group co-founder Dana Anderson. Both styles often feature roses prominently.

Artists of any stripe can submit work. Every submission will be displayed as long as it adheres to the guidelines: It must have at least one rose somewhere in it, it must be able to hang on a grid wall and the artist must drop it off between noon and 6 p.m. Thursday at Zen Den Studios, 1800 Industrial Road. Anderson also asks that artists attend the event and take their work home if it is not sold by midnight.

The Gallery at Bunkhouse will reoccur every two months, alternating with the variety show ISI Group hosts monthly at Bunkhouse.

With this event, the ISI Group is resurrecting an original raison d’etre. When Anderson founded ISI Group with business partner Phillip Limon in 2011, it hosted an auction and gallery event. Attendees bid on pieces that artists painted live. Artists could also submit completed pieces relevant to the event’s theme, which were then displayed for sale. The gallery portion of these events proved to be too labor-intensive for Anderson and his team, so they decided to forgo it about two years ago in favor of focusing on the live art and auction.

Though the auctions continued regularly, this Friday will be their first time hosting this style show again, after reworking the event a bit.

Anderson created ISI Group — which stands for Industry Supporting Industry — to bolster local artists and creatives in Las Vegas. The Gallery is an opportunity for artists, regardless of whether they consider themselves professionals, to display their work for sale. ISI Group does not take any portion of the sale price or charge a hanging fee. The artist keeps 100 percent of the proceeds from their art’s sale.

“We want people to be able to live off what they love,” Anderson says.

Read more from Sarah Corsa at reviewjournal.com. Contact her at scorsa@reviewjournal.com and follow @sarahcorsa on Twitter.