Exhibit at North Las Vegas Campus showcases artistic skills of CSN professors

The College of Southern Nevada’s art exhibition features the latest works by 25 of its art and art history professors.

Jeff Fulmer, the Fine Arts department coordinator who curated the exhibit, said it is meant to showcase the diverse talents of CSN art professors, the art program and the courses it offers. The exhibit is in the Performing Arts Center at the North Las Vegas Campus, 3200 E. Cheyenne Ave.

CSN’s Fine Arts Department has 38 part- and full-time faculty members and is among the largest higher education art programs in Nevada. The pieces vary among ceramics, digital media, metal work, printmaking, photography and sculpture.

“The exhibit is laid out so that works that relate to each other or complement each other are hung in proximity,” Fulmer said.

Fulmer described the exhibit as an opportunity for the professors to express themselves artistically, and as a mirror that will reveal visitors’ art preferences.

Assistant Department Chairman Sean Russell contributed three pieces to the exhibit that he produced as the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area artist in residence. Russell transferred infrared images he took of wildlife such as deer and coyotes rooming the canyon at night onto images of the landscape during the day.

“It’s a mix of what your average tourist normally sees and what really goes on at Red Rock,” Russell said.

Professor Suzanne Acosta’s two pieces titled “Outside the Wilds: Sunset Park” and “Botox” featured human subjects from the 2015 Age of Chivalry Renaissance Festival at Sunset Park and a self-portrait of Acosta. In “Botox,” Acosta noticed after finishing the piece, she made her lips thicker and drew less winkles on her face, making it seemed as if she had undergone a botox procedure.

She said art is one of the only place where you can be completely free and make your own rules and capture a part of time or place that can’t be recovered.

“I usually have multiple narratives in my paintings, but I usually leave them obscure because I want the viewers to complete the other part of narrative on their own,” Acosta said.